The relevant and the trivial

I have likened the world to the ocean – on the top are waves and foam and much movement that catches our attention but is largely meaningless – just movement of water up and down. Deep underneath are great currents that actually move water and heat vast distances and make a huge difference to the planet’s climate. That seems to me an apt metaphor for American life these days. Most Americans are consumed with the daily political trench warfare in Washington, or the latest celebrity scandal, or the latest conspiracy theory circulating on social media, or the latest cultural, social or environmental fad issue – all driven by a hyperactive media but most largely meaningless in the long run. Meanwhile truly transformative things are happening largely under the media radar that will profoundly affect our lives, and the lives of our children and grandchildren.

There is no question that the world order that has prevailed since the end of World War II, and has kept the world largely at peace during that time despite the occasional proxy wars and the constant drumbeat of local insurrections and civil wars, is breaking down.  We may wish it would remain, but it won’t, and in fact it can’t. Conditions have changed and the world is, inevitably, responding to those changes.

Nor is Trump the cause of this disruption, much as his opponents would like to think so. He is, if anything, a symptom of the change, as is Brexit, the EU problems, the current Russian aggression, China’s expansionist moves, and the rise of nationalist parties throughout Europe.  If Hillary had won the election, things that matter would probably have been much the same, though of course her language and the media’s responses would have been more moderate.

The world system is immensely complex, with hundreds of thousands of interacting local agendas, trade flows, ideologies, cultural differences, etc, etc. But one can certainly sort out a few of the major factors that really matter.

The first one is changing demographics. I have written about this before. Lots of nations, in fact the majority of nations, are now depopulating themselves, some more rapidly than others. They are having less children than are needed to keep the population stable. And as a result they are becoming top-heavy with older people and short of the young workers who keep the whole economic system running with their labor and taxes and consumption. This will destroy the economies and social safety nets of many nations within a decade or two, with massive consequences for all of us.

The second one is changing technology. The world is now interconnected in ways never before experienced, or even anticipated. This has made possible instant communication across the globe and access for everyone to immense amounts of information. But it has also driven the rapid spread of propaganda and fake news, and the ability of authoritarian governments to track the location, the habits, and even the thoughts of its subjects in ways even George Orwell never imagined possible. (My new Subaru is talking to the internet all the time, Alexa is hearing everything said in our living room, Amazon knows what products I have looked at last night, local CCTV cameras watch me as I move around town, and my cell phone tracks exactly where I am at all times for anyone who is interested.).

Technology has also fostered automation and artificial intelligence, which are increasingly putting people out of work, and not just manual laborers or factory workers. (for example, AI is now better at reading an X-ray than highly trained and highly paid radiologists).  Capitalism requires workers who get paychecks so that they can buy products that keep other workers employed and produce profits that can be accumulated and reinvested to expand production., What happens when a lot of people get replaced by robots or AI and no longer get paychecks? That will certainly disrupt the system.

The third one is changing trade flows, especially of hydrocarbons (gas and oil) which provide the energy to run the world and the fertilizer to feed the world. This a is a complex issue which I won’t try to summarize here. I suggest reading Peter Zeihan’s 2016 book The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America. Or for an entertaining but good summary watch his one hour presentation on YouTube at https://youtu.be/feU7HT0x_qU.

The point I am making is this: the daily media outrage at whatever outrageous thing Trump has just said, or whatever infeasible populist proposal some politician has just floated to feed their base, or whatever sordid little Hollywood scandal has just surfaced, are just waves on the surface of the ocean – in the long run they simply don’t matter and consume our attention and energy to no purpose. We should put our attention to the deep currents in the world that really do matter, that really will disrupt our lives and the lives of our children.