Reply #9: I think within a century's time we will see a large scale return to that agrarian life.

[napoleon_in_rags]

The reason we don't live that way now deals mostly with military industrial dynamics. Some happy tribe in South America is just fine until industry decides they want to burn their rain forest for McDonalds Hamburgers, and comes in backed with superior military technology, and the tribe is done. So whoever is more advanced in military industrial tech wins. But this is only a pretty brief passing fad in the big stream of things, the fact is a time is coming when these old military tools become obsolete against new ones, as they always have. What I forsee is a time when military dominance doesn't require people for armies anymore, just resources, energy and human intelligence to fuel the machines of control. If a country moves to this stage, than the energy/resources consumed maintaining a high standard of living become threats to national security, direct competition to the military apparatus. So in a time of war, the national interest becomes in getting most people living agrarian sustainable lives, consuming as little of the core resources as possible. This stands in contrast to previous wars, where human labor was essential to the military apparatus, so in times of war people worked in factories as well as enlisting.

Or that's one theory of looking at it, may happen, may not. One this is for damn sure, things can't keep going as they are!