Technocracy. We'll all live in small flats, every move monitored, resources 'correctly' allocated, quarterly 'health' shots, no cars, we'll see very little nature.
My, how far we've come...
My, how far we've come...
There is actually a lot of land left in the world (even in the US and Canada) if you want to take on the hardships of not interacting with society. Judging by what I see say on YouTube, a lot of people want this!
Random channel, I only watched a little of it: https://www.youtube.com/user/explorealternatives (it felt like a lot of off grid living was in Canada, which is interesting given the weather)
Similar to paleo and other alternative diets as a reaction against industrial farming and food production, there's already a lot of reaction against big tech and technocracy. I think / I hope this time it won't take 50+ years to "properly react". Both industries brought us some good things but we have to be critical about what to adopt.
That's a lot of land.
I just googled and this seems like a real thing, i.e. hundreds of properties for very cheap:
https://www.landandfarm.com/search/michigan-land-between-500...
Also I had a friend who did this near the California/Nevada border. Super cheap land if you don't care about electricity and plumbing!
Michigan and California are both extremely populated states -- but MOST of them by land area is very sparsely populated.
I'm sure someone here knows more, but I think it's obvious if you just drive 30, 60, or 120 minutes outside any city in the US. There is a lot of land. All of it is probably owned, but the owners are probably not doing anything with it, and would sell it for a fair price, which is low.
Hell there is even land in San Francisco if you've ever biked between San Francisco and South San Francisco. Again, it's owned, but it's not doing very much.
Humans like to crowd together in very few places, particularly near water. Here's a more relevant picture: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/3d-mapping-the-worlds-large...
Judging by this picture, the US, Europe, and Russia are barely populated at all :)
In Australia for instance, thousands of acres of Rural land have been rezoned as "Farming", which means that you can't build a house on less than 100 acres. And of course the only ones who benefit are the corrupt real-estate developers.
The future will be miserable, unless you live in China. In China, the future will arrive as planned as China will once again become the middle kingdom and be bestowed with the mandate of heaven. In the west, the 200 years of western industrial society will be regarded as a mistake that must be payed for dearly with carbon credits.
;)
Also.
Sudden death for worn-out workers. We'll invent a rationale for that eventually. 20 years of retirement is just an unnecessary drain on the economy.
Like in Logan's Run except more plausible.
Also cellphones implanted at birth. With stress induction.
Also, radical amputation for information workers. All that extra flesh is just an unnecessary drain on the economy.
It's a interesting development and worth watching.
Or you might go the way my country did, with a 60-something retirement age and 65 (or slightly better) life expectancy.