Meanwhile, it turns out that social stratification all by itself can prompt collapse,even if ecological collapse wasn't a factor, according to this study, anyway. (Apologies if this has already been linked)
The linked article, entitled "How Western Civilization Could Collapse," discusses how the appetite of the economic elites to hoard resources, not only damages the environment, but also stratifies our socio-economic fabric; both of which appear to be on track to lead to a collapse of Western Civilization in the 2050-2060 timeframe. As this timeframe comes after the 2045 date for Ray Kurzweil's 'Technological Singularity', I attach an image from The Matrix of what the Machine City looks like after the Machine Wars.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2017041 ... d-collapse
Safa Motesharrei, a systems scientist at the University of Maryland, uses computer models to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that can lead to local or global sustainability or collapse. According to findings that Motesharrei and his colleagues published in 2014, there are two factors that matter: ecological strain and economic stratification. The ecological category is the more widely understood and recognised path to potential doom, especially in terms of depletion of natural resources such as groundwater, soil, fisheries and forests – all of which could be worsened by climate change.
That economic stratification may lead to collapse on its own, on the other hand, came as more of a surprise to Motesharrei and his colleagues.
Under this scenario, elites push society toward instability and eventual collapse by hoarding huge quantities of wealth and resources, and leaving little or none for commoners who vastly outnumber them yet support them with labour. Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the elites due to the absence of labour.
…
“The world will not rise to the occasion of solving the climate problem during this century, simply because it is more expensive in the short term to solve the problem than it is to just keep acting as usual,” says Jorgen Randers, a professor emeritus of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, and author of 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. “The climate problem will get worse and worse and worse because we won’t be able to live up to what we’ve promised to do in the Paris Agreement and elsewhere"...
(Thanks, as often, to ASLR at neven's site for link and text.)
I suppose that if automation goes far enough, the elites may be able to get by with a lot less labor from the hoi poloi (the rest of us)?