The coming economic crisis

[Encephalon]

If you want my honest estimate, this planet will easily support 250+ Billion before the game's done here. Sure its prudent to be cautious, but people throughout history have constantly looked around them and dreamed nothing more grandiose than the glass ceiling immediately above them would be feasible.

 

I guess I have a little more faith in human creativity, ingenuity, and the technical possibilities the tao contains

 

I think yer tryin' to pull my leg, Joe. Reasonable estimates of earth's carrying capacity have never been more than 40 billion, and the quality of life associated with that number is nothing to wish for.

 

The "people throughout history" appeal is starting to get quoted a great deal at this point in time. Because human ingenuity existed in the past, especially during the era of fossil fuels, many wish to abate their fears about an uncertain future by assuming that the same ingenuity will prevail in the absence of an adequate fuel source and resource base.

 

I read a report recently that stated that tidal power could generate enough sustainable electricity to support 20 billion. If "faith" is part of your equation, then it needs to figure out how we're going to use the world's remaining oil reserves to construct this new global energy grid. Barring that, economically extractable oil will continue to be used for transportation and agriculture.

 

This is just another paragraph in the "technosphere vs biosphere" argument, and you can't have one without the other.

[joeblast]

and here I thought I was being reasonable

 

 

 

 

 

And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

 

 

 

 

[Brian]

...

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

Are you guys nuts? Mankind's "survival" on an overpopulated planet means the end of nature. You have the 'carrying capacity', but without wild places, the biology and wilderness becomes dead. I would not want to live on an earth that has no real places of natural wonder to maintain my soul. We would all be lost, even if we could feed everyone (but the water issue is altogether different.) Anybody care for a Soylent Green Energy Bar?

[joeblast]

I might be nuts - but I'm also being realistic - who'da thunk forty years ago that China would have over 6 billion today? Look at how many people can be packed into a city - New York, Tokyo, etc. Clean water? Reverse osmosis. Power? Who cares about oil, what do you think energy will be like once fusion power is viable and perfected? Oil is but a launch ramp. A dirty one with high energy density as compared to most of today's sources, yes, but...we wont subsist forever on it, I think we can all agree on that one.

 

As technology is furthered, as will the capacity of this planet to harbor human life. This aint no petri dish and we aint no colony of bacteria - its not going to simply be a matter of "use up the resources, none left, colony experiences massive die-off." Humans are creative little buggers and where there is a will, there is a way.

 

Of course I would rather live on Endor than Couruscant, but if we're talking the future of planet earth...

 

(tx...its a good quote, seeker I try not to overuse it.)

[Enishi]

Even if we have to makedo with "less" technology, that doesn't mean the technology can't be more advanced and efficient.

 

The world CAN support more people, just not lots of people living an American suburbs lifestyle where everyone in the house has a car. lol.

 

The mental adjustment is harder than the physical adjustment IMO.

 

During a recent trip to Russia my mom kept trying to convince me to stay in a hotel room for 14 days instead of hostels and a friends small apartment, even though it would have cost over 1400 dollars and put both of us in debt. O.o For many people I think the idea of them or their family having to make do with "less" bruises their ego.

Edited July 18, 2010 by Enishi

[-O-]

Are you guys nuts? Mankind's "survival" on an overpopulated planet means the end of nature. You have the 'carrying capacity', but without wild places, the biology and wilderness becomes dead. I would not want to live on an earth that has no real places of natural wonder to maintain my soul. We would all be lost, even if we could feed everyone (but the water issue is altogether different.) Anybody care for a Soylent Green Energy Bar?

 

 

This is interesting.... A digital experiment a few years back (I think called Avida) found some interesting observations regarding evolution, resources and competition. A few (from memory) that I think apply...

 

1)When the envirounment that the species are in has unlimited resources - evolution slows and even stops.

 

2) When a limit is placed on resouces evolution across may species will accelerate (same as above I guess) - others will dies off

 

3) 3-5 species comepeting for the same limited resources is the ideal for evolution across all of them (with more - the resources runs out - if less 1 or 2 sepecies wil dominate and subsequently the evolution of those dominate species slows)

 

4) When one species dominates over the others thier evolution slows or halts and population will devour the available resources until the entire envirounment dies.

 

5) bad mutations - turned out to be really important for the evolution of the population over a long period of time.

 

6) Although it appears that as life evolutions the "systems" become more complex - but in actuality the "complex systems" are really an accumlution of simpler systems (as they evolve thier systems become simlified. THis simplification allows for adapting additional systems.)

 

Some personal musings:

Humans are a species that are not in competition for resources with other species (we dominate the envirounment).

 

Is technology a complex system - or an set of smaller simplified systems (simplified from systems prior - or more complex then systems prior: think food gathering, resource harvesting)?

 

 

Technology is larging based in data or knowledge - if we think of knowledge or data as a resource then the next question would be.... "is data/ knowledge a limited resource for which we compete - or is it unlimited?" (in terms of "limited" think of it this way - I have comsumed a bit of data and then made it available here - as you consume it by read, has the "data resource" increased or decreased?)

 

Are humans at a dead end of evolution? Perhaps a "culling of the herd" would place our species back into a position to compete for limited resources with other species. Survival systems like medicine, hygenien, food sterilization, weapons, shelter technology... have allowed us to dominate an envirounment and thus seal our fate as aspecies....

 

 

 

On the other hand there are observations that as a culture move from post-industrial thourgh modern and into post-mordern ages the population naturally drops (it increases through industrialization, flattens at modern and begins to drop at post-modern). It is simply this - as a country increases in wealth and moves out of a manufacturing economy people tend to have less children - instead of 2.2 kids per family it drops to 1 - so two parents produce 1 instead of two kids which over the course of just a generation or two the population would be halved... but only after ALL cultures have reached this level of wealth....) So perhaps if we can hold off long enough and spread the wealth/prosparity then our over population issue will eventually, naturally begin to decline. (are there enough resources to get us to this point?)

 

Edited July 18, 2010 by -O-

[gendao]

I might be nuts - but I'm also being realistic - who'da thunk forty years ago that China would have over 6 billion today?

I think only you?

 

Everyone else thinks China has 1.3 billion today...

[ralis]

I might be nuts - but I'm also being realistic - who'da thunk forty years ago that China would have over 6 billion today? Look at how many people can be packed into a city - New York, Tokyo, etc. Clean water? Reverse osmosis. Power? Who cares about oil, what do you think energy will be like once fusion power is viable and perfected? Oil is but a launch ramp. A dirty one with high energy density as compared to most of today's sources, yes, but...we wont subsist forever on it, I think we can all agree on that one.

 

As technology is furthered, as will the capacity of this planet to harbor human life. This aint no petri dish and we aint no colony of bacteria - its not going to simply be a matter of "use up the resources, none left, colony experiences massive die-off." Humans are creative little buggers and where there is a will, there is a way.

 

Of course I would rather live on Endor than Couruscant, but if we're talking the future of planet earth...

 

(tx...its a good quote, seeker I try not to overuse it.)

 

 

Exactly why would any reasonable person want unbridled population growth? Marketing and business opportunities? Conservatives love that one. Fusion power may be just another wet dream that eats billions (USD).

 

 

ralis

Edited July 21, 2010 by ralis

[lino]

Some pragmatic measures for those who can stuff

pride and disregard the tradition of "keeping up

with the Joneses".

 

1. File for bankruptcy. Debt gets people in bad shape.

It is so bad that people waste away from the cortisol

and accumulate fat (toxins accumulate in the fat).

 

2. If you live in the suburbs and have a lawn, keep the

grass clippings for eating.

 

3. Look for a park and take note of the trees. The leaves

are for eating.

 

4. If you are unemployed and single, get into a homeless

shelter as soon as possible. Stay with your parents

or extended family. These options are trade offs...

too much social contact for my liking.

 

5. If you live near a public library with wifi access then

use that (laptop?). Split a bill for broadband connection

with your neighbor.

 

6. Keep a PO box and see if you are near a state park. Might

need a tent. Compare the rent prices. Parks usually have

public showers, see if they are open in the winter time.

 

Don't ever feel bad if you do any of these things. The system

puts a HUGE tax on people's resources.

[ralis]

This may be a little OT. However, the religious movement in the U.S. is over the edge. Here is a video a friend sent me.

 

 

[Brian]

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[ralis]

The problem is that "population control" is horrific, ralis. The human species is an element of the dynamic system of life on the planet Earth, which includes every iving & non-living element, too. As such, changes in one element affect other elements, both negatively & positively. Dynamic systems, by definition, never reach stasis but are continually adapting & adjusting. Human population follows the same dynamics as any other population regardless of whether people attempt to manipulate it or not because such attempts are merely additional terms in the incomprehensibly complex equation by which Earth's biosphere operates. "Technology" is just another of those terms.

 

As an aside, "anti-technologists" may want to consider that everything from using a stick to scrape one's teeth and wearing animal skins to keep warm to running water & the computer on which you are reading this post are all "technology". Human innovation is as much a natural part of the human as claws are a natural part of the tiger. Technology is neither good nor bad by its nature but by the morality of the applicant.

 

But back to the population question -- advocates of man using "technology" to control human population have been around for a very long time. Their numbers and sense of urgency are always dire & frightening (are you old enough to remember "Future Shock"?) and their solution ALWAYS involves a small group of individuals being given life-and-death authority over everyone else, with the advocates invariably selecting themselves to be among that afore-mentioned small group. Given man's utter inabillity to adequately control populations of any other species without either totally eliminating or "domesticating" them, how much faith do you place in man's ability to ethically control the human population in a top-down fashion? Personally, I have none at all.

 

This certainly doesn't deter the advocates, though. "Population control" is responsible for more deaths in the last hundred years than all of mankind's collective wars throughout history, yet the population growth isn't "under control." The advocates' solution? More control is needed! You are aware, I assume, that the current senior White House "science advisor" strongly recommends a high-priority government program to administer involuntary sterilants through drinking water. Eugenics-type breeding programs have also been a favorite of the population control advocate. Sound pleasant to you? Sounds like Eloi and Morlocks to me...

 

As to the "unbridled population growth" idea, every other species of plant or animal seems to manage this fairly well, you know. For instance, rabbits reproduce fairly rapidly (well, "like rabbits", one might say!) but few places on the planet experience runaway rabbit populations, right? The system adjusts. Goes back to that whole "dynamic system" thing -- attempts to regulate populations "in the wild" generally have unfortunate unintended consequences while unregulated populations invariably "find their own level". In truth, the "regulated populations" find their own balance, too, but never quite in the same way that the regulators had expected. For example, Cambridge experienced a severe deer population problem a few years back after the fearless leaders deigned to control nature -- the result was nature reasserting the dynamic system and soon deer where being involved in lots of auto incidents, being attacked by neighborhood dogs, starving to death, etc.

 

The same applies to every other dynamic system, by the way. Unless all the myriad components of the system are well understood (which generally applies only to artificially simplistic systems), attempts to control the system and force it into static equillibrium will fail. The controllers respond by increasing number & severity of control points. The system remains dynamic, however, because control is simply beyond the controller's ability.

 

 

I was objecting to Joeblast's idea of there being a max. sustainable population of 250B. A very irrational idea. Resources to sustain present day levels are not available for many. Further, there is much starvation, pollution and real health concerns among most nations. Technological applications are unable to effectively deal with these problems. His view is for a population 35x present day levels.

 

I never implied that strict controls are needed to control populations. Although the Chinese are successfully reducing population levels.

 

In terms of dynamic systems, the will to survive and human intelligence are variables that are not quantifiable. Therefor at some point of human evolution, humans may as a group be able to attain to a level of responsibility for the group and planet.

 

 

ralis

 

 

 

ralis

[Enishi]

Any attempt to limit the population needs to take into account quality control. It's best to have a population with a high IQ, hopefully one which is rising over time, rather than having the enormous masses of low IQ dumbasses we have here in the US breed like rabbits whist being supported by well-intentioned yet naive government services, as in the movie Idiocracy.

Edited July 22, 2010 by Enishi

[Encephalon]

I think it was well established that the best way to control population was combating poverty. We teased a lot of these issues out after WWII and composed the UN Charter of Human Rights, but never truly took them seriously as we were too busy carving the planet into spheres of influence. Now with half the world's population living on no more than $2/day, the window of opportunity has been slammed shut. The financial costs of basic housing, water, food, medical care and primary education were a pittance compared to the fortunes that transformed the world, but we never truly evolved beyond a Darwinian state. And the irony is that we may have to exercise cruel Darwinism in order to maintain the species. Crazy, man.

Edited July 22, 2010 by Blasto

[Brian]

..

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

[joeblast]

So you guys are sidestepping the question of whether 250 billion is possible by saying its not very natural and you wouldnt want to live there?

 

Like I said, I was merely being reasonable and realistic, and I gave no timeframe other than "by the time the gig's up here" - so the few of you saying that 250 billion is just a ridiculous number dont seem to be looking forward more than perhaps 200 years into the future. Unless of course you're fully of the opinion that the earth will be a nuclear waste-ravaged overheated cesspit with 10,000ppm of CO2 by then...

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

OK, then, tell me how there will be fresh water supply for 250 billion?

[ralis]

First of all, while you may not have stated that “strict controls are needed to control populations”, you must definitely implied it. The alternative to “unbridled population growth” is “bridled population growth.” Since “population growth” is too complex to quantify (by your own admission), such “reasonable” controls as would first be implemented would fail to achieve the desired results and the controller’s solution could only be implementation of more & tighter controls.

 

Second, your previous point identified another problem with the population controller’s position, one that I hope you are only parroting. You suggest that nuclear fusion should be abandoned as a waste of money but you seem to offer no alternate solution other than population control, pointing to evil capitalism as the problem. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail? Unfortunately, this is a fundamental issue with the population control statist mentality – they don’t WANT cheap & abundant energy for the masses! They like to claim to be “on the side of the little people” and “looking out for the sustainable development of mankind” but their policies belie their motivations because their actions openly seek to block the development and deployment of cheap & abundant energy, cheap & abundant food and cheap & abundant disease prevention. Why? Because they view a healthy & nourished population with free time on its hands as “the problem” as these people will just reproduce even more.

 

But you said you were only responding to joeblast’s 250B number so let’s explore that a bit. IIRC, his number was in response to someone who claimed that the practical max was 2 or 3B, suggesting that we need to eliminate 1/2 to 2/3 of the current population. I’m not saying that joeblast’s number is “correct” because I don’t believe there is such a thing -- history shows our attempts at identifying this quantity have been rather laughable (not too long ago, 200 million was considered a reasonable estimate…)

 

Currently, there are numerous cities with urban population densities in excess of 15k/sq. mi. This seems to be the current comfort ceiling (and is roughly three times the density of NYC, BTW). This density is made possible by technological innovations such as running water and eliminating the horse as transport mechanism, in addition to things like multi-level construction, decentralized food production, etc. It seems reasonable to expect this density to increase by an order of magnitude over the next few centuries but let’s assume for the moment that it doesn’t even double.

At 30k/sq. mi., the “cities of tomorrow” could contain 250B on less than 15% of the Earth’s land mass. Throw in twice that for food production and we are looking at less than half the land area. Attractive? Perhaps not. Inconceivable? Perhaps not.

 

If we look, instead, at the “cities of the day after tomorrow”, with 150k densities and much of the farming moved to the oceans, we are looking at covering less than 5% of the Earth’s land mass with that same 250B population.

 

Will Earth’s biosphere “look the same” as it does now? Certainly not. It didn’t “look the same” a hundred years ago or a thousand years or a million years ago or a hundred million years ago so it would seem unreasonable to expect it to look the same as it does now at any point in the future regardless of man’s actions, involvement or existence. From my viewpoint, attempting to hold the population (or economy or 9climate or technology or fashion or music or knowledge) at or near any arbitrarily selected setpoint is hubristic folly.

 

BTW, did you know that there was a serious effort about a hundred years ago to prevent the then-new refrigeration industry from becoming established?

Did you also know that there was an attempt by lawmakers a few years back to change the definition of pi to 3?

 

 

I am not against technology that will improve the health and well being of people! However, there are many on this planet who may never obtain any benefit from improvements that a privileged few take for granted. Humans can't even begin to control the myriad problems of hunger, disease, pollution and decreased agricultural production.

 

I never implied there needs to be gov't controls over population growth. In general, a reasonable person would consider the ramifications of unbridled growth and realize the problems that such growth creates. That is all I stated. Seems that your view is of technological fixes ad infinitum. Further, proceeding from incorrect conclusions about what I am stating here, will be met with a rebuttal!

 

Nuclear fusion is only a theoretical experiment at this time. Will it ever be viable? No one knows. The billions spent on this endeavor, may be better used elsewhere.

 

Your idea of some ideal future seems to be devoid of the natural world and all it's wonder.

 

 

ralis

Edited July 22, 2010 by ralis

[Brian]

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[Brian]

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[ralis]

^^^This is simply false. The current challenge is to develop an economically viable method for the generation of electricity via fusion, much as was done with fission in the middle of the last century.

 

Viable? The longest sustained reaction was 10 MW for 0.5 seconds. Current estimates are possibly 50 years for this technology to be fully developed.

 

 

ralis

[Brian]

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[Brian]

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Edited November 12, 2010 by A Seeker