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Comment by jcbeard | Hacker News Reader

Anybody ever wonder if we put 1/3 of the defense budget into Fusion energy research (literally a new Manhattan project, lets call it the Princeton Project) that we could have more impact than that entire defense budget? Think about it. Most of the worlds conflict arises over struggle for resources, and most of those resources are oil. If the world didn't lust for oil as a cheap energy source, could we defund dictatorships around the world? Could we start focusing on cultural and structural issues vs. the struggle for fossil fuels? Seems to make far more sense to spend a few hundred billion USD on fusion research vs. 1.59 million USD per cruise missile to fix/quell conflict that arrises from that struggle. Just a thought, but it seems fixing the cause rather than treating the symptoms is a far better approach in the long term.

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Not to get too political, but I think that the US tends to have the policies it does to prevent the all out collapse of the Middle East. If you think it's a shit storm now, just wait until they have nothing.

Few of those states invested in their people and their infrastructure. Instead they created an almost UBI for their population. It's enough to keep them relatively passive. Cheap gas and just enough to get by. All the while they've created a sense of entitlement in their population. Look at how they treat immigrant labor.

Sadly this population didn't take their minimal freedom to pursue the arts or sciences. While there are instances of individuals improving their life, developing skills and preparing for a post-oil world, the bulk of their society just floats. Moving off oil will pull the plug on their basin. Their societies will probably go down the drain.

Watch out for Europe when that happens. These groups will migrate north and west. I don't think you'll see an exodus into Asia. Given their poor skills, Europe will have a hard time incorporating them into general society. In the end they will probably ghetto-ize. Now Europe will be a melting pot of terrorism. Disaffected young males, the primary target of extremist groups, will be sitting, by the millions, in slums in and around major European cities.

TL;DR: Oil, for all of its faults, stabilizes the world. The US military budget keeps that around.

A while back I read that states which get their funding from natural resources instead of taxes very seldom turn into liberal democracies. I think it was in Zakaria's Future of Freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom

So maybe oil hasn't been a net benefit for these countries. In any case, if we stop needing their oil, their capacity for causing trouble will be drastically diminished.

> if we stop needing their oil, their capacity for causing trouble will be drastically diminished

I think in a few decades their new need for self reliance could pay dividends. They could be living much better in the long run.

Interesting hypothesis, has anything been written about it?

It's a little dated, but here's a Forbes article that discusses a decline in Western oil consumption (not necessarily from fusion).

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2012/12/03/what-ha...

That is, by far, the most chilling and worrying vision of the future I have heard in a long time.

I really hope you're mistaken. I'm terrified you aren't.

Really? That's your nightmare scenario? A bunch of immigrants, and some of them will turn to terrorism - a threat that kills less people per year than, say, automobile accidents or medical mistakes.

How about climate change? Meteors, supervolcanos? These are all things that have destroyed the majority of either humanity or life on earth at some point in the past. And then there's horrors of war, plagues, earthquakes, and tsunamis, which have the capability of killing double-digit percents of regional populations in short amounts of time. Terrorism has never killed even a tenth of a single percent of any population.

Sure, you can worry that terrorists /might/ get nukes or biological weapons. But unstable national governments already have these things. The number of times that the USSR and the USA accidentally almost started a nuclear holocaust via tens of thousands of superbly-engineered ICBMs is vastly more concerning than a bunch of poorly funded, poorly organised idiots that might set off some homebrew weapon.

There are vastly more impactful things that /have already proven to exist/ to be worried about and prepared against.

>some of them will turn to terrorism - a threat that kills less people per year than, say, automobile accidents or medical mistakes.

Yes, some currently turn to terrorism and kill fewer people than automobiles. You're implying that the number of deaths won't grow at all when an entire region of the globe loses it's major cash cow.

The point I'm making is that it could grow 100 times and it still pales against other risks.

there is still something more human, more humanly-terrifying about human-created terror and destruction

Please at least have a cursory glance of the history of any of these countries from around WW1 to the present day instead of just assuming things magically came to be the way they were 6 hours before the first gulf war. States are _not_ abstract entities that just sort of float around existing at geographic locations

An unsubstantiated theory that just happens to align with your ideology and interests -- how would you describe that if not as "very political"?

Even with fusion energy we'd still use oil. We do have cars after all.

Actually I think you'll find more resistance to the new technology than anything. West Virginia is not doing so hot economically, the coal industry has been going downhill [0]. Do you hear of training centers popping up? No, everyone is up in arms about their jobs leaving. They're calling it a "war on coal".

Now try that at a global level, I'm betting entire countries would have their life styles completely altered. Who knows, maybe entire currencies would become worthless in the process. Would it eventually even out where everyone could do well. Yeah, probably, but would people let you see the plan play out?

I hope someday that yes, we could stop fighting over resources and come togehter as a world to ensure we all have what we need. This is one area that I wonder if we can change in time.

[0] http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/us-has...

I think there would be more training centers popping up if there was funding for them; just because they help a region's economy doesn't mean they're a good investment, and it's plausible the state will have to get involved. Essentially, I think the talk of "saving coal" is less about the coal tradition and lifestyle and more about the fact that nothing seems to replace it; if former coal miners were getting new jobs, I think they'd quiet down on that front considerably.

True, I was thinking more from the perspective of trade schools. The whole, market responding to demands thing. I took a quick look, seems WV is well known for redirecting federal funds to random stuff. Like gold plating the dome on the capitol building. I also heard they were supposed to get really nice fiber internet, but I guess that was probably "redirected" as well.

West Virginia politics being what they are they aren't likely to plan properly for a post coal mining future.

FWIW: Southern and Eastern Kentucky's economies are also virtually 99% coal (and 1% illicit marijuana).

Senator Mich McConnell has done the exact same for those poor people... Nada.

That's from Senator Byrd. He was known for bringing home the bacon (pork spending).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd

It's one thing to talk about propping up training centers, it's another to make them effective.

I supposed we have to try if nothing else. I don't have in mind any other solutions other than universal basic income.

Warren Buffet advocates an Earned Income Tax Credit. It's very similar to UBI except more politically possible.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/better-than-raising-the-minimum-...

Agree wholeheartedly, fixing symptoms seems to be the more popular and profitable, albeit less effective, action of choice. To be pedantic, however, a case for fresh water could be made to trump the oil problem. Both needs could be solved by a cheap supply of electricity(well pumps, desalination, sterilization). Alas, we are still perpetually '20 years away'.

How much of the perpetuity is the uncertain funding faced by researchers in the field? The same can be said of supercomputing which directly feeds fusion research. Instead of long term funding, we get 1-2 years of off and on "kickstarter" projects. Long term funding set aside for things like fusion through 5-10 year commitments could improve the outcome. You're totally right though, fresh water as you get to in the end is a direct result of power. Everything comes down to power. As we move from a factory industrial society to a additive manufacturing society this will become even more true. Those who have the power (literally, like electrons) will thrive, those that don't...will look like the middle east in 100 years.

I imagine in the near future with micro-machines that can produce molecules on demand, food will also become equal to power. Its all about the power.

Food is literally equal to power. It's fuel. The joules have to come from somewhere. And "micro-machines that can produce molecules on demand" would be life. If you have tons of free electricity you can turn it into food with greenhouses and grow lamps. As it is, it's usually cheaper to use solar directly.

But then defense contractors, infrastructure contractors, weapons manufacturers, bankers, oil magnates, politicians, and a whole slew of other people wouldn't be able to make as much money. :)

Give them money, just for a different purpose - I bet you they'll take it.

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