America Devours its Own Future:

Self-Consumption – The World 3 Model Actually Predicts it – soon.

If you haven’t heard of World3, it may well be because of a variety of factors. If you live in the US, likely it’s due to willful ignorance. I say this because the ramifications of realizing and internalizing that what ‘is’, will soon be ‘no more’, may well be hard to fathom. However, the prediction, which was made in 1972 has been peer reviewed, recreated and tested numerous times in the last 54 years, all with the same outcome. Capitalism, by its very nature is unsustainable as the title of the first cited work alluded, “The Limits to Growth’.

As a former instructor in strategic studies, it has become obvious under the trump administration that system dynamics and strategic planning has not been the forte of the United States. So much so today, that the World3 model may well have been accelerated by the U.S. penchant for greed alone. One may well want to read “Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World” in order to appreciate the depth of work put into the study and its ramifications.

It was followed in 1991, with another assessment of the study, updating the parameters. “Beyond the Limits” was then released by the Institute for Policy and Social Science Research, and finally “Limits to Growth: The Thirty Year Update” in 2004.

World3 is one of several models that have been generated throughout the world, “MOIRA model, Mesarovic/Pestel Model, Bariloche Model, SARU Model and FUGI Model, the latter model generating the spark for all later models.

The Models

The models are constituent of five main systems:

• The food system
• The industrial system
• The population system
• The non-renewable resources system
• The pollution system

Agricultural System

The following information is not an aggregation. It would take a complete book to provide both the data and its analysis. However, the models consist of a simple, useful view that land and fertilizer should be used for farming, and that more of either will produce more food. Since land is finite, and industrial output required to produce fertilizer and other agricultural inputs cannot keep up with demand, there necessarily will be a food collapse at some point in the future.

It also predicts that the process of industrialization in the future proceeds in a way very similar to its progress in the past, and if technologies and value changes that have already been institutionalized continue to evolve. In this scenario, the world reached a population of six billion, and then peaks at seven billion. Today, we have surpassed that number by 1.3 billion which, of course will both amplify the negative outcomes and decrease the impending timeline for societal collapse to occur.

The model predicts that the global population will decline because of an increased death rate. In 2015, both industrial output per capita and food per capita peaked at US $375 per person (in U.S. dollars – now approximately $2,900 today) and 500 vegetable-equivalent kilograms /person. Persistent pollution peaks in the year 2035 at 11 times 1970’s levels.

Suffice to say, that irrespective of criticisms of the model, made mostly by nationals who are at the greatest risk, the U.S. and the western world, the predictive validity of the models are highly significant.

Validation

A number of researchers have attempted to test the predictions of the World3 model against observed data, with varying conclusions. Recent results published in Yale’s “Journal of Industrial Ecology” found that current empirical data is broadly consistent with the 1972 predictions and projections, and that if major changes to the consumption of resources are not undertaken, economic growth will peak and then fall precipitously by around 2040.

Anecdotal Data that Reinforces the Likelihood of Collapse

One cannot hope to ignore the reality of what Donald Trump’s actions or inactions have, and will have in the remaining two years of his tenure. Trump’s dismantling of agencies responsible for aggregating data, for diminishing negative effects (health, environmental, disparity in wealth and access to it, pollution (the continuance of measures that ignore fossil fuel usage or the use of alternate sources of energy) all contribute to the problem. When one adds climate change and the diminished capacity of the world’s predicted production of food, combined with the destruction of existing land needed to produce food, it simply means an acceleration of the impending collapse.

Factors such as the rapid increase in debt, the AI bubble, the current geopolitical dislocations caused by Donald Trump and the likelihood of an increase in the rate and severity of those dislocations (Project 2025). When combined with what will become America’s inability to control its economy, and hence the global dislocation of the U.S. dollar, investment and any actual level of trust in the United States and its actions, – will all have massive impacts and subsequently evaporate any remaining trust in the U. S..

Some of the ramifications are already evident, others are aggregating to a point in the future where failure will occur.

[embed]World3 - Wikipedia The World3 model is a system dynamics model for computer simulation of interactions between population, industrial…en.wikipedia.org

The Future

The ‘wealth-equality’ gap continues to widen. For example, “In 2026, the U.S. households in the top quintile (20%) had an estimated average worth of $398,000, compared to $53,000 for the middle quintile and $14,000 for the bottom quintile (USGAO, 2019).

Globally, around 1 billion people earn less than $1 per day, and about 1.5 billion people earn between $1–2 a day (World Bank, 2012). In 2016, the sixty-two wealthiest people in the world has as much wealth as the 3.6 billion poorest (Guardian, 2016). The numbers are actally worse as the additional 1.5 billion people are predominantly residents of third world nations. The ramifications of a world where trillionaires, like Elon Musk create the future, foretells not just of changes, but profound anger, mistrust, conflict and war in response. The same applies to technological breakthroughs and to whom have access. Medical breakthroughs profit the rich, first. In fact, in every facet of human life, the rich are advantaged, and the poor victimized.

Conclusion

Continuation of the income and wealth gap between the wealthy and others could (and I personally believe, will) unhinge capitalism’s economic system. The disparity in survival rates between rich and poor will become stark, and near impossible to ignore. In rich societies for example, for people in their 50’s and 60’s in 1992, 3/4 of the wealthy survived in 2014. For the poor, 1/2 survived by 2014.

Probability

The reality is that regardless of technology or AI, that the concentration of colossal wealth and income at the top of society and extreme poverty at the bottom undermine capitalism’s legitimacy. The continued increase in wealth and income gap and breakthroughs in biomedical technology and AI paints an undesirable future. The rich may create a different human species that may not follow today’s ethical and philosophical norms. I would suggest that ‘that particular ship has sailed’ and the future now is even less likely to benefit anyone but the rich.

In reality, the poor will only have the ability to accept the disparity for a short period of time, especially for those within rich nations as the obvious disparities can be felt, viscerally by those disadvantaged. At some point, scarcity, anger then hate will prevail, and when it does, the rich will find themselves the targets of that anger. Systemic anger will create the collapse of capitalism, as the poor, the engines of dislocation and the will to act violently to tear down what capitalism has created becomes evident.

AI and the dislocations it will create as greed obviates a reduction in human employment , will bring about massive angry responses to not incremental change but change that constitutes ‘ruptures’ in the covenant between workers, corporations and their greed.

Hobbes may well have had it right in Leviathan. The future will be not of our choosing.

Am I pessimistic? Absolutely. When the most powerful nation in the world resorts to unlimited greed and power, then the future will be mired in warfare and scarcity.

America used to exercise ethics and moral judgement. Now all it exercises is hubris and limitless greed.

Trump essentially guarantees a negative outcome. How is it that America has transitioned from a man of substance in Obama in 2017, a constitutional lawyer, to a man who has no substance, no character, who lies with every breath and who oozes incompetence and hubris in 2026? America isn’t under new management. It’s devoid of it. Meanwhile, when Obama left office the national debt was under 20 trillion. When Trump leaves? Likely higher than 42 trillion, in fact it may well be closer to 50 trillion due to investors and the holders of U.S. treasuries dumping them on the market.