The Next 100 Years

I am a member of the World Council of Dallas/Fort Worth and had the opportunity to hear George Friedman speak tonight. Dr. Friedman in the founder and chief executive of STRATFOR: Global Intelligence. Friedman received his bachelor's degree from the City College of New York and holds a PhD in government from Cornell University. Dr. Friedman's presentation tonight touched on the themes outlined in his recently published book, The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century.

Several themes and forecasts presented by Friedman are important to engineers and engineering. The first is a projection of a population bust. As outlined in his book - "People assume that while population might be slowing down in Europe, the world's total population will continue to spiral out of control because of high birthrates in less developed countries. In fact, the opposite is true. Birthrates are plunging everywhere. The advanced industrial countries are on the cutting edge of decline, but the rest of the world is following right behind them. And this demographic shift will help shape the twenty-first century." This is highlighted in statistics from the United Nations that forecast by 2050, Europe will have a population between 557 million to 653 million as compared to their current population of 728 million.

The projected population bust and the collapse of population growth produces a world economy not of capital shortages but one of labor shortages (where the investment bankers are surpassed by headhunters in importance). The population bust creates a technology surge of productivity improvements and labor saving equipment. An outcome of the increased development and focus on technology is an energy demand and development surge. As the Department of Defense did with the telegraph, national highway system, and Internet - it becomes the lead funding and development agency and organization for our national energy efforts. The United States is projected to weather the population bust storm far better than the rest of the developed world. This is primarily due to our lower population densities (we have the available space for increased immigration) and our history of embracing immigrants.

Dr. Friedman closed on his projections for the next regional powers around the global - Japan, Poland, and Turkey. He also pointed out the lack of liquidity problems that Mexican banks had experienced during the recent financial crisis. Friedman speculated on the idea that drug money could have been a factor in providing needed liquidity.