Post-Industrial Society's Inequalities

The cousin talks a lot of sense.  This pertains to our country however it may be VERY long (anyways we should be trying to extend the length of our attention span as it is diminishing in these modern days where every child is 'plagued' with ADD or ADHD):

Oil:

The world has its finger wrapped around oil; the elixir of life, having the ability to grant immortality to humans.  Everything in life is now revolved around oil.  I didn't know that plastic products were oil by-products.  We love it, we seek it, we need it, we confide in it, we wage wars over it.  He says that Obama was a good choice but change?  I would like the war to end but the United States won't pull out of Iraq anytime soon.  Iraq is the strategic position in the Middle East.  If the United States gives up their convenient lilly pad of the Middle East, Iran will likely see Iraq crippled and blow away Israel and own all of the power of the area while gaining nukes.  The tribes have been fighting for thousands of years and we are trying to instill our holistic approach to government?  He says if it wasn't for oil, if America concentrated the trillions on war instead on self-sustainable energy like wind and solar, we wouldn't even be fucking with oil in the Middle East today.  The world is a fucked up place, I realize.  It's like the Spanish conquistadors raping and pillaging foreign lands all over again, only nowadays its socially acceptable.  Where instead of religious values being force-fed upon you or else we murder your whole village, its a democratic government at gunpoint.  It's the Capitalistic Crusade!

Energy:

Brazil has been energy self-efficient a few years back.  They do not muddle in the oil wars or pay homage to the oil gods.  Well they are Catholic anyways aren't they?  Brazilian officials do not succumb to money from special interest groups dealing with oil.  In exchange however there is a lot of land needed to be completely self-sufficient like sugarcane-based fuel.  China and India respect Brazil's model with its oil-dependency freedom and Japan and others purchase the ethanol alternative from harvesting corn to meet the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol (too bad we didn't talk about the Kyoto Protocol and why USA isn't on it yet).  One downside in sustainable energy is if you want to grow sugarcane you need a lot of land and that means less rain forests.  I read that with the increase of land devoted to the production of oil in the future, some farmers may choose the more lucrative crop and food prices may rise.  But my cousin reminds me that in the world there is no right answer, there is no answer that will please every single person.  There are only decisions that will benefit the greatest amount of people.  A happy medium will always yield the best results.  Laws and the way society lives will slowly be shifted and skewed to meet the future's needs.  We basically can't be naive, or actually we can't keep acting naive.  With the talking of energy, we started talking about oil in politics and oil funding to political campaigns like special interest groups.  

Oil in Politics:

GM bought over a majority of the rails in Los Angeles county only to dismantle the rails so that people would buy more cars.  Thats why LA has such horrible traffic today.  There was also that one documentary on "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and it deals with a lot of topics I am interested in investigating further:

"The movie deals with the history of the electric car, its development and commercialization, mostly focusing on the General Motives EV1, which was made available for lease in Southern California, after the California Air Resources Board passed the ZEV mandate in 1990, as well as the implications of the events depicted for air pollution, environmentalism, Middle East politics, and global warming.  

The flm details the California Air Resources Board's reversal of the mandate after suits from automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, and the George W. Bush administration.  It points out that Bush's chief influences, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Andrew Card, are all former executives and board members of oil and auto companies."

This means that oil runs deep in politics and oil really sways our nation's decisions.  I made a connection to tobacco conglomerates and how they operate in much of the same way, they use their weight to swing things in their favor, and believe me, they have a lot of weight.  Jay-Z was right, 'politics AS usual.'  They pay whoever off to whack whoever is trying to come up in their territory.  They are the leaders of this great America.  The tobacco industry pays for advertisements slandering alcohol and death-inducing drugs like marijuana to boost cigarette sales.  I bet diamond companies are out to murder the guys who are inventing the process of creating diamonds through pressurization.  I personally don't see any glorification of diamonds if it is going to cause the problems that arise around it today.  My cousin said he bets they already have their own personal security just so the diamond companies can't murder them.  The diamond guys would definitely dismantle their inventions that may divert ANY of their business sales and well-being on top.  These conglomerates I felt were like mob families and we were the terrified women and children who lived in ghettos that get bullied around by these filthy, money-hungry, power-lusting gangsters.  These crime families though were untouchable, even the feds couldn't contain them, they were busy getting paid and bribed off.  He also said if GM goes down, the economy is going to shits and GM's stocks are the same prices as they were 50 years ago;  they are either going to get bought out by Japanese or bailed out by the government.  The government likes to bail out large conglomerates to save us from the ripple effect like how they bailed out the airline industry.  These conglomerates are rich and greedy, greed is how this world is run.  And then we got into alternative energy solutions, the progression of economic models, and having an incentive-full economy.

Alternative Energy Solutions:

He brought up the idea for the decentralization of energy; much like what has happened with information and the internet.  He said information used to be centralized in one area, like at a library.  Nowadays information has become so widespread with the internet that it has become an open domain for people to share ideas.  He connected it back to energy saying eventually we will be having efficient electrical cars and every home would have a portion of their energy provided by the installation of solar panels and small wind turbines.  With energy more easily accessible we would then become less dependent on fossil fuels and large energy companies.  We talked about new ways of producing energy as even dams hurt and harm ecosystems when SimCity previously taught me that dams were easy and good for the environment and don't produce CFCs.  We talked about geothermal energy by creating steam in chambers by extracting heat from below such as volcanos.  We also talked about wave energy and energy derived from tides rising and falling 30 feet in some parts of the world.  He also said those oil conglomerates wont just dissolve, they will instead evolve into 'energy' companies adapted to fit our every futuristic needs.  It's like the pyramid scheme ACN trying to become a telecommunications conglomerate that wants a slice of the pie.  It's also like BP as it was previously named 'British Petroleum' but merged with ARCO and is now referred to as 'Beyond Petroleum.'  How smart of them huh?  Trying to cover up their tracks, much like the tobacco industry.

Progression of Economic Models:

He mentioned a few different economic models that a country goes through.  To start off, the first stage of the economy will be based off of natural resources like cash crops.  Each nation will tap into their own resources and thrive off of mining and agriculture.  The second stage would be the industrialized part where factories and plants are created to process other raw materials into consumer goods like cars or computers (ie: Industrial Revolution).  Goods would mostly be manufactured domestically.  The third stage of the economy would be based off of services.  Most of the manufacturing then becomes outsourced for cheaper labor.  Instead of automotive companies you now have more fast food restaurants.  Reading up on post-industry societies, we learn that:

"Within the economy, there is a transition from goods production to the provision of services. Production of such goods as clothing and steel declines and services such as selling hamburgers and offering advice on investments increase."

It's crazy how many topics we covered today during dinner, we even talked about nuclear technology and I found this in my studies:

"Post-industrial society seeks to assess the impacts of the new technologies and, where necessary, to exercise control over them. The hope is, for example, to better monitor things like nuclear power plants and to improve them so that accidents like that at Three-Mile Island or Chernobyl can be prevented in the future. The goal is a surer and more secure technological world."

Another interesting point about post-industrial society is the emergence of universities, the pursuit of knowledge and the practice of philosophy, and the increase of impact derived from scientists and engineers.  I'll cover the incentive economy first and I'll end with nuclear technology.

An Incentive Economy:

So we know that communism doesn't work.  Human nature is to be greedy, so we need some incentives in order to drive competition.  If everyone was equal and no one had incentive to work hard, society would fall apart and greedy men at the top would become the number one importer of Cavasia.  Americans have incentives to work hard and to thrive their businesses in order to make the most money.  China is not even communist anymore, the harboring of capitalistic factories will transform the government into a pseudo-capitalist entity.  We also talked about China and it's false sense of control and how it likes to have control over its people when in fact there is no jurisdiction over the many outsourced factories there.

Nuclear Technology:

So we were also talking about Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl and I started to think about how things and ideas in our heads are so effected by society's view on it; the great social stigma.  I almost forgot I learned about Chernobyl in my environmental class in college.  With a horrible experience at Chernobyl, nuclear fallout killed hundreds with thousands getting cancer, nuclear power was seen as a terrifying technology.  But my cousin thinks that nuclear technology is far more efficient than the burning of diesel fuels and coal.  But nuclear power plants aren't created anymore, they are only being torn down or shut off.  One nuclear plant will yield a truck load of waste a year but will supply ample energy without the emissions of CFCs.  With containment technology pretty advanced these days, I too think nuclear technology is a viable solution to the burning of diminished fossil fuels but should only be a method in the transition and attempt to finding cleaner energy.

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I guess my main question today is regarding our post-industrialized society.  We all know that outsourcing our factories overseas is a horrible way to take advantage of cheap labor, letting the free market cripple these lesser-nations because 'not everyone can win' right?  My sister always refers it to the 'winners' and the 'losers,' in these cases the USA and all the countries that are post-industrialized are the big winners.  So I know our factories used to be concentrated in Mexico and have now traveled to China as well as South East Asian countries.  With the introduction of our factories, countries get a stimulant of productivity and sort of enter the manufacture-based economy of the economic models I mentioned earlier.  Once every country is exploited and all the 'straggling' countries or 'third-world' countries are up to par and eventually evolve into service-based economies (post-industrial societies), who will be left to exploit if all the countries are advanced?  When all the manufacture-based economies mature into service-based economies, who will do all the manufacturing?  That is my main question that both me and my cousin could not answer.  Instead of manufacturing, everyone will develop in-depth universities and universal knowledge will jump forward, does that mean Star Trek or Star Wars will happen and then the space frontier?  Who will do the manufacturing? Who will capitalism oppress?  Aliens?