I haven’t been on a good trip for a few years. Wife, school and a lack of finances have restricted me to bouncing back and forth between Canada and Japan. I have only been able to make trips within the (respective) country. International travel has gotten pretty expensive, especially due to “fuel surcharges.” A friend who just finished grad school is taking off to the Maghreb for a week before starting work. I am jealous.
Recently the strategist has been thinking about travel of the rich and the poor. He concludes that fears of terrorism and high oil prices will lead to a world where only the rich can travel to luxurious isolated destinations and the rest of us must stay home. “As it has been for most of recorded history, travel will be done by soldiers, sailors, merchants and migrants, as a matter of livelihood not leisure.”
I think adventure travel was always expensive and dangerous, just the go to countries have changed. In the 60s and 70s Afghanistan was one stop along the “Hippy trail.” During the same time you would have a hard time getting into Russia or any of the CIS countries. Normal tourism on the other hand is a billions-of-dollars-a-year industry with a huge market. In order to transition to a service economy — and exploit untouched nature resources — many developing countries have been turning to tourism; nearly 50% of Cambodia’s GDP depends on it. Prices may rise with the costs of fuel but the Puerto Vallartas of the world will entice people to their beaches. Then of course there are cruise ships, “floating fortresses” which are relatively safe.
I don’t believe in the dystopian future the strategist imagines. It will take world war three for this round of globalization to be broken. The travel landscape will change, but the tourism market has spoken. Peak-oil is a fallacy, and alternatives are getting increasingly better. Space travel on the other hand, I imagine “will be done by soldiers, sailors, merchants and migrants, as a matter of livelihood not leisure.”
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Lexington Green added these pithy words on 23 Oct 07 at 4:39 pmAgreed on everything except space travel. Most work in space is better done by machines. For the near term, humans in space will be big-ticket recreational travel. That may or may not, in the long run, lead to some more practical uses of humans-in-space.
strategist added these pithy words on 23 Oct 07 at 7:22 pmHey, I thought this is a blog about the coming anarchy!
Curzon added these pithy words on 24 Oct 07 at 2:52 amStrategist, I’m far more pessimistic on two angles. The first is that there are several possibilities that could derail the current ease of international travel. The second is what this does to societies—although plenty of cosmopolitan people can travel, the scum of the earth that used to be limited to cities can now roam the globe. More on that in a future post.
Joe added these pithy words on 24 Oct 07 at 11:56 amJust this morning I was looking at the seat map of the new Airbus A380. The dividing line between the cosmopolitan and the scum is becoming more and more apparent.
It seems that intercontinental air travel is becoming like train travel in India: you’re either basking in the lap of luxury or you’re hanging onto the roof for dear life.
Michael added these pithy words on 30 Oct 07 at 12:49 amThat isn’t an airliner; it’s an old-style ocean liner, complete with steerage!
Michael added these pithy words on 30 Oct 07 at 12:53 amOh, yeah. Had a serious point to make.
It’s one thing to write humans off in terms of probes or science missions, but what happens if we start constucting solar-power satellites? Or full-scale mining expeditions to the asteroids? The more complex the task, the more likely it is that humans will be needed.
Filium Lucae added these pithy words on 19 Nov 07 at 2:27 amSpace got everyone in a shivy, but peak oil I think is a reality. There is a finite amount in the ground; what happens when its all gone? Then Space travel certainly won’t be an option. And with higher fuel prices, less people will be traveling. there was a good point with less developed countries turning to tourism in order to fund themselves, but what happens when great economic powers can barely pay for their fuel, will the tourists still be that significant of a market?
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