US Nationalism and Peak Oil

[Illuminatus Primus]

Theoretically? Is it possible? Sure. But look up "Bretton Woods." You will find a group of financial institutions set up to solidify the post-WW2 economic hegemony of the remaining Western great power: the United States. You'll find all the world arbiters are mostly beholden to the U.S. You'll find we also set up a world currency system and asked everyone else to sign on to it, then we spent irresponsibly and jumped off basically leaving everyone on the sinking boat we'd put them on. The U.S. just didn't care what happened.

[His Divine Shadow]

So how could or should global trade be handled? Is there an alternative?

[MKSheppard]

You think the U.S. pays a fair or real value on what it consumes? And sells things for what they are worth. America buys from China BECAUSE they can maintain a slave existence on Chinese workers. Their plight and low standard of living and nonexistent labor rights - their suffering - are a subsidy on middle class Americans who like their cellphones cheap.

Hey moron, try saying that to the average chinese on the street.

In 1980, the Chinese GDP per capita was around 100 dollars. It's around 1,700 today.

The average chinese is bigger, stronger, and healthier now than he was in 1978, and can afford all kinds of things he couldn't afford in 1978, such as refrigerators, televisions, air conditioners, etc etc, and the new things which have been invented and made massively cheaper by Chinese labor, such as DVD players.

The average Chinese has more personal freedom to move around, marry who he likes, and live where he wants to, as modernity is grinding away at old Chinese social mores and customs.

China right now is in the position that America was in the 1870s to 1900s, a rapidly industrializing country changing from a massively agarian economy to an industrial one.

China has driven up raw material prices all across the market as she consumes more and more each year; and all that isn't going to cheap crap; it's going to building a modern infrastructure where one didn't exist before. Sanitation, Dams to produce cheap hydropower (the massive Three Gorges Dam has long been a dream of Chinese leaders going back to Chiang Kai-Shek), and it will do much more to raise the living standards of people in that region than any stupid Earth Live concerts will ever do. Roads and railways to help move people and goods around more efficiently - China just completed a massive railroad project that links the Tibetan mountain highlands with the lowlands, which will make goods prices in that area fall massively, meaning better standards of living for Tibetans, etc.

And as Chinese military might rises, along with it's industrial sinews; the world will get unfucked.

Chinese companies have been massively investing in Africa; industrializing the region so that it can provide China with the raw materials she needs; along with sending Chinese troops for military assistance and training, all of which will stabilize and raise African standards of living more than "Concerts for Darfur".

[Illuminatus Primus]

[sniparoo]

Does or does not Wal-Mart buy from Chinese factories because they can push prices down because Chinese workers do not enjoy basic labor rights and standards of decent living that other nations do?

Investing in Africa is not going to magically restore crop soil, magically build power plants, magically restore oil to spent reservoirs. It will not create plenty of opportunity.

I am educated in economics. You can't throw capital at every problem. You need time, you need raw materials, you need lines of exchange in goods and services. The bedrock of a modern society is decaying in Africa and world over. I'm not some starry-eyed idiot humanitarian who thinks if only people had more compassion in Darfur than there would be no death. No. It has nothing to do with morality. It has everything to do with salinization and desertification and the fact that now there's not enough to support both the Arab Muslim pastoralists and the black Christian farmers, and so they circle the wagons and try to cull "them" until there's enough left to feed the families. Touchy-feely humanitarian help caused this crisis in part. Subsidizing a population and society that could not possibly support itself, the West has just encouraged Africa to exist in a configuration that, deprived of foriegn subsidy results in starvation. We gave modern weapons and technology and medicine to a continent with no functional states. Surprise, they bred like rabbits until they starved with a famine. Likewise with Rwanda. Why do you think there were still mass deaths in communities with almost entirely Hutu population? Jared Diamond found that the correlation was that killers were young landless males and the dead were established established men who had horded land. What happened nine months before the genocide? The land per capita slid beneath survivability. Its quite simple and I'd do the same. If there's enough food for only one family and you and your family share this island with another family, what would you do? Well I'd kill the other family. We're only alive today because our ancestors consistently chose to survive regardless of the cost in the past. And I will do the same.

[Surlethe]

You think the U.S. pays a fair or real value on what it consumes? And sells things for what they are worth. America buys from China BECAUSE they can maintain a slave existence on Chinese workers. Their plight and low standard of living and nonexistent labor rights - their suffering - are a subsidy on middle class Americans who like their cellphones cheap.

Hey moron, try saying that to the average chinese on the street.

In 1980, the Chinese GDP per capita was around 100 dollars. It's around 1,700 today.

What's the median wage? GDP per capita is close to useless in a stratified society with a few very super-rich people.

The average chinese is bigger, stronger, and healthier now than he was in 1978, ...

Sure. The average Chinese is better off than when the nation was just out of the Cultural Revolution. Try to find a useful comparison.

And as Chinese military might rises, along with it's industrial sinews; the world will get unfucked.

Chinese companies have been massively investing in Africa; industrializing the region so that it can provide China with the raw materials she needs; along with sending Chinese troops for military assistance and training, all of which will stabilize and raise African standards of living more than "Concerts for Darfur".

Chinese sinews are unfolding; unfortunately, the United States has already bled China dry. China's industrial lifeblood will -- is already becoming expensive and the price of oil is going nowhere but up. And sitting on top of a dirt-poor underclass, with cities that need feeding and growth slowed by -- guess what? -- high oil prices, China will have its hands full controlling its own population.

[Surlethe]

Basically, you're an adult hardened by perspective and experience. The feeling for those my age having realized what happened and is happening is akin to going to the bank having turned 18, promised your whole life an inheritance and college fund more than sufficient to build a life, and having discovered your parents spent it dry.

This is God's own truth. I'm still in a state of shock on some level: I look around me at the conditions I've spent nearly two decades in, and I simply can't believe they'll end in a few years. Intellectually, I know; intellectually, I'm preparing; but viscerally, on a gut level, it just doesn't feel possible. People who are not intelligent enough to base decisions on rational analysis, and instead use gut feeling -- that's more than 90% of the population, my cynical side says -- simply will not believe this. Or, worse, they'll say they believe it, and do nothing about it: a trap that I'm afraid of falling in myself. And I would be surprised if those who do realize what the future holds aren't somewhat paralyzed by fear: I'm fucking scared shitless by the prospect of losing the promised inheritance, of arriving into adulthood in a prosperous, happy society and then watching it crumble around me in my twenties. I know what to expect intellectually, and I'm preparing, but the fear of the unknown is still there. What do I do? I think I know, but the certainty and security of my childhood is entirely gone.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I can think of something to add - get the hell out of Florida.

Here in bumfuck, Northwest Indiana, we have bookstores where people are encouraged to come in, sit down, and browse. We have coffeehouses (and not just starbucks) and parks.

A little further away, Chicago is a relatively pedestrian friendly city, with miles of sidewalks, more bookstores, more coffehouses, more parks, open-air eateries, and downtown has several city-sponsored locales providing free-of-charge resting areas for the public. There is mass transit, so you don't need a car even for long distances.

Which is not to say it's perfect (and some spots it's downright ugly) but the picture painted by Illuminatus Primus is by no means universal

Oh, not all of Florida is that bad. I live in Gainesville, and accordingly there is an eclectic mix of attitudes and venues and yeah - real coffeehouses and places of learning. Downtown St. Petersburg isn't bad either. But here the exurbs and suburbs are at least as soulless and vacuous as anywhere else - and probably worse - as Florida just wasn't that settled until the last fifty years. Consequently, all the worst excesses in gaudy home speculation and people vainly trying to buy an "image" (the goal of most modern advertising).

I do love Chicago and the L. I would like to go to the University of Chicago for graduate school but I don't know if time and circumstances will permit or if a track involving economics so primarily is even desirable anymore. But I do adore that city - took the words right out of my mouth.

[SirNitram]

It's so strange hearing Americans talk about what they expected and thought they were 'promised', honestly. I got the Immigrants American Dream drilled into me, but all that says is 'Bust your ass, and you'll make it', and that's likely to remain so even through the coming perfect economic storm.

Of course, I've braced about as well as can be feasibly done at my level of money, and of course, I'm at least trying to get the local government to realize that the massive influx of coal-cash they'll get better be spent in sensible ways to keep the state going, but hey, there's always a chance it won't be the worst case scenario.

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

Does or does not Wal-Mart buy from Chinese factories because they can push prices down because Chinese workers do not enjoy basic labor rights and standards of decent living that other nations do?

Wallmart buys from China because it is the cheapest possible source of their products. PERIOD! They didn't set up the system, and do not perpetuate it. Their participation in it or not would not change one iota of the country.
Ascribing political motives to a mega corps is foolish projection. Corporation are amoral. They see a way to make money and take it. Not buying goods from China will help the Chinese people... how? Becasue that is the alternative.

There is a certain "arrogance of false humility" that presupposes that the root cause of evil in this world is evil/greedy westerners. If only we would do the right thing, then all would be well in this world. This gives us the illusion of greater power in the world than we actualy wield, but allows us to mock that power at the same time. This feeds into the bizzaro self loathing of the elite efite fools in their ivory towers, who owe their very exsistance to this system. (I believe the source of this self loathing is the feeling by these folks that they don't deserve what they have, because they work so very little, and thus feel guilty about being well off. These people do have eyes, and do see honest hard working stiffs they hire, and can not help to notice how much harder the working man works than professional students and other college employees like professors.)
This sidesteps the issue that these are players in their own right, with their own agenda, political sructure, and culture that sometimes rejects the premisses that wesern countries take for a given.
Most of the great problems in this world are a direct result of bad governments that are a result of bad ideas helf by the people in these ares. Africa is a prime example of stupid belief systems crashing the economy and ruining what infrstructure the evil west set up in it's colonial days.
Tribalism is the prime cause of the biggest problems there and the middle east as well.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Okay, that was nice, but why are products cheap from China? Because of slave conditions for labor and environmental degradation. I am not subscribing motives to corporations. But that real world suffering is a subsidy on which American consumerism is built, and that's a fact.

[Surlethe]

It's so strange hearing Americans talk about what they expected and thought they were 'promised', honestly. I got the Immigrants American Dream drilled into me, but all that says is 'Bust your ass, and you'll make it', and that's likely to remain so even through the coming perfect economic storm.

Over the course of human civilization, the children of royalty and the wealthy have, in general, been spoiled. It's a human impulse: make your children as comfortable as possible. For example, the Roman Empire began its slow decay after the reign of Marcus Aurelius, who passed the title of Caesar to his son rather than a more qualified man; Aurelius was the last of the Five Good Emperors.

Middle Class and above Americans during the second half of the twentieth century have been wealthy beyond the imagination of any past royalty. Is it any surprise that those of us who are children of the era of easy wealth and exponentially growing economies are spoiled? Sure, we pay lip service to the American Dream, and recognize that some hard work will be necessary to make it, but scraping out survival in a chaotic long-term depression? Frankly, I wasn't prepared for that sort of hard work. I'll be damned if I don't bust my ass and survive, but fuck, that's shattered delusions right there.

Anyway, IP's and my generation are spoiled even more than the X-ers, who are spoiled more than the Baby Boomers, who are spoiled more than the Greatest Generation, who were born in a depression, scraped out a living, won World War II, and carved out the course of the modern nation. That's not a nice reality, but it is reality nonetheless.

[Surlethe]

There is a certain "arrogance of false humility" that presupposes that the root cause of evil in this world is evil/greedy westerners. If only we would do the right thing, then all would be well in this world. This gives us the illusion of greater power in the world than we actualy wield, but allows us to mock that power at the same time.

Just because all evil is not caused by Western consumerism does not mean that our cheap, glitzy, throw-away culture is not responsible for a great deal of pain and suffering in the world right now. Don't like it? Deal with it. As for the power we wield, when we go down economically, we're going to drag the rest of the world with us. This is simple fact.

This feeds into the bizzaro self loathing of the elite efite fools in their ivory towers, who owe their very exsistance to this system. (I believe the source of this self loathing is the feeling by these folks that they don't deserve what they have, because they work so very little, and thus feel guilty about being well off. These people do have eyes, and do see honest hard working stiffs they hire, and can not help to notice how much harder the working man works than professional students and other college employees like professors.)

If you think research into any sort of science is easy, try banging your head against a wall for two or three months straight and see if you enjoy the feeling. Also, note that in math at least it's not research that pays the bills, it's teaching; and that's plenty hard, thankless work.

[Howedar]

An alternate viewpoint: throughout history it's pretty much been the case that a child could look at his/her parents and see a way to live functionally in his/her society. Maybe not the best way to live, or the way that the child would want to live, but a feasible way. At worst, you could always follow in your parents' footsteps, and you'd have a pretty good feeling for what the results would be.

Many of us in their early twenties no longer have that feeling.

[SirNitram]

Anyway, IP's and my generation are spoiled even more than the X-ers, who are spoiled more than the Baby Boomers, who are spoiled more than the Greatest Generation, who were born in a depression, scraped out a living, won World War II, and carved out the course of the modern nation. That's not a nice reality, but it is reality nonetheless.

Well, look on the bright side. Unless the Oil part of the economic storm gets solved by synthetics(A possibility, though we'll see if it actually pans out before the worst hits), there won't be a World War this time. You can't really have one without petroleum.

That's the one thing that bugs me about these conversations. Peak Oil is a major problem, but there are less-than-doomsday scenarios that are entirely feasible. The problem is it's just one of quite a few; global scale climate changes, the implosion of the Dollar, the default world currency, a credit climate that will gut-check America, religious extremism in the areas that will be hit hardest even if the best-case PO scenarios pan out, and so forth. Can we dodge the oil bullet? It's possible. We could dodge any one of these bullets, potentially. The problem is it's not a musket slowly being reloaded; it's a goddamn GPMG about to go at full tilt.

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

If you think research into any sort of science is easy, try banging your head against a wall for two or three months straight and see if you enjoy the feeling. Also, note that in math at least it's not research that pays the bills, it's teaching; and that's plenty hard, thankless work.

If you think doing research will leave you with repetative motion maladies, shorten your lifespan, and actualy cause you, well "PAIN" the way hard physical labour will you should share what you smoke with me.
Many phusical jobs rewquire you to become injurde as part of the expected job. Case in point. Welders and glaziers. If you don't want to get burned, you can not be a welder. If you don't want to get cuts, don't be a glazier.
Pain is expected in many labour jobs, but not in any I have yet to hear about in any intellectual field.
Frustration, lack of self fufillment and occasional eyestrain pale in compairison to bad backs, knees, shoulders and hands.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Yeah, the adults here: you found a lifestyle, you found a future, you've lived a life. You just have to try and keep it together and ride it out. Nothing can take from you the life you've already lived.

I have yet to live that life. And I still stand to lose everything.

[Surlethe]

Well, look on the bright side. Unless the Oil part of the economic storm gets solved by synthetics(A possibility, though we'll see if it actually pans out before the worst hits), there won't be a World War this time. You can't really have one without petroleum.

This is true, although regional wars are possible. And there are oil-free alternatives to worldwide conventional war that are much worse.

That's the one thing that bugs me about these conversations. Peak Oil is a major problem, but there are less-than-doomsday scenarios that are entirely feasible. The problem is it's just one of quite a few; global scale climate changes, the implosion of the Dollar, the default world currency, a credit climate that will gut-check America, religious extremism in the areas that will be hit hardest even if the best-case PO scenarios pan out, and so forth. Can we dodge the oil bullet? It's possible. We could dodge any one of these bullets, potentially. The problem is it's not a musket slowly being reloaded; it's a goddamn GPMG about to go at full tilt.

You have a good point: it is a perfect storm in terms of the financial situation and culture shock exacerbating the effects of peak oil. Nonetheless, I think you may be downplaying peak oil a little bit; on its own, it's capable of wrecking us and making us start over, especially with respect to transportation. This is like the 2005 hurricane season, and peak oil is Katrina.

And, as Valdemar is fond of pointing out, people are fundamentally dumb. In planning for this sort of thing, it's only wise to look on the dark side for estimates; we could have potentially dodged the oil bullet thirty years ago, but we didn't, for example.

[Guardsman Bass]

Maybe we are defining neoliberal differently but AFAIK neoliberal economics on a global scale is mainly about lessening trade barriers and encouraging trade between nations and working against protectionist policies and things like the EU farm subsidies.

You think the U.S. pays a fair or real value on what it consumes? And sells things for what they are worth. America buys from China BECAUSE they can maintain a slave existence on Chinese workers. Their plight and low standard of living and nonexistent labor rights - their suffering - are a subsidy on middle class Americans who like their cellphones cheap. The U.S. price of oil does not reflect the true cost of the military-political machinations and their social cost in the ME, to say nothing of the subsidized transport-fuel infrastructure and the externalities of air pollution and global warming. The U.S. subsidizes its agriculture, castrating much of Africa and Latin America's only substantive products, and forcing their prices ever lower relative to sustainability. In Bolivia we burn coca plantations and leave campesinos with nothing while the only reason they grew it in the first place was because socialite Americans cannot stop frying their brains by snorting white powder. Our influence is baleful. We've helped dismantle countless countries' governments because a participant in a coalition government was a communist or someone we chose to call communist because they opposed the low prices at which we bought their goods and because we owned their national resources.

Free trade is not neither free nor fair. It is coerced and one-sided.

I see your point but are you saying there can be no such thing as free trade on a global scale, or just that this perverted version wherein america fucks over other countries isn't free nor fair?

I would presume he's talking about the latter. Which is not to say that you can't get undesirable consequences from free trade in of itself; one of the interesting things brought up in the book Lies My Teacher Told Me was how the influence of the Colonists in America gradually caused the nearby Indians to specialize in the fur trade, and while theoretically everyone's living standards went up, in the long run it made the Indians more and more dependent on the Colonists, while the Colonists' adaptations made them less and less dependent on the Indians.

[Illuminatus Primus]

If you think research into any sort of science is easy, try banging your head against a wall for two or three months straight and see if you enjoy the feeling. Also, note that in math at least it's not research that pays the bills, it's teaching; and that's plenty hard, thankless work.

If you think doing research will leave you with repetative motion maladies, shorten your lifespan, and actualy cause you, well "PAIN" the way hard physical labour will you should share what you smoke with me.
Many phusical jobs rewquire you to become injurde as part of the expected job. Case in point. Welders and glaziers. If you don't want to get burned, you can not be a welder. If you don't want to get cuts, don't be a glazier.
Pain is expected in many labour jobs, but not in any I have yet to hear about in any intellectual field.
Frustration, lack of self fufillment and occasional eyestrain pale in compairison to bad backs, knees, shoulders and hands.

Does any of this have value other than rosy old-fashioned virtue of the laborer and loathing jealousy of intellectuals and academics? What about this has to do with the simple fact that you buy goods which can only be provided to you at that quantity and price because of terrible conditions - the same labor conditions but worse you wax poetic about - in another country? Or that quite simply the American economic engine has burned out all the fuel in the tank, and now humanity stands to enter a transition more fundamental than any since we invented agriculture: population and wealth will stop increasing. What does any of this have to do with the sober realities of not having a rosy future as the economy can no longer function as it once did?

And besides, am I supposed to feel guilty if my brain is worth more to society than my hands and muscles? What is the point?

[Surlethe]

If you think research into any sort of science is easy, try banging your head against a wall for two or three months straight and see if you enjoy the feeling. Also, note that in math at least it's not research that pays the bills, it's teaching; and that's plenty hard, thankless work.

If you think doing research will leave you with repetative motion maladies, shorten your lifespan, and actualy cause you, well "PAIN" the way hard physical labour will you should share what you smoke with me.
Many phusical jobs rewquire you to become injurde as part of the expected job. Case in point. Welders and glaziers. If you don't want to get burned, you can not be a welder. If you don't want to get cuts, don't be a glazier.
Pain is expected in many labour jobs, but not in any I have yet to hear about in any intellectual field.
Frustration, lack of self fufillment and occasional eyestrain pale in compairison to bad backs, knees, shoulders and hands.

What do the physical costs of labor jobs have to do with what I said?

[SirNitram]

Well, look on the bright side. Unless the Oil part of the economic storm gets solved by synthetics(A possibility, though we'll see if it actually pans out before the worst hits), there won't be a World War this time. You can't really have one without petroleum.

This is true, although regional wars are possible. And there are oil-free alternatives to worldwide conventional war that are much worse.

No doubts there.

That's the one thing that bugs me about these conversations. Peak Oil is a major problem, but there are less-than-doomsday scenarios that are entirely feasible. The problem is it's just one of quite a few; global scale climate changes, the implosion of the Dollar, the default world currency, a credit climate that will gut-check America, religious extremism in the areas that will be hit hardest even if the best-case PO scenarios pan out, and so forth. Can we dodge the oil bullet? It's possible. We could dodge any one of these bullets, potentially. The problem is it's not a musket slowly being reloaded; it's a goddamn GPMG about to go at full tilt.

You have a good point: it is a perfect storm in terms of the financial situation and culture shock exacerbating the effects of peak oil. Nonetheless, I think you may be downplaying peak oil a little bit; on its own, it's capable of wrecking us and making us start over, especially with respect to transportation. This is like the 2005 hurricane season, and peak oil is Katrina.

I think you're definitely overstating the situation. It will be a serious setback, and I'm not debating that, but once the aftershocks die down, cars will be back. If synthetics become viable, cars will be relatively unchanged. If they don't, it waits until the power grid can support electric cars, which have always existed. Planes will be much harder, if possible at all, but a world without cheap airlines is quite survivable.

It's capable of wrecking the world, if things go down the worst case scenario. But the worst case scenario assumes scientific and engineering regression, as opposed to people working on the problem because the solutions will be liscenses to print money. I suspect we'll get a sharp reminder that greed is how we get to the cultural heights.

And, as Valdemar is fond of pointing out, people are fundamentally dumb. In planning for this sort of thing, it's only wise to look on the dark side for estimates; we could have potentially dodged the oil bullet thirty years ago, but we didn't, for example.

Indeed, long term planning for this is in the shitter. The best cases I envision still have five to ten years of Great Depression level economic mayhem; they just assume that people will be slaving over how to fix it once the impact hits, and that we'll be building up the power grid in the same way we did then.

[brianeyci]

If there's enough food for only one family and you and your family share this island with another family, what would you do? Well I'd kill the other family. We're only alive today because our ancestors consistently chose to survive regardless of the cost in the past. And I will do the same.

I don't really disagree with much of your post at all, except I'd like to point out that killing your own species is a rare adaptation. I don't think we've reached that point, and I don't think the Rwanda Genocide was about survival more than hatred. Also I personally like to think that ethics is what divides human beings from animals. So if it comes down to family one and family two, I would share and if mankind dies then so be it. Our survival is not so important that we have to sacrifice who we are. Ayn Rand and her false dilemmas can suck my nuts, no offense. There is a non-trivial distinction between actively going out to kill someone to steal their food, and keeping our food in the first world because there's no enough to go around.

[Surlethe]

You have a good point: it is a perfect storm in terms of the financial situation and culture shock exacerbating the effects of peak oil. Nonetheless, I think you may be downplaying peak oil a little bit; on its own, it's capable of wrecking us and making us start over, especially with respect to transportation. This is like the 2005 hurricane season, and peak oil is Katrina.

I think you're definitely overstating the situation. It will be a serious setback, and I'm not debating that, but once the aftershocks die down, cars will be back. If synthetics become viable, cars will be relatively unchanged. If they don't, it waits until the power grid can support electric cars, which have always existed. Planes will be much harder, if possible at all, but a world without cheap airlines is quite survivable.

Electric cars will be back in the long run, sure, but first we'll have to rebuild the infrastructure. That, as you note, will take a decade or two. What I meant by wrecking was simply that our transportation system, and indeed those all over the world, will largely stop working, and we'll have to rebuild it almost from scratch.

I'm also skeptical of synthetics until I see more information on them.

It's capable of wrecking the world, if things go down the worst case scenario. But the worst case scenario assumes scientific and engineering regression, as opposed to people working on the problem because the solutions will be liscenses to print money. I suspect we'll get a sharp reminder that greed is how we get to the cultural heights.

Ah. Egg's on my face: I'd forgotten about the worst worst-case scenarios and have been focusing on Her Grace's predictions.

Indeed, long term planning for this is in the shitter. The best cases I envision still have five to ten years of Great Depression level economic mayhem; they just assume that people will be slaving over how to fix it once the impact hits, and that we'll be building up the power grid in the same way we did then.

You could take a page out of Stapledon's books here, and note that one of the failings of First Man was his individualism. This entire peak oil problem -- indeed, everything we're facing -- is one big tragedy of the fucking commons, and if people as a whole were capable of sacrificing a little bit for the common good, we wouldn't be in the jam. Now, we're looking at another Great Depression as a best case, and I don't even want to think about the worst case possible.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I don't really disagree with much of your post at all, except I'd like to point out that killing your own species is a rare adaptation. I don't think we've reached that point, and I don't think the Rwanda Genocide was about survival more than hatred. Also I personally like to think that ethics is what divides human beings from animals. So if it comes down to family one and family two, I would share and if mankind dies then so be it. Our survival is not so important that we have to sacrifice who we are. Ayn Rand and her false dilemmas can suck my nuts, no offense. There is a non-trivial distinction between actively going out to kill someone to steal their food, and keeping our food in the first world because there's no enough to go around.

Okay, well if you'd share your food with family B and kill both of you, so be it. My children will inherit the Earth, yours will die and there won't be anyone left to tell your interpretation of ethics, only mine. I'm sorry, but any abstract value I assign to members of human race as my equals and deserving of human dignity and respect is secondary to the survival and well-being of my close family and children and myself. You may find it sick, but it would be those willing to kill to make room for their family who'll teach virtues and write history. No one will record your futile sacrifice, because you will have led you and your children to death - and I feel bad for your children that they'd have a parent that didn't value their survival and well-being as the ultimate and highest good above all other others.

If the thesis regarding the Rwandan genocide is wrong, why did Hutu kill Hutu en masse in villages with nary a Tutsi in sight? How is your interpretation more parsimonious? It does not explain that data. Why had there always been ethnic strife but there was only a genocide after food and land resources became below immediately sustainable?

Survival IS the greatest virtue of any living thing. It is the only fundamental prerequisite to everything else. You ONLY EXIST because of hard and possibly unpleasant choices to survive made by your ancestors. And quite frankly, I find it hard to believe you'd watch your babies die so that another family's babies could die less slowly.

[brianeyci]

It's a false dilemma though. If things were so bad that I could not maintain my standard of living but someone else had to die, I would make due with a lower standard of living and help the person survive. First of all I would not have children personally due to a variety of factors, but let's say I did one day. Yes, I would probably defend them no matter what, but there is a non-trivial distinction between killing someone to take their food to feed yourself and withholding food for yourself since you feel there's not enough.

Besides, there is more than enough food to go around to feed everybody and there will be when peak oil occurs as well. The only problem is money, whether the masses will have enough to pay for their food and the upper echelons will hoard it, which is what people like AV are afraid of: whether the masses will have enough money to pay for food, not if there's enough food to go around. There will be no such thing as a scenario you propose, food for one side or the other. It's less food for both but both survive, or one side hoards it. So I don't see the purpose in your conclusion, other than to state the obvious of an outlier scenario which will never happen.

As for my interpretation being parsimonious, it is simple. People are stupid and easily swayed by charismatic people. There are people like that man who was tried by the war crimes tribunal for making charismatic speeches to rile up the masses to attack people different from themselves. Hutu fighting Hutu could be because there's little difference physically between Hutus and Tutsis. I don't disagree that lack of resources is a breeding ground for genocide. However if it was the main factor, places like North Korea where the people are poor and starving would see mass killings. Instead people are happy with their riceballs and few hours of electricity a day, because there is no charismatic manipulative person telling them to go out and slaughter their neighbours. A correlation is not a causation, and I refuse to believe that survival is more important than who we are. For example, I consider giving one's life the greatest sacrifice, and soldiers regularly accept that they could give their lives at any moment. Lack of resources is not a sufficient condition for genocide. Just look at the Holocaust.