Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Neo-Malthisians shall always be with us. Parson Malthus 300 years ago would have been proud of you. You Democrats should go hide under the bed, we'll fix it inspite of your 5th column efforts. Never has their been a group of people more surrounded by bounty willing to trade in their freedom for free false teeth and reassurance moma will make it all better.
a combination of complacency and bravado is a sure way to get one'e butt kicked..
Both valid, but too intellectual for Saturday night. Keep your gun loaded, but kick back, look at the stars, and chill dudes.
PS Before we insult others with accusations of Malthusian thinking, you would do well to ponder that the inspiration for Malthus' masterpiece, Essay on the Principles of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society published in 1798, came from his reading of Political Justice, an incorrigible piece of optimism by William Godwin. Godwin's vision of the future was a utopia containing neither war nor crime nor disease nor government—nothing but complete happiness. Malthus expressed his dissension through his Essay on Population. I would submit that Montana needs NEITHER an unsuccessful pessimist, derided for his failed economic theories, nor a head-in-the sand optimist with little appreciation of today's realities.
And another thing, the original epithet of "Neo-Malthusian" referred to a person who advocated birth control. Was that how you made the conceptual leap from jazzlover's comments to "Democrat"?
Come-on guys, lighten up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TypicalCalifornian
... Only the desolate underpopulated places are poor.
My goal is to live in a desolate underpopulated area of Montana and NOT be poor.
One can choose to discuss the aesthetic of Blue Highways, or the source of economic vigor, but switching in mid-stream likley reflects a little intellectual 3-card monte this writer, while born at night, but several nights ago shall not leave unchallenged.
It is clearly true that in a post-industrial world, population density fuels ecomonic vigor, with subsequent increased standards of living in most material ways. Having said that does not preclude the spiritual need for places wild and unpopulated. People in those wild and unknown places have an obligation to those of us in "humanity-rich" environs not to scare themselves or their children into hiding in caves because some "late at night radio show Cassandra" sees patterns in the weather coincident with Chinese wealth and Al Gore diatribes on environmental collapse.
30 years ago it was the coming ice age, 25 years ago it was rampant heterosexual AIDS, then Erlich's population bomb, now global warming, SARS, and on and on. Totalitarians of all stripes need fear to stampede a population into foregoing their better angels for over-reaction. In these days the aspiring totalitarians happen to be on the Democrat left, it might change but today it is clear whose agenda is moved forward by environmental and economic fear-mongering.
Saturday night is now over, and so I offer a sermon fit for Sunday before I saddle up my golf clubs and wander off for pre-dawn lashes and joyful sunrises that if I look just right contain no sign of human intrusion.
Apologies for my intemperate comments, blame it on flagging testosterone.
Resource scarcity? Even those "big, bad" oil companies are figuring out that we have passed "peak oil." They aren't investing in new refineries to capitalize on higher prices because they know that they are not going to be a good long-term investment. Several of the world's largest oil fields are now in serious decline (North Sea, offshore Mexico, Prudhoe Bay, probably the Saudi fields) while demand continues upward. Why build more refineries if you're not going to have the raw materials to feed them? If you live anywhere in the West (including California), water is getting to be a problem, too.
The only comments I will make at this point are;
1. The reason no new refineries have been built has nothing to do with lack of oil, it has been stated over and over again that environmental regulations and envirowackos have stopped any way to build one.
2. As for oil, nobody disputes there's plenty of oil in places like a.n.w.a.r. but again environmental people are stopping that idea. So, at this point we can either be tied to and at the mercy of the middle east or develope our own. There also may be a little of the thinking "lets use up everyone else's so we will be the only place with oil.
Who knows for sure.....
Neo-Malthisians shall always be with us. Parson Malthus 300 years ago would have been proud of you. You Democrats should go hide under the bed, we'll fix it inspite of your 5th column efforts. Never has their been a group of people more surrounded by bounty willing to trade in their freedom for free false teeth and reassurance moma will make it all better.
Once again, quit scaring people.
I'm not a Democrat. I'm a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. Maybe you should read his writings on conservation, and the bleak future he predicted for this country if we did not embrace it. I happen to think the base word of "conservative" is "conserve."
A few of my favorite quotes from TR:
"The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life."
"Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes foolishness. We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so."
Seventh Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1907
"We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted...So any nation which in its youth lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of life."
"Arbor Day - A Message to the School-Children of the United States" April 15, 1907
"There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country."
Confession of Faith Speech, Progressive National Convention, Chicago, IL, August 6, 1912
"Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the 'the game belongs to the people.' So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The 'greatest good for the greatest number' applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method."
A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open, 1916
"The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others."
Address to the Deep Waterway Convention, Memphis, TN, October 4, 1907
It's true, there is very little industry here and there doesn't seem to be any coming in. Unless they're working for the University of Montana, most people here seem to have jobs tied in some way to real estate or development/construction. If this dries up, it could be very bad economicaly for the area. Other than that, many people work multiple, menial jobs in retail, restaurants, and in the casinos to eek out a living. If you're not wealthy, or retired and set for life, absolutely check out the job market here before planning a move. I know of one person who rolled all of the equity he made off the sale of his home in another state into a home here in Montana, and now is getting ready to FORECLOSE on that home because no "good paying" job in his field ever panned out like he assumed it would. We desperately need good manufacturing jobs back in this area and across the country...
I think it's time to stop predicting the future, optimist or pessimist - we have only to look around, the future is here.
$100 a barrel oil, a demorcatic nation in debt up to its eye balls to a communist country, a nation that gave away the livelyhoods of its people to a communitst country for the sake of a capitalistic buck, a nation that arrests parents for disciplining there children, a nation that elects the same families in the presidency, a nation that praises selfindulgence and scornes viture, an nation that doesn't know why mother nature gave them sexual organs, a nation where the men act like women and the women try to act like men, a nation where big brother takes care of you from craddle to grave...Need I go one.......the future is here, wildfires burn our homes, Katrinas destroy large parts of our country, our children kill each other everyday in schools and on the streets, we kill our own unborn, we put our parents in homes, the future is here, what event could have been more futuristic than 9-11, who would ever beleive you own leaders would let millions, that's MILLIONS, if you can comprehend that, MILLIONS! of foreigners invade YOUR country and start taking your possesion (you tax money in govenment programs) away from you and destroying your cities and culture................the future is here, it's unraveling all around you, it's just not blowing up all at once in your face, it's just eating away at you like a slow cancer. Take for example a californian who can't stand to bear what his own countryside has turned into, a sewer, he wants out, he wants to move to montana - your world is unreaveling all around you, like the frog in the pot of increasingly hot water some of us just don't know it yet. We don't even have the brains, the sense, the courage to protect ourselves any more, wittness the phoney peace movement, the war right or wrong, half of us, leaders included don't have the b*lls to standup for each other anymore - because we are cowards that don't give a sh*t anymore - we'd rather spend our time marching for alternative life styles.........
Nope, I don't think the end will be when an astorid or global warming, or scare resources gets us, I'm not appocoliptic, I'm more practical, the end will be more like the slow discineration of our socieity, like the one we are wittnessing now - with little fits and spurts here and there, some spectacular events, but mostly a nagging nawing away - the future is here, as a people we've reached the tipping point where enough of us don't even know who we are or why we are here or even care, you can see it all around you - just look. We're rotting away ever so slowly and systematicaly like an old usless tractor left out in the field. Rotting and rusting bit by bit hardly noticable at all until one day it's just gone.
Excuse my spelling and grammer - but I hope I got my point across.
Last edited by JoeJoeMan; 11-12-2007 at 12:01 PM..
Joe, I'm gonna venture into dangerous territory this one time to see if I can mitigate some, not all, of your pain. let me take the points i disagree with you on, and assume I agree with you on the no comments ones.
1. $100 a barrel oil. Inflation adjusted it's just about what it was in 1960, and marginally cheaper than during the worst of the 70's. Further, as a frame of reference, when I see people drinking bottled water that often costs over $20 a gallon, I want to scream or smile. To make that fancy water we don't need to find the water, fight Arabs, put in in giant ships, transfer it 10,000 miles, refine it in rare and complex refineries, transport the product to gas stations that are wonders of complexity themselves, manned 24 hours a day for the sole purpose, etc etc.
How come gas is so cheap?
2. Owing ChiComs lot's of money. Lot of thoughts come to mind but the essential one is that it reflects a trust/ intertwinning of economies where both parties have to behave. Or Not. 25 years ago folks like yourselves were certain the end times were here because of similar imbalances with the Japanese. Let's take that one apart: they sent us awesome electronics, auto's, etc. at low prices and we sent them green pieces of paper. After a time they realized these green pieces of paper needed to be spent. So they bought (for example) Pebble beach golf course for $800M and sold it back to American's 3 years later for $300M. They bought/overpaid all the most prominent buildings in downtown Los Angeles...and Americans took all the money and built Irvine, brand new, gorgeous, modern, and downtown LA kinda...sucks.
The lesson: when you owe the bank $10,000, you're in a lot of trouble. When you owe the bank $1m...they're in a lot of trouble. Never, ever underestimate American's and money, or anything else. lot's of folks have badly burned hands from underestimating us.
3. Wildfires burn your homes? katrina...? Mother nature happens. 100 year policy of putting out fires left too much fuel in the forests and .... 100 years of corrupt new orleans politicians not using the money for levees and dykes...why would you blame Washington because a bunch of Bubba's steal from their constituency...the same people who elect them...sorry I sleep well at night.
4. War in iraq? A geat strategic move, history will vindicate Bush, and our efforts there. Let me paint you a scenario few have considered: one day a Muslim fanatic will get a nuke. They will set off the nuke in Tel Aviv at which point Israel will launch 195 of it's 200 Nukes at every Arab city from Morocco to Indonesia radiating the oil fields for 10,000 years. They will take the other 5 nukes and say thanks for your support to Paris, Berlin, Moscow, etc. The USA does not protect Israel, it protects Arabs, from themselves.
We talked and talked to the Arab world for a decade whether our best smooth-talker, Bill Clinton his ownself, no good. We have had Bush use some tactical force to show we are serious and not just talk, maybe, maybe not no good. But I can assure you a future president may not have much choice but to get medieval on these nutters and in the spirit of escalation...you owe it to your foes to show a consistent and serious policy.
There are a lot of byproducts from this policythat are mixed blessings: Syria out of lebanon, Libya dropped it's nuke program and is behaving, Egypt has more woman's rights, Saudi is propped up another day, Mussariff in pakistan got some relief, North korea got to see saddam coming out of a spider hole and may have given itself a wakeup call, iran...well once again..they are on notice.
The world is a complex place full of bargains made with less than thomas jefferson-like people, but i am an optimist we live in the best of times with a better world ahead.
If you think growing up ducking and covering under your desk while the Soviet's had 20,000 nukes aimed and cocked, well ....our problems are peanuts compared to that. Cheer up.
$100 a barrel oil. Inflation adjusted it's just about what it was in 1960
I hope you're not using our government's measure of inflation - 2 %, I should have added another thing to my list of the future is here now - that being "your government cooking the books on economic data". Anyway it was written in many business articles a while back that it would take oil at $80 a barrel to equal its height in the 70s. Beside $100 oil is not the end of the world, I'm just saying it was something people said would happen someday and I'm saying that day is now.
As far as the turmoil in the middle east, who cares it's been like that for 6000 years, that's standard practice for those people.....
As far as the Chinx, its the fact that our lying government is even in bed with them while lying to us all the time how bad they are......the future is here when you can't trust a word you leaders are telling you -
When the government can come in and take you children away from you for doing what people have been doing for the last 1000 years should give you concern.....I my parents were alive today and raising use as they did, if caught in today's world - they'd be in jail and we'd be in foster care - The future here when you children are not you own anymore - and the education system is indoctrination of the youth -
TypicalCalifornia you are looking at the wrong things for a sign of the times - you are the frog in the pot, you don't even realize what has happen to you personal freedom,
And if we owe China so much money they are in trouble - what do you think their gonna do when we don't pay and push comes to shove ? Good thing they aren't on are souther border, you'd be speaking chinese now.
I'm not saying it's the end of the world or fire and primestone are gonna raindown - I'm say that what alot of people thought would happen someday is or has already happened. That's why I say the future is here now. And in a lot of ways it ain't good. But the world ain't gonna end tomorrow, although no one can ever rule out a repeat of real bad times and a small or epic scale.....I'm saying one person's world could turn in to hell, look at our inner cities they are hell on earth, children killing children....but the world will continue to turn - it won't be the end of the world, just one in which more and more people won't want to live in.
Last edited by JoeJoeMan; 11-12-2007 at 06:20 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
