The Dusty Many and the Splashing Few: A Science Fiction Story

Joanna woke up, and noticed that dust had got inside her bedroom.

“Bill, how many times I gotta tell you,” complained Joanna. “You can't leave the window open at night. Too much dust gets inside.”

“Sorry,” mumbled Bill. The couple got up, dressed, and had breakfast.

“So who's gonna get the water today – you or me?” asked Joanna.

“I'll do it,” said Bill. Bill and Joanna's apartment had a nice bathtub, and a nice kitchen sink. But there was no running water. After years of the long drought, their local municipal government in California had stopped providing running water to average citizens in the year 2052. Global warming was making the drought much worse.

So there was only one way for Bill to get water: he had to go to a local store, buy a 5-gallon jug, and carry it home. The water ran out pretty quickly, as it had to be used to flush the toilet. So Bill and Joanna didn't take showers very often.

Bill was halfway out the door when Joanna had a reminder.

“Bill, you forget something?” she asked.

“I got the cash,” said Bill.

“No, silly,” said Joanna. “I mean your dust mask.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Bill, grabbing the mask. He started out the door again.

“You still forgot something,” said Joanna. “Your goggles. You wanna get dust in your eyes?”

“Oh yeah,” said Bill, grabbing the goggles.

As he walked to the store, Bill wished that he had a car so he wouldn't have to lug the big water bottles back from the store. He once had an old used car, but he had sold it after he got tired of the chore of having to brush off the dust from the windows each morning. At least I have a good pair of goggles and a good dust mask, thought Bill; pity the poor people who walk around in this swirling dust without protection.

The water line at the store was too long, causing Bill to curse. He finally got his 5-gallon jug of water, paying 50 dollars. A large fraction of Bill and Joanna's income went just to pay for water.

Bill headed back home. But on the way back, he had a cruel surprise. A man approached him, and pulled out a knife.

“Your water or your life,” the man with the knife said. Bill handed over the water bottle. He sadly walked home, and opened the door.

“Take off your clothes, you're all dusty,” said Joanna. “Where's the water?”

“I got robbed again,” said Bill. “Water muggers.”

“What are we gonna do now?” asked Joanna. “We don't get paid until Friday. We got no more money for water.”

“Don't worry, I'll take care of it,” said Bill. It was time for desperate measures. Bill looked in his closet, and got out a crowbar.

Bill then searched the streets for a car where no one was nearby. He used the crowbar to pry open the hood. He yanked out the water bottle that stored water used to clean the windshield. He tasted the water.

“Argggh,” said Bill, spitting out the water. “Too much soap.”

Finally, after breaking open the hoods of six different cars, and looting the water supplies of three of the cars, Bill was able to collect enough water for him and his wife to drink for the rest of the day.

Elsewhere in the city, Caldwell and Bethany were having no water problems at all. They lived in a luxurious mansion surrounded by green lawns watered every day by sprinklers. In the back of the mansion was a large fountain that ran all day long. Their home had not just running water, but two large swimming pools – an indoor pool and an outdoor pool. Robots with water sprayers kept the dust off their gleaming home.

Caldwell was splashing with his friends in his huge outdoor pool filled with clean water. One of his friends had a question.

“How can you have all this water with the long drought going on?” asked the friend. “What about all those rules restricting water use?”

“Water rules are for poor people,” said Caldwell. “I paid for my 'rule exemption' fair and square.”

“Do you think some day we should invite some poor people to come swim here?” asked Bethany. “Just for show, of course. It would make a good social media post, showing our generosity.”

“Certainly not,” sneered Caldwell with snobbish disdain. “We don't want to dirty the pool. Do you know how smelly and dirty and dusty those poor people are these days?”

“Yes, I know how those type of people are,” said Bethany vacantly. “Why can't they be civilized and take baths every day to wash off the dust-- or at least go swimming in the swimming pools in their homes?”

Models of the Future the One Percent Want You to Believe

In the United States we are facing an increasing shrinkage of the middle class, as the top one-percent gobble up more and more of the nation's wealth. Imagine you are one of the lucky super-rich, trying to greedily hoard a larger and larger slice of the nation's wealth, to the detriment of more and more people who are struggling to just get by. What would your strategy be? One strategy might be to distract people with meaningless elements of popular culture, so that the average person paid more attention to gossip, celebrities, and fleeting fads and fancies than their dashed economic hopes. Another strategy might be to make people think that their votes will reverse the decline of the middle class, while helping to make sure that both of the candidates in the next election are loyal servants of the wealthiest elites. Then there is the strategy we saw in 2008 of declaring a “sky is falling” financial emergency, claiming that it can only be averted by shoveling trillions to the wealthiest corporations.

But the best strategy might be: make people think that their future is bright (regardless of the economic reality), by feeding them rosy technological progress scenarios. Below is a discussion of three of these scenarios, along with a discussion of why America's wealthiest would like you to believe them.

Model 1: The Singularity

The idea behind the Singularity is that before long there will be an “intelligence explosion” in which machines become super-intelligent. Singularity enthusiasts have said that this will involve all kinds of astounding things such as men merging with machines or digital immortality involving people uploading their minds into computers.

The conversation below helps to illustrate the value that such a scenario may have as a kind of opiate to soothe the anger of those who have to settle for crumbs while the richest gorge on ever more extravagant feasts.

James: I got out of college with a ton of debt, and could only find a job paying much less than I thought I'd get. To cover costs and the high rents, I had to charge lots of money on my credit card. I'm paying insane interest charges on my card, plus there's all those college loans to pay off. All my debt is killing me. And what kind of future can I look forward to? I'm just scraping by, so how can I ever save enough to retire? At this rate, I'll have to be running on the corporate hamster wheel until I'm 90 years old.

John: Don't worry about it! In another 25 years we'll all be uploading our minds into supercomputers. Who cares about what kind of house you'll have 25 years from now? By then we'll be spending all our time roaming around in ultra-realistic virtual worlds generated by super-intelligent computers. And think of how rich you'll get in a few decades, after you triple your intelligence by using brain nanobots!

We see the value of the Singularity concept as a kind of glistening “castle in the air” to plant in the minds of the economically damaged, to get them to overlook their diminishing prospects, while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The Singularity also comes in handy if a person complains about government officials being virtually owned by the wealthiest one percent. Such a person can be told: why even worry about government when super-intelligent machines are soon going to take over the world? 

The average man's paycheck, also known as "chump change"

Model 2: Radical abundance

The concept of radical abundance is that before too long things like homes, cars, and consumer goods will all become super-cheap and super-abundant, because of breakthroughs in nanotechnology. The idea has been advanced in a book by nanotechnology expert K. Eric Drexler.

The conversation below helps to illustrate the value that such a scenario may have as a kind of opiate to soothe the anger of those who get a raw deal in today's world, as the super-rich grab a larger and larger share of the national wealth.

Jane: How the hell is someone supposed to afford a house in this city? I've been working my butt off 60 hours a week at my crummy sweatshop of an office, and I'm still struggling to make the rent. How come all the white men have no trouble getting promotions, but not me?

John: Don't worry about it! Just wait a decade or two until we have precise molecular manufacturing and other wonders of nanotechnology. Nanobots will then be able to assemble you a new home or a new car almost instantaneously, using the raw materials in rocks and trash you gather. It will be an age of plenty, in which every man and woman lives like a billionaire!

Get the idea? The name of the game is: pie in the sky. It used to be that religion was the main source of promises of future bliss (commonly called “pie in the sky.”) Now it seems like the main ideas of “pie in the sky” are technological projections offered by futurist visionaries.

While they grab up a larger and larger share of the world's wealth, the super-rich would like you to believe that radical abundance is around the corner. That way you won't be upset about your ever-shrinking slice of the pie. They hope you won't look at studies involving oil, water, and metals suggesting that there is strong reason to fear an eventual “age of shortages” rather than an age of radical abundance.

Model 3: Extraterrestrial Exodus

The concept of extraterrestrial exodus is basically the idea that our planet is getting worse and worse, so we need to flee to elsewhere in space – perhaps to giant space colonies orbiting the earth, or perhaps to the planet Mars.

The conversation below helps to illustrate why a very rich person might want you to embrace such an idea.

Todd: I'm so upset about the way the big corporations are harming our environment, plundering the land for energy and often leaving behind a landscape that resembles a desolate moonscape. But what really gets me is how we're letting global warming get worse and worse.

John: Such environmental concerns are so outdated. Within a few decades, the best and brightest will shake off this crummy planet like a man might shake off the dust on his shoes. The grand space exodus will begin. Mankind will leave its planetary cradle, and people will head out into space to seek fame and fortune, just like the covered wagons left for the California gold rush.

Such an idea is very convenient for a billionaire who wishes to live like a king, with a total carbon footprint of 5000 Africans. He can tell himself that his carbon footprint really doesn't matter too much, since planet Earth is just mankind's “old home” rather than his “new home” in outer space or Mars or some planet revolving around another star. The same person can tell himself that it doesn't matter too much if the corporation he invests in is turning some lovely natural area into an ugly wasteland, on the grounds that our descendants or grandchildren will be born in outer space, far away from the toxic sludge left behind by the company.

Fight for social justice and your fair share of the pie, and do not be tranquilized by enchanting tales of future fortunes that may be told to keep you pacified while your future is being stolen, your planet is plundered, and you are slowly turned into a modern day serf.

An Elysium Future?

This week I saw the new science fiction film Elysium starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster. I thought the movie was fairly plausible and realistic, with the exception of one laughable scene in which a computer expert looks at a few screens of hexadecimal code for a few seconds, and then deduces the extremely complicated task the program was designed for. (This scene is utterly unrealistic because no programmers can read hexadecimal, and even if the program had been written in a more high level language, it takes programmers hours or days to figure out what any complicated program is doing just by reading programming code.)

Credit: Sony Pictures

The movie is set in the year 2154, and depicts a vast gulf between the poor and the rich. The poor are living on an overcrowded, run-down, over-polluted Earth. The rich are living in a huge luxurious rotating space station orbiting Earth. The space station rotates to produce artificial gravity, and those on the space station have an almost suburban lifestyle, with lovely houses and lawns, in addition to medical devices which can cure any health problem. But those left on Earth live in conditions like the filthy shanty towns of third world nations.

There is actually a plausible Malthusian case to be made that the future may resemble the future shown in this movie, although the movie does nothing to explain what caused the world to reach the state the movie depicts. Let us look at some of the factors that might end up producing a world rather like the world depicted in Elysium, not in the next century but in this century. When I refer to a world like the world in Elysium, I don't specifically mean a world in which the rich are living in outer space. I mean instead a world in which the many live in squalid, run-down, overpopulated conditions, and the lucky few live in wonderful high-tech splendor, isolated from the unlucky rabble. The isolation is more likely to occur by the rich fleeing to gated communities, fenced mansions, or high-rise buildings.

Here are factors that may lead to a future like the movie Elysium.

Peak Oil and Peak Coal

Our civilization is centered around cheap oil, but in the future oil may be very expensive, and the global demand for oil may soon far exceed the amount of oil we are producing. In the United States, the production of oil peaked in the early 1970's, and oil production has also peaked in many other countries. Oil is a nonrenewable resource, and we probably only have decades left of crude, easy to get oil. Although there is significant disagreement among experts, many predict that before long the global production of oil will peak, and then begin declining at a rate such as 2 percent per year. This will be at the same time that the world's demand for oil will be growing, as more and more people in countries such as China and India start to drive.

The situation regarding coal is a little brighter, as coal production is expected to increase for a few decades. But many experts predict that coal production will peak around 2040 or 2050, and then begin to sharply decline, because of the depletion of limited fossil fuel resources. This is exactly what happened locally in Pennsylvania, which was once a center of coal mining, until it mined itself out. If coal production plunges, it will be good for the environment, but a potential disaster for civilization. Imagine a time around 2040 when more and more internet-loving people are using ever more electricity, to power their digital devices and to cool their homes (increasingly necessary because of global warming). Then imagine coal production starts plunging because of resource limits. After a few decades of dwindling electricity, the result would be grim. Solar power and wind power will help to bridge the gap, but many are worried that there will still be a huge energy crisis in this century that degrades our civilization.

Overpopulation and Overconsumption

The world population is growing at a rate of about 74 million per year, and experts predict that the population will grow to about 9 billion by the year 2050. Perhaps more worrying than the growth in population is the growth of consumption, with increasing numbers in countries such as India and China
adopting Western lifestyles that include driving, heavy use of electronic gadgets, or heavy meat eating. Increasing levels of consumption and population are straining the Earth's resources and causing environmental harm. For an example, we only need look at the air pollution levels in China.

Global Warming and Soil Depletion


Global warming was not an element in the movie Elysium, but it is easy to imagine global warming playing a part in the sad birth of a planetary landscape like the one depicted in the movie. Global warming may shorten the growing season and may lead to increased droughts in prime agricultural areas. Another severe problem is soil depletion, a process by which soil gradually loses nutrients that it took centuries to acquire. The combination of global warming and soil depletion may mean that we are not able to meet the food demands of the future, possibly resulting in widespread famine.

Water Shortages

Another problem that may lead to a future like that of the movie Elysium is future shortages of fresh water, as described here. For example, the movie is set in Los Angeles, and the California Department of Resources says that if more water supplies aren't found by 2020, the region will face a shortfall nearly as great as the amount consumed today. The Wikipedia article on water scarcity says, "The water tables are falling in scores of countries (including Northern China, the US, and India) due to widespread overpumping using powerful diesel and electric pumps... This will eventually lead to water scarcity and cutbacks in grain harvest.”

Growing Economic Inequality

Another trend that may lead to a future like that of the movie Elysium is the accelerating trend towards wealth inequality , meaning the excessive concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. The graphic below illustrates very vividly the ridiculous excesses of wealth inequality in the United States. As wealth inequality has grown steadily worse over the past twenty years, we have every reason to suspect things will get worse in the future.

Credit: Stephen Ewen

Dystopia or Utopia?

So are we likely to see an earthly dystopia like that depicted in the movie Elysium? I can merely give the same answer given by last year's World Economic Forum's annual report on future risks. The report said that we are now planting the “seeds of dystopia.” If we continue with business as usual, we may well see a grim future like that depicted in the movie, a future of the fortunate few and the miserable many.

We probably won't see the super-rich fleeing to luxurious space stations, as in the movie. But we can expect to see more and more gated communities in which the rich flee to try to live in their own little worlds of comfort, from which the suffering masses are excluded.

One of the ways we can help prevent such a future is by introducing hefty luxury taxes on very expensive items, which will discourage excessive extravagant consumption, and help encourage a more equitable distribution of wealth. Every time a millionaire buys a mansion or a yacht or a jet or a diamond necklace, he or she should be paying a large luxury tax.

Will Wealth Inequality Increase in the Future?

One of the most serious problems in the United States is the very high degree of wealth inequality – the fact that a large fraction of the national wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. In the United States the top 10% of the population owns 80% of all financial assets. The top 1% own about 34% of all financial assets. The graph below shows the stunning degree to which wealth in the United States is concentrated in the hands of the few.

Despite all the attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement, we have seen very little done to try to correct this problem, and under the current administration wealth inequality seems to be increasing rather than decreasing.

But what about the next several decades: should we expect that wealth inequality will grow even worse? There is reason to fear this. Certain technological developments on the horizon may tend to increase the degree to which wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few.

One technological development which may increase wealth inequality is the ability to enhance the genes of your offspring. Before long we may have medical advances that allow a prospective father and mother to go to a doctor and request gene modifications that will increase the likelihood of their child being born with a high IQ. At first, this will probably be something rather modest – perhaps a technique that will have a good chance of adding of 10 or 20 IQ points to the intelligence of a child.

When such exotic techniques are developed, it is unlikely that they will be covered by the average person's health insurance. These techniques will probably be expensive treatments that only the rich can afford. The result will be that the rich may tend to have smarter children, who will have a great advantage in the job market for high paying jobs requiring a sharp intelligence. This will help to perpetuate the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, just as the legacy admissions policies of Ivy League colleges have the same effect (policies that make it easier for you to get into an Ivy League college if your parents went to them).

Another thing that may tend to make wealth inequality worse is the use of chemical or electronic cognitive enhancements, which only the rich may be able to afford. Currently some people are using the prescription drug Adderall to boost mental performance. In the future we may have various high-priced drugs to boost mental performance, as well as electronic devices for cognitive enhancement, possibly including devices for connecting the brain with computers. The people who can afford such cognitive enhancements will tend to get into better schools, get better jobs, and make more money. But it may be that only those from rich families will be able to afford such cognitive enhancements. So it will be a case of rich families getting richer. If you are from a poor family, you won't be able to afford the cognitive enhancements your child may need to get into a top school and become a top earner in tomorrow's world.

Another thing that may tend to make wealth inequality worse is any technology that causes an increase in human lifespans, as long as it also causes an increase in the average retirement age. Imagine if the average retirement age were only 55. A person might work until he was 55 when he had started to become rich, and would then retire, earning no more. But imagine if the average human lifespan increases to 100, and the average retirement age increases to 80. That would greatly increase wealth inequality, because you would have many more cases of rich people piling up additional riches. A person might start working at 22, get rich by 55, then keep working for 25 additional years, during which time he just piles up additional riches. Such a person would also be holding his high-paying job for 58 years, giving much less of an opportunity for a poor person to get ahead by taking his job. The higher the average retirement age, the more commonly we tend to see cases of the rich getting richer. Future increases in lifespan that lead to an increase in the retirement age will therefore tend to increase wealth inequality, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.

What are some of the things the government can do to decrease wealth inequality? The main things are increasing inheritance taxes, making the tax code more progressive, and reducing obscure tax loopholes that are used only by those who can afford expensive tax lawyers. Unfortunately, in the United States we have a Congress that seems to operate on the principle of “government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.” So there is little chance that we will see any legislation any time soon that will help to limit the every growing concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. Because of the reasons mentioned above, we have reason to fear that the problem of excessive concentration of wealth in a small number of hands will get worse rather than better.