I question whether anything remotely resembling sustainability can be built on the shell of an infrastructure that built such a monstrous culture grown out on oil and automobiles. We need new designs and new visions instead of attempting the impossible task of resurrecting such a basket case. Detroit is indeed a stark forebear of our dystopian future. Robots ... to what end? What exactly will those robots be building?
No more than does the continuing erosion of consumerism via growing inequality. Perhaps we need to ask: in a truly sustainable culture built on an enduring infrastructure and very high energy efficiencies and much lower consumption levels, just how central consumerism will be or should be to our lives, our economies, our politics, etc.?
We need new rules. Yes. And a new way of measuring economic/ecologic health. GDP is killing us by undervaluing environmental services and totally ignoring the long term costs of ecological degradation. In a world increasingly short on jobs, there is no greater potential employment opportunity than ecological restoration. But this won't happen unless we can collectively assign much greater value to environmental health by gaining a true measure of the natural wealth that is the foundation of our lives and future generations. Of course, this would require such a revolutionary shift in world view that I don't think it would ever pass go any more than your ideas of communalizing robotic production. But this is exactly the kind of vision we need but which will get their believers relieved of their heads as being enemies of the elite global empire.
I question whether anything remotely resembling sustainability can be built on the shell of an infrastructure that built such a monstrous culture grown out on oil and automobiles. We need new designs and new visions instead of attempting the impossible task of resurrecting such a basket case. Detroit is indeed a stark forebear of our dystopian future. Robots ... to what end? What exactly will those robots be building?
No more than does the continuing erosion of consumerism via growing inequality. Perhaps we need to ask: in a truly sustainable culture built on an enduring infrastructure and very high energy efficiencies and much lower consumption levels, just how central consumerism will be or should be to our lives, our economies, our politics, etc.?
We need new rules. Yes. And a new way of measuring economic/ecologic health. GDP is killing us by undervaluing environmental services and totally ignoring the long term costs of ecological degradation. In a world increasingly short on jobs, there is no greater potential employment opportunity than ecological restoration. But this won't happen unless we can collectively assign much greater value to environmental health by gaining a true measure of the natural wealth that is the foundation of our lives and future generations. Of course, this would require such a revolutionary shift in world view that I don't think it would ever pass go any more than your ideas of communalizing robotic production. But this is exactly the kind of vision we need but which will get their believers relieved of their heads as being enemies of the elite global empire.