Quote from: r0ach on January 15, 2017, 11:18:57 PM

No offense, but your thesis on a so called knowledge age is completely irrational. When complex systems collapse, they devolve into simpler ones. They never jump into a higher tier of complexity. Complex systems also tend to require exponential resource (energy) curves. Peak conventional crude oil already happened in 2004. Peak working age demographic already occurred in every nation that matters.

Wealth comes from people doing work in the real world, not shuffling around papers. That work is either done from things like burning fuel to do the work for you, or humans physically doing it themselves. With both working age demographic and energy output declining, people will be spending more time and effort doing work for the basic necessities and nobody is going to be overpaying people for shuffling numbers on a computer unless it involves something to do with solving the energy problem.
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So, I hate to rain on your parade, but there is no so called knowledge age unless there's some type of enormous energy breakthrough. Russian govt energy analysts see things getting really bad by around 2020 and say there is no technological solution in sight. There is no coming out on the other side of the monetary reset with some type of "utopia". In fact, one of the reasons it's currently crashing is because it relies on infinite growth and the energy situation prevents that.

In my opinion your error here is looking at this situation as one of collapse. The system is not going to collapse just change. We might not like the change and our quality of life especially in the West may decline but our disliking does not equate to collapse. What we are witnessing is not the start of collapse but the undermining of the old order as it is swept away to form the new. I agree there will be a monetary reset and I agree we will not come out of that reset into some form of utopia but into something else entirely. That something else will have its merits and its faults. I believe we are currently on the verge of transitioning from cycle #4 to cycle #5 in the post below.

Quote from: CoinCube on January 15, 2017, 08:06:28 PM

Sustained increases in living conditions result only from gains in knowledge. Top-down control plays in role in the the organization needed to facilitate the emergence of new knowledge. Top-down control facilitates its own removal for new knowledge eventually circumvents and undermines the prior order allowing society to climb to higher energy systems. The new system is also one of top-down control but the knowledge gained allows for an overall relaxation of the imposed order increasing economic degrees-of-freedom.

The evolution of the social contract is a progressive climb to higher potential energy systems with increased degrees of freedom. The state of nature begat tribalism. Tribalism grew into despotism. Despotism advanced into monarchy. Monarchies were replaced by republics. It is likely that in the near future republics will be consumed by world government, and perhaps someday world government will evolve into decentralized government.

Each iteration has a common theme for each advance increases the number of individuals able to engage in cooperative activity while lowering the number of individuals able to defect. Each iteration increases the sustainable degrees of freedom the system can support.

Cycles of Contention

	Cycle #1	Cycle #2	Cycle #3	Cycle #4	Cycle #5	Cycle #6
Mechanism of Control	Knowledge of Evil	Warlordism	Holy War	Usury	Universal Surveillance	Hedonism
Rulers	The Strong	Despots	God Kings/Monarchs	Capitalists	Oligarchs (NWO)	Decentralized Government
Life of the Ruled	"Nasty, Brutish, Short"	Slaves	Surfs	Debtors	Basic Income Recipients	Knowledge Workers
Facilitated Advance	Knowledge of Good	Commerce	Rule of Law	Growth	Transparency	Ascesis