Arc Line ...

Arc Line

Depicted above is a delicate arc of ice with the background removed to show how profoundly beautiful nature can be. What's also obvious is just how transitory this arc of ice is because one day later, it was gone. Now, look at our economy, driven by code and AI, abstracted to the nth degree with the stock market forever going into the stratosphere until it doesn't, something slowly beginning to happen thanks to the inevitable fact, resources on our finite planet keeping us alive are not infinite, which means the economy of the world will soon revolve around said resources, a physics driven reality not even AI and the endless manipulation of money can change as man moves further into the 21st century.

The era of financialization, globalization and digitization is giving way to an era in which materials will dominate the global economic, social and political orders. Life will revolve around obtaining the basics of life rather than around marketing to consumers with discretionary income/credit to spend.

The material world is ruled by physics, chemistry and cost, not finance or politics. Humanity has already consumed / depleted the cheap, easy-to-get resources, from coal and oil to topsoil, wild fisheries and fresh water aquifers. The net result is that all resources will cost more to extract, process and transport, and these systemically higher costs manifest as inflation / loss of purchasing power: it will take more units of labor / money to buy the essentials of life, leaving fewer units of money for discretionary spending in the consumer economy and fewer units available to support additional debt.

And so it begins. - K. Vonnegut

A simple matter of division