Post: #51

(12-31-2018 12:45 PM)questor70 Wrote:  What I'm saying is that the 21st century is going to be defined in terms of creeping resource constraints, all of which tracing themselves back to the root cause of overpopulation, the elephant in the room nobody (including people here) wants to face.

Ok, let's talk about overpopulation :



Do you believe it would be a problem without foreign aid and migration ?
Serious question.

Post: #52

^
Surprised to see even an Asian downturn in that graph.
Although, if they've reached critical mass in terms of land mass, it does stand to reason.

Then again, there is the fact that the world turned just fine with 1 billion folk just prior to World War 1.
Now we worry at a population decline when it's at 8 billion +.

We may need to rethink our economy...

Post: #53

(01-01-2019 03:15 PM)CynicalContrarian Wrote:  *cough* Oil is abiotic. *cough*

No one really knows. Even if so, is all the oil, everywhere, the abiotic oil? All the different kinds and grades? Abiotic theory would suggest that yes, oil should be like oxygen, the same kind everywhere.

At the end, it does not change much since abiotic or not abiotic, somehow this oil is not being replenished anywhere. And this is the problem.

Post: #54

(01-01-2019 03:25 PM)Oberrheiner Wrote:  Do you believe it would be a problem without foreign aid and migration ?
Serious question.

The problem isn't just population growth. It's at what level of population (even static) can the planet sustain. In other words, long-term carrying capacity.

Yes, the planet can handle 8 billion...today, but it does so by eating through ecological resources. It's like burning through a saving's account. Eventually you will hit rock bottom. (You'd be surprised how fast this sort of thing can happen. Think about how quickly the bison and whales were hunted to the brink of extinction or how much of the US was deforested before the switch to fossil fuels and that was with a US population a small fraction of what it is today.)

That ecological drawdown is not immediately visible, but ask around in different industries like farming (topsoil), fishing, municipalities (water) and you'll start to see a pattern developing.

I don't have a safe ideal population number handy but it is way lower than 8 billion if the objective is to live a modern lifestyle of creature-comforts.

The future envisioned in Blade Runner 2049 is the most realistic scenario that I can think of, which is creeping dustbowl conditions, but even there that predicted the affluent leaving to off-colonies. That ain't gonna happen. When the planet's ability to feed us becomes compromised enough, people are gonna die one way or another. I don't know when or how fast, other than that it's pretty much baked into the cake unless a massive wave of opting out of having children happens, not just 1 child, but opting OUT. China just upgraded its 1 child to a 2 child policy. What needs to happen ain't gonna happen because the conventional wisdom is that a lopsided society that is topheavy in the elderly is economically unfeasible. If any of you watch the Al Bartlett videos you'll see this dilemma detailed very clearly.

The reason why Alex Jones' "depopulation agenda" narrative is so attractive is that at some deep seated level the public knows that overpopulation is a problem, but it's more fearful of the sorts of cruel solutions that the powers that be might try rather than manning up and acknowledging the underlying problem in the first place, which, left unaddressed, will cause just as much suffering at the hands of mother nature rather than some deep-state cabal. One way or another, the ecological balance will be regained. But no. People still feel entitled to consume and reproduce unchecked as a matter of inalienable human rights.

There is no painless solution. It's a dilemma meaning you have to pick your poison. The worse the situation gets the more the interventions start to seem just as bad as letting the house of cards fall naturally.

This is the aspect people struggle with the most. Humans are problem solvers. We don't like to accept the notion of catch-22s. It comes across as defeatist.

To get back to your point, though, when you suggest that pulling foreign aid would solve the problem, it would not solve it, but it might help. What you're describing is known as lifeboat ethics.

In some small way, Trump's call for strong borders IS lifeboat ethics in the sense that it comes from a worldview of scarcity. The idea is that with more immigration comes greater competition for jobs, therefore it would be best to keep the huddled masses out. It's a rather simplistic and naive notion, but he is more or less correct. 100 years ago when the US was still largely unpopulated we could absorb the huddled masses like the irish potato famine refugees and what not. That's no longer the case, but culturally, most of us still think that way. We think of America like it has infinite resources still, manifest destiny. But the more people we let in, the more strain put on america's native resources. Taken to its ultimate extreme, you have Soylent Green conditions where people might still be kept alive, but quality of life goes down and down. There's already all sorts of talk about dietary changes, shifting off of meat or learning to eat insects in order to be able to keep more and more people fed in the future. It's working the wrong end of the problem. The more people you add, the more resources become stretched and strained. Note that in Soylent Green the elites were still able to eat steak because there were so few. In the future expect ever more extreme class envy/warfare both within and betwen countries. This is the manifestation of the lifeboat, those within, and those swimming with the sharks struggling to get in.

The problem with the left is they act under the assumption of PLENTY, not SCARCITY. So they feel that if we just evenly spread the wealth around, nobody would unduly suffer. That's not true. It's been shown that if you did that then the average quality of life would be 3rd world level. So we are already enjoying our quality of the life by virtue of the rest of the world NOT (intentionally or by the invisible hand of the markets). If everyone were as rich as the average american then the crash I'm talking about would happen a hell of a lot faster.

I'm not trying to bash the american way of life here. I like it as much as anyone does, but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. In the west we fashion ourselves to be just and enlightened but when times get tough people wind up fighting over resources, first country by country, then state by state, county by county, etc.... That's what happened when Rome broke down into warlordism and feudalism. When there isn't enough for all, you start drawing circles and classifying people as in or out of the lifeboat.

The narcissistic and hyper-individual entitlement mentality of millenials is the complete opposite of the sort of depression era frugality and communitarian mindset that will be most adaptable in the future if we want to avoid things sliding into zombie apocalypse territory. It's a perfect storm.

Again, I'm not saying the world is a shithole today the way a lot of doomers do when they over-exaggerate. It's still pretty much the calm before the storm still, but the stage is set and there's very little that can be done to avoid a lot of human suffering down the road in some shape or form, especially since there's been no widescale recognition that we are even in this jam in the first place, hence we're still moving as fast as we can towards the brick wall.

Post: #55

(((James Howard Kunstler)))

Post: #56

(01-01-2019 04:28 PM)questor70 Wrote:  you suggest that pulling foreign aid would solve the problem

I don't suggest that, rather the opposite in fact :
I believe foreign aid created (and still creates) the conditions for demographical growth in africa.
Then migration makes this problem visible to people in europe.

Then the second orthogonal problem is that people are not willing to pay the true cost of things anymore, which leads to china, pollution, deforestation, child labor, etc.
So the first world adopting consumption habits of the third basically, cheap (which implies polluting to create) and disposable (which implies polluting to destroy) instead of what we had before, quality which lasts.

Post: #57

A disturbing thought has just struck me:

Maybe the immigration as replacement workers trend, instead of having children at the replacement level, is due to the fact that Controllers of the World know that in the near future there will be not enough time to raise children anymore...?!

Imagine you know that there will be some kind of a big population catastrophe (war, disease) with limited mobility afterwards (no oil), but you still want to have some working-age population in the area...? So you import people before the event...

I know it is a bit sick, but we are in rather amoral zone now.

Post: #58

(01-01-2019 01:44 PM)Dr. Chim Ritchalds Wrote:  Meh. Tell Africa and Asia to stop breeding like rabbits and 99% of our problems are solved. In the meantime I'll still be driving my 14mpg land cruiser.

You just earned your first positive rating ;-)

Post: #59

At some point you have to move beyond bargaining and anger. It doesn't accomplish jack shit really. It's not within our control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model

Humans are by nature just selfish short-term thinkers who lack impulse-control and the net result is we're going to become victims of our own success.

Not to be rude but I guarantee I've heard every talking point that could be inserted into this thread already. There is no solution. There are only a series of strategies to try to hold the line but they all involve shared sacrifice (which nobody wants to do) and/or mean picking winners and losers (which leads to conflict).

Post: #60

Paradoxically, masculization of women suits this trend too: in the future women primarily would not be needed in their essential roles as mothers and carers, but as a kind of more docile and obedient men, in order to make up for dearth of men, killed in war, for example. It is not true that women are always more important for society, taking this thing precisely, women are more important only for the future society; from the standpoint of the current society men are actually more important as they are the builders of civilization (and we will most probably try to keep the status quo, just in a smaller area). If the future dimension disappears, then the female value goes down, too.

Post: #61

(01-01-2019 04:47 PM)Kaligula Wrote:  A disturbing thought has just struck me:

Maybe the immigration as replacement workers trend, instead of having children at the replacement level, is due to the fact that Controllers of the World know that in the near future there will be not enough time to raise children anymore...?!

Imagine you know that there will be some kind of a big population catastrophe (war, disease) with limited mobility afterwards (no oil), but you still want to have some working-age population in the area...? So you import people before the event...

I know it is a bit sick, but we are in rather amoral zone now.

I think it's much easier than this :
1. The financial system needs growth.
2. Economic growth is mostly demographic growth.
3. We have a shitty situation now, we K-selected people sense it and don't make children anymore.
4. Our leaders need children anyway, because of points 1 and 2. How do you call people who will make children regardless of the situation ? r-selected. Where do you find these ? Africa mostly.
5. So they import africans in europe, thinking it solves the problem short-term.

And that's it really, no need for any conspiration theory.

Post: #62

(01-02-2019 05:33 AM)Oberrheiner Wrote:  

(01-01-2019 04:47 PM)Kaligula Wrote:  A disturbing thought has just struck me:

Maybe the immigration as replacement workers trend, instead of having children at the replacement level, is due to the fact that Controllers of the World know that in the near future there will be not enough time to raise children anymore...?!

Imagine you know that there will be some kind of a big population catastrophe (war, disease) with limited mobility afterwards (no oil), but you still want to have some working-age population in the area...? So you import people before the event...

I know it is a bit sick, but we are in rather amoral zone now.

I think it's much easier than this :
1. The financial system needs growth.
2. Economic growth is mostly demographic growth.
3. We have a shitty situation now, we K-selected people sense it and don't make children anymore.
4. Our leaders need children anyway, because of points 1 and 2. How do you call people who will make children regardless of the situation ? r-selected. Where do you find these ? Africa mostly.
5. So they import africans in europe, thinking it solves the problem short-term.

And that's it really, no need for any conspiration theory.

This used to be a standard media narrative.
In the past maybe, I am talking about the recent trend of accepting more and more refugees as a "moral duty" a la Merkel. Not talking about economy any more. At some stage, the EU even tried to offer money to Poland for accepting refugees, and it was quite a lot, like between 10000-30000 euro per capita, don't remember exactly/
There has been a crisis long time here in Europe. Nowadays Merkel must have heard something abot peak oil etc. A lot of those Africans cannot even read and write (I am on the Germans side of Rhein). The cost of preparing them to live in our society is higher, I suppose, than just having children by the natives. What they are to do? I have no slightest idea...

Also, from some point of view you can see feminism as an attempt at population control. Now, what do you do if, after all, you need more working-age people? You import them. So you need some additional factor to explain it. Why do you need those people so suddenly? The only one I have found is some population catastrophe on the horizon.
Well, we will see (or not) how it will play out.
In social sciences, generation is 30 years. The new generation shall not replace the old one, therefore you can assume that significant social changes are to be expected in the next 30 years.

Post: #63

(01-01-2019 03:25 PM)Oberrheiner Wrote:  

(12-31-2018 12:45 PM)questor70 Wrote:  What I'm saying is that the 21st century is going to be defined in terms of creeping resource constraints, all of which tracing themselves back to the root cause of overpopulation, the elephant in the room nobody (including people here) wants to face.

Ok, let's talk about overpopulation :



Do you believe it would be a problem without foreign aid and migration ?
Serious question.

Africa has enough rich soils and a large enough continent that were it not for Food Aid destroying local industry could develop over time a robust Agriculture.

Post: #64

(01-02-2019 09:19 AM)Kaligula Wrote:  This used to be a standard media narrative.

Really ?

Well here in france you certainly had zero mainstream media saying that if locals won't have children the elite will just import foreigners to replace them.
This would have been gilets jaunes times ten.
Many people discovering this idea via alternate information sources certainly plays a role in this movement by the way.

(01-02-2019 09:35 AM)infowarrior1 Wrote:  Africa has enough rich soils and a large enough continent that were it not for Food Aid destroying local industry could develop over time a robust Agriculture.

I heard many people saying this, but what makes you think so ?

History certainly doesn't seem to support this theory.
Evolution on the other hand explains just fine why it never happened, so Occam's razor would have us believe that this theory is simply not true ?

Post: #65

(01-02-2019 10:30 AM)Oberrheiner Wrote:  

(01-02-2019 09:19 AM)Kaligula Wrote:  This used to be a standard media narrative.

Really ?

Well here in france you certainly had zero mainstream media saying that if locals won't have children the elite will just import foreigners to replace them.
This would have been gilets jaunes times ten.
Many people discovering this idea via alternate information sources certainly plays a role in this movement by the way.

(01-02-2019 09:35 AM)infowarrior1 Wrote:  Africa has enough rich soils and a large enough continent that were it not for Food Aid destroying local industry could develop over time a robust Agriculture.

I heard many people saying this, but what makes you think so ?

History certainly doesn't seem to support this theory.
Evolution on the other hand explains just fine why it never happened, so Occam's razor would have us believe that this theory is simply not true ?

Well, the official narrative as I remember it wasn't so blunt and crude but more of a kind humanistic "everybody wins, human potential wins". I happened even to read one French minister's book of this sort, Luc Ferry "L'Homme-Dieu ou le sens de la vie",
(Man Made God: The Meaning of Life)
Well, I find it nice that in France you have this strong literary culture, that even politicans write books: Macron, Melechon etc.

The everybody wins narrative:
1. our advanced society has less children, women engage so much in sophisticated science careers that they do not have enough time for children because they haven't yet realized their own human potential. All that taken for granted, which is of course the false, un questioned premise.
2. poor people in Africa and Asia have no jobs
3. we have jobs for those poor people, and we need them (taxes, levies etc) because of our humming economy
4. everybody wins: our women are even more godlike than we used to think, African and Asian poor people are getting richer and more civilized on the side, our eldelry get their pensions etc


plus general blabla about capitalism duty to create opportunities for everyone, atonement for colonialism etc

The point is that not having children by locals was not presented as some anomaly which needs to be corrected, but as a natural consequence of our social progress: therefore good, as every progessive thing is good by definition. The usual comeback if someone tried to discuss was that you want "women closed in their homes, not developing their potential".


Nowadays I don't hear "everybody wins" mantra anymore but more about moral duty etc

Post: #66

(01-02-2019 09:35 AM)infowarrior1 Wrote:  Africa has enough rich soils and a large enough continent that were it not for Food Aid destroying local industry could develop over time a robust Agriculture.

Africa? Rich soils? Um, Sahara desert anyone? Plus Africa is going to be one of the worst hit from global warming, with Australia not far behind. I know China is trying to convert Africa into its breadbasket but it ain't gonna work, at least not for long.

(01-02-2019 09:19 AM)Kaligula Wrote:  what do you do if, after all, you need more working-age people?

In the short-run, robots.

A future society of fewer and fewer young people due to demographic shift where the lights stay on is ROBOTS.

Japan is already planning for that, for instance, although also fighting tooth and nail to goose the birth rates (which I don't think they should do).

Post: #67

(01-02-2019 11:06 AM)questor70 Wrote:  

(01-02-2019 09:35 AM)infowarrior1 Wrote:  Africa has enough rich soils and a large enough continent that were it not for Food Aid destroying local industry could develop over time a robust Agriculture.

Africa? Rich soils? Um, Sahara desert anyone? Plus Africa is going to be one of the worst hit from global warming, with Australia not far behind. I know China is trying to convert Africa into its breadbasket but it ain't gonna work, at least not for long.

(01-02-2019 09:19 AM)Kaligula Wrote:  what do you do if, after all, you need more working-age people?

In the short-run, robots.

A future society of fewer and fewer young people due to demographic shift where the lights stay on is ROBOTS.

Japan is already planning for that, for instance, although also fighting tooth and nail to goose the birth rates (which I don't think they should do).

I suppose you may be right. I also see the attempts to introduce a basic income as a step in this direction, meaning decoupling your life from monetary profit. That, however, brings to the fore the fact that one of the biggest problem in change is our financial system which is based on growth.

Who knows, maybe the creeping islamisation of Europe is supposed to help here, as islam is not compatible with what they call "Usury".
The fact that islam is not modern may turn out to be its strength, finally. Also in islam there is duty of alms (zakat), one of the 5 pillars of islam, with which you could justify basic income, and Zakat is assessed against your wealth not just your revenue (in the West, it is easy to cheat by being reach with negative [losses] income stream: you have tax consulting industry for that ). And for all talk about equality, Europe still has a very hierarchic mindset and people are not ready to share; the recent Swiss basic income referendum dismissed the proposition.

Post: #68

One of the big problems of the West, and the sad legacy of the Roman Empire is fiscalism and legalism.
Even nowadays, the only measures which we try to apply are either new taxes or new laws. It all backfired in Rome. With the deepening crisis, the Romans produced more and more draconian laws, which only resulted in local uprisings like bagaudae
With Gilets Jaunes, I already start to see some parallels (even the same place - Galia)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagaudae

Legalism breeds the culture of bureacracy, which starts to live for itself, like EU.
Let's look upon Greece, the country which since its entry to EU in 1980 really got a lot of subsidies. What are effects?! You see yourself. But surely they learnt to fill in applications for subsidies. Anyway, the recent development of China, a country with very weak legal system, definitely proved that legalism is not so important as the West likes to stress.

The Romans had a dislike of technological innovations, too. The emperor Vespasian bought once plans of technological innvention just to destroy it, because, well, what would happen with the people who used to do this stuff prior to an invention?
Our capitalism of this late stage, the capitalism of the rent, acts often in similar ways. In this way, Vespasian is just a CEO who buys some other firm to protect his own rent. The mergers of companies, buying them up often leads to discontinuation of interesting ideas... And have you already met with patent industry...? Also, the cost of patents is often prohibitively high for anyone new in the business to introduce anything new into the market. Very often, there is not enough "commons", or free market, for anyone new to develop profitably its own business. It is no accident that Tesla etc are ventures subsidiesed by government.

I really think that we lack a kind of religious, or revolutionary, mindset which would allow us to sucessfully struggle forward.... With such a mindset, Arabs conquered Meditarrean, and the French revolution its enemies. Without such a mindset, all kinds of carbon taxes will not help.
But we are not religious society. In religious society, religion conquers everything else. Ask yourself: what conquers everything else in our society?!


To anyone who would like to study this cross between West civilization and its mindset, I recommend the excellent and unique work by Aldo Schiavone, The End of the Past. Ancient Rome and the Modern West:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?i...0674009837

Post: #69

Islam has no appreciation for birth-control. Places like the Palestinian territories are the most densely packed on the planet as a result. It's not part of any sort of solution.

Post: #70

(01-02-2019 12:40 PM)questor70 Wrote:  Islam has no appreciation for birth-control. Places like the Palestinian territories are the most densely packed on the planet as a result. It's not part of any sort of solution.

Palestine is a special case. They are convinced that they must wage "demographic warfare" on Israel. Still, what is noteworthy in those conditions is that both Hamas and Hezbollah have developed extensive charity networks to help the general population of the area. Instead of being dismissive, maybe we could study a bit more how they managed to become so resilient.
Another point: real warfare conditions upon people (i.e. when war really comes to you) are reality check on government. The corrupt Fatah lost its power despite the legend of its founder, Arafat. Similarly, in Roman Empire, the best recommendation for becoming an emperor was to be a successful field commander.

Post: #71

(01-02-2019 10:59 AM)Kaligula Wrote:  The everybody wins narrative:
1. our advanced society has less children, women engage so much in sophisticated science careers that they do not have enough time for children because they haven't yet realized their own human potential. All that taken for granted, which is of course the false, un questioned premise.
2. poor people in Africa and Asia have no jobs
3. we have jobs for those poor people, and we need them (taxes, levies etc) because of our humming economy
4. everybody wins: our women are even more godlike than we used to think, African and Asian poor people are getting richer and more civilized on the side, our eldelry get their pensions etc

Ok let's reformulate that narrative then :
- intelligent women could work and make (and spend) money. More money, more taxes, more GDP, capitalism is happy. If they make children none of that happens : it's thus discouraged by the system.
- "poor" (low IQ, really) people can't find jobs, forcing them into the system would either be very expensive, or not work at all. For not much money we can house them in hutches and pay them to make babies. They would not be good for anything else anyway, so it's encouraged by the system.
- capitalism wins, and yes it's dysfunctional in nature so in the end we all lose.

Post: #72

(01-02-2019 01:51 PM)Oberrheiner Wrote:  

(01-02-2019 10:59 AM)Kaligula Wrote:  The everybody wins narrative:
1. our advanced society has less children, women engage so much in sophisticated science careers that they do not have enough time for children because they haven't yet realized their own human potential. All that taken for granted, which is of course the false, un questioned premise.
2. poor people in Africa and Asia have no jobs
3. we have jobs for those poor people, and we need them (taxes, levies etc) because of our humming economy
4. everybody wins: our women are even more godlike than we used to think, African and Asian poor people are getting richer and more civilized on the side, our eldelry get their pensions etc

Ok let's reformulate that narrative then :
- intelligent women could work and make (and spend) money. More money, more taxes, more GDP, capitalism is happy. If they make children none of that happens : it's thus discouraged by the system.
- "poor" (low IQ, really) people can't find jobs, forcing them into the system would either be very expensive, or not work at all. For not much money we can house them in hutches and pay them to make babies. They would not be good for anything else anyway, so it's encouraged by the system.
- capitalism wins, and yes it's dysfunctional in nature so in the end we all lose.

Well, another rule of the capitalism game is that everybody is equal and can improve his life.
So, putting poor people in hutches would not work, as they officially would become second-class citizens. For that to work you need some other master narrative, something out of Huxley's "The brave, new world". Anyway, in reality in the West some poor people do live from child allowances from the state but it still does not lead to the replacement level of the population.

Post: #73

Oh, well here in france we totally have that, both poor people of immigrant descent living in hutches as second-class citizens, and those people being responsible for the fertility rates we have, it's even been discussed on this forum already.

I lived a couple of years in public housing in the paris suburbs and I can tell you this is exactly what I saw every day.



Of course state money is not the main income source there, illegal businesses are.

Post: #74

(01-02-2019 02:28 PM)Oberrheiner Wrote:  Oh, well here in france we totally have that, both poor people of immigrant descent living in hutches as second-class citizens, and those people being responsible for the fertility rates we have, it's even been discussed on this forum already.

I lived a couple of years in public housing in the paris suburbs and I can tell you this is exactly what I saw every day.



Of course state money is not the main income source there, illegal businesses are.

Well, it does look even worse than known to me communist high rises in Poland.
Totally do not understand the idea of concentrating all those immigrants in such places. What kind of illegal business? They can't sell weed to each other all the time,can they?.
So what parts of population are yet productive in France?
Small businesses, restaurants etc?
Or only big ones like ELF, Alstom, Renault etc?


On the other hand, the French ambassador in Warsaw recently vehemently attacked the Polish Foreign Minister for saying "France is a sick of man of Europe" in the context of Gilets Jaunes protests. The ambassador stressed "In EU we are all together in this." (?!) Whatever. It is nice to know that Louis XIV maxim"L'État c'est moi!" still lives in France! But, seriously, does the French elite has similar sense of ownership of EU as the German elite has?

Anyway, you shouldn't take it to yourself as a French, of course, Polish government just used opportunity to fire back for constant pounding we have been recently getting from Merkel and Macron for "tolerating fascism and lawlessness".

Post: #75

Well we have something that poland is missing, won't dwelve on that.
But it was far from the worst place in france : behold marseille, the jewel of the mediterranean







The "businesses" in paris mostly revolved around drugs, the customers being mostly outside of these zones.
Marseille is different since it's a port.

Many parts of the french population are productive, especially blue collars in the countryside.
In Paris mostly white-collar jobs creating intangible stuff, so it's up to you whether you consider that productive or not.
To me this city became a chancre on the face of the country anyway, we would be better off if it was razed.