denroxon, Your concerns are quite valid and they will need to be addressed over time. But not so different from the many threat scenarios and difficulies that have been in the background to one extent of another from time to time for much of the last 40 years or so.
The fiat money system is not perfect, but is far more flexible and certainly more scalable than a gold or other asset backed system. In many cases and within reason of sensible policy implimentation, policy flexibility and scalability are some of the most desirable assets of any currency system that really, has never in history been anything more than the assigning of, and mutually agreeing to, a tradable/transferable/negotiable value to some particular item, be it a shell, a bead or a piece of attractive metal or some crop.
High oil prices will reward those who can develop energy efficient technologies and penalize those who cannot.
High energy prices can provide a powerful incentive for consumers and industry to upgrade all devices/machines that use power to more energy efficient and newer models. There has rarely been as strong a commercial driver for appliance upgrade in our recent history and manufacturers are already starting to tap into this massively profitable market.
High energy prices will also stimulate the broadening of our energy supply sources and provide the incentive for the reseach, development and deployment to whatever energy source provides the best combinations of advantages. Previoulsy un-economic energy sourrces will become economic, and with scaling, some will prove to be a practical alerbative. New energy technologies will be developed and deployed to an eagerly waiting market and some will succeed beyond the wildest dreams of the developers.
There are a number of other complexities for the myriad of other problems you mentioned that I might one day take the time to explain, but I have some poster fatigue right now and will leave it at this.
If you feel so strongly that much of the western world is facing such a dead-end street then I suggest that you make your decisions for your investments and your life, with that scenario in mind. The deep backwoods with a shotgun, plenty of ammo and a survival course might be the best you could aim for.
I dont have an overly pessimistic scenario of the world economy despite the dangers and the various potential problems looking forward. Many of those that you mentioned can just as well be viewed as more potentially profitable opportunities waiting for the right innovation/development/regulatory environment/etc to find their way into the mainstream.
I do however always hedge my bets in the case that one or more of the worse-case scenarios come to pass to one extent ot another.
The most dangerous of which I view to be the existential threat to our societies posed by islamic terrorism and the complacency of segments of our communuties in dealing with it.
The other major danger I view, one I dont think you mentioned and maybe are not much aware of, is the management and balance of our societies through this demographic bubble that we are approaching and just now starting to see some effects from. This dovetails with the threat from islamic extremism as the islamics have targeted our weak population propogation as an area of weakness of our societies and noticed the possibility to distort the democratic election process by sheer numbers and gain control.
