Fortress Assets for The Coming Anarchy - The Opportunity

Combine the earths carrying capacity limits with the mechanization of labor and you have billions of people with no jobs and who can't afford food.

There will have to be a paradigm shift in economics and sustainability soon.

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Fortress Assets for The Coming Anarchy - The Opportunity

http://silverbearcafe.com/private/06.11/fortress.html

Legendary Investor Jeremy Grantham "concludes that the world has undergone a permanent "paradigm shift" in which the number of people on planet Earth has finally and permanently outstripped the planet's ability to support us.

Specifically, Grantham says, the phenomenon of ever-more humans using a finite supply of natural resources cannot continue forever-and the prices of metals, hydrocarbons (oil), and food are now beginning to reflect that.

In other words, Grantham says, it is different this time.

Grantham believes that the trend of the last 100 years, in which the prices of almost all major commodities have steadily declined, is permanently over. And from here on in, humans will be competing more-and paying more-for ever-scarcer resources...

Until about 1800, our species had no safety margin and lived, like other animals, up to the limit of the food supply, ebbing and flowing in population.

From about 1800 on the use of hydrocarbons allowed for an explosion in energy use, in food supply, and, through the creation of surpluses, a dramatic increase in wealth and scientific progress.

Since 1800, the population has surged from 800 million to 7 billion, on its way to an estimated 8 billion, at minimum.

The rise in population, the ten-fold increase in wealth in developed countries, and the current explosive growth in developing countries have eaten rapidly into our finite resources of hydrocarbons and metals, fertilizer, available land, and water.

Now, despite a massive increase in fertilizer use, the growth in crop yields per acre has declined from 3.5% in the 1960s to 1.2% today. There is little productive new land to bring on and, as people get richer, they eat more grain-intensive meat. Because the population continues to grow at over 1%, there is little safety margin.

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