[Amorymeltzer]

>Orwell's mistake lay in thinking there had to be actual war to keep the merry-go-round of the balance of power in being. In fact, in one of the more laughable parts of the book, he goes on and on concerning the necessity of permanent war as a means of consuming the world's production of resources and thus keeping the social stratification of upper, middle, and lower classes in being. (This sounds like a very Leftist explanation of war as the result of a conspiracy worked out with great difficulty.)

>In actual fact, the decades since 1945 have been remarkably war-free as compared with the decades before it. There have been local wars in profusion, but no general war. But then, war is not required as a desperate device to consume the world's resources. That can be done by such other devices as endless increase in population and in energy use, neither of which Orwell considers.

...

>He did not foresee the role of oil or its declining availability or its increasing price, or the escalating power of those nations who control it. I don't recall his mentioning the word 'oil'.

I feel like Asimov completely misses the point here. The fact that we didn't have the kind of "general war" Orwell wrote about doesn't mean this isn't meaningful or relevant, it just means we didn't do that then. Jump forward a few decades and it's not hard to imagine e.g. the Bush years of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan rhyming with Orwell a bit.

And, perhaps it's inevitable given this is from 1980, but Asimov is stuck in the overpopulation-as-demon narrative and peak-oil stuff. Neither of those have lasted the test of time.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The perpetual war is just a framework for Orwell's autocrats needing to direct the anger of the populace away from themselves. We have this today with government propaganda stirring up renewed hatred of brown people to deflect from their ineptitude. Conveniently blowing up in their faces when it turns out to be much easier to hate pedophile protectors.

[tokai]

Isn't Asimov mistaking the Party's self rationalization and use of war (that might not even still be going on) as a statement of Orwell beliefs?

[epistasis]

Asimov was definitely stuck in the moment of 1980, energy insecurity from the oil crisis of the time.

We are now transitioning away from oil, world wide, and energy scarcity is more about preventing regulatory structures from getting in the way of new wind, solar, and battery resources.

Overpopulation was also a bugaboo of the time, but I thought that was mostly a leftist problem.

[just-the-wrk]

Or the wealth could accumulate in the hands of a few