On being modern, we can assume unsustainable objectives as a community.
The developmental model used by many people contains concepts of modernity that really don't measure up to what being modern really requires.
I have spent years trying to understand why the Roman Empire failed so miserably and what really were the choices made by people that brought about history's greatest bubble economy. The Roman economy imploded spectacularly, and so too have many others that followed similar developmental paths. What we need to ask is why and what draws communities into bubble development.
Regarded as a haven of civility in a sea of barbarity, the Roman empire was regarded by many wantabe communities as something to be emulated. This tendency towards the large scale governnance of communities continues to inspire.
We saw, however, that the copy cat German Reich under Hitler, the copy cat French imperialists under Napoleon, the copy cat Stalinists under Stalin all produced misery for their nations and those around as these experiments with social expansion on the Roman model failed to sustain viable pathways of community growth.
Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Japan, China, and USA have all experienced the tragedy of societies hell bent on dominance of their surrounding communities. Eventally these 'empires' burst and the bubble of destruction following makes the communities unrecognizable from their ancestral roots.
The history of change based on expansion into the territory of others is replete with the pain it brings to the expansionist community. From within the volcano of bubble growth comes untold misery and destruction as the infected community spreads it's diseases of dissatisfaction onto neighbouring communities.
Seen in this way, we can understand why wars continue to be an outcome of bubble growth in which greed and the trap of debt burst out into the world landscape! It seems that people are drawn onto destructive developmental paths all too easily. Does it have anything to do with scale and the expected returns from increasing scale? I think so.
Economies of scale are a result of technology and the grail of enterprises of all forms: cities, economies, empires, farms, firms, boxes, ships, .... many things!
Organizing on ever increasing scales means greater profits and increasing returns. There is no limit to technology upscaling except that it leads to death!
Technology upscaling is addictive and produces an adrenalin rush for a community that leads that community down a pathway of self destruction. This path is always a death march or funeral corridor for individuals and communities. It arises because the next fix is always larger.
Seen in this context, the expansion of industrial communities is a form of social addiction that will lead those communities towards self destruction. The reason is simply that economies of scale of one community eventually impinge on the adjacent communities who struggle to survive. There is only one winner in the economy of scale process and that us the larger more efficient unit. Farms get oversized, firms get oversized, communities of people get larger and larger.
Miniturization allows economies of scale to be achieved and the process of seeking after economies of scale continues into smaller and smaller quarters. Engines get smaller yet produce larger and larger amounts if energy. Computer chips get denser and denser. Pills become more and more potent and more and more addictive.
This is the inner and outer city of development in modern times and it's outcome is an addictive process that leads to earlier than normal death for the individual or social participant. Cities die young, farm communities cease to have a soul, unemployment rises and the income distribution skews away from even distribution. Managers die in the harness, addicts lose control and waste their lives in narrow pursuits that kill them. People cease to exercise by walking as much as they should and vegetate into sedentary blobs of obesity.
I am speaking of myself!?