The way people—at least from what I can see in Europe—will be squeezed out of the typical modern lifestyle is through regulations and price increases. Cars get more and more regulated based on how much they pollute, such that you cannot afford one as easily, and have to compromise on other things or seriously reconsider your lifestyle based on commuting one or two hours a day. In general, prices will of course increase across the board, since energy becomes more expensive as the energy return on energy investment of fossil fuels can only decrease over time.
Therefore people will be squeezed out more and more from the typical modern middle-class lifestyle, and the first thing that they will skimp on are of course the luxuries of life. Anything related to entertainment will be severely hit in the decades to come, unless it is relatively cheap.
To the extent that more necessary goods increase in prices, they will do so in hidden ways at first, through a process called stealth inflation, which refers to how inflation is hidden away from most people by a variety of tricks. Skimping on product quality, reducing the size of portions sold to consumers, replacing materials or products by cheaper substitutes, tracking inflation over a different pool of goods, these are all ways of reducing the real price of a good without having to change its nominal price, i.e. the price tag which the consumer sees.
This process of price increase is a rather smooth one, which is to say it doesn't occur in sudden spikes, unlike let's say a financial crisis which is inevitable to happen in the coming decade as governments do everything they can to hide the unsustainable nature of our system.
One thing for sure is that most people will not willingly give up all the pointless things they have been brainwashed into desiring, when this could result in the exact same quality of life, if not more because of the effects of a different mindset towards material goods. After all, what rules our world is not conscious decisions but comfortable routines dictated by other people.
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2024-12-14