1 in 6 -

[brad jones]

We were discussing this week-end :

Six billion people in the world

One billion won't likely eat a meal today as they live in serious poverty.

Another 1.5 billion also live in poverty at a level where they will be lucky if they do have one meal today.

That is nearly half the world not getting enough food to sustain themselves.

Something's broken in our world.

I was told that I live in the 26th county in the United States. Even in my area there are thousands that live below the poverty level. While statistically lower than the world's 2.5/6, it is still high for the area.

Something's broken in our world.

...Shake the System...

[Kasracer]

If populations increases as predicted then I believe it's in the next 70-100 years we will run out of physical room to live comfortably and food shortages will be a daily issue.

Good stuff, huh? I'm hoping someone creates replicator technology soon

[crptcblade]

If we could all agree to kill the poverty stricken and grind them up into food or some sort of all purpose paste, we'd be much better off. But noooo, everybody's too concerned with ethics and moral behavior to do what is necessary.

All I can say is you liberals are digging your own graves.

[brad jones]

If we could all agree to kill the poverty stricken and grind them up into food or some sort of all purpose paste, we'd be much better off. But noooo, everybody's too concerned with ethics and moral behavior to do what is necessary.

I write a serious post and that is your response? Wow. Are you serious?

[crptcblade]

Semi-serious. It's an elegant solution at least.

[Kasracer]

Well, think about it. Due to our technology we have no natural predators and we are at the top of the food chain. Illness no longer controls our population as it once did hundreds of years ago so the only way we have to control our population is either through people killing people or people starving because they can't afford food.

When deer become over populated we allow them to be hunted. Since we have the same problem... well I don't think we could declare human season but without population control we will eventually get to a point where we're killing each other for scarce food and land which will help control our population for a short amount of time but I'd rather not live in that chaos.

Without some form of radical population control (whether or not you agree with human population control is irrelevant as chaos will force it at some point) we only have a few options.

Hunger Solutions:
1. Develop better ways of growing crops and animals to be harvested. We will need to do this faster and more efficient though this will only slightly out-pace out food requirements.
2. Develop some sort of replicator technology. Sure it sounds sci-fi and ridiculous since it was on a sci-fi series but if we could develop this kind of technology we can solve all of our hunger issues almost overnight. If we wish to avoid chaotic population control this is the best solution.

Solution 3 works for both land issues and possibly hunger issues:
3. Colonize a new planet. Face it, we're running out of land fast on the Earth. Our only hope for sustaining human life and allowing people to own land larger than a few meters is colonizing either new planets or the ocean floor. Both create their own difficulties but we could find a new planet that could support human life and have animals and vegetation it would go a long way to helping our hunger issues as well.

So there we have it. The only logical solutions I can come up with to avoid a chaotic population control that will be forced upon us through worsening living conditions is better plant and animation harvesting, replicator technology or planet colonization.

In other words... we're doomed.

[brad jones]

If we could all agree to kill the poverty stricken and grind them up into food or some sort of all purpose paste, we'd be much better off.

Most of the one billion in abject poverty are children. Most of them are without parents. Kids who didn't have a choice for the position they've been put into.

[Tom Sawyer]

Despite crptcblade's sarcastic tone, he does actually make a valid point. Most people aren't going to be willing to make all that much of a sacrifice to help groups of people they've never met who live on the other side of the world - or even the other side of the city. I'm sure that if their neighbour or brother was in need, they'd do whatever they could to help, but if it's only strangers starving and dying, then it's not really something that's of a convern to them.

The question is what should be done anyways? Should the haves be made to give up what we have in order to help the have-nots? If so, how much? If it's too much, we run the risk of harming ourselves if there is some sort of downturn in our supply of foods, if it's too little, food rots in warehouses while thousands of people die.

I think that investment in technology is the only viable solution. Water purification and desalination can give them more to drink. Genetially modifying crops so that they can have better yields and survive in harsher climates can give them more to eat. Spaceship technology would allow us to export excess population to penal colonies on Mars and Venus (hey, it worked in Australia ... eventually).

[Kasracer]

Most of the one billion in abject poverty are children. Most of them are without parents. Kids who didn't have a choice for the position they've been put into.

What's your point? Not to sound rude but in a world where food is becoming scared and killing poverty stricken people becomes an option for food, do you know anyone is going to think of the ethics? No.

I can guarantee you if it ever comes down to an option where we must kill the poverty stricken to survive everyone who protests it will either die of starvation or be killed as food.

All ethics go out the window when it comes to survival. No matter how good of a person who think you are, when you have to survive you will do some horrible things or you will die.

Humans, like any animal, will do what it takes to survive and it that means "kill the poverty stricken and grind them up into food or some sort of all purpose paste" they will do it and all opposed would become part of said paste or die of starvation.

Now, let's hope it never comes to that point...

[crptcblade]

Despite crptcblade's sarcastic tone, he does actually make a valid point.

Glad to see some of you can still interpret my sweeping social commentary.

[kleinma]

education is the only thing that is going to end poverty. Not all, but most people in poverty can never get out because they lack education. It is almost never their fault that they can't get this education, its just how it is unfortunately.

[Kasracer]

education is the only thing that is going to end poverty. Not all, but most people in poverty can never get out because they lack education. It is almost never their fault that they can't get this education, its just how it is unfortunately.

I don't think that's necessarily true for countries outside of the USA. Many countries with high poverty, even with education, don't have many jobs so even if they began to get very educated I'm not sure that would fix the problem. It's a good idea to get them educated of course but I'm not convinced that will save them from poverty.

[kleinma]

You are misunderstanding my use of the word education.

Yes in a sense getting them educated via school in terms of math, language, social, and other skills is important. I am talking education in a more broad sense. Education about birth control, education about disease being spread via sex and other means. Education about human rights, etc, education about how the rest of the world works for those who are suppressed by their nations, etc, etc...

[Tom Sawyer]

I don't think that's necessarily true for countries outside of the USA. Many countries with high poverty, even with education, don't have many jobs so even if they began to get very educated I'm not sure that would fix the problem. It's a good idea to get them educated of course but I'm not convinced that will save them from poverty.

But education gives them more tools to find and create opportunities. If you've learned how to be a carpenter, you have a better chance of finding work, even if no one is building anything in your town and you have to move, than does someone with no skills and can only contribute as one more piece of manual labour.

Additionally, the single most effective way to lower any country's birth rate is to educate its women. Less children to feed means more resources for each of them.

[kleinma]

Additionally, the single most effective way to lower any country's birth rate is to educate its women. Less children to feed means more resources for each of them.

I agree with you, but rape is defenitly a problem in some places that female education will not be able to fix. There needs to be better policing efforts, less corruption, more human rights, etc, especially in developing nations. They still have a chance to lay a good foundation from the start, but its like a free for all in some places around the globe.

[Tom Sawyer]

I agree with you, but rape is defenitly a problem in some places that female education will not be able to fix. There needs to be better policing efforts, less corruption, more human rights, etc, especially in developing nations. They still have a chance to lay a good foundation from the start, but its like a free for all in some places around the globe.

I strongly disagree that female education is not a something that can combat the problem of rape. Education leads to empowerment and an awareness of one's rights. It leads to men getting prosecuted for it so they know that there's a consequence to their actions. It leads to society recognizing that women are human beings and not pieces of property that can be used for men's convenience.

Of course it won't stop rape, but I can't think of a single thing that would lessen the incidence of it more.

[kleinma]

but I can't think of a single thing that would lessen the incidence of it more.

men not doing it in the first place would be my single thing that would lessen it

[syntaxeater]

Call me a sociopath or whatever... But I'm hoping for a distopia like the one in Brave New World. Maybe not to the same degree of "everyone belongs to everyone else" and the conditioning of children, but the family dynamic of it is rather appealing. Everyone being manufactured and genetically engineered to perfection. Production can be controlled. And as a bonus: diseases and vulnerabilities we can't cure - can be prevented in the next generation.

Unrelated, but to also qualify my statement: repulsion of the family is not what I am advocating. For lack of any better idea right now; do it based on lottery. Life continues as normal... Two people meet, two people fall in love, two people get married and then apply for a child. When their number is drawn (odds are adjusted based on the couple's age and number of children), they go to a birthing clinic and both make a 'donation.' They come back in 9 months, and blam-o... a Baby. Natural birth wouldn't be outlawed, but would instead phase itself out; and very quickly. One of the most primitive instincts we have is caring and wanting the best for our children. After we spend a few years preeching the dangers, showing the risks, etc etc... The public will see natural birth as something irresponsible, trashy people would do.

And there you have it. While it solves the food crisis with "responsible" population control; it also solves much, much more. Damn us and our morales.

[Tom Sawyer]

Call me a sociopath or whatever... But I'm hoping for a distopia like the one in Brave New World. Maybe not to the same degree of "everyone belongs to everyone else" and the conditioning of children, but the family dynamic of it is rather appealing. Everyone being manufactured and genetically engineered to perfection. Production can be controlled. And as a bonus: diseases and vulnerabilities we can't cure - can be prevented in the next generation.

Unrelated, but to also qualify my statement: repulsion of the family is not what I am advocating. For lack of any better idea right now; do it based on lottery. Life continues as normal... Two people meet, two people fall in love, two people get married and then apply for a child. When their number is drawn (odds are adjusted based on the couple's age and number of children), they go to a birthing clinic and both make a 'donation.' They come back in 9 months, and blam-o... a Baby. Natural birth wouldn't be outlawed, but would instead phase itself out; and very quickly. One of the most primitive instincts we have is caring and wanting the best for our children. After we spend a few years preeching the dangers, showing the risks, etc etc... The public will see natural birth as something irresponsible, trashy people would do.

And there you have it. While it solves the food crisis with "responsible" population control; it also solves much, much more. Damn us and our morales.

They did this in Gattaca. Turns out it's problematic because there's no gene for the human spirit.

[syntaxeater]

They did this in Gattaca. Turns out it's problematic because there's no gene for the human spirit.

That's some form of something other than fact. We've incubated human life atleast a few times now. If they were souless creatures; we probably would have heard something about them eating brains

[kleinma]

soul is a concept, human spirit is also a concept, but at the same time, very real. Humans are one of the most helpless species on the planet. In fact mammals in general are generally helpless. A baby human is totally helpless and will die without someone to take care of it. Most species are not like this, it generally seems to be a mammal thing. Over the many many years of humans developing in such an intellectual way, we have lost some of our primal instinct because we are cared for by others instead. We still have some primal instinct though, which makes up all of our bad/evil emotions, like greed, and gluttony, etc..

It is hard to say if compassion is instinctual or not. I think to some degree it is, however I feel that some if it is also manufactured by our surroundings and morality, and what we are taught from a young age.

[Kasracer]

Yes in a sense getting them educated via school in terms of math, language, social, and other skills is important. I am talking education in a more broad sense. Education about birth control, education about disease being spread via sex and other means. Education about human rights, etc, education about how the rest of the world works for those who are suppressed by their nations, etc, etc...

I fail to see how this gets them out of poverty. Education is always a positive thing but it won't change behavior in many instances. Take South Africa for example. The United States has spent millions of dollars over there alone on education for AIDs. What's the AIDs status there now? An all time high and it's expected that 2 out of every 3 South Africans will be infected with AIDs in the next generation of people.

Education isn't always a behavior deterrent. Sure, many people can be educated and decided "oh that's bad so I'll stop doing that" but you can't force this behavior through education when it's regarding something as natural as sex. We are meant to reproduce so no amount of education is going to change the want or desire of something as natural as sex.

As for teaching other things like human rights well that's just common sense but you can't instill your definition of human rights onto other groups of people worlds apart. They live in a different world. besides, I don't see how teaching a poverty stricken country about human rights is going to improve the living conditions. It's not going to put food on the table for them nor get them a job.

I just think it's unrealistic to think that education can or will fix all our poverty problems. It's a nice thought but even if everyone was well educated we don't have the resources on this planet to keep everyone out of poverty and well fed. It's estimated the Earth can only sustain about 2-3 billion people so some of our resources are already stretched.

But education gives them more tools to find and create opportunities. If you've learned how to be a carpenter, you have a better chance of finding work, even if no one is building anything in your town and you have to move, than does someone with no skills and can only contribute as one more piece of manual labour.

You're missing the point. If everyone learns a trade where are they going to go? No where. If you've looked into some of these places where poverty is at its worse, they live 20+ miles away from the nearest poverty stricken village. If they want to go anywhere to work other than the minuscule jobs they get in and around their village, they have to trek sometimes 100+ miles depending on the area they live in and what are they going to find? Thousands already trying to do the same thing with no jobs.

You act like learning a trade guarantees you a job but it doesn't. There are so few jobs and opportunities anywhere near many of these villages that won't be changed by anything the villagers do.

Even if they do end up getting jobs it's not like the poverty rate will go down. We're getting close to 7 billion people on this planet and, realistically, it should only be about to support about 2-3 billion people. Jobs, food, water etc can't just materialize (unless we're talking about my replicator solution) so no matter what you're going to have a significant portion of the population out of work and in poverty.

Additionally, the single most effective way to lower any country's birth rate is to educate its women. Less children to feed means more resources for each of them.

Didn't work for China. They had to create laws to slow birth rates. I don't think it's realistic to think educating someone will change their behavior. Millions of people smoke yet with have tons of research proving that smoking shortens your life span and quality of life. Did they stop smoking? Only an insignificant portion so small that new smokers more than equal people who quit smoking (which is why tobacco is still a huge business).

Another thing to keep in mind that sex is part of our anatomy. It's natural and something our primitive minds urge for so we can reproduce and pass on our genes to the next generation. No amount of education is going to stop nor slow this down.

[Tom Sawyer]

I never said that getting them a trade guaranteed a job, what I did was give the examples of two people, one with a trade and one without, and said that the one with a trade was more likely to get a job than someone without one, as the one with a trade has more to offer. Of course there are many situations where it won't be anywhere near as black and white as this, but do you have a better first step to offer?

Also, you are incorrect about education not slowing down birth rates. Iyt's extremely well documented.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/97facts/edu2birt.htm

http://www.aag.org/Education/center/...on3_page2.html

[kleinma]

Another thing to keep in mind that sex is part of our anatomy. It's natural and something our primitive minds urge for so we can reproduce and pass on our genes to the next generation. No amount of education is going to stop nor slow this down.

I won't say it doesn't happen in civilized nations (that would be a fairytale), but the levels of rape are arguably lower in developed nations than in the undeveloped ones. This is not due to education alone, I am sure it is also due to fear of punishment.

So like I said, there needs to be better education efforts, better policing efforts. I am not saying we should not feed the hungry in the process, I am just saying there would be less hungry to feed with less kids being born that simply should not be born because they will have a poor quality of life. Maybe any life is better than no life, but its hard to say being that I am a middle class American, and most of what I know is based on American ideals and culture. Being a middle class American means my problems are generally very small in comparison to others.

[kleinma]

guys, being that the head of this site, Brad, was the who posted this thread, I would think you would look at a thread like this and think "If I don't have anything intelligent to post, I am not going to post at all"

I mean think about it, how many posts does Brad start in chit-chat that aren't geared at forum rules and chit-chat behavior? So he posts a legit post looking for some legit discussion, and some of you spew garbage all over it.

I just don't get it...

[syntaxeater]

It was a simple misunderstanding... I would argue that removing the posts was a little brash considering only 2 were OT and done in a "oh hey, sorry" fashion.

And as far as "spewing garbage" all over it, this really is what I believe and I earnestly think it would solve the food crisis. Regardless of if you agree, Brad's original post was a statement; not a question or an invitation for discussion. But its attracted opinions and ideas - which may be what he wanted.

[brad jones]

Also, you are incorrect about education not slowing down birth rates. Iyt's extremely well documented.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/97facts/edu2birt.htm

http://www.aag.org/Education/center/...on3_page2.html

Thanks for posting the links. Interesting stats. First is a little old, but I'm sure it holds up over time.

Brad!

[kleinma]

It was a simple misunderstanding... I would argue that removing the posts was a little brash considering only 2 were OT and done in a "oh hey, sorry" fashion.

And as far as "spewing garbage" all over it, this really is what I believe and I earnestly think it would solve the food crisis. Regardless of if you agree, Brad's original post was a statement; not a question or an invitation for discussion. But its attracted opinions and ideas - which may be what he wanted.

I did not remove any posts from this thread. I am simply a spectator. I was just commenting based on what I personally saw.

[brad jones]

One of the other related items I saw that I thought would impact poverty and the state of the world was an article in Wired. I've linked to the image I thought said the most.



I have a feeling water issues will impact the world quicker than food shortages.....

It would be interesting to overlay a map showing poverty levels with this map of water availability. I bet there is a direct relationship.

[kleinma]

kind of crazy when you consider that around 2/3 of the earth is water.

I think they are getting better and water purification and getting water to where it is needed (maybe the latter isn't so true). Isn't part of Bill Gates upcoming philanthropy now that he has stepped down at MS to try to help developing nations in need of such things?

[brad jones]

I did not remove any posts from this thread. I am simply a spectator. I was just commenting based on what I personally saw.

I -hid- posts that I considered off topic and those posts that were response to the off topic posts. If anyone has issue with any of the posts I hid bring it up directly with me in a PM or email. I can unhide them. I considered very carefully before removing posts. Posts such as those on Uma were off topic.

At this time, please don't respond to this post, but please focus back on the thread's topic. If you have issues with what I hid, PM me.

Brad

[brad jones]

Isn't part of Bill Gates upcoming philanthropy now that he has stepped down at MS to try to help developing nations in need of such things?

I know they are working on things like stopping basic deseases like malaria that are killing thousands in areas of Africa.

[visualAd]

I think what Agent Smith said about the human race in the Matrix is quite accurate: "you are a disease .... we are the cure". Sci-fi aside, the rate that we (humans) are consuming the worlds resources is at an unsustainable exponential even; especially as society becomes more complex.

To use an analogy, look at programming languages. The first programming languages were simple, fast and required little in the way of resources but if you wanted to do anything interesting things got very complex very quickly. As computing has matured we have added more layers on to the languages making them easier to learn and more powerful. In turn though they have become more resource hungry and their workings more complex. The result of this is that there are now fewer people who use assembler and low level languages, relying on the abstraction of the higher level ones to handle that for them.

If you think about human society, it is panning out exactly the same way. The dynamics of our society are becoming more and more simple and higher level. The average carrot is grown by a farm and sent through a huge supply chain before it gets into a cupboard; all along the way profit is taken and resources are used. By the time the carrot is eaten; the resources used to deliver it to the plate far outweigh the resources that were used to grow it in the first place. But the simplicity is, I can now go to the shop and buy a carrot, I don't know how to grow the carrot, I don't even know that they came from seeds.

So its a sustainability and as the we start to grow taller the tower we build becomes more and more vulnerable to the elements. When resources become scarce the tower will tumble to the ground. Who will be left? Those in poverty and those who don't rely so much on others for a carrot.

The reality is, is that if we don't control the population it will control itself. Eradicating third world diseases is possibly the worst thing you could do for the human race. What we (the Western World) should be doing is sacrificing 90% of what we all have and allow some of the third world diseases to come back into the Western World. Oh damn; ethics - can't do that.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I was walking through a very old graveyard last fall prior to the funeral of a close family member, and I noted the family plots from around the turn of the century. There would generally be a larger stone for the father and mother, but there would invariably be a series of smaller stones for the kids who lived for a few months or a few years. Average life expectancy around the beginning of the last century (1900) was somewhere in the 40s. That didn't mean that people died in their forties, though. In fact, if you lived to 30, your life expectancy was about the same as it is today. The reason the average was so low was that it was the average at birth, and so many children died young that the few long lived survivors couldn't bring the average up all that high. Also around that time, world population was estimated to be around one billion.

We are now heading toward seven billion, and it has become a tragedy when a child dies. For our grandparents (or great grandparents for you young uns), the death of a child was normal. Having one or two children made it quite likely that you would shortly be childless. All those children who died young didn't contribute to the next generation. Now they do.

Anybody who thinks about it has to realize that something will have to give. WWI and WWII slowed but didn't reverse population rise, despite the huge death tolls. In fact, the only incident I know of that significantly dropped population rise was the Black Death. Will this happen again? Much of our population rise has been driven by antibiotics and the ability to at least keep diseases at bay until a person has gotten old enough to reproduce. That's not natural, and has only been normal for a few decades of human history. However, misuse of antibiotics is resulting in increasingly resistant strains of microbes, and viruses are immune to antibiotics to begin with. As population grows, the threat of a worldwide pandemic on the scale of the Black Death (30-50% of Europe died in one year) becomes increasingly likely. Much study is going into how to contain such an event.

However, at some point we will have to ask whether we can contain such an event. For US citizens, it seems like we obviously have to, but when you consider that no economist believes that there are enough resources in the world to bring the entire world to the standard of living of modern Americans (surely the most wasteful society ever). Therefore, do we give up our standard of living and drop back to their standard of living, or do we accept that inequality is necessary?

If we accept that inequality is necessary, then we have to accept that growth is a zero sum game. If we increase our consumption by 10%, then the rest of the world has to decrease by 10%. Of course, efficiencies of production and new resources and technologies can mask that. We would have run out of oil already had we not learned better ways of extracting oil. Therefore, we gain more oil from fields than we would have, so it looks like the rest of the world doesn't have to decrease. On the other hand, if the US had forced the rest of the world to decrease consumption, then we could have increased even more. That's an evil calculation, but at some point in the future, it is an inevitable decision as long as population growth continues.

Worse yet, if we ignore political boundaries, and say that 500 million get one standard of living, another 2 billion get a second tier standard, and the rest get to fend for themselves, then those boundaries will begin to make inroads into any one country. No matter where you set the bounds of who gets what standard of living, as long as population continues to grow, at some point every country will be divided into a small number of haves and a large number of have-nots. Even worse, that divide will grow increasingly extreme, until it breaks.

We are living in the golden age of humanity. Not only do the people on this forum generally live in a land and time of opportunity and plenty, we live in a time when people talk seriously about bringing all the advantages of the industrial world to ALL people. Give every child three square meals a day and a computer so that they can all become part of one big happy global community. Unfortunately, at the same time there is not more than the slightest whisper around the edges about stopping the steadily exploding global population. Right now, it is quite possible that we CAN supply every child in the world with three square meals a day. It is likely that we CAN supply every family with a computer or two. It is likely that we can make lives happier and more stable. Does that give us any chance of slowing population growth? Only the last point might get us there.

If we provide food and medicin without education, population growth will increase because better nourishment and health will mean more kids able to produce more offspring. Why should the poor be expected to do otherwise? Does anybody seriously think that we could offer the poor food and health, yet say to them, in effect, "But in return for food, you can't have more than two kids, and don't ask for nicer cars, computers, markets, etc., because there isn't enough to go around at this time, and we are going to keep those things for ourselves."

So population will keep growing, and resources will keep expanding until we have used up all the readily available ones, and still there will be poor. Perhaps we can harness the sun with futuristic means. Perhaps we can finally get nuclear fusion providing HUGE amounts of energy. Still, at some point we run short of metals, or space, or reach a limit on the ability to extract food from the land. So there will be poor always, and at some point we will cease to be able to claim that we give all children three square meals and a computer. We will cease to believe it possible, and we will eventually be right. At that point we consign people to a horrible death because we lack the foresight to prevent it.

This is a golden age. It is unsustainable, and at some point it will end. It will end in death and suffering. The only way to avoid that is if we now, during the height of our power, take steps to reverse the consumption of resources, and especially, take steps to reverse the continued growth of the human population. We can do it now without killing and eating people, but if we take no action, then either that solution, or a devastating plague are the only plausible outcomes. We can't wish it away. We can put it off for a certain length of time, as technology improves our abiltiy to extract resources from the land, but we can't put it off forever, and the crash, when it comes, will be even more severe for our delay.

Consider the movie I am Legend. The real story was just beginning at the end of the movie. All the resources seen at that point, which included cars, guns, clothing, gasoline, lumber, nails, wiring, generators. Not a single one of those items could EVER be manufactured again for many many generations. There simply wouldn't be enough people to mine the ores, to operate the machinery, to repair the machinery when it broke, etc. That population would be stone age within a generation or two, at which point the knowledge of how to do the industrial things would have vanished. In the movie, that point was reached by a single catastrophic disease event. If the loss of that fundamental knowledge arose due to societal breakdown, then there would be a population of billions without the means to grow anywhere near enough food for them to survive. At that point humans would become the most savage rats on the planet until the remnant population had shrunk to a sustainable simple agrarian or tribal level.

We live in a golden age, and it could come apart without much difficulty. I am not optimistic about the human race, but I am optimistic that I will die before the wheels come off.

[Tom Sawyer]

There was a sci-fi book I read once that had a bit about one alien race that faced similar problems. Their planet was within a nebula or something, so the sky was just black they had no idea that there were other stars with potential planets for them to inhabit, so moving offworld wasn't an option for them. Their population grew and grew and competed for the limited resources of the world until the population density was unsustainable. There was constant war over scarce resources, starvation, disease, etc and every nation had WMDs and they all knew that the point was rapidly coming where they would have to use them on a neighbour nation to clear some space or their own society would collapse from the weight of all the people within it.

One of the races eventually built a wormhole that led into the future. They gathered their entire population into ships, sent them into the wormhole and let off their WMDs, killing off the rest of the world. A few thousand years after that (a minute or two of wormhole travel), scouts came out and reseeded the world with plants and animals after the effects of the WMDs had worn off and the rest of the population travelled for another five minutes or so and came out a hundred thousand years later to an empty world with a thriving ecosystem that was ready for them to inhabit.

They spread out across the world and thrived until the population started to get so large that war and disease were ripe again and all the new nations were competing with each other and then the ones that owned the wormhole jumped into it and blasted the rest of the population with the WMDs and yada, yada, yada, the cycle kept repeating itself. Eventually, they emerged from it to find the world scorched and uninhabitable as a result of the sun going nova and they all died off.

That may sound like another derail from the topic, but it actually relates. The point is that as resources become scarce, individual groups can either horde a greater portion of them for themselves, at the expense of other groups who therefore get less or none, usually as a consequence of having been killed off by the groups wanting more, or they can take less resources in order to share what's available with groups that are in need.

While the latter sounds nobler, it's not really a practical alternative, as it makes your group weaker relative to everyone else. As groups get larger and resources get more scarce, everyone in all groups ends up suffering. If a few groups decide that they don't want to be altruistic and want to take a larger share for themselves, the weaker groups aren't strong enough to stand up to them and they get taken out by the groups wanting to be stronger. Therefore if you decide to take the altruistic route, you place yourself at the mercy of any other groups that decided not to play nice and felt that their well-being was more important than yours.

If the resource situation is as dire as some people suggest, then helping the disenfranchised would be the worst thing we could do. Making them stronger relative to us weakens our position in any clash for scarce resources as they are therefore more able to grab what they want or defend what we want to take. Naturally, this is taking things to an absurd logical extreme to make the point and we're nowhere near the point where such considerations would have any relevance, but the underlying concept is valid. If we're going to help people who have less than they need, it can only be done by giving up what we have.

At present, first world consumes far more than it needs and can afford to trim a good deal of fat which can be exported to the poorer parts of the planet without significantly impacting its own quality of life. If this is successfully done, however, it will still be significantly better off than most of the rest of the world, which will begin to then want even more. If we want to give them a better quality of life at that point, the only way to do so would be to reduce the quality of life for ourselves. Not everyone will agree to that and the only way to get them to do so would be by attempting to force compliance from the groups most able to defend themselves and they will have no choice but to respond in kind in order to protect what's theirs - however moral or valid the definition of what they consider to be "theirs" is.

So basically, I'm saying that however altruistic we decide to be, eventually we're going to get to the point that certain groups are going to have to screw over other groups in order to keep their position and defend themselves from other groups who want to take a share of their stuff. With less resources than are needed to go around, its inevitable.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Three things:

1) It's good to see that I'm not the only one with a mega post.

2) Moving off planet is a total pipe dream. The energy doesn't exist to move this population anywhere at a rate fast enough that the population on earth would decline. A handful could move off, and the rest would be left to devolve into barbarity.

3) Resources have not yet begun to run out, but since they are all finite, it is inevitable that they will. The only question is when.

[mendhak]

I think it's an anthropomorphic fallacy for anyone to refer to their times as the golden age. Every generation of our species has always thought of themselves in this way

1. We are living in a golden age
2. Civilization will not make any more progress than we have
3. We invented nostalgia
4. Doomsday is approaching

They were thinking this even when they were burning women for having opinions, ostracizing Galileo for his blasphemous views and going on murdering rampages in South America.

While it sounds unfortunate, I believe that any given capitalistic society (the world economy) by necessity requires a portion of the population to 'suffer' in this way - capitalism is an economical manifestation of Darwin's theories. That's just my observation, it's somewhat close to what Shaggy posted, but I'm disagreeing about us being in the golden age.

Just as Charles Babbage once said, I too would be willing to give up the rest of the days of my life if I could come back 500 years in the future to see how much more progress has been made. And there will be lots, our achievements will seem barbaric, scattered and disorganized to them. This view, however, is what lends to a diminishing of our own self importance which may not be comfortable for everyone to handle. I'm willing to accept the existential insignificance implied because I think it's true!

[FunkyDexter]

They've been saying on the news this morning that we throw away something like 10 billion pounds worth of food a year in the UK. I don't know what the figure for the US but I'm willing to bet it dwarfs that (I'd guess you guys probably outstrip us on a per capita basis as well as a total but I'm not sure). I think this serves to demonstrate that the problem is one of distribution rather than production. The world produces easily enough food to keep us all fed, if there was the will to get it to where it needs to be.

That over simplifies the problem of course. It's not just a matter of loading up a bunch of steaks on a truck and driving them to Katmandu. We live in a world where the Military government of Burma are actually refusing unconditional international aid in the face of one of the biggest humanitarian crises for the last decade. I am convinced, however, that in a world where Oranges can be flown from Africa to the supermarkets in our high streets, more can be done to ship bread in the opposite direction.

[mendhak]

I'm not convinced that the death toll is around 100,000 in Myanmar. (Myanmar, come on, respect the name change!) I am positive that this is a media propagated conspiracy to make the Myanmar Junta look bad and (hopefully for them) incite a coup - because there's a referendum coming up this weekend. It's politics and we're all guilty of it.

[wossname]

"Myanmar" - Didn't they name it after one of the locations in Tomb Raider?