It's both intriguing and frustrating the way you're almost there, in fact approaching there from multiple directions...but you don't quite take the final step.

Bottom line: Yes indeed the world is changing.

So maybe the economic system fine-tuned for one world needs a bit more tuning to make it work better in the present world?

I talked about "proto Native Americans" confronting an empty continent, and I was describing a huge differential in supply and demand. Later I described European settlers heading west seeing a similar situation and responding in the same appropriate (in the short term) way, exploiting rather than husbanding; and you provided the description of the huge differential enjoyed by the US at the end of World War II. We often liken economics to the flow of energy, and it's a principle of physics that there must be some differential in energy levels to perform useful work.

You mentioned China and India, and they certainly illuminate the problem. As you say, they intend to create wealth sufficient to raise their standards of living to parity with the First World. But where will that wealth come from now, in the 21st Century? We built our economy in a 19th and 20th Century world in which there were global differentials we could exploit. Countries with little technology had no choice but to sell resources to us for minimal payment (not a criticism, just noting that the added-value comes later in manufacturing), we applied our monopoly on technology to add value to the raw materials, and sold some of the finished goods back to the original source of raw materials. Notice why our business partners generally resented us: They had no choice but to sell raw materials to us, and then had no choice but to buy the finished goods and return some of the initial payment for the materials. Hard not to see why they feel screwed coming and going, even if they can't quite place their finger on how it was done.

But, as you point out, the world's changed. The very people whose resources we used to extract now have their own technology. They can add their own value, thank you very much, and sell the stuff to us now.

So where's the economic differential? In the new world, it's economic peers selling to each other; we've picked all the low-hanging fruit of virgin markets. No steep energy curves to exploit any more, just a uniform world competition for a shrinking resource base. The economic system that once served us well is more and more seeming a poor fit to modern reality. When do "necessary adjustments" grow to the point that the rivets start popping and the water starts pouring in and the ship starts sinking?

But please quit with that binary "but we know Communism won't work!" nonresponse, willya? Communism didn't work, and now it appears that free-market capitalism is in danger of not working anymore. Why in the world would I suggest going back to something that's already proven it didn't work? Sheesh, man, you insult my intelligence. I'm saying, we have to think about an economic system that works under present conditions, and preserves the very values of freedom and egalitarianism you cite as the benefits of the traditional way. If the traditional way stops working, then aren't we at risk of losing those things we value? So we better start thinking about how to correct things now, while there's still time.

Is it the free-market capitalist system you value, or the freedom and general prosperity that it's supposed to provide? Isn't the first just the process by which we achieve the second? Why cling to the process?

I wish I had an easy, pat answer for transitioning to a world where everyone is, or wants to be, middle and upper class. The long-range issues were obvious years ago, which is one reason I have been pushing the idea of large-scale use of space resources and energy since the early 1970s.

You know we're strongly in agreement here. I'm cautious, not skeptical, about the power of technology to ride to the rescue once again and break the constraints of a fixed planet to postpone the day of reckoning by opening up another seemingly open-ended frontier. It's like saying that we can count on fusion to eventually be perfected and rescue us from dependence on petroleum. Yes, of course, but will it be ready in time? Without solid reason for optimism--an engineering plan to make it happen, in other words--it's a bit like hoping for a deus ex machina courtesy of the God of Technology.

(And let me just mention in passing that the biggest obstacle to coming up with a technological solution happens to be the party in power, who actively oppose investment in developing alternative energy sources and complementary energy-efficiency development work, denigrate conservation as a "personal lifestyle choice", and basically try to shut out consideration of solutions by denying there's a problem in the first place. Isn't it amusing that you and I have finally gone beyond debating whether there's a problem and we're finally talking about solutions? A new day dawns!)

Consider the scope of the problem to understand the scale of the solution required. China and India, and the rest of the world have the stated goal of catching up to the First World by mid-century; we have about fifty years. By that time world population is forecast to reach 15 billion. A First World standard of living consumes about 22 times the resources and energy of a "Third World" lifestyle. Averaged out over a population already there and the rest catching up, the result is a population of 15 billion consuming 15 times the resources had the development not occurred. That's the equivalent impact of a population of more than 225 billion people.

Well gosh I sure hope technology can pull a rabbit out of a hat, because otherwise the 21st Century is going to be nothing more than an endless series of wars over resources. I don't think that that fate is totally escapable, but the pain can be mitigated somewhat by working out an economic system that has some place for consideration of the general welfare. Resorting to war to resolve fundamentally economic disputes is a lousy bargain--it usually costs more and destroys more resources than could have been gained through compromise and peaceful trade. War as "the continuation of business by other means" is sooooo 19th Century. We need to get over it.