FWIW, that land allocation came through a lot of blood allocation. Of course, wars are fought very differently these days but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the "transitionary period"
We fought many wars over lands that no one occupied. In fact, we've fought many wars over maritime territories before too. Wars are far from exclusively fought via inhabiting force and invading force. How do you think those boundaries were developed in the first place? People don't grow out of the ground and we all originated from Africa. In fact, not even the whole of Africa!
Did we really do so well on land? We are already looking at overtaxing our planet's carrying capability. 21st century will be pretty rough as the developing countries' lifestyle will catch up and they won't accept the richer countries telling them to be more sustainable unless the latter become so as well. Unfortunately, our level of consumption and environmental destruction is already unsustainable.
I am not asking you if human progress is speeding along and accelerating. That's an obvious yes.
I am asking you: are we speeding into a brick wall? If so, can we steer the car? Who steers the car? Does ANYONE steer the car? Or do market forces just decide where we go.
How do we ant colony our way out of this bitch before we all die?
Nobody has steered humanity's car so far, and it's gone well.
I'll give you my favorite answer. You probably won't like it.
For reasons I don't claim to know, humanity always expect the world to end. It's in all the religions. Christians has expected the Last Judgment any day now for 2000 years.
In this century we don't express that urge in religious term. It manifests in worries that pollution or overpopulation or nuclear war will bring the end of times. I've seen enough of these predictions over the last 50 years to stop worrying too much about the new ones that keep popping up.
Of course non of this proves we won't speed into one of these brick walls. None of us knows the future, and that's certainly a possible one.
It worked so far because our desire to grow never before threatened to exceed the carrying capacity of the whole planet. Growth is not stopped by people, but by environmental boundaries. So far the cost of failure was never the near-extinction of humanity. When civilizations exceed the carrying capacity of their environment, the results aren't pretty.
Civilizational collapse is real. It has happened many times to flourishing cultures and might happen again. Most cultures never recover*. The difference is that previously there was always another culture that was not pulled into the abyss as well and could pick up the leftovers.
As I indicated above, this seems to be an unsustainable state of affairs and an example of the mentality of kicking the can down the road. Let's hope we can continue living longer and better lives.
