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The whole domination of the world by the western powers are based on upholding a consumer economy on a scale never seen before in history.(well maybe some of the old crazy royal families in ancient Rome could match -burning down Rome and all..)

There is really only one incentive/driving power behind political and in the same footsteps -military expansion .

Economics .

There have been older systems that include less turn over,less money ( if any at all) etc -but it is a proven fact that these did not yield the same socioeconomic changes OR technological advances - and those changes that did come were infinitely slower -taking many generations to take root.

(democracy,electricity,abolition,antibiotics,legal equality etc)

Now- the consumer economy is the driving power behind the hegemony of the west -and the motivation for it .It is geared largely to run on fossil fuels -petroleum products in particular .The faster you can burn the oil means that the faster money will come in to fill your coffers.

A change will not come before it will start paying of to use other fuels and/or people start getting serious about enviromentalism meaning voting into power those who would actually let the consumer economy suffer and the enviroment thrive.This means massive social upheaval and political change .Millions of jobs will be lost .Living standards will drop drastically .The economy would have to change meaning that manufacture would be done closer to the markets,recycling would be the order of the day and people would have to pay more dearly for the items they purchase -and also they would have to take better care of them as they are more expensive than before.

Quite possibly the drop in living standards would only be felt for those of us lucky enough to be in rich western countries or are rich in the poor world .

The oil will run out .The wars to control it will become harsher and larger in scale and involve more of us than today .Hopefully noone will nuke eachother in the process ,but you never know.

Afterwards a new economic system will emerge -one that uses less petroleum products ,and quite posibly relies heavily on another fuel source .Some say this will be thorium or uranium even -meaning that new wars will follow to conquer areas where this resource is abundant etc etc .

There is always a reason to hope that alternate fuels like vegetable oils etc will win the day and become prevalent -meaning that a new economy based on the supply of such oil could become big.Some parts of the world already run vehicles on alcohol and vegetable oil etc .But in the end I take my marxist view of the historic process over the more cheery " it will all be alright in the end "..

all in my humble opinion of course