PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT
Marchetti fitted growth curves on car populations back in 1981. 6 His
estimates of the ceilings for most Western countries have been already
reached and in some cases surpassed but this does not necessarily mean
he underestimated the size of the market niche. Overtaking of the niche
size is not unusual and oscillations are often seen around the saturation
level. We will better understand this phenomenon when we make the
connection between natural growth and chaos in Chapter Ten.
A similar situation is encountered with highways. Construction of
highways and paved roads in general can be considered as a completed
process. The natural-growth curves for the total mileage of roads in ten
European countries are already at the saturation level. With data up to
1970 the perceived ceiling for all paved roads in the United States was
estimated as 3.4 million miles. In 1987 this number reached 3.5 million
miles and no significant plans were made for more new roads.
Both automobile and road niches are already filled to the brim. The
ceilings of these curves could have been calculated—if with less certainty—back
in the 1960s. Therefore, this general saturation cannot be
linked to global events such as the oil shocks of the 1970s, or air pollution
and other recent environmental concerns of society. Neither is it
correct to attribute saturation to economic recession. On the contrary, it
is more reasonable to argue that recession results from saturating these
niches.
Many of the problems the automobile industry encountered around
the end of the twentieth century can be explained as follows. 7 When the
population of automobiles reaches the saturation level, the industry becomes
one of supplying replacements only. Productivity keeps
increasing, however, because of competition, tradition, and expected
pay increases. A constant level of production coupled with increasing
productivity creates redundant personnel and eventual layoffs. Since
saturation coincides with recession, so do the layoffs.
It is not only the automobile industry that got in trouble as the century
came to a close. Most technological breakthroughs became
exhausted more or less at the same time because the cluster of basic innovations
born together saturated together. Even if they reached a
geographical location late, they usually grew faster there. The simultaneous
saturation in many sectors of the economy generated a
progressive reduction in employment and low growth in the Gross Na-
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