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Historically people moved from food generation to jobs that use up resources (energy for example) and produce goods. Western society has become consumption focussed and so the production of goods and services for consumers has swelled. But this has a natural end as the resources used to generate the goods run out.

In short one might say that machines will enable us to produce even more and open even more areas of manufacture and consumption, areas that were previously unknown - we'll be in flying cars and every item of clothing will have a computer in it and ... - but that relies on infinite resources. Without sufficient resources there is a natural brake on our ability to produce out of such a crisis in jobs.

Moreover there are certain costs to production that we have not paid, the current ecological state of the planet, the increased climate change, the other ecological impacts from chemical abuse (eg fracking), deforestation, stripping of raw materials - we haven't really paid for these things (proper filtering of toxins, development of renewable energy, clean-up of chemical impacts, planting of new forest, etc.) instead we've been on a relatively free ride. It's like a hoarder, they can keep being pathological and filling their house with crap but eventually they get sick and there's no more room in the house.



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