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Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock, dies aged 87
In Future Shock Toffler also speculated that the rising general prosperity of the 1960s would continue indefinitely.

"We made the mistake of believing the economists of the time," Toffler told Wired magazine in 1993. "They were saying, as you may recall, `We've got this problem of economic growth licked. All we need to do is fine-tune the system.' And we bought it" [...]

Toffler, a native of New York City, was born on 4 October 1928 to Jewish Polish immigrants. He graduated from New York University, was a Marxist and union activist in his youth, and continued to question the fundamentals of the market economy long after his politics moderated. He knew the industrial life firsthand through his years as a factory worker in Ohio.

This problem of economic growth... So Toffler did not take planetary limitations seriously. Knowledge economy is infinite, so no worry about nutrition, social satisfaction of presumed knowledge takers.

For the middle and lower classes, prosperity limitations are pressing hard for decades already. They know on their skin that customary American Dream aspirations are neither enough for comfortable future, nor achievable to everyone. That is why they do not trust "rational" progressives. They would rather protect the subsistence they have, even if that looks racist, xenophobic, ignorant.

In the meantime, the 20th century infrastructure is crumbling, and no one seems to care. The global elites must be just busy with managing an inevitable deep decline.

by das monde on Tue Jul 12th, 2016 at 05:33:58 AM EST
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