The future of world economy is anything but bright unless technologies and industries align with the laws of nature and become environment friendly
The world economy is heading for a tailspin. There are limited resources on the globe and great greed pervading the humans inhabiting it. This greed for material resources, which connote wealth, is creating ever greater struggle, competition, and strife among the human population. Whether it is land or oil or gas or minerals, irrespective of their locations defined by national boundaries, the tendency to acquire more by individuals or institutions is creating incipient chaos and mayhem. This mayhem will be more and more visible in the times to come. Does it portend well for the future of the world economy? The answers are too obvious.
The economy of the world has traditionally depended upon three essential items for humans—food, clothing and shelter. There was significant commercial activity in material resources or services that went into the making of these items. And the long traditional period of world history is testimony to small human community-dwelling units called villages where such resources belonged. The economies of regions were built around village economies only. There was extensive trade of goods and services within and across villages and also across major economic regions. But the existence of wealth within villages was significant as these villages were the prime centres of economic activity. This meant that the scale of economic activity was low and limited. The population of the world was far lower than it is today.
With modern industrialization arrived rapid urbanization. Population growth increased due to a decrease in the death rate. The traditional methods of agriculture were changed by mechanized farming and inorganic fertilizer use. This was entailed by the burgeoning population.
Let us return to the basics of the economics of the global human community. There are limited resources on the planet. Today’s massive population cannot grow sufficient food for itself without the use of inorganic fertilizers, inorganic pesticides and genetic engineering applied to crops. Farming is local but the distribution of farm products is in the hands of corporate business houses which work on a gigantic scale in the capitalist mode. The same is the case with the other two basic human necessity items—clothing and shelter. Textile and clothing industries as also the real estate industry are largely in the hands of big corporate houses funded by banks and financial institutions. And corporatization of other human needs like education, travel, entertainment, healthcare etc. has created those much more big business entities. This has destroyed the age-old and stable rural closed economy model and propagated the open expansive urban model and this model is unstable and unsustainable. The reason is very simple—limited material resources on the planet and the urban model coupled with a modern technological perspective feel that economic growth can continue even by inflicting harm on the environment. Therefore, to expect that global GDP can and will rise, even with new technology, is naive, and rather foolish. And what are these new technologies? Digital computation and communication Systems, Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnologies.
The above technologies are only going to reduce the need for human services. Already Chat GPT has come to supplement digital computation and communication systems. These technologies will kill employment hugely by making humans increasingly service providers rather than skilled producers and then gradually being replaced by robots and AI-based machines. Applied to wars, these technologies will bring the use of extremely lethal weapons delivered by robot soldiers and drones and will make wars long-drawn and protracted. Economic, military and political hegemonic designs have been in evidence throughout history. But humanistic systems and nature-friendly technologies can deliver economic benefits to all with the exploitation of none.
All our current technologies are crude, cruel and inferior. The technologies need to be in sync with the immanent scientific laws of the universe and nature and this is exactly what most of the present technologies lack. If they were in sync, they would cease to be environmentally unfriendly.
Environment-unfriendly and grossly reductionist technologies are going to take a heavy toll on the quality of industrial products. The effects of quality vitiation are becoming increasingly apparent.
The future of the world economy is anything but bright unless, as stated above, our technologies and industries begin to align with the laws of nature and become environmentally friendly. It’s a humongous cost we are paying for environmental degradation and we are unable to see it fully well. Forced switchover to environment-friendly technologies due to nature’s backlash in the form of climate change and its concomitant global physical effects is definitely on the cards.
In the above backdrop, it can be logically inferred that the future of the world economy is marked by—
The future of the world economy is going to be dictated by environmental factors rather than technology because the environment is a part of Mother Nature which is far more powerful than humans who develop incremental technologies. Unless the technologies are nature friendly and aligned with the ecosphere, they will bring more harm than good and will perforce be ultimately discarded. The true meaning of economic growth is value and quality addition to human life but that cannot happen at the cost of the environment. Hence, in the ultimate analysis, what counts is systems, technologies and processes which are nature and environment-friendly.
We will, unfortunately, have to witness the spectre of nature’s severe backlash on the global human population come true and alive in the years to come and that hardly forebodes well for the global economy. This honeymoon with new industrial technologies has lasted about 200 years or so. But their detrimental effects are only now beginning to show. Economics is all about quality and value addition to human life. And remember, Mother Nature has a great role to play in this. We must integrate Mother Nature into our economic planning and systems before it is too late.