- Michael Crichton.
Actually, even putting more money into CURRENT technology, we could survive without fossil fuels. We do have nuclear reactors and etc.
Voluntary mass suicide?
Hmmm… something to think about. Though I think all suicide are voluntary, haha.
But then again, though I still disagree with you, this suicide plan of your’s will need a massive propaganda tool of some sort. Brain washing and self-hatredness policies in all mediums. Which I think is very an unstable plan to begin with and most likely it will backfire and let the whole population of lemmings just jump off the water for the sake of it and not for survival anymore.
And as far as I understand man naturally wish to preserve himself (ergo reproduction). I think what you are proposing is valid to a degree and is ideal in short term plans. But anything other than that, I think I have other opinions.
Well to answer your questions, honestly I don’t think I’m capable of answering it with the given assumptions.
One theory presented by a government health worker in my country:
I hope it will help to shed light on the phenomena.
-
The USA economy has peaked. Like Peak Oil and Peak Work, it has run out of gas (literally?). More effort will not generate any further results. What we have is decreasing marginal returns, more inputs do not generate more production, more work doesn’t generate any further wealth, more science and technology, more studying doesn’t produce any further progress. And actually more of all of these inputs from science to work, to general activities like the Service Economy Fairy Tale etc. generates less and less wealth, generates Negative Production, destroys wealth. That means that if all those workers and scientists just slept for 24 hours a day they would be generating much more wealth, say +100 compared to creating -300 by all their totally useless activity. Give them a function and they will be happy, like robots, but the game is over. They better learn to like being bored fast. They better like to sleep 24 hours a day for a hundred years real fast.
-
The USA economy has generated hundreds of Malls, all kinds of exchanges of goods, has created millions of homes, many which now sit empty, because people don’t have the cash, has generated and tried to optimize all kinds of industries and activities, but the net result of all this huge activity is a society that has become poorer and poorer by the year. Since the 1960s wealth has been decreasing at an alarming rate for many simple middle to lower class folks. The USA has a very strong Work Ethic, love to put in more EFFORT with the expectations of more RESULTS, but this simple circuit is now broken. Now we have millions of people who have got to retire and no one knows how to pay them, companies that don’t even know what on earth to PRODUCE anymore, aside from fluff, layoffs, and a bunch of useless crap, health care that is becoming stingy by the day aka “if you get sick just drop dead” philosophy since no one will have a hundred thousand dollars to stay a week in a hospital. And this is what is happening in the most Advanced Free Market economy of the world, the rest of the world doesn’t even have a chance. The rest of the world will disintegrate real fast into total poverty and war, they are all doomed. People better get used to sleeing 24 hours a day for a hundred years, better like being bored, any effort at all is totally useless, the human race should disappear real fast. The USA must embrace a strong Communist Dictatorship form of government and hand out 2,000 dollars a month to every family without them having to do any work at all, since work now is a totally negative production endeavor, the free market fairy tale is totally over, the rich can stay put they have millions of dollars, they can simply keep what they got.
Hey old6598, are you paid by the oil companies to generate fear about Peak Oil ? The more people talk about it, the truer it becomes even if it is not true, the more the oil companies and oil producing countries can hike up the price. What a windfall for Iran, Russia and Exxon, etc. No one really knows for sure how much of the Peak Oil MYTH is true or not, know one can probably know since it is such a complex calculation, and anyways the higher the price the more convenient it is to pull out of inconvenient places. My take is that even if it hits 1,000 dollars a barrel, life will continue as usual, maybe with somewhat smaller cars.
And we always have buses, just imagine how much oil could be saved if the US started using buses a whole lot more.
Hasta la vista progress.
Hmm, I just actually think the gov’ts are at a point where a pandemic is an ideal solution to pressing populations. I seriously don’t think this is a diabolical hatched plan, just a planned use of a current trend. Propaganda is already in place, how many TV ads do you see selling sanitizing products? How many pharmecuetical commercials are on TV? Commercialism is the tool. Actually its not about self hatred its about desperate self preservation, Watch the commercials for sanitizing items. Suicide is not always what a person is aiming to do. If you kill yourself in order to protect yourself, it still is killing yourself.
Its is just an observation at any rate. We have seen the flu bugs mutating faster, the gov’t acknowledges this year’s serum for innoculations is the wrong one. They have to guess which flu will get passed around, this year they guessed wrong.
It seems like the plan is only using what people do to themselves. Noone is forced to use this stuff. we know they predict large pandemics. They know antibiotics weaken us, they know to avoid disease weakens our systems. Yet, Companies and Doctors and our Gov’t still sell us the goods that do us in. We are voluntarily ignorantly happily stepping up to jump off that cliff. And that suits others to a large T. Why no education? Why is it that the health community is not louder about over use? Trying to find these answers makes one take a second look at the situation.
I have to agree with you, haha, which makes the rational animal rather (and quite sadly) irrational. Tsk.
Well yeah, virus had been mutating which is presensts very scary future and medical landscape. And your argument on antibiotics holds water because antibiotics do make these viruses mutate in hyperdirve and make our immune system obsolete in the process.
But going back to the topic, a lesser population is not really an answer to promote progress. But rather the quality of population we have that will show how progressive we will in the future.
How many are educated, how many can stay healthy, how many still give a shit about work, self-development, social development and stuff. I think if a certain population have these characteristics progress can never be terminated.
True but, it still goes back to that cluttered filthy room then. How to achieve such a thing without removing things? It takes much more energy and time to do so. A better world is going to have to be done with a concerted effort by the vast majority of humans. Its difficult to get 20 people to agree on something, now we talk of billions. Get 20 people in a room from 20 cultures and languages. Set an urgent problem in front of them that needs no language to solve. Time them then take 20 people from the same culture with the same language and get them to solve the problem… I would bet the time difference between the two groups would not be very large. But I would also bet that if you put half the people in the room in both cases the problem would be resolved faster.
The larger the number, the longer it takes. And the amount of time would increase in the cross cultured/language set too, the gap between times of the groups would change to a larger amount with more humans added. To try to get billions of humans from so many cultures and languages to agree on solving this issue would take more time than what is on the clock. Law enforcement goes only so far. There are only so many soldiers in each country only so much money and only so many resources. Too many people for limited resources. The UN is just a play thing without real power right now. A centralized world Gov’t would be best, think that is going to happen soon? I don’t. Too many egos.
I wish you’d shut the fuck up about antibiotics already kriswest. They’re over-perscribed, its not a big deal in comparison to the HELP they give us. antibiotics aren’t creating ‘more deadly’ bacteria, its creating bacteria that doesn’t respond to antibiotics, when that happens, we’ll need new antibiotics.
Antibiotic resistant bacteria is no worse then normal bacteria when you don’t take antibiotics. Normal bacteria is pretty fucking deadly on its own, it just responds to antibiotics, thats the only REAL DIFFERENCE worth mentioning.
The bacteria/viruses evolve as they go along ANYWAY they naturally become more (whatever helps them survive) spreadable, vicious, etc.
We’ll see some kind of plauge eventually, but it has nothing to do with antibiotics and everything to do with viruses/bacteria naturally evolving. The spanish flu for example, killed millions, avian flu could easily mutate and exchange information with another virus (say in a pig, which can host both avian/human flu viruses) and we could see a biological holocaust that could kill millions/billions of people.
Which has nothing to do with antibiotics.
Well I think we are in that critical threshold of globalization and finding of renewable energies and technological breakthroughs. World Government is a possibility with the coming of a far more enlightened human population (with more education and the moderation of all system of thoughts like capitalism, atheism, Christianity, Islam, and others) I don’t say how, I ask when.
I think the problem of the “room” depends on how much patience and investment of time and resources you want to do to teach people to act positively and progressively. Again my answer is BETTER management, there is no “deadline” if we only invest on the right things.
We better learn how to relinquish control, how to give up real fast, we must get out of the mental loop of thinking that we can do something about anything. We can no longer do anything about our problems but simply abide and obey reality. We are in love with the model of effort that brings results, that we can resolve problems, but there is no way to resolve any of our problems anymore, we create imaginary efforts to achieve imaginary results, but the real results such as food, gasoline, cheap housing and cheap health care are disappearing, are getting further and further away.
We can fool ourselves into thinking we are producing results, with all the imaginary efforts, and imaginary products the new Fairy Tale Service Economy produces, but it is a deception. We have excess capacity in all production segments, we have excess capacity in brain power and people and all this excess capacity is discharged onto imaginary activities that produce imaginary results to fool all these people into thinking they are PRODUCING something, when in all truth they are being fooled.
We need WATER, FOOD, CHEAP HOUSING and CHEAP HEALTH CARE and that is all, the rest is a bunch of useless fluff and advertising. With all our grand scientific and technological progress which is ultimately almost totally FAKE, millions of people in the most advanced market of the world, the USA, can’t have these very simple basic goods guaranteed anymore. Maybe water and food, but make no mistake, just as housing and health care is slowly being taken away from people, so will WATER AND FOOD. Beware. We need a very strong COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP that gives these basic goods FOR FREE TO EVERYONE IN THE USA!
It could possibly be done. But you would need two things:
-
A completely militarized border of the US since 5 billion poor people around the world would want to get into a place where they get free food, water, house and health.
-
You would need are very strong and fierce police force that guarantees that hording and looting and arbitrary borders within the country are not created. You know free food, water and homes is quite attractive to millions of people, you would need extreme forms of control, hence a dictatorship.
But with a dictatorship almost always comes abuse and power struggles. You would almost certainly end up once again in a system where a few get everything and everyone else gets hosed.
Right…
Like poor people want to migrate into a country with collapsing economy and a happy-trigger president.
Now you are the one who is living in fantasy. Communism, cheap services, c’mon!!!
Those who do not work, must not eat.
Nothing is cheap, that is the truth, and charity is only used never in a regular basis. Man will not grow with that kind of begging and dependence from the government. Spoonfeeding only makes retarded mama’s boy.
I have to agree with you that your country is producing imaginary results, but not humanity as a whole, it continues to produce pragmatic and hopeful results so far, just look at Japan or the EU. The US had been investing too much on war, that’s the cause of all your problems.
Japan has been in a kind of depression - recession for 15 years and has not improved the standard of living of their people in maybe 20 years, notwithstanding huge resources dumped into public projects, infrastructure, research and development and industry. The Japanese can’t buy homes (hugely expensive) and are terrified of losing their jobs, there ain’t no real job market there, they don’t even have immigrants, a very closed society.
The EU is a lighter version of Japan, no increase of standard of living, homes hugely expensive, rents expensive, no real job market etc. etc. In short they both suck more than the USA.
The US health care problem is intruiging. It may be that since it is so hard to find a sector of the economy where you can promise increasing salaries and make some good profits, the health care industry can leverage the total dependency people have on it to squeeze alot of money out of people in need. So the doctors and insurance executives can keep on buying McMansions and live the mostly finished American Dream.
Hmmm… interesting. Do you have any reference link for these? I have to review your claim before I give my opinion on it. But interesting point.
Just things I read randomly here and there. Do a test, find a job at McDonalds in Japan and then try to rent a small home and live with that salary, do the same in the EU and then do the same in the midwest US (where cost of living is manageable). You will see that your best bet is the US, but don’t go to the east or west coast of the US, the cost of living there is higher.
But does that really tell the whole economic status or future of a country or humanity as a whole. And I think you are confusing cases and formulating future trend with it.
I mean comparing a highly urbanized area like Tokyo or Berlin, which of course offer different demands and lifesytles, against life let’s say a sleepy town in Kentucky where you only care for gasoline money or crop maintaince. Of course there would be difference. A 100 dollar wage is not sufficient in the city but it is something in towns.
Now surely you are not serious to say that these differences dictate trends for progress or the economic stability of the US or the world?
This thread is so all over the place that I don’t even know what it is talking about. Anyways, yes there are huge differences between NYC and Alabama and between different cities and countries in Japan and the EU. England I think is really expensive, since most jobs are in the London area, Germany is a lot better, etc.
The point is if we define progress as equivalent to standard of living and in some sense as wealth, then it should be easy to see who can give you the most bang for the buck. If I can live on an entry level salary and rent a small home in the midwest US (which I can), even though I wouldn’t have much left over, say 1,000 dollars a month salary, 500 dollars a month rent, the rest to live, but can’t do it elsewhere, then the midwest US is the most “progressive”. This is much more difficult to do in Japan (if not impossible) and in many place of the EU and also in big cities of the US.