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On December 03 2014 02:42 Hryul wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2014 15:25 Alex1Sun wrote:On December 02 2014 10:28 Hryul wrote:On December 02 2014 09:52 Alex1Sun wrote:On November 19 2014 01:54 Redox wrote: I am glad that Germany has low fertility. I just wish it was the same in other countries. THIS!With advances in robotics (meaning getting gainful employment will be much harder in the future) and depleting global natural resources (we really don't have any reasonable substitutes for most of what we are using up), shouldn't all countries strive to decrease fertility? Sure it'll lead to economic problems in short-to-medium run, but what about the long run? The less people we have on this planet, the larger share of renewable and non-renewable resources every person can potentially earn. because it is a deeply misanthropic and pessimistic way of thinking. I also have the feeling that people from the environmental-sensitive side seem to underestimate the resources we have available. Coal, Oil, Gas and Uranium all will last for at least 100 years. which doesn't even account for the technological advances we will make in the future. With everyone so obsessed about their iPhone and the (cheap) consumer criticism it yields, people tend to overlook the technological advances in mining and drilling. the famous Club of Rome report was wrong not because they calculated wrong, they simply couldn't account for technological advancement. Peak Oil never came. your focus on robotics also is steering away from the fields we need people for: research and education. There are so much more things we don't understand starting from genetics to gravity. Yet we are here trying to build a fusion core. "preserving natural resources" also is a moot point for two reasons. The first is that humanity started to evolve away from an agricultural society to a technological advanced one when we started to used coal as energy source. The sun simply doesn't deliver enough energy to sustain our technological standard. which includes vaccines and cancer treatment and robotics. the second is that the sun will burn out eventually. so you could maybe expand humanities existence, but in the end "preserving" humanity will be in vain. We need technological advancements to "save" humanity and we need a highly specialized work force for people to develop cutting edge technologies. this is only possible with enough people. in the end it's a simply number games: the more well educated people you have the more likely someone makes a big discovery. Thanks for your post. I am myself working on future tech (advanced research in physics and engineering). I know that resource extraction is rapidly improving. I know that technology can solve a lot of challenges if used right. However wouldn't we be even better off with more advanced technology AND less people, at least until the point when we can massively colonise other worlds (and keep in mind that this point is very far away)? As for research and education, most developed economies are decreasing funding for these endeavours both in public sector and in private sector. Building a career in research or education is no longer possible in most developed countries, barring school teaching. In UK only 1 out of 220 successful STEM PhDs can become a professor (i.e. a career in research and/or education). In other developed countries the situation is similar. And it's getting much worse. Another tiny fraction of PhDs may build R&D careers outside academia, but not many. A lot of companies worldwide are currently disbanding their entire R&D departments or at least massively downsizing them (Google is one of the very few notable exceptions to this trend). If research and education is the answer, than we are rapidly moving in the opposite direction. I'm sorry if I projected some of my views about the "ecological movement" onto you. One of my main problems with "them" is that most of the time there is a misanthropy or even "mankind-hating" lingering through their views together with an overly romantic view of nature ("mother nature", "natural balance"). I'm also well aware that I was describing more of an ideal world myself, maybe even putting a naive hope on technological advancement myself. It's just that I want to believe that mankind can "dug itself out of the hole in which we put ourselves". Every generation before us could have held pretty much the same view of "resources are running out" and restrain themselves. But they didn't and just carried on. And here we are, with more knowledge and possibilities than every generation before us. Taking the preserving-stance has a very defeatist stench for me. Falling into the trap that we might become caretakers instead of creators. there's also a very practical problem (which also plagues global warming): you can't enforce this worldwide. not only would there be an uproar in the "western" world (or so I tend to believe), underdeveloped countries simply don't have the administrative measures to enforce such a policy. So you would simply reinforce an already existing problem: technologically advanced societies will be shrinking while other will grow. And they will simply start using the resources "we" won't. just take a look at China: They are well aware that coal plants pollute their air, but they build them anyway without air filters because having cheap, dirty electricity is better than not having electricity at all. And it simply won't happen that the chinese government says: hey, sorry, you can't go for western living standard because we have to protect "the planet".
First robotics will make most "research" jobs disappear as well. It's an illusion that all the things even PhD students do require the degrees at all times. Sure if you don't have the education you can never do any part of the job because you lack understanding that drives the process but a successful professor juggles several different projects and PhD students at the same time. If robots could help you do the mundane research tasks and help with things like gathering research and drafting papers (yes there are "robots" which can write already) fewer researchers would be able to do more.
Secondly "new jobs" have yet to replace even close to the amount of old jobs that have disappeared. Sure new markets pop up the amount of people who work in them are not even close to the ones that disappear.
Thirdly not all people have the ability or desire for the advanced higher education that these new jobs would require. Even in states with free higher education we struggle with getting people through the system at a massive cost, most countries don't have the educational system to make everyone a top graduate which will be required to compete.
That the people who lose their jobs will be employed in some new work is a myth, and it's a very dangerous myth. Because it makes us blind to the reality that unemployment will continue to rise over time and the fact that we need to deal with that.
Scarcity of resources is not a problem, we won't run out before we either have a solution or we have crashed. Environmental issues are a compounding factor but also not the core problem.
We need to realize that society needs to change. If capitalism is to survive we need to protect demand probably by taxing production. For sure we can solve the problems with massive unemployment some other way as well.
Because robotics is something inherently good. Were simply getting better at doing stuff and we can produce more, cheaper, faster, easier. It's a good thing in itself and we can just build a better future around it everyone will have a better life.
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On December 03 2014 04:19 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote: We need to realize that society needs to change. If capitalism is to survive we need to protect demand probably by taxing production. For sure we can solve the problems with massive unemployment some other way as well.
easy! start a war. that's the obvious solution, and the one that will be/is being pursued
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On December 03 2014 04:29 bookwyrm wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 04:19 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote: We need to realize that society needs to change. If capitalism is to survive we need to protect demand probably by taxing production. For sure we can solve the problems with massive unemployment some other way as well.
easy! start a war. that's the obvious solution, and the one that will be/is being pursued
As long as your fighting an inferior enemy so you can keep using humans and you employ enough people to not let unemployment go over 20-25 % it works.
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What?? When you fight an inferior enemy, you use robots and magic sky bombs. The entire US engagement in the middle east in the last decade has involved a laughably small number of troops. When you fight a REAL war, you use humans. Wartime mobilization is the only way that the crises of capitalism have ever been solved in the past.
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On December 03 2014 03:34 Nyxisto wrote: If we manage to switch to renewable energy by the end of this century I don't see why we couldn't sustain our current standard of living. This has nothing to do with blind faith. Industrialized England one or two-hundred years ago looked way worse environmentally than it does now. That developing countries like China are actually pretty heavily investing into renewable energy seems to be a good sign, too. If anything the environmental situation has improvement pretty considerable since the early industrial times, when Marx and others brought these issues of sustainability up. "If" we manage. That's faith.
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It's simply untrue that the "environmental situation" has improved. They weren't even pumping groundwater in the 19th century...
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On December 03 2014 04:58 bookwyrm wrote: What?? When you fight an inferior enemy, you use robots and magic sky bombs. The entire US engagement in the middle east in the last decade has involved a laughably small number of troops. When you fight a REAL war, you use humans. Wartime mobilization is the only way that the crises of capitalism have ever been solved in the past.
Can't fight a real war with humans for long enough. To many people will die because your side is inferior and opinion will turn on you. Humans today have to much information in a democracy, sustained warfare with high casualties is doomed after Vietnam.
You need a way to mobilize a massive amount of people in a large region against inferior forces. Most actual combat can be done by drones though but you need to employ actual people. Like invading africa + the middle east or something like that, it could work.
But is fucking over the rest of the world really the solution we want?
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Yeah, I just don't believe in the "now we are too civilized for total war" line. I think people thought that in the 10's and the 30's also.
I'm not ADVOCATING the solution. I'm saying that this is the solution that will be pursued.
edit @below: I don't understand what's off topic, we are discussing the geopolitical consequences of deflationary crises. But okay...
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Zurich15240 Posts
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I also agree it's on topic. Islam / IS / Al-Queda is more and more becoming seen as the enemy. The countries in (northern) Europe has traditionally been welfare states were people expected the state to provide certain services AND they have traditionally taken in a very large number of middle eastern and African refuges.
As a deflationary crisis fueled by people becoming obsolete quagmires the economy and leads to massive unemployment >35 % a welfare state becomes unsustainable. We know human nature so we can assume they want a scapegoat when the state can't handle the unemployable masses. We also know the immigrants are at the bottom rung of society already and will be hit the hardest by the crisis, their unemployment will be higher. We already see radicalization of some youths in this group. The logical followup to the development is increased terrorism in Europe furthering the mistrust and hate towards Islam as a religion.
And when you need a war next, where do you turn?
I'd much prefer we just tax corporations and employ people as caretakers for elderly or schoolteachers or nurses or something.
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Aren't immigrants in most countries (not sweden though) are more likely to be working than the native populations?
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On December 03 2014 03:34 Nyxisto wrote: If we manage to switch to renewable energy by the end of this century I don't see why we couldn't sustain our current standard of living.
Because of the economy? There are a lot of other constrains besides energy. If the economy does not grow fast enough (and it's quite possible that it won't grow fast enough in a resource constrained world despite advances in technology), then inequality, poverty and underemployment levels rise. That's what has been happening in Japan in the last 2 decades and may also start happening in Germany if it follows the same path.
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On December 03 2014 05:12 bookwyrm wrote: Yeah, I just don't believe in the "now we are too civilized for total war" line. I think people thought that in the 10's and the 30's also.
I'm not ADVOCATING the solution. I'm saying that this is the solution that will be pursued.
edit @below: I don't understand what's off topic, we are discussing the geopolitical consequences of deflationary crises. But okay...
How do you fight a global war that involves hundreds of thousands of casualties without blowing up the whole planet with nuclear weapons? It's one thing to talk about some middle eastern ethnic conflict and another to talk about wartime mobilization of a major first world power. I wouldn't say we are too civilized for war; we are scared of it, and for good reason. Without the threat of total nuclear annihilation the US couldn't possibly do what it's been doing for the last 40 years.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
as we've seen wtih the rare earth thing, without outright crazy distortions from the govt technology and resources can be sorted out by market price signal. there's a great deal of externalities with energy generation and that need to be solved, but in the eventuality of some resource running out, people will develop substitutes, change behavior or technology it up because of the price increase.
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On December 03 2014 14:47 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 05:12 bookwyrm wrote: Yeah, I just don't believe in the "now we are too civilized for total war" line. I think people thought that in the 10's and the 30's also.
I'm not ADVOCATING the solution. I'm saying that this is the solution that will be pursued.
edit @below: I don't understand what's off topic, we are discussing the geopolitical consequences of deflationary crises. But okay... How do you fight a global war that involves hundreds of thousands of casualties without blowing up the whole planet with nuclear weapons? It's one thing to talk about some middle eastern ethnic conflict and another to talk about wartime mobilization of a major first world power. I wouldn't say we are too civilized for war; we are scared of it, and for good reason. Without the threat of total nuclear annihilation the US couldn't possibly do what it's been doing for the last 40 years. There are two ways, both fairly obvious. The most obvious is of course that you do not fight with someone else who has nuclear weapons. The US has fought several major wars in the postwar period, at least two "major" even by the horrifying standard set by the world wars (Korea, Vietnam). The other is to ensure that the goals are limited and very clear in scope, in particular emphasizing that the goals are not expansion of territory or total destruction of the enemy's resources. We see this today with how limited President Obama has tried to frame its goals in Syria and Iraq.
We aren't too civilized for war and we are scared of it, but we fight them nonetheless. The US government has been very good through its history at shielding the American public from directly experiencing the horrors of war, but don't mistake that with an implication that the United States does not fight wars.
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On December 03 2014 15:01 coverpunch wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 14:47 IgnE wrote:On December 03 2014 05:12 bookwyrm wrote: Yeah, I just don't believe in the "now we are too civilized for total war" line. I think people thought that in the 10's and the 30's also.
I'm not ADVOCATING the solution. I'm saying that this is the solution that will be pursued.
edit @below: I don't understand what's off topic, we are discussing the geopolitical consequences of deflationary crises. But okay... How do you fight a global war that involves hundreds of thousands of casualties without blowing up the whole planet with nuclear weapons? It's one thing to talk about some middle eastern ethnic conflict and another to talk about wartime mobilization of a major first world power. I wouldn't say we are too civilized for war; we are scared of it, and for good reason. Without the threat of total nuclear annihilation the US couldn't possibly do what it's been doing for the last 40 years. There are two ways, both fairly obvious. The most obvious is of course that you do not fight with someone else who has nuclear weapons. The US has fought several major wars in the postwar period, at least two "major" even by the horrifying standard set by the world wars (Korea, Vietnam). The other is to ensure that the goals are limited and very clear in scope, in particular emphasizing that the goals are not expansion of territory or total destruction of the enemy's resources. We see this today with how limited President Obama has tried to frame its goals in Syria and Iraq. We aren't too civilized for war and we are scared of it, but we fight them nonetheless. The US government has been very good through its history at shielding the American public from directly experiencing the horrors of war, but don't mistake that with an implication that the United States does not fight wars.
The casualties on the US side are a fraction of what they were in Vietnam. We are talking about total war here, not the adventure wars of Cheney and Bush.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22271 Posts
This thread has gone off topic too often, and the original thread's topic has little left to discuss. The OP has also abandoned the thread and only makes anti East Asian threads. I don't see any point in keeping this around any longer.
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