Let me guess. You're freaked about what appears to be rapidly developing a "1984" style police state, right? You've probably been reading various alternative news sites (including LATOC) that document everything from implantable RFID chips to massive artificial intelligence powered Pentagon computer simulations to the development of Terminator style robotic soldiers, to increasingly fascist legislation being passed to KBR-built work camps and thinking to yourself:
Damn, before long TPTB are going to have us all chipped, tagged,
drugged, and living in urban slums patrolled by robotic soldiers
with strangely familiar Austrian accents . . .
To a certain degree I share your fears. However, here's the kicker about highly advanced computer programs and all the other command and control ("C&C") police state type programs we're all freaked out about these days: Even high-tech organizations like the NSA are subject to the law of diminishing returns as articulated by Joseph Tainter in "The Collapse of Complex Societies."
Here's how it works: the more C&C measures "THEY" implement, the more dependent they become on increasingly massive energy inputs and sprawled out 3,000 mile supply lines. As these networks grow increasingly complex, they begin to hit certain breaking points. These breaking points can come in the areas of energy supply, distribution, infrastructure, affordability, personnel, etc. In his book, Tainter illustrates this process with the following graph:
The NSA's current electricity crisis is an example of one these breaking points, albeit one currently at a comparatively early and only mildly disruptive stage. The more computer programs they run the more electricity they need. At some point (right about now) their ability to procure electricity can not keep up with their desire/need to maintain their massive computer-based surveillance programs.
A year after the National Security Agency nearly maxed out its
electrical capacity, some offices are experiencing significant
power disruptions as the agency confronts the increasingly urgent
problem of an infrastructure stretched to its limits, intelligence
officials said.
The spy agency has delayed the deployment of some new data
-processing equipment because it is short on power and space.
Outages have shut down some offices in NSA headquarters for up
to half a day. And some officials fear that major problems could
occur this summer as temperatures climb.
A lot of Peak Oilers are convinced TPTB are going to implement a "1984"-style police state once TSHTF. I have little doubt they'll be attempts at creating such a state. However, the law of diminishing returns is and will be the big X-factor monkey wrench in Big Brother or Big Sister's plans. The police state tactics employed by TPTB are as dependent on huge energy inputs and 3,000 mile supply lines as Wal-Mart is. As those supply lines and energy flows reach certain tipping points, the ability of TPTB to run massive Orwellian command and control schemes will diminish.
But can't TPTB just use force to get what they want?
To a certain degree, "yes." The law of diminishing returns, however, applies to the use of force just as it applies to every other problem solving strategy. At this point all of the tools a "Big Brother" style police state would use to impose its will upon people are completely dependent on multiple and incredibly complex 3,000 mile supply lines, just like everything else in our culture. When energy shortages start to hit hard, these supply lines will break down and Big Brother's ability to use force will begin diminishing.
Another Example: The Burgeoning Space Debris Catastrophe
To illustrate, consider the medium-to-long term effects of the burgeoning space debris catastrophe. You might remember hearing, albeit briefly, about China shooting down one of its old satellites back in January of this year. When China shot the satellite down, it shattered into 10,000 pieces. These pieces are now are all in orbit and it's just a matter of time before they start colliding with other satellites and reducing them to 10,000 piece of debris and setting off a chain reaction. An article in the New York Times summarized the situation as follows:
. . . after a half-century of growth, the federal list of detectable
objects (four inches wide or larger) reached 10,000, including
dead satellites, spent rocket stages, a camera, a hand tool and
junkyards of whirling debris left over from chance explosions and
destructive tests.
Now, experts say, China’s test on Jan. 11 of an antisatellite rocket
that shattered an old satellite into hundreds of large fragments
means the chain reaction will most likely start sooner. If their
predictions are right, the cascade could put billions of dollars’
worth of advanced satellites at risk and eventually threaten to
limit humanity’s reach for the stars.
While the Times article framed the situation as being problematic for space exploration they (conveniently) failed to explain that it is equally, if not even more, problematic for the world's financial, military, and communication networks as these are all dependent on networks of space based satellites at this point.
Down the road, this situation poses an (essentially) intractable problem for any globalized Big Brother state as whatever methods of control they wish to implement are going to require increasing number of satellites. But they can't just keep shooting satellites up there without risking setting off space debris chain reactions that threaten the entire network. A classic example of the law of diminshing returns in action.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it's also worth noting that everything that goes into satellite and space-based command and control methods are, like everything else in modern society, wholly dependent on those pesky 3,000 mile supply lines which will begin breaking down as soon as serious energy shortages hit. So even if we dismiss the possiblity of a space debris chain reaction as described in the previous paragpaprhs, Big Brother is going to run into a lot of problems procuring the parts and materials necessary to maintain his satellite based surveillance network before much longer.
Bottom Line: Our long term future is "The Road Warrior" not "1984"
This is going to be difficult for a lot of people to believe as they have a lot invested in their fears of a 1984 style police state emerging in the coming years. The good news is that such a state will become at some point essentially impossible to maintain without supply lines and massive energy inputs of modern society. This is not all together different than what happened to Hitler's police state circa 1944. When Germany failed to secure the oil fields in the Caspian Sea resorted to coal-to-liquids technology which was just barely enough to keep its military running at a greatly reduced capacity. By 1945 Hitler was sending much of his infantry into battle on horseback and bicycle because there wasn't enough fuel from any source to send them into battle via mechanized methods.
That's, more or less, the same fate that awaits the modern police state as the world's supply of recoverable energy goes into decline. The result for the citizens like you and me is likely to be not unlike what happened to Germany's citizenry at the end of World War II which is a descent into chaos.
Whenever I explain this to people they first reaction is "great, there won't be a police state in the future!". Well I'm not so sure there is reason to celebrate as all of us are dependent on those same 3,000 mile supply lines for our food, energy, medicine, etc as the police state is for its command and control technologies. The bottom line is the future is more likely to be a low-energy, chaotic dystopia like "The Road Warrior" than a high-energy, fascist dystopia like "1984".
If you want, just watch the first seven minutes (particularly 1:40-to-3:00) of the film to get a idea of what awaits us as the law of diminishing returns kicks into high gear. FWIW, while the narrator doesn't make it explicitly clear, it's pretty obvious the two oil-addicted "warrior tribes" he's alluding to are the Judeo-Christian and Islamic tribes.
