Ever since I made my fortune in the silk trade the petty problems of the common man mean nothing to me. I mean I got 4 trade ships coming in weekly full of exotic spices and lilac dyes straight from the orient. Like a bunch of protests are gonna change that.

What's happening in Libya makes Egypt and Tunisia look tame.  There were deaths and brutality in both of those cases, but not even close to the scale of Libya.  This is fast encroaching all-out civil war.  However, as bad as it may seem, this conflict is a short-term regional one.  The real cause for concern is actually the forces that are sparking these revolutions: food prices. 

In countries with relatively low wages, rapidly rising food costs meant many people could no longer afford to feed themselves or their families.  Even brutal and corrupt regimes can often stay in power so long as their citizens can get by, and this is evidence of how quickly things deteriorate when they cannot.  The real danger is that the rise in food prices is showing no signs of slowing down, and more countries may be affected into the future.

Now, as for oil prices, the events in Libya are mostly fuelling fear.  There's actually considerable unused supply right now, so it'd take more than a few oil-producing countries going into chaos to throw it off in the short-term.  The 2008 recession really did a number on demand, and it hasn't fully recovered yet.  On the other hand, increased supply capacity has come online in the meantime, so in the short-run the oil-supply is very stable and reliable.  It's the long-run we need to worry about, and it's difficult to predict when the next oil shock will occur.

As for the debt crisis, the countries with the biggest problems are the ones that bailed out hopelessly underwater banks.  Instead of the banks going bankrupt, now the government is bankrupt.  To be honest, I think they traded a major problem for a catastrophic problem.  They likely face decades of economic contraction, so even if they can miraculously manage a balanced budget the debt:GDP ratio will continue to grow regardless.  For some of these countries, it may no longer be feasible to pay it off.

For what the future holds... it's impossible to say.  There are so many problems that may or may not come to pass in the next 50 years, and so many technologies that may or may not be the solution, that you're really just throwing out guesses.  It's a great time to write fiction about the next 30-50 years, though.

To be fair, pure market capitalism is nothing more than abstract concept.  It's become the mantra of the right-wing recently, but only when it's convenient for them and their policies.  Any viable economic system is a hybrid of government institutions/regulation and market forces, and the discussion of where to draw the line along this spectrum has no clear-cut answers.

The biggest problem with the bail-out in the United States is that it sent the message that the taxpayer will undertake any and all risk for super-massive corporations.  All will for serious reform has been blunted at this point, so there's all the reason to expect this will happen again.  The lesson bank executives learned is that they can take obscene risks for decades at a time, earn ridiculous bonuses, and then cry to the government to fix the problem they created when it all blows up.  The mouse was given a cookie.  Ten years from now when he gets thirsty, he's going to ask for a glass of milk... and these are VERY expensive cookies and milk.

I tend to agree that "too big to fail" is "too big to exist". 

True, there hasn't been pure free market capitalism in the United States in a very long time, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Institution/regulation and market forces have their place, but exorbitant bail-outs don't belong.

That message is the exact reason why I am appalled by the bail-out. What happened in the stock market crash of 1929? The government didn't bail-out everyone, they let it happened, which isn't the wisest of decisions. They should have done something, but not like spend trillions of dollars that did virtually nothing. At least some banks either didn't take the money or paid it back quickly, so I don't think all bank executives believe that, but the message is still crystal clear and the wrong message.

I agree that "too big to fail" is "too big to exist".

You could definitely craft policies where the bailouts would be reasonable, just as you could craft policies to deal with the fallout of the bankrupcies if you didn't.  There's a wide range of viable policies ranging from the more socialist to the more capitalist, but they still need to be implemented sensibly.  This has nothing to do with free market vs socialism, and everything to do with simply being bad policy.

It's the scale of change now for which we don't have any precedent in most of our own lifetimes.  Global change and interdependencies on a scale we haven't experienced.

Workers in India and China competing for jobs in the UK, Mexico and the US.  Diseases, cultures, goods and ideas rapidly transported on a daily basis across the entire planet.  The ability to annihilate large portions of or entire national populations with nuclear or biological assaults as a means to obtain national, regional or even ideological objectives.

The scale of things and the rapidity of impact and change are what causes concern.  The American Revolution ended six months before Britain even knew it was over.  Now the Queen could command her troops in real time and move reinforcements up in days.

The biggest change that I think is most potentially risky is the interdependence of global economies.  Poorer countries can undercut more wealthy countries in the area of wages, introduction of wealth to poorer countries from more wealthy ones can cause rampant inflation and even poverty and starvation for many citizens there.  Limited commodities vied for internationally can deprive local economies of the very products they are able to produce themselves.

Food prices are an excellent example.  Just a few years ago, basic food prices went up nearly 500% due to speculation by banking corporations.  Nothing in reality had changed--just on paper.  This was a few wealthy nation's corporations (really a single corp) manipulating commodity purchases on futures and it caused riots and hunger all around the globe.

We haven't seen these sorts of things in our own generation or even in that of our parents and possibly grandparents.

National boundaries, time and distance used to provide a buffer--the chance of one nation's catastrophe causing catastrophe for other nations was more contained.  Now it isn't.

Its a chain reaction. The events on egypt and the other countries trigered a series of events that will grow at all the african countries that are on similar state (military control, a lot of poor ppl)

When I'm earning enough to give to charities, http://www.populationconnection.org is near the top of my list. Just a few days before Tunisia erupted, their magazine arrived in my mailbox and the cover story was about the connection between "youth bulges" and civil unrest.

4-5 billion is still too many, but it would be a great start if we could get their without mass violence or disasters.