I think some people fail to realize that they were born in the world of ever going exponential economical growth that made the living of every new generation better than their fathers. And they think it will continue forever. It won't. The technological revolution and a century of economic growth had a price. Machines that liberated man from tedious manual labour don't run just because. They need fuel. And 85% of global electricity is generated from burning coal, gas and oil. So as these resources peak and start to become more scarce the costs of producing EVERYTHING will gradually increase. That means tighter profit margins for busynesses, smaller salaries, higher prices for basic necessities etc. We are living right in the times of peak resources, so that old logic - every new generation will have more prosperous living will be gone. Quite the contrary, sons now will work harder and afford less than their fathers. Well, unless, of course, mankind invents some revolutionary source of cheap energy to replace depleting fossil fuels.

@sohus "People here need to learn exponential thinking" You do understand the irony of your statements right? :)

People here need to learn exponential thinking. Looking at the future with current technology easily leads to all this doomsdays scenarios.

You know why Greeks are in trouble?

Because they are corrupt, avoid taxes, only want to work till they are 50, because 25% of people in that country work for the government and more of those reasons. They only ones to blame are themselves.

And yes, the world as we know it will collapse but what we are going to get is going to be prettier and more sustainable.

I recommend you guys start reading some literature: Society 3.0, Singularity, The Power of Pull. Instead of complaining about all the bullshit going on in this world, do something to change it.

The sun and wind are unlimited resources (for a long time ahead), we have to start utilising them. The costs of solar panels is coming down at amazing speed. The technology is already there to turn every single house in this world into a energy self sufficient provider which means we don't need any other resources for energy: no coal, no gas, no wood. We just have to get better in capturing energy that is already present.

For 34 years, Gwendolyn Beasley worked as a clerk at the Detroit Public Library and paid a portion of her salary into a fund that would someday help pay for her pension.

Now retired, Beasley, 67, receives $1,500 a month from that pension. But she's cutting back on spending after a judge ruled last week that Detroit's pension funds, like other city creditors, may have to take a hit as the city reorganizes its finances under bankruptcy.

It's not just Detroit retirees who are worried about their pensions. Financially troubled cities in California, Illinois and Pennsylvania will soon face decisions on what to do with chronically underfunded pension funds, and experts say the Detroit ruling has made it easier for cities to argue that pensions must be cut.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-public-employee-pensions-20131208,0,3337836.story

I concede the point about oil, I was really talking about natural gas so I'm not sure why I went down that road. My house uses oil for heat, and the price has only increased in the last 5 years (and it's too damn high! as I'd mentioned). If I had a natural gas burning furnace, it would be significantly less expensive -- but it's the US that now has so much natural gas that it exports it like Russia, not Greece or PIGS.

Larger point about whether money can influence costs, just take a look at the prices of energy on the stock market, or for raw materials, and compare with price for production. If a lot of people decide to invest in the stock the price rises, and it's been characteristic of recent years that the price of oil, or metals say, can go way higher than is justified by anything except speculation by investors. And then it drops because it was just speculation, this happened a number of times over the past decade.

Maybe you are really saying that money can't influence energy prices downward, only upward. That may in fact be the case in a sense because for energy the price will never go below a certain level because the demand is always there. I don't say my POV is original, just that it's based on financial data which could be checked by anyone. There can only be other data that perhaps I'm not looking at, and I commend your efforts to highlight them if they are out there and being obscured by the worlds major news media.

Last thing -- the price of borrowing is crucial here, and this is how policies of the EU affect the price of energy. If they make the price of borrowing outrageously high like it is now, then just to keep the country running, the price is far higher than it would have been otherwise. And all that money just get borrowed and puts the Greeks further in the hole. The rest of this is a bit of a distraction from that bigger point.

The US is fracking all over the place, and yet you seem to be saying there is a lack of resources like natural gas. Well, I may not bother to check the forum on this point, call me ignorant...

Please understand, we are not here to prove some point at all costs. I know that I have huge amount of data backing things I say here. And you want to just argue with mass media words and common people "logic". It is different levels of discussion.

Please, understand me right. Your POV is absolutely non original and very common. In fact, it is not POV at all, it is just mass media propaganda that due to mind nature transformed in your opinion that you now thing is original.

I must say that the statement "money plays zero role in all current trends" is something I hadn't heard before, or not for a long time. Very materialist, I guess. Sorry this got a bit intense; I do enjoy arguing, but I'm not sure this is going to go anywhere new and I don't want it to sound personal.

Money indeed do not set any of current trends, money are used as tools to make things slightly better in short term (and much worse in long term) despite the trends.

If you cut off monetary supply, you stop everything pretty much. All governments as far as I know rely on short term debt to finance whatever they do the next month. If support is withdrawn then then the governments have to rely on insanely high interest to keep the economy running, and it becomes untenable to do even some of the basic things. If you can't take care of even the basic things, or look like you aren't going to be able to, then all the investors that might create new business pull out and you are fucked.

And I know governments who did not use debt (in your understanding) at all. And lived happily.

Debt, as we know it, came to an end. Just another failed mutation as Carlin would say.

I also know personally that even if you cut monetary supply people will invent many measures how to make exchanges of real goods. Btw, you can read about them in any good economics book.

Are you saying that energy resources are running out? This does not seem to be the case, as of yet there isn't a shortage of oil and there is more and more natural gas coming from the US and elsewhere. Certainly food is not running out, and water -- well water is a problem in many parts of the world, but not in the EU yet. So if there is a ton of natural gas, more than ever before is probably the truth of it, why should poor greeks be freeing their butts off? It's not because there is a shortage, it's because they've got no money.

Huh. How about just go back and check facts, reports and charts that proof all your statements false. You can start from this blog.

Again, money plays zero role in all current trends. And if you check latest economic conferences speeches elites even started proclaiming it, not in mass media yet, but between them. EU, UK, US and Japan make huge monetary invasions and it did not help much. With EU, UK and Japan big amount of them are used to finance energy and resources they buy, btw :-) US use money to finance resources, oil and gas projects that are otherwise financially not viable (say, with negative income if government do not present you piles of money).

I don't think energy is the whole story, I think @jrd's explanation is right. But Vitaliy's is as well. Energy is a huge factor, but money itself is huge, a bigger factor than energy sometimes, as it influences the price of energy depending on random whims of market forces.

Money can change distribution of real things, they can artificially prevent production sometimes. But they can't make gold from fart. And making gold from fart is exactly the idea of using money to somehow "improve" things.

At some point, say if Vitaliy's doomsday scenarios come true, then energy and the facts of daily life become more important and money loses all value, but we're not there yet.

Btw, I do not have any "doomsday scenery", quite reverse. I am telling that elites use carrots, TV and sports to distract hampsters from understanding real trends. It is like pirate captain on the desert island who do not want to tell his mates that water and food supplies are ending (and that he personally want to eat 80% of remaining ones :-) ).

One more picture of the future

Indoor tents are all the rage in South Korea this winter. Apparently they keep you really warm and save electricity as well. In fact, some tent-users say their heating bill has been reduced by half. While the temperature in rooms gets as low as 19 degrees Celsius, the 40,000 won tents are quite cozy at 23 degrees.

Given their multiple benefits, these tents are flying off shelves in South Korea. One tent maker claims to have sold 4 million in just a couple of weeks. Thousands of tents are on back order, and manufacturers are rushing to make more. We don’t know who came up with the ingenious idea, but it looks like almost everyone has caught on.

This winter has been pretty harsh for the South Koreans; they are facing power blackouts and surging energy costs with six of 23 nuclear reactors being shut down. People have been looking for cheaper heating methods that save electricity, and the tent is apparently working wonders for them. Families are sleeping in tents setup within their homes to keep themselves warm. Some of them have placed tents on top of beds for extra warmth

Few more positive charts

Sorry, but I don't buy the energy explanation. The proximate cause of distress in Greece and Spain is the interrupted flow of money, and a lot of reckless investment, from northern European financial centers, when the financial crisis hit.

Once that money spigot was turned off, and being unable to depreciate their currencies, and/or get real support or real debt relief from the EU, things went to hell. You can argue the energy thing for the long term, but the immediate causes of what's happening now aren't a mystery.

study the weimar republic

Notwithstanding the stories about the wheelbarrows of money you needed to buy a loaf of bread in Weimar Germany, it was deflation that did the real damage to the German economy during the post WWI period. But since deflation doesn't have the same melodramatic appeal to the dreamers who think restoring the gold standard and banning fiat currency would solve all our problems make them fat and happy and punish the wicked, they ignore it.

Similarly, what's happening in Greece is completely unnecessary. It doesn't reflect core reality. It's just the stupidity of European technocrats whose fiscal policy is a mixture of voodoo and morality play (for other people).