1) As oil becomes expensive more oil becomes available. Canada is sitting on top as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Hell, the US is sitting on top of a sizable chunk of oil still. It is just that no one has any desire to dig it out of the ground when fuel costs less than 100 USD a barrel. As fuel costs go up, the fuel supply goes up with it. This will keep us from one day ‘running out’ any time soon. Prices will rise, but we won’t see shortages any time in the near future. There is a lot of fuel left in this world, the price of fuel just has to be hire before it is worthwhile to try and extract it.

2) There already exist oil alternatives. You can make synthetic gas. The Germans did it way back during World War II when their oil supplies were almost completely cut off. There are a slew of ways of making synthetic oil that are already ready and waiting. Again, the issue is just costs. When oil prices can’t stay over 100 USD a barrel for even a year, it just isn’t worth it to pursue these.

3) Alternative energy is extremely promising and rapidly advancing. Bio fuels, plug in hybrids, fuel cells, etc, are all well along on their way. It took oil prices jumping over 100 USD for less than a year before we saw all of these alternatives to oil get a mighty shove. If the prices was ever maintained higher for more than just a year or two, I think we would see them advance even more rapidly. I actually worked in a company working on alternative fuels during price jumps of 2008. We had money raining in from the sky and did more work in a year than we did in the previous 5 before it because suddenly we were an investment opportunity, not a struggling company skimping by on government grants.

The advantages of rapid global transit of people, goods, and information are simply too great for a world wide economy of tens of trillions of dollars to suddenly “give up” on the whole idea and revert back to isolated fiefdoms. The world economy will turn more and more of its resources towards ‘solving’ the energy issue as they become more of an issue. Even today with the paltry investments into alternative resources that we have now we are seeing great returns. If a crunch ever arises, you are going to see a huge portion of global productivity turn towards solving this problem, and I honestly believe that when you turn a few billion minds and trillions of dollars on ANY problem, it gets solved.

That isn’t to say that we won’t have little energy crisis here and there, but the equilibrium of the world is not in isolated little self sufficient fiefdoms as this author seems to believe. The world is opening up rapidly. There is no going back. The world economy won’t LET it turn back.

Rindan, in the author’s defense, he does raise the idea of fuel shortages. I certainly hope we find a replacement for oil, but I’m not holding my breath. Certainly this issue might act to impede the flow of goods, though?

I just assumed the use of “autarchy” was a side-effect of being German.

Chad, it is hard to miss the hint of schadenfreude, but after 2000-2008, I can see the motivation…

In general, I’m skeptical of predictions that anything is going to just wither away. Wasn’t that supposed to have happened to multinational corporations by now, according to the futurists of the 70s or 80s? Or are we just not giving it enough time?

1. “He basically is arguing that Europe is going to become a mostly self sufficient zone and implies that its economic connections to the outside world are going to decrease. This is silly. Can anyone REALLY argue with a straight face that the future is a world where it is HARDER to move goods, information, and people across borders? It is entirely the opposite. We are barreling full steam down the path of globalization. The world is going to open up faster and more rapidly.”

The issue will be the cost of energy. In order to continue globalization oil will have to stay very cheap and that is not likely. Thus, a new cheap energy source will be necessary to continue globalization.

2. It always amuses me how every single non-US prognosticator has the US collapsing oe way or another. I’m not saying it can’t happen, just that the desire for this to happen, from those outside fo the US, is amazing.

This desire has to color their predictions.

He basically is arguing that Europe is going to become a mostly self sufficient zone and implies that its economic connections to the outside world are going to decrease. This is silly. Can anyone REALLY argue with a straight face that the future is a world where it is HARDER to move goods, information, and people across borders? It is entirely the opposite. We are barreling full steam down the path of globalization. The world is going to open up faster and more rapidly.

The cost of sending physical assets, people, and information across national ‘borders’ is going to continue its rapid decrease, not magically reverse as this guy claims. Nations that continue to struggle to control this movement are going to find themselves marginalized and undermined. In fact, national borders are going to start to crack under the strain of the rapid flow of goods, people, and information across them. There is nothing Europe can do to stop this. At best, they could feebly attempt to wall up and suffer a slow xenophobic inevitable decay.

As far as the US, of all the challenges the US has to face, Hispanic immigrants are pretty much at the bottom of the list. It might be a local issue in a few border towns in the way Irish immigration was an issue for Boston, but otherwise the growing Hispanic population is just the growing life force that the US desperately needs and much of Europe lacks. The influx of Hispanic immigrants has been a boost to the US. Will they change US culture? Sure… just like all the other dozens of massive immigration waves to the US did. In the end the US will stuff a few more words into the English language, the definition of “American” food will expand a little, and they will slap Cino de Mayo into the calendar next to Saint Patrick’s day and it will be used as an excuse to claim Hispanic heritage, get drunk, and eat burritos (as opposed to claiming Irish heritage, getting drunk, and eating potatoes).

This guy is an isolationist balls to bone. The future is going to sadly disappoint him. The world is not going to wall itself up. Immigration isn’t going to end or even harm the US. And in general we are going to find a world with more open borders where goods, information, and people flow faster and cheaper than ever before.

The first generation of immigrants speaks Spanish. The second speaks Spanish first, English second. The third speaks English first, Spanish second. The fourth speaks only English.

That is not a prediction. That is history.

What will be the case in 2030? Same as it ever was.