It seems to me that this is a snap-shot of the on-going "catabolic collapse" that has been ably discussed by John Michael Greer in his weekly "Archdruid reports."
It seems to me that many towns, and regions, have suffered hard times ... in the last 100 centuries. Many of them are, unfortunately, natural outcomes of misplaced plans and ambitions.
I mean, I don't think any of us here hope or wish the 10 MPG SUV thing to go on forever. So if it doesn't, and a transition to market-friendly alternatives was not made, something has to give.
But to name this, after countless similar occurances through history, as a "snap-shot" of collapse ... well, see also:
It is a snap-shot of decline - a symptom that shows up during typical recessions as you note ode, but also possibly a model of decline in general for many metro areas during T1 of this Greatest Depression.
I like these kinds of articles because they show in a tangible way how everyone can be affected in our economic food chain. Most people I know in my 3D World shrug off Peak Oil because they do not understand how it might affect them - other than the pump prices.
Here you can see how the cost of energy creeps into every corner of the economy (pizza delivery costs... yard care, etc).
Maybe this is similar to climate discussions, where we can't use the 10 year temperature trend in a single town, but have to step back to a wider focus.
If this is a localized result of that very adjustment which is so often denied, that may not be a bad thing.
On the other hand, if someone can show that there are no winners (nationally or even internationally) to balance the losers, then maybe we are in a broad downward movement.
Odo: It is quite clear. USA median income (inflation-adjusted) is in permanent decline, for a number of reasons. On the other hand, the number of millionaires and megamillionaires (>100 mill) is increasing at a brisk pace. Less "winners" than in 1976, but if you "win" in 2006 you end up with a lot more money.
Just as the Detroit decline is something real, that we try to put in perspective, so is the median income data.
I do think it is very bad, and is an indication that we should change our national policies ... but isn't that more a story of globalization and misapplied tax cuts?
Globalization.
The final frontier.
These are the voyages of the venture ship: Enterprise.
To boldly go where no business has gone before.
To seek our new sources of profit.
To suck out the last of what is worth sucking on.
And then ... to move on.
I used to think Star Trek technology would save us. Heck, that's why I became an engineer. I wanted to be part of the solution. Instead, I ended up part of the problem. :-/
Scottie. Look at me. I'm the Captain. I'm the Alpha Kirk. I know you can push her more. Squeeze the last drop out for ME Scottie. I'm only asking you to do what's best for everyone on board. If you pull it off, there will be a bonus in your paycheck at the end of the accounting quarter.
Kidding aside, after I wrote that, it dawned on me that the Cornucopians in our society are like Captain Kirk.
Sure the dylithium crystals are almost drained dry. But Scottie the ingenius engineer will pull another rabbit out of the hat and keep us going for at least one more episode.
Sure the oil wells are being drained dry, but our real world engineers will pull another Moore's Law miracle and double production figures yet again. They'll go the extra mile undersea. They'll trudge the extra step out into the tundra.
Even if the Cornucopians are right, you have to ask if their plan is wise? IS that what we should be doing? Squeezing the last drop out of her (Planet Earth) BEFORE we figure out how to get along without the dylithium energy?
Now all those reading TOD outside the US understand our culture. We were raised on Star Trek...no matter how insane the odds are, Scottie (technology) will save us in the end. This is how TV has twisted our sense of reality and entitlement.
What we have yet to figure out is that Star Trek had a good run, but in the end, after all it's "generations", it got cancelled.
Actually it was never Scottie who got credit for saving the floating life vessel week every week but rather the sheer optimism and will power of the uber-human, Captain James T. Quirk.
A freak shuttlecraft accident -- and suddenly Captain Kirk and most of his senior officers find themselves adrift in space, with no hope of rescue, no hope of repairing their craft, or restoring communications -- with nothing, in short but time on their hands.
Time enough for each to tell the story of the Kobayashi Maru -- the Starfleet Academy test given to command cadets. Nominally a tactical exercise, the Kobayashi Maru is in fact a test of character revealed in the choices each man makes -- and does not make.
Discover now how Starfleet Cadets Kirk, Chekov, Scotty, and Sulu each faced the Kobayashi Maru...and became in turn Starfleet officers.
Download Description
As portrayed in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, all Starfleet Command cadets must take the "no-win" Kobayashi Maru rescue simulation. Trapped aboard a doomed shuttlecraft, the Enterprise officers reminisce about their individual performances on the Kobayashi Maru test . . . reminiscences that spark a last, desperate attempt at survival.
No, that's not really the point. The Kobayashi Maru is a starfleet test in which you are presented with an unwinnable situation. However, there was one - and only one - cadet who actually beat the test. That would be - James T. Kirk. Does anyone recall how he did it?
It's not about globalization, it's about power. The winners in this economy have changed the rules of the game and done it by the application of power.
So the winners get more and more, the losers less and less. Median income stagnant or down. If the winners played the game smart they would create prosperity for all.
But it's not about prosperity, it's not about creating wealth. It's about being a winner and giving the losers a hot poker in the ass.
I was planning to evetually chime in with my own definition of modern "wealth". A number of TODders here have already touched on some of the basic concepts.
In years past, "wealth" was measured by the number of acres of fertile land that a noble owned and the number of sheep, cattle and servants he had working that land for him and directing the profitable "fat of the land" to him in terms of goods, services and taxes.
During the industrial revolution, the definition changed somewhat from defining territory in terms of land and serfs to maket size and market share. This was more of a Demand-side oriented view of the world. You became "wealthier" as more of the world demanded your goods or services, as your sphere of influence as a seller enlarged.
Modern wealth (IMHO) has two intertwined aspects:
Neuro-hegemony over:
Sources of money inflow, and
Sources of quality service provision.
First, what do I mean by "neuro-hegemony"?
In days of old (yes, when knights were bold), a nobleman exerted his hegemony mostly by physical force, by running a tight police state. That was a costly and resource intensive way of controlling an empire. Besides as you got older and weaker, some younger punk warlord can come in, beat you up and take over.
The more sophisticated noblepersons soon came to realize that mental manipulation of the masses was a cheaper and more effective method of control (as long as the reigns of neural control did not slip off) and it could last well into old age.
The church was a first vehicle for gaining control. Give onto Ceasar ... yeah, right. Who do you think actually came up with that line, Jesus or Ceasar?
But as control by the church began to slip, nobility realized there was a much subtler way to maintain control: Education. Get hold of the kids while they were young and program their brains with ideas that will fool them into serving you. Fool their parents into thinking that "education" is good for everybody. Fool them into fighting over each other so they can get into the "best" of schools and thereby become the "best" of people, the ivory towers of their society. Yeah right. (Oops sorry. Not supposed to say that. It's heresy you know.)
As a nobleperson, you want to fool as many people as possible into serving you. That means you have to "educate" a greater number of them to your way of how they should think. They should worship Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand. They should believe that working long hours and even weekends in the office, will get them to the promised land. Death by over work is an honorable way to go, and it serves as a good example for the other sheeple.
That is what "globilization" is really about: finding larger masses of population to service the masters. Of course, when you finish encircling the globe, that indeed is the final frontier. The race is on to see who finishes first.
There are two basic ways that the masses can serve you, the nobleperson: (1) sending you more money in the form of taxes or in the form of revenue from having bought some trinkets you "sell" to them; and (2) providing you with immediate and quality service the instant you want it. When you go to a restaurant, the waiter is there at the mere whip of a finger. More champagne sir? What can I get you? When you go to a hospital, you get the executive suite and the best of doctors fighting over each other to see who can service you first. That is wealth. That is power. That is neural hegemony.
Thank you, stepback, I couldn't have said it better.
As the smallest addendum, do not discount the sheer glee our modern nobles find in causing pain. It is fun to kick out your servants teeth and hear him thank you for it.
They don't just profit from their servants, they hate us.
Here is why.
The modern nobles love their assests.
They love their cattle.
They love their sheep.
And aye, even thou be a pain in the assets, they love you.
That's one of the reasons I like it to, sendoilplease. It shows how everyone is impacted, from those in the gated communities to yardcare workers.
odo -I too think calling it catabolic collapse is overreaching a bit, but this is more than just a general historical decline; I think it is a foretelling of what's to come.
What is productive about Youtube? It's not a wealth-generating enterprise like the auto industry, in which you take raw materials like iron ore and oil and turn them into vehicles that do work. The U.S. continues to move away from real value-added industry towards infotainment/service industries. Who was it that said we Americans are just living off of each other's "discretionary" income?
Youtube is a way to share videos of people doing stuff (don't get me wrong, I enjoy it), and it is a front for ads telling us we need more worthless junk. These ads generate an income for not that many people in comparison to the auto industry.
Bottom line, the auto industry creates real wealth, while Youtube doesn't. And how is it anyway that the acquisition of Youtube by Google is a sign of economic hope? Isn't it just a monopolizing of the infotainment industry? It certainly doesn't offset the decline of the auto industry.
Not fair. You're talking about the internet in general now, whereas before you were talking about Google's acquisition of Youtube. I'm not arguing against the fact that the internet changes the way we can work (i.e., drive less), but there's more to the story.
So I guess anytime a data-sharing giant like google buys a niche online service like Youtube, we should all feel like our country's industrial health is A-OK.
Diminishing returns, in my opinion. The internet is great, but my argument remains that it doesn't replace the wealth generation of something like the auto industry.
And perhaps I am a dinosaur (pretty good for a 29 year-old). I'd rather see our population learning skills that contribute wealth to our society like welding, masonry, engineering, geology, medicine, agriculture. It probably says something about my experiences, but I believe these productive occupations are the foundation of a healthy economy, and that this foundation supports the bits and bytes of the internet. Would the internet, or computers, have been realized were it not for these industries? The reason the computer (or even math) was developed was to make these "hard" industries more efficient. But, like I said, we're experiencing diminishing returns. We're (well you're) now calling Youtube "Productive". I use Youtube for procrastinating.
Youtube is no more the internet than Detroit is industrial America.
That is the symmetry I was striving for in the random question.
Now I am amused to see people demand of me that I prove youtube is typical, and may be generalized ... while totally not getting that we started with a similar point case, and broad generalizations.
It is a mess. Welcome to the mess. Some heavy oil-consuming industries will die. Some ethereal information companies will prosper.
I, the moderate, uncommitted to a single future, sure don't know how that will play out.
The fact of the matter is it may very well become a wealth generating enterprise. The business model of the internet is very much like TV. You generate content, which generates web page views, and you sell ads.
YouTube is the biggest in a new "user generated video content" type web portal. There are some questions about copyright. Google is going to try and find answers for them. If they can conquer the issues with their video fingerprinting technology and then combine that with their superior ad services, this is going to be a slam dunk.
This whole attitude that only welders, mechanics, and geologists produce things is such crap. Talk about a totally bogus Pat Larouche type argument. The internet is huge. It's an entirely new paradigm. And it is possible to make a lot of money on it. And just because you can't pick it up, doesn't make it any less real.
No mate, you are the one who doesn't get it. This so-called wealth you talk about exists solely in pieces of paper and keystrokes: money.
Money is not wealth.
This site is here because it's obvious that the energy surplus is fading fast. The levels of complexity in our society, of which YouTube is the latest added layer, will vanish accordingly, as will the invented prosperity that this delusional society leans on. You've been had!
Just below this post you will find this list:
Programmers,
Accountants,
Database Administrators,
Network Administrators,
Human Resources,
Technical Support,
Customer Service Reps,
Billing specialists,
Phone Operator,
Salesmen
See that? All about to disappear. See also Leanan's post about real skills (which equal real wealth).
Umm you might want to rethink that given history has shown us that usually the skilled workers are not the ones who enjoy the benefits of wealth in a less technological society. Generally from pass examples, Administrators such as nobles, landowners, and aristocracy are the ones who ended up benefitting from the wealth of physical labors.
In fact quite often those who did have the skills needed to produce physical wealth were often owned themselves by the nobles/administrators, or else were so dependent on their patrons that to go against the Administrators would mean death in one fashion or another.
In the end you could say the skills to Administrate and the companion skills such as policing, and combat trump skills of physical labor.
Your statement that all those IT jobs are about to disappear is built on the assumption that collapse has to be severe enough to return us to a society of equivilent technology to 200 years ago or worse. That is a pretty severe assumption and one that I think is wrong.
You've also taken that list of jobs out of context from the original point of the post, much as did Leanan in that I was not talking about a collapsed society, I was talking about a society still functioning but taking measures to slow or prevent collapse.
Granted if we tank, a lot of those positions will be needed in much smaller numbers. But first we have to tank, and we have not done so yet.
In the meantime the concept of Virtual Property, is one that is growing, and one that I think would be important to a community worried about resource degradation and consumption. If we spend our money (which essentially is a representation of our time spent working) consuming, or "owning" virtual property (a bunch of electrons arranged in some order) wouldn't that allow the consumption of physical resources to slow?
Instead of buying that jet ski which was produced using fiber glass, and steel and plastic and who knows how much energy to make those materials, I buy instead an equivilent dollars worth of videos, video games, or e-books, who is saving more resources? Or if I decide to watch the football game on my telivision instead of driving downtown or heck flying to the away games, who is saving more resources?
People will want "things". Its part of our nature. Riches, wealth, whatever you want to call it has been a part of every major civilization around the world. The difference in those civilizations, and the measure of wealth has been related to what it is they value(gold, food, land, women, soldiers) . Moving into a resource strained era, I could easily see Virtual Property becoming the new "wealth" for people. Instead of the big fancy car, or big house, it may be the one with the largest collection of MP3s. Or the one who has built a virtual empire in some game world. Or the one who has a blog with the most hits. I think any of those would be
I mean, I don't think any of us here hope or wish the 10 MPG SUV thing to go on forever. So if it doesn't, and a transition to market-friendly alternatives was not made, something has to give.
But to name this, after countless similar occurances through history, as a "snap-shot" of collapse ... well, see also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
I like these kinds of articles because they show in a tangible way how everyone can be affected in our economic food chain. Most people I know in my 3D World shrug off Peak Oil because they do not understand how it might affect them - other than the pump prices.
Here you can see how the cost of energy creeps into every corner of the economy (pizza delivery costs... yard care, etc).
If this is a localized result of that very adjustment which is so often denied, that may not be a bad thing.
On the other hand, if someone can show that there are no winners (nationally or even internationally) to balance the losers, then maybe we are in a broad downward movement.
I do think it is very bad, and is an indication that we should change our national policies ... but isn't that more a story of globalization and misapplied tax cuts?
The final frontier.
These are the voyages of the venture ship: Enterprise.
To boldly go where no business has gone before.
To seek our new sources of profit.
To suck out the last of what is worth sucking on.
And then ... to move on.
(Resistance is futile.)
I used to think Star Trek technology would save us. Heck, that's why I became an engineer. I wanted to be part of the solution. Instead, I ended up part of the problem. :-/
Kidding aside, after I wrote that, it dawned on me that the Cornucopians in our society are like Captain Kirk.
Sure the dylithium crystals are almost drained dry. But Scottie the ingenius engineer will pull another rabbit out of the hat and keep us going for at least one more episode.
Sure the oil wells are being drained dry, but our real world engineers will pull another Moore's Law miracle and double production figures yet again. They'll go the extra mile undersea. They'll trudge the extra step out into the tundra.
Even if the Cornucopians are right, you have to ask if their plan is wise? IS that what we should be doing? Squeezing the last drop out of her (Planet Earth) BEFORE we figure out how to get along without the dylithium energy?
What we have yet to figure out is that Star Trek had a good run, but in the end, after all it's "generations", it got cancelled.
Yup. They don't believe in the no-win scenario.
Two words: Kobayashi Maru
Book Description
A freak shuttlecraft accident -- and suddenly Captain Kirk and most of his senior officers find themselves adrift in space, with no hope of rescue, no hope of repairing their craft, or restoring communications -- with nothing, in short but time on their hands.
Time enough for each to tell the story of the Kobayashi Maru -- the Starfleet Academy test given to command cadets. Nominally a tactical exercise, the Kobayashi Maru is in fact a test of character revealed in the choices each man makes -- and does not make.
Discover now how Starfleet Cadets Kirk, Chekov, Scotty, and Sulu each faced the Kobayashi Maru...and became in turn Starfleet officers.
Download Description
As portrayed in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, all Starfleet Command cadets must take the "no-win" Kobayashi Maru rescue simulation. Trapped aboard a doomed shuttlecraft, the Enterprise officers reminisce about their individual performances on the Kobayashi Maru test . . . reminiscences that spark a last, desperate attempt at survival.
Alan
Think 3-dimensionally Scottie!
Give me all the impulse shopping power you got.
Aye aye Captain.
Today, any cadet who did what Kirk did, tampering with school computers, would be expelled.
The Kobayashi Maru was meant to teach cadets that sometimes, no matter what you do, you lose. Kirk cheated...and hence never learned that lesson.
BTW, it was actually the TOS movies (ST II, I think) that introduced the no-win scenario and the Kobayashi Maru.
I am at this very moment re-programming the laws of thermodynamics and geo-global climatology. Wish me luck.
Get back here Scottie, you haven't finished the last line of code! The gin bottle is yours AFTER you finish.
Star Trek is more about avoiding reality than anything else - and yes, what a metaphor for America.
So the winners get more and more, the losers less and less. Median income stagnant or down. If the winners played the game smart they would create prosperity for all.
But it's not about prosperity, it's not about creating wealth. It's about being a winner and giving the losers a hot poker in the ass.
In years past, "wealth" was measured by the number of acres of fertile land that a noble owned and the number of sheep, cattle and servants he had working that land for him and directing the profitable "fat of the land" to him in terms of goods, services and taxes.
During the industrial revolution, the definition changed somewhat from defining territory in terms of land and serfs to maket size and market share. This was more of a Demand-side oriented view of the world. You became "wealthier" as more of the world demanded your goods or services, as your sphere of influence as a seller enlarged.
Modern wealth (IMHO) has two intertwined aspects:
Neuro-hegemony over:
- Sources of money inflow, and
- Sources of quality service provision.
First, what do I mean by "neuro-hegemony"?In days of old (yes, when knights were bold), a nobleman exerted his hegemony mostly by physical force, by running a tight police state. That was a costly and resource intensive way of controlling an empire. Besides as you got older and weaker, some younger punk warlord can come in, beat you up and take over.
The church was a first vehicle for gaining control. Give onto Ceasar ... yeah, right. Who do you think actually came up with that line, Jesus or Ceasar?
But as control by the church began to slip, nobility realized there was a much subtler way to maintain control: Education. Get hold of the kids while they were young and program their brains with ideas that will fool them into serving you. Fool their parents into thinking that "education" is good for everybody. Fool them into fighting over each other so they can get into the "best" of schools and thereby become the "best" of people, the ivory towers of their society. Yeah right. (Oops sorry. Not supposed to say that. It's heresy you know.)
As a nobleperson, you want to fool as many people as possible into serving you. That means you have to "educate" a greater number of them to your way of how they should think. They should worship Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand. They should believe that working long hours and even weekends in the office, will get them to the promised land. Death by over work is an honorable way to go, and it serves as a good example for the other sheeple.
That is what "globilization" is really about: finding larger masses of population to service the masters. Of course, when you finish encircling the globe, that indeed is the final frontier. The race is on to see who finishes first.
There are two basic ways that the masses can serve you, the nobleperson: (1) sending you more money in the form of taxes or in the form of revenue from having bought some trinkets you "sell" to them; and (2) providing you with immediate and quality service the instant you want it. When you go to a restaurant, the waiter is there at the mere whip of a finger. More champagne sir? What can I get you? When you go to a hospital, you get the executive suite and the best of doctors fighting over each other to see who can service you first. That is wealth. That is power. That is neural hegemony.
As the smallest addendum, do not discount the sheer glee our modern nobles find in causing pain. It is fun to kick out your servants teeth and hear him thank you for it.
They don't just profit from their servants, they hate us.
You are loved.
Here is why.
The modern nobles love their assests.
They love their cattle.
They love their sheep.
And aye, even thou be a pain in the assets, they love you.
odo -I too think calling it catabolic collapse is overreaching a bit, but this is more than just a general historical decline; I think it is a foretelling of what's to come.
What is productive about Youtube? It's not a wealth-generating enterprise like the auto industry, in which you take raw materials like iron ore and oil and turn them into vehicles that do work. The U.S. continues to move away from real value-added industry towards infotainment/service industries. Who was it that said we Americans are just living off of each other's "discretionary" income?
Youtube is a way to share videos of people doing stuff (don't get me wrong, I enjoy it), and it is a front for ads telling us we need more worthless junk. These ads generate an income for not that many people in comparison to the auto industry.
Bottom line, the auto industry creates real wealth, while Youtube doesn't. And how is it anyway that the acquisition of Youtube by Google is a sign of economic hope? Isn't it just a monopolizing of the infotainment industry? It certainly doesn't offset the decline of the auto industry.
Tom Anderson-Brown
I think stegasourus are my favorite ;-).
Consider for at least a full minute: what happens when oil prices go up, and bandwidth prices go down?
So I guess anytime a data-sharing giant like google buys a niche online service like Youtube, we should all feel like our country's industrial health is A-OK.
Diminishing returns, in my opinion. The internet is great, but my argument remains that it doesn't replace the wealth generation of something like the auto industry.
And perhaps I am a dinosaur (pretty good for a 29 year-old). I'd rather see our population learning skills that contribute wealth to our society like welding, masonry, engineering, geology, medicine, agriculture. It probably says something about my experiences, but I believe these productive occupations are the foundation of a healthy economy, and that this foundation supports the bits and bytes of the internet. Would the internet, or computers, have been realized were it not for these industries? The reason the computer (or even math) was developed was to make these "hard" industries more efficient. But, like I said, we're experiencing diminishing returns. We're (well you're) now calling Youtube "Productive". I use Youtube for procrastinating.
Tom A-B
That is the symmetry I was striving for in the random question.
Now I am amused to see people demand of me that I prove youtube is typical, and may be generalized ... while totally not getting that we started with a similar point case, and broad generalizations.
It is a mess. Welcome to the mess. Some heavy oil-consuming industries will die. Some ethereal information companies will prosper.
I, the moderate, uncommitted to a single future, sure don't know how that will play out.
Odo,
They don't get it.
The fact of the matter is it may very well become a wealth generating enterprise. The business model of the internet is very much like TV. You generate content, which generates web page views, and you sell ads.
YouTube is the biggest in a new "user generated video content" type web portal. There are some questions about copyright. Google is going to try and find answers for them. If they can conquer the issues with their video fingerprinting technology and then combine that with their superior ad services, this is going to be a slam dunk.
This whole attitude that only welders, mechanics, and geologists produce things is such crap. Talk about a totally bogus Pat Larouche type argument. The internet is huge. It's an entirely new paradigm. And it is possible to make a lot of money on it. And just because you can't pick it up, doesn't make it any less real.
Money is not wealth.
This site is here because it's obvious that the energy surplus is fading fast. The levels of complexity in our society, of which YouTube is the latest added layer, will vanish accordingly, as will the invented prosperity that this delusional society leans on. You've been had!
Just below this post you will find this list:
Programmers,
Accountants,
Database Administrators,
Network Administrators,
Human Resources,
Technical Support,
Customer Service Reps,
Billing specialists,
Phone Operator,
Salesmen
See that? All about to disappear. See also Leanan's post about real skills (which equal real wealth).
In fact quite often those who did have the skills needed to produce physical wealth were often owned themselves by the nobles/administrators, or else were so dependent on their patrons that to go against the Administrators would mean death in one fashion or another.
In the end you could say the skills to Administrate and the companion skills such as policing, and combat trump skills of physical labor.
Your statement that all those IT jobs are about to disappear is built on the assumption that collapse has to be severe enough to return us to a society of equivilent technology to 200 years ago or worse. That is a pretty severe assumption and one that I think is wrong.
You've also taken that list of jobs out of context from the original point of the post, much as did Leanan in that I was not talking about a collapsed society, I was talking about a society still functioning but taking measures to slow or prevent collapse.
Granted if we tank, a lot of those positions will be needed in much smaller numbers. But first we have to tank, and we have not done so yet.
In the meantime the concept of Virtual Property, is one that is growing, and one that I think would be important to a community worried about resource degradation and consumption. If we spend our money (which essentially is a representation of our time spent working) consuming, or "owning" virtual property (a bunch of electrons arranged in some order) wouldn't that allow the consumption of physical resources to slow?
Instead of buying that jet ski which was produced using fiber glass, and steel and plastic and who knows how much energy to make those materials, I buy instead an equivilent dollars worth of videos, video games, or e-books, who is saving more resources? Or if I decide to watch the football game on my telivision instead of driving downtown or heck flying to the away games, who is saving more resources?
People will want "things". Its part of our nature. Riches, wealth, whatever you want to call it has been a part of every major civilization around the world. The difference in those civilizations, and the measure of wealth has been related to what it is they value(gold, food, land, women, soldiers) . Moving into a resource strained era, I could easily see Virtual Property becoming the new "wealth" for people. Instead of the big fancy car, or big house, it may be the one with the largest collection of MP3s. Or the one who has built a virtual empire in some game world. Or the one who has a blog with the most hits. I think any of those would be