Predicting the Future

In a situation where resources, like oil, required to maintain industrial civilisation become scarce because of demand outstripping supply

the United States would become less secure and the preparations for defence and retaliation would have to be intensified. But liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is premanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government.

- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, 1958