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Originally Posted by jazzlover
So, modern agricultural technology, like so many touted "high technologies," is still really "petroleum technology." No petroleum = no technology.
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That isn't true at all. That's typical warped thinking by people who can't think outside the box. What the little brains have given you so far touted as "alternatives" are merely variations of the combustion engine: the idiot who wanted natural gas vehicles (because he owns
beaucoup stock in natural gas companies) and the "hybrid" and other idiotic variations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jazzlover
A fellow I know who studies sustainable agriculture extensively told me that if petroleum and natural gas become either unavailable or unaffordable for agricultural activities, at least half the world's population would starve within 2 to 3 years.
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That guy is a total loseridiot who doesn't have the first freaking clue about anything.
You over-produce food crops and the problem is you don't use food crops for food. You use corn for ethanol; for high-fructose corn syrup to produce the many useless and unneeded beverages, and a host of other things, like ready-to-eat and frozen foods. Using food to produce food is not exactly efficient.
After the US and UK murdered, bribed and threatened numerous government officials in African states, the US and British corporations plowed under the rice crops and planted sugar cane and coffee so by the early 1980s, Africa went from a net-exporter of food to a net-importer of food.
You can plow the rice and sugar cane fields back under and start growing rice again anytime you want. Of course, Starsucks stock would plummet and they would go out of business, but oh, well, life's a rock.
Ohio currently has 26,449,920 acres of farm land just lying there fallow, and that doesn't even include the millions of acres of pasture and grazing land for cattle and sheep that are lying fallow.
Between Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois there are more than 150 Million acres of farm land lying fallow.
Across the world there are more than 1 Billion acres of fallow farm land. That's about the equivalent of the 38 Ohios and I'm talking the entire state of Ohio, not just the 26+ Million acres of fallow farm land.
You don't even need petroleum to work the farm lands in the US and before anyone gets stupid, I would remind everyone there are some 9+ Million unemployed people sitting around with their thumbs up their asses so you have more than enough labor to work the farms. In fact you, you could revive every fallow acre of land in the US and still end up with Millions unemployed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jazzlover
I don't think most people, especially Americans, are cognizant of how precarious our food supply really is, and how easily and quickly a very serious world famine could develop if a few key things--especially energy supplies--were to even be somewhat disrupted for a relatively modest period of time. We are living on right on the edge of catastrophe and nobody seems to care. Sadly, most probably won't until it is they who facing imminent starvation.
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I just proved you wrong. There's nothing wrong with your food supply, other than you aren't using it efficiently.
You can also stop growing exotic groups and grow crops that are more stable. You don't need tomatoes year round. That's something you want, not something you need.
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Originally Posted by JohnHAdams
How can you leave out things like education, technology, financing, weather, history, and productivity?
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I don't want to down-play the importance of those, but geography is actually more important. Even if you have resources, you have to get them somewhere, and that's quite difficult for land-locked States.
Even for those States that aren't land-locked, the terrain has to be conducive to transportation.
That's one of the primary differences between Europe and Africa. Every river in Europe is navigable and all lead to a sea (White, North, Baltic, Black, Med or Atlantic Ocean). There are no navigable rivers in Africa. And before someone gags me and says "Nile" that is only navigable from the cataracts in Egypt to the Mediterranean. You cannot go from the White Nile or Blue Nile to the Nile to the Med. Contrast that with the US where you can sail from the Allegheny or Monongahela to the Ohio to the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico unimpeded.
Ports are also important, the Americas and Europe are blessed with dozens of natural ports and harbors. Africa has few natural ports or harbors. It's a similar situation with Central Asia.
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Originally Posted by JohnHAdams
The most prosperous countries also tend to be leaders, or lucky, in those areas.
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Money allows you do to things. Take away the Hudson, Chesapeake and Tampa Bays and the port at Charleston and let's see how prosperous America would be. Let's put some cataracts or falls along the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi and let's watch people struggle to ship their goods anywhere.
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Originally Posted by Shizzles
That has more to do with general societial shifts away from religon/family/community that overpopulation itself. As an extreme example, you're probably safer in Tokyo or Seoul @3am than in even your average US suburb at the same hour.
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That has to do with the car and the ability to move freely in America.
For the rest of the world, movement is impeded by a lack of transportation and by culture. In Germany for example, you are generally raised, live and die very near to where you were born.
There's no place you can go.
20 years ago there were borders in the EU, and even though there aren't now, there are still cultural barriers. I mean you can only go to France if you speak French, otherwise you aren't going to be able to work. If you're a lawyer in Germany, you aren't going to be able to work in France unless you are very fluent in the French language.
If you're a teacher or professor in Italy, you can't go to Germany or Denmark to teach unless you are fluent in those languages.
Luxembourg is the size of Hamilton, Clermont and Butler Counties in Ohio. Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands are the size of 42 (of 88) Ohio counties. Those three countries would fit nicely in the southern Ohio from I-70 south to the Ohio River. Can you imagine spending all of your life in 3 counties? Some people in the US do, but many for any number of reasons travel to other states for education or employment.
Freedom of movement in the US and the ability to do that with the automobile has essentially destroyed the family. That creates many problems in society, because the safety net isn't there. Europeans don't need "day-care" because they have a hyper-extended family nearby consisting of aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins and nephews and nieces to assist with child-rearing and many other things.
Before the advent of the automobile, when people were down on their luck, they had family, friends, neighbors, the church and their community for support. Now they have nothing, except the government.
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Originally Posted by vaughnwilliams
Maybe I'm short sighted, but I honestly have no idea what the average Joe will do in 2050 for a living.
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I think you mean the average
Pat
Lots of house-husbands. That's a phrase you people might want to add to your vocabulary. Households with two-wage earners will be a thing of the past.
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Originally Posted by thrillobyte
As the middle class sinks further and further into the mire here in America while nations like Brazil and Chile boom and start treating their lower and middle classes more benevolently, would it behoove young people here, especially Latins, to start seriously considering migrating to South America or should they just stay here out of patriotic duty and go down with the ship?
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Absolutely. One of the predictions by Futurists in the late 1990s was that there would be mass emigration from the US.
For the 35 and under crowd, if they want a career or a future or anything other than being an orderly in a hospital or nursing home, they'll have to leave.
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Originally Posted by Willy702
And few countries will ever come close to 10% sustained growth for even 5 years, let alone a couple of decades.
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In spite of US sanctions and trade embargoes, Vietnam has.
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Originally Posted by slackjaw
The claim that natural resources = prosperity is discounted by countless examples across the globe.
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That isn't true at all. Without natural resources a country is relegated to basically subsistence agriculture, which is the 0 Economy.
Even for those countries that have natural resources, if they aren't being exploited, then their stuck in a 0 Economy. Afghanistan is a great example. It is essentially a great rock.
However, it has recently been discovered that Afghanistan has at least some critical (ie strategic) natural resources, but it will take decades to develop the infrastructure to exploit them, assuming the conflict ever ends.
The Central Asian States are another example. They are now rich in oil, natural gas, metal ores and minerals, but it will take decades to build the infrastructure, which is not just the oil wells, but also the pipelines, the processing facilities, the refineries, and for the metal ores and minerals, the highways and rail lines to transport them, plus the processing facilities for the raw ore.
That will move them from the 0 Economy to the 1st Economy. It will take decades more to recoup the costs from building the infrastructure, and when that's done, they'll move into the Phase One of the 2nd Economy, and start manufacturing. Then decades later they'll move into Phase Two and start producing commercial goods. Then eventually they'll be in the 3rd Economy and produce consumer goods first and then electronics.
The main factor in all of that is the education system. It doesn't require an education to farm, but it does require an education to operate more and more complex machinery, and to provide the service structure for each Economy, that is the accountants and attorneys and judges and managers and planners etc.
Some countries have had their development arrested by inference from outside powers, like many of the single cash-crop MENA Muslim countries. There are 31 "Muslim" countries and 16 have democracies and it's no secret that those that do not have democracies are all single-cash crop economies that are US client states.
Continued US support of dictatorships in those countries has hampered development for decades. In fact, the same is true for all US economic slave states, like Honduras (where the US recently overthrew the government for the 14th time in 150 years), Nicaragua and Guatemala.
Countries like Vietnam and Cuba, in spite of constant or continued harassment by the US, have surpassed those 3 countries in standard of living, wages and a number of other categories of development.
In the case of Bangladesh, the country has few natural resources, an incompetent and corrupt government, an extremely poor judiciary (ie it is incompetent or lacks any substantive case law or that the government will not enforce contracts), meaning that there is little or no protection for property owners, those who own capital and those who invest, so investment is extremely high risk, plus the fact that the country is subject to repeated devastation by monsoons means if you invest money, or building a factory or take any other action you can lose your shirt because you have no legal protections, there's no guarantee the government won't seize your factory or assets, the government is corrupt and it could all be washed away in a huge monsoon flood.
A few other countries are similarly situated, Myanmar being one of them.
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