If this entire piece wasn't tongue in cheek my hat's off to you. While I'll quibble with some of your other choices, pets are never going to disappear. Never. I'll give up my car and computer before I'd give up my dog.
Hi Richard, and thanks for commenting. At the beginning of the piece I do clarify the title to mean 12 things "I feel will disappear, or at least be much smaller than today and unrecognizable to people of 2025". That's the key.
Of course in a world with 8+ billion people there so much inertia that almost nothing may COMPLETELY disappear in just a few years (I really hope so at least).
Wrt pets, what I mean by "be much smaller or unrecognizable" is that:
1, I do hope that certain pet breeds made to suffer for our esthetic pleasure will disappear asap, that is that no new pups will be "produced"
2, less and less people will be able or willing to afford pet ownership as expensive as it is today, often for no real purpose (e.g. tons of useless gadgets, ridiculously sophisticated food etc)
3, getting pets like dogs just to keep them confined inside four walls most of the day will be recognized as cruel, hence only people who can keep them outside will get them
4 all of the above applies to NEW potential pet owners. That is, people like you who already have a pet will of course keep it. But less and less people who never had a pet will ever decide to get one, and less people than e.g. 10 or 20 years ago will get a new pet when their current one passes away.
On another note: if you could elaborate on the first sentence of your comment, "If this entire piece wasn't tongue in cheek my hat's off to you.", I'd be grateful
Hi Marco, thanks for the detailed and thoughtful elaboration. I still disagree with your analysis on pets. Given deathbed demographics in many western countries pets have become a replacement for children in many locales. As such I do not see pet ownership either decreasing or going away.
Regarding my tongue in cheek "tongue in cheek" preamble, I was essentially joking soto voce that your predictions that many of the 12 items will "disappear" struck me as disregarding human nature, or certainly disregarding our fervor in exploiting human nature. There has never been a point in human history where exploitation of human nature wasn't pursued if money can be made or some need (however niche) can be fulfilled.
Of course, human fervor in exploiting human nature knows no limits. However, the main point of my post is that we have reached a point where that fervor may find itself unable to operate, purely by physical constraints.
That is, if all the warnings about "top diesel" and other physical/economical tipping points are half correct, it won't be possible anymore to exploit human nature in any manner as energy intensive as those ones.
Or, in other words: if we all became 100% rational beings tomorrow, I assume that would be enough to voluntarily abandon or completely reform those practices. But they will end anyway, because there won't be anymore enough energy to produce and ship both products like those, and enough jobs paid enough to buy them, in the same amounts as today,
That's a defeatist approach. We have plenty of energy. If we push hard on nuclear Gen IV we'll have all the power we need. The only limit is human will. I choose a future of promise.
If this entire piece wasn't tongue in cheek my hat's off to you. While I'll quibble with some of your other choices, pets are never going to disappear. Never. I'll give up my car and computer before I'd give up my dog.
Hi Richard, and thanks for commenting. At the beginning of the piece I do clarify the title to mean 12 things "I feel will disappear, or at least be much smaller than today and unrecognizable to people of 2025". That's the key.
Of course in a world with 8+ billion people there so much inertia that almost nothing may COMPLETELY disappear in just a few years (I really hope so at least).
Wrt pets, what I mean by "be much smaller or unrecognizable" is that:
1, I do hope that certain pet breeds made to suffer for our esthetic pleasure will disappear asap, that is that no new pups will be "produced"
2, less and less people will be able or willing to afford pet ownership as expensive as it is today, often for no real purpose (e.g. tons of useless gadgets, ridiculously sophisticated food etc)
3, getting pets like dogs just to keep them confined inside four walls most of the day will be recognized as cruel, hence only people who can keep them outside will get them
4 all of the above applies to NEW potential pet owners. That is, people like you who already have a pet will of course keep it. But less and less people who never had a pet will ever decide to get one, and less people than e.g. 10 or 20 years ago will get a new pet when their current one passes away.
On another note: if you could elaborate on the first sentence of your comment, "If this entire piece wasn't tongue in cheek my hat's off to you.", I'd be grateful
Hi Marco, thanks for the detailed and thoughtful elaboration. I still disagree with your analysis on pets. Given deathbed demographics in many western countries pets have become a replacement for children in many locales. As such I do not see pet ownership either decreasing or going away.
Regarding my tongue in cheek "tongue in cheek" preamble, I was essentially joking soto voce that your predictions that many of the 12 items will "disappear" struck me as disregarding human nature, or certainly disregarding our fervor in exploiting human nature. There has never been a point in human history where exploitation of human nature wasn't pursued if money can be made or some need (however niche) can be fulfilled.
Hi again Richard,
Of course, human fervor in exploiting human nature knows no limits. However, the main point of my post is that we have reached a point where that fervor may find itself unable to operate, purely by physical constraints.
That is, if all the warnings about "top diesel" and other physical/economical tipping points are half correct, it won't be possible anymore to exploit human nature in any manner as energy intensive as those ones.
Or, in other words: if we all became 100% rational beings tomorrow, I assume that would be enough to voluntarily abandon or completely reform those practices. But they will end anyway, because there won't be anymore enough energy to produce and ship both products like those, and enough jobs paid enough to buy them, in the same amounts as today,
That's a defeatist approach. We have plenty of energy. If we push hard on nuclear Gen IV we'll have all the power we need. The only limit is human will. I choose a future of promise.