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Hard to believe it is only 4 years from now. Wait, did I just give it away?

Actually it will likely happen at the tip of the next century, though really its going to come down incrementally, thus robbing the world of the galvanizing great and mortal single danger that would cause it to change course.

It's hard to really blame the cause of the end of humanity, though it's pretty easy to pin down. Overpopulation. Everything else simply comes from this single, indefatigable, unalterable truth. No one wants to curb overpopulation, and no one wants to deal with its consequences. Lazy.

ShumaGorath wrote:It's hard to really blame the cause of the end of humanity, though it's pretty easy to pin down. Overpopulation. Everything else simply comes from this single, indefatigable, unalterable truth. Most do not want to curb overpopulation, and most do not want to deal with its consequences. Lazy.

Fixed that for you.

Just don't start talking about radical ways to achieve this okay? Solar energy, and perhaps even taxes on larger families (with exemptions of course) could combat this in two very cohesive and self-sustaining ways.

If every couple has one child, we are all good, if they have two, we have logistical problems, if they have three we are starting to screw ourselves.

You also fail to factor in technology and research into terra-forming (I guarantee there is really in depth research going on in at least a few places on our humble little rock) which could be how we colonize the Moon, and possibly even other planets moons. Moons seem to be our best bet at the moment, and I can assure you none of this is out of the realm of realistic achievement.

And if they try to have more than one child we could force an abortion or perhaps just kill the youngest child.

China is very forward thinking by your standards then shuma.

And you come in and say it... how quaint.

Going up does not entail flying mind you... just a thought.

Just don't start talking about radical ways to achieve this okay?

There are no effective ways to curb overpopulation that are not at this time considered radical. All attempted human and socially "acceptable" measures tried so far in the history of mankind have failed.

Just don't start talking about radical ways to achieve this okay? Solar energy, and perhaps even taxes on larger families (with exemptions of course) could combat this in two very cohesive and self-sustaining ways.

Ask china how well taxes are working. Financial burden has never been on the mind of people who want to screw or just want another kid. Not to mention the horrific strain this tends to cause to a social system. The epidemic of chinese girls being cast out or thrown away because they can't keep the "family line" going as an example.

If every couple has one child, we are all good, if they have two, we have logistical problems, if they have three we are starting to screw ourselves.

Technically if every couple has a single child we'll start losing population rapidly. To maintain every child birthed needs to lead to one other. To maintain in perfect equilibrium two per couple would be needed, thats discounting infertility, failure to mate, and early death.

You also fail to factor in technology and research into terra-forming (I guarantee there is really in depth research going on in at least a few places on our humble little rock) which could be how we colonize the Moon, and possibly even other planets moons.

Actually I know a good bit about terraforming, and we can't terraform the moon. We don't have the billions of tonnes of atmosphere or water to bring there. Mars is a possibility, as is europa as both have standing supplies of water, and mars even has an atmosphere that could be easily (relatively) converted to breathable.

Unfortunately you fail to factor in logistics. Even the most optimistic estimates with all of mankinds resources and perfectly ideal situations it would still take hundreds of years to terraform mars (using realistic designs and planning by scientists, not sci fi). By then we will have broken the green barrier and lost the ability to support the earths surging population long before.

Space colinization is outside the realm of usefulness. To survive without curbing the population we will need to move many billions off of the planets surface. That would be a feat of logistical engineering far beyond anything possible today. The science to do all this exists now. We just can't do it because it's realistically impossible.

And if they try to have more than one child we could force an abortion or perhaps just kill the youngest child.

China is very forward thinking by your standards then shuma.

China doesn't do that. Read a book. Any book. Stop playing WoW and eating doritoes while Hannity shouts at your television.

halonachos wrote:I mean it causes suffering as in someone says that everyone should kill each other and then doesn'tkill themself. or if they say they won't increase taxes on the middle class and does it anyway.

I'm deeply confused as to how either of these things relates to illegal immigration, or harm for that matter.

1968 called, they said they want their copy of The Population Bomb back.

Orkeosaurus wrote:1968 called, they said they want their copy of The Population Bomb back.

Yeah, no one in this time could read anyway.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Orkeosaurus wrote:1968 called, they said they want their copy of The Population Bomb back.

Yeah, no one in this time could read anyway.

WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT

Are you saying that we aren't talking about some new idea that people have never heard of before. Well I am shocked to know that other generations before me thought about things.

lord_sutekh wrote:

rubiksnoob wrote:No, we should not. Obama hasn't even been in office one year and he wants to increase the deficit by trillions of dollars. And don't give me any of that "He inherited it from bush" crap. Bush was a crappy president, we all know that, but Obama's president now. It's his problem.

... Were you asleep last year, or is that selective conservative memory acting up again? That's like saying "I ran up a huge tab at the bar sitting in that seat, but I've gotten up and walked away; it's the fault of whomever sits down there next." Utter crap, and you know it.

How about you go look at how things would have gone if Obama HADN'T acted; there's some nice projections out there, from a variety of sources. Wrecked economy + aging populace + out-of-control healthcare costs = a heck of a lot more damage than a trillion.

I don't fully agree with this.

In a democratic system, the challenging party has a duty to keep an eye on how badly the incumbents are doing, and be prepared accordingly.

That said, the economy took a very bad turn very quickly and unexpectedly in the last few months of 2008, so it's not surprising that the incoming administration would find things worse than expected.

Ahtman wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Orkeosaurus wrote:1968 called, they said they want their copy of The Population Bomb back.

Yeah, no one in this time could read anyway.

WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT

Are you saying that we aren't talking about some new idea that people have never heard of before. Well I am shocked to know that other generations before me thought about things.

How could they? They didn't have the internet!

You sound like a pretty dark guy Shuma, not that I blaim you, I just think you may be taking things in a bit of an assumptive fashion.

Perhaps we cannot colonize our moon, but we can colonize others, and even two centuries should be well within the realm of manageability.

I truly believe that there are real options that we can choose to take, and it does involve people getting up a bit more often and remaining socially and politically active.

Sitting on a couch eating doritos is actually a pretty fun thing to do every so often, I happen to skip the TV part though.

Anyway, amazing things our possible when a group sets their mind to it, this has been proven time and time again that the optimistic and open-minded attitudes tend to prevail.

Those silly disney movies actually mean something, albeit coated in corporate money grubbing.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Orkeosaurus wrote:1968 called, they said they want their copy of The Population Bomb back.

Yeah, no one in this time could read anyway.

WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT

Are you saying that we aren't talking about some new idea that people have never heard of before. Well I am shocked to know that other generations before me thought about things.

How could they? They didn't have the internet!

I have no idea what we're talking about!

JEB_Stuart wrote:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2009/07/27/obama-2004-bush-rushed-legislationthrough-congress-without-allowing-ti

I just wanted to hear any thought on this story. I am not a fan of the new health care plan, mostly because we simply cannot afford it. The plan is expected to cost $1.5 trillion, which is just a God awful amount of money. Oh, and don't forget this is just an estimate, it will undoubtedly be more expensive. I am not saying socialized health care can't work, it just can't work in the US. There are too many people here and we are too in debt to be able to run this type of plan. Also, the prospect of more free social services will only help to drive up the major problem of illegal immigration, which is among other things a major national security issue. But the real issue here is this, should we tolerate Pres. Obama's blatant hypocrisy?

You're in the media and you're still buying the gibberish in that article? Obama complained that Bush pushed through legislation that . Meanwhile Obama has requested congress to write their own healthcare legislation, not only are they given enough time to read it, they're actually writing. There's no actual hypocrisy, but presumably if some rightwing blog says 'hypocrisy' enough times then hides the actual charge away in the last paragraph then people who want to believe it will believe it.

Even if its obviously stupid.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

rubiksnoob wrote:No, we should not. Obama hasn't even been in office one year and he wants to increase the deficit by trillions of dollars. And don't give me any of that "He inherited it from bush" crap. Bush was a crappy president, we all know that, but Obama's president now. It's his problem.

When did Keynsian stimulus spending become such a lost art? Perhaps about the time people realised they could score cheap points by pretending it doesn't exist.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Hard to believe it is only 4 years from now. Wait, did I just give it away?

Actually it will likely happen at the tip of the next century, though really its going to come down incrementally, thus robbing the world of the galvanizing great and mortal single danger that would cause it to change course.

It's hard to really blame the cause of the end of humanity, though it's pretty easy to pin down. Overpopulation. Everything else simply comes from this single, indefatigable, unalterable truth. No one wants to curb overpopulation, and no one wants to deal with its consequences. Lazy.

When 10% of the population consume 90% of the resources, you have to look at consumption and wealth before you look at population control.

We actually have a thread going now here, where you can discuss that distribution of wealth here!

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/249976.page

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:If you want to solve the US health crisis it will take resolve and extreme measures that the public will not like.

Slap a 1000% tax on all junk food (chocolate, burgers, fries, sugared soft drink etc).
Slap a 1000% tax on cigarettes.
Slap a 1000% tax on alcohol.
Caught with an illegal drug- chop off their hand and 30 years in prison.

Obesity (and diabetes)... gone
Smoking related disease.... gone
Injuries, car crashes, liver disease, dramtically dropped
Drug use- Pretty much non existant.

Pays for itself and you get a tough ass country full of toned hombres and senoritas...

And you guys thought Frazzled was extreme...

Obesity not equal to diabetes, nor is diabetes caused only by obesity.

This report about Obamas Hypocrisy, is in fact hypocrisy. All politicians are hypocrits, they answer questions off the cuff and try to sound competent on an issue, nevermind that they may coem to regret what they said years later. It happens all the time.

The fearmongering towards the Obama administaration that is going on in the U.S. is quite sad.

GG

He's right you know, but I do know someone who has lost weight because of his diabetes, he's in the weight class he needs to be in except that he still has diabetes.

generalgrog wrote:This report about Obamas Hypocrisy, is in fact hypocrisy. All politicians are hypocrits, they answer questions off the cuff and try to sound competent on an issue, nevermind that they may coem to regret what they said years later. It happens all the time.

The fearmongering towards the Obama administaration that is going on in the U.S. is quite sad.

GG

Every administration has its opponents, that's a healthy part of the democratic process of government.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:If you want to solve the US health crisis it will take resolve and extreme measures that the public will not like.

Slap a 1000% tax on all junk food (chocolate, burgers, fries, sugared soft drink etc).
Slap a 1000% tax on cigarettes.
Slap a 1000% tax on alcohol.
Caught with an illegal drug- chop off their hand and 30 years in prison.

Obesity (and diabetes)... gone
Smoking related disease.... gone
Injuries, car crashes, liver disease, dramtically dropped
Drug use- Pretty much non existant.

Pays for itself and you get a tough ass country full of toned hombres and senoritas...

And you guys thought Frazzled was extreme...

Didn't you aussies pass us up in obesity?

You're bringing down the curve (literally) mister gonads.

generalgrog wrote:This report about Obamas Hypocrisy, is in fact hypocrisy. All politicians are hypocrits, they answer questions off the cuff and try to sound competent on an issue, nevermind that they may coem to regret what they said years later. It happens all the time.

There's also the problem that there wasn't any hypocrisy. You have Obama saying legislation being put to congress without any reasonable time to read. Then you have a quote from Emanuel saying he wants three or four issues being pushed at a time so negative forces can't get together to stop legislation being passed.

I mean, never mind that Obama and Emanuel aren't the same person (part of the same admin so we can let through at a stretch). Obama was talking about legislative review, and giving congress time to review legislation properly before voting on it. If Obama was attempting the same thing he wouldn't be leaving it to congress to write the new health legislation, but he is, which fits exactly with his earlier statement about proper legislative review.

Sure, Obama is probably hypocritical. We all are about something, and it'd be even more common in something as murky as politics. But if this example is the best the attack dogs have?

The fearmongering towards the Obama administaration that is going on in the U.S. is quite sad.

It's weird, isn't it? I mean, its was there in the Republican Party during the Clinton days, remember the black helicopters and the list of people Clinton apparently had killed? Well with the Republicans and US right in general drifting further towards the extreme, crazy end of the right wing that's only been heightened. Then you add in that he's, gosh, black, and it seems to have sent a lot of people into near delusion.

It's easy to push a line when preaching to the converted.

Kilkrazy wrote:

generalgrog wrote:This report about Obamas Hypocrisy, is in fact hypocrisy. All politicians are hypocrits, they answer questions off the cuff and try to sound competent on an issue, nevermind that they may coem to regret what they said years later. It happens all the time.

The fearmongering towards the Obama administaration that is going on in the U.S. is quite sad.

GG

Every administration has its opponents, that's a healthy part of the democratic process of government.

Sorry I don't call propogating enemies that aren't there healthy. It may have worked in Nazi Germany(for a while anyway) and in Orwells world, but I wouldn't call it healthy. Just like I wouldn't call the lunacy that purveyed the left wing nutters towards Bush and Cheney the last 8 years, healthy.

GG

Kilkrazy wrote:It's easy to push a line when preaching to the converted.

That's pretty much all this article is. If you're against Obama, you lap this article up. If you're for or against no one, and choose instead to think critically for yourself, you realize that there's no hypocrisy here.

Wrexasaur wrote:If the president were really just a front man, then the whole system is messed up entirely, which I just do not believe,

Logically, belief is unrelated to the truth, and I think that if one looks at the intentions of the founders then our whole system has been messed up entirely for 50 years, and it’s too late to turn back.

My thesis, should I ever return to school for history: at the end of World War II, and this is a matter of historical fact through records of government policymakers (and which Chomsky has provided excellent citations for in his work), the United States decided that it would pursue a policy of extending its economic and military power worldwide in an attempt to ever prevent any other nation from achieving the levels of economic and military power the United States then held.

As of that moment, America set itself up for its eventual fall.

One of the guiding principles of our Republic in terms of foreign policy was “Do not get involved in foreign wars.” Now, to be fair, we had been involved in wars in North America pretty much from the get-go, and had a few very limited foreign adventures here and there, but by and large we stuck to this isolationist mentality up until the end of World War II.

After World War I, we brought our troops home. We could have done the same thing after World War II, but we already had generals arguing for an invasion of the Soviet Union after Germany fell, and so the seeds were sewn for the future.

The Marshall Plan. NATO. Drumming up the Cold War through paranoia and confrontational foreign policy. The Korean and Vietnam wars. Proxy wars throughout Central America. This was an America unheard of prior to the mid-20th century, and we paid for it in spades. Expensive global military deployments. An end of general isolationist principles set the stage for such economic integration that it destroyed our native workforce and eventually led to the service economy which may now be unsustainable.

Imagine a world where the United States had instead returned home after World War II, returned to her general isolationism, spent its money on scientific development which in turn may have led to homegrown consumer goods production as well as our military breakthroughs as we did have legitimate future threats to prepare for, instead of wasting 50 years of blood and treasure on wars that never should have been fought…if we hadn’t been so at odds with the Soviet Union perhaps their culture might have opened up to ours decades earlier. THAT is what destroyed the Soviets, their getting to see how the Western world really lived. A method of comparison.

Now we've spent our strength in an attempt to maintain our dominance, and the plan has failed. We have a world economy, and we produce nothing, and our government is not equipped to deal with this as it requires a re-tooling of America almost from the ground up, and that's not how things work around here.

This is not an American problem at heart...government EVERYWHERE has never truly been “for the people, by the people.” The Founders were mercantile capitalists who decided they didn’t want to pay taxes to England that they probably ought to have paid considering the English had fought two wars on the Colonies’ behalf and for their safety. Only a third of the Colonists actually fought against the British. This was no broad, social revolution. The Founders did not establish a democracy, they established a republic, creating a layer of insulation between the people and the real power.

Now, combine this basic nature of our government with the power-hungry political culture that evolved out of WW II and our current state of affairs is rather predictable, isn’t it? Our government exists as its own entity which serves its own needs, namely its continued existence. Our members of government are so far removed from the reality of real life in America that of course they can’t get anything done! Senators and Representatives care mostly for the needs of their own States so that they can keep their jobs. You’ll never see anything like term limits established to prevent national political office from becoming an entrenched career which is just a recipe for abuse of power, and disconnection from the electors.

We also live a culture that preaches every man for himself, dominated by the myth of meritocracy, is fairly blind to race in the halls of power, extremely hypocritical in declaring the freedom and equality of its citizens without protecting and enshrining those freedoms and equalities in the law (ask any gay person in most of the States whether they can get married, or go back 50 years and ask a black person how they feel about their legal freedoms – not that those are equitable, just two rather pointed and obvious, but different, examples).

It’s a culture of greed, a culture which is decidedly anti-intellectual…we live in a nation whose age of Empire has come and gone, and so now we need to transform into something else…and there’s one thing about power, ladies and gents.

Power never, ever cedes itself. It has to be taken…and that generally doesn’t happen until things have gotten bad enough that no one can really deny it needs to take place anymore. We’re probably a century or more away from that, but our children’s children in America are going to live in very, very interesting times.


The President is very much a figurehead. They wanted to make Washington the new king but instead they created the Presidency. He's the Commander in Chief but he depends on his military advisors to know what is going on and to make decisions. He cannot create law, he can only veto it and then be overridden. Power resides most directly in the Legislative branch, have no doubts. We could eliminate the Presidency tomorrow and have our Chief Executive be chosen from the majority party in the Senate a la a Parliamentary system and not much would change, really, save we'd have a government more in tune with itself...

ShumaGorath wrote:Unlikely. People will just keep making the uneducated easy decisions until the ice caps are gone, oils disappeared, central asia and africa are starving, Europe's half under ice, and america is bankrupt and destroyed. Uneducated, untempered freedom is whats going to get all of your grand children killed. Keep right on sprinting towards it. At this point I've lost hope of any sort of recovery.

People are just too stupid and lazy.

I have to agree to a point. Humans, as a species, are incredibly short-sighted and narrow-minded. The average person’s inability to see the big picture as a matter of course should probably have ceased amazing me a long time ago, but it never does. We have no inherent sense of the long-term continuity of our species, of the utility of predicting long-term consequences of action or inaction. We are very much a species of dealing with the convenience of the here and now and consequences be damned.

The problem with freedom is that if you’ve never had to fight for, it isn’t used responsibly. It becomes an invocation for doing what you want, not what is best or most responsible; and we all do this, including Shuma and myself. We’re only human.

Change is a violent, destructive act. It always has been. I have faith that humanity will always pick itself up from the ashes short of something like a nuclear holocaust or zombies…some day America will cease to be because no nation, no government, no society is eternal. America is very much an experiment in accelerated social evolution due to the economic and legal freedoms we were endowed with since day one rather than having to evolve into them over centuries, so we’re passing through the normal phases of nation and society faster than perhaps any other nation in history, and we may come to a faster end as a result…but I think the United States will just get replaced with five or so regional alliances based on language and culture, the lines of which are pretty much already drawn now, and everything will be okay.

At least for those of us in the Northeast. Read “The Long Emergency.” If and when the oil runs out, New England is the place to be. *grin*

You make some great points there and I think that's bang on about your economic and military ploicies being so intertwined as they were both vital approaches to USA foreign policy for the past 50 odd years.

But--- and you knew they'd be one right ? -- I would have to disagree with your idea that the USSR could have been defeated without the presence of USA trops, missiles etc in Europe. NOne of the European countries were in great shape post WW II, but just in terms of numbers and poxy geography there would have been no one capable of standing up to the Russians had they chosen to attack, and their entire policy was one of expansion. Okay, maybe, and it's a big maybe, the UK might hjave survived for a little longer than the rest through being an island, but once they'd had time to consolidate and reinforce continental europe we wouldn't have had a chance.

I think as well it's important to remember that part of the drive in USA policy post WW II was, and quite rightly, a reaction to the sheer unmitigated horror of what the"great" nations of Europe had unleashed upon the world. I wouldn't underestimate the desire to genuinely try and ensure that nothing this horrific, especially certain rather extreme policies, would be unleashed on the world again.

The moment you cite Chomski you've lost the argument.

Wrexasaur wrote:Not everything said by "Jesus" was said by "Jesus", so, your referring to a book of accumulated knowledge and covered in about 1000 years of social dust.

The more you know.

It's called a "fun fact." I wasn't trying to justify anything or claim anything was true or not. That was kind of a butthole thing to pull out of nowhere.

Frazzled wrote:The moment you cite Chomski you've lost the argument.

I take it that's an intentional misspelling for an intended wry effect?

That might take the cake for "most ridiculous statement ever written in this forum." People who disrespect Chomsky usually haven't read his books or seen the litany of citations he provides...he's one of the best-researched men I've ever read. Tell me you've actually read him?

"Deterring Democracy" is the specific work I would reference for my argument...policy papers you can go read at the Library of Congress don't lie. He quotes them word-for-word. What I said about America's stated foreign policy direction is absolutely true, but don't take my word for it - go do the research. I trust Chomsky's citations, personally.

reds8n wrote: I would have to disagree with your idea that the USSR could have been defeated without the presence of USA trops, missiles etc in Europe. NOne of the European countries were in great shape post WW II, but just in terms of numbers and poxy geography there would have been no one capable of standing up to the Russians had they chosen to attack, and their entire policy was one of expansion. Okay, maybe, and it's a big maybe, the UK might hjave survived for a little longer than the rest through being an island, but once they'd had time to consolidate and reinforce continental europe we wouldn't have had a chance.

I think as well it's important to remember that part of the drive in USA policy post WW II was, and quite rightly, a reaction to the sheer unmitigated horror of what the"great" nations of Europe had unleashed upon the world. I wouldn't underestimate the desire to genuinely try and ensure that nothing this horrific, especially certain rather extreme policies, would be unleashed on the world again.

I think that an expressed policy of containment would have been one thing, but that's not how the ideological position was construed. It was very much a classic expansionist doctrine. America's empire was born of capital, not military conquest.

I would argue, perhaps, that missiles and not troops were all we needed in Europe. We could have sold the Europeans the weapons they needed instead of personally garrisoning the troops over there to man said weapons and made a killing, no pun intended.

I would also question whether the Soviet Union's entire foreign policy was one of expansion. I think history regarding the Soviet Union has been badly warped in the United States. I was a Russian history major in college for a while, and I think it helped garner me a better understanding of the Russian people. They'd been invaded, conquered, and Lorded over for centuries...I think, in the end, the Soviet Union just wanted to be secure, not to form an Empire. I can't quite blame them for the Warsaw Pact...if our cultural heritage was invasion by the Mongols and paying tribute East and missing out on several European revolutions of thought and technology, and then suffering multiple invasions in the "modern" world, I might want a buffer zone as well...

I'm not apologizing for the Soviets, but it takes two to tango...the amount of American war-mongering and posturing that took place after WW II played a large part in why the Soviet Union felt like it had to react with whatever aggression it did. If we had returned home, provided to our own self-defense with a nuclear arsenal, erected the nuclear umbrella over Europe and sold them the arms they needed to defend themselves, meh, perhaps there'd have been a European war, but who says we'd have had to get involved? Who knows. Now we're into alternate-history science fiction book land.

If you trust Commsky you should really expand your reading base beyond coffee table lefty hothouse.

Frazzled wrote:If you trust Commsky you should really expand your reading base beyond coffee table lefty hothouse.

That's pretty much the sort of thing I was thinking you might respond with. I'll take it from your not responding to the question that you've never read him.