Food rationing has started in America....we are going downhill FAST (calculate, tier)
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The only real question in my mind is where, how, and how soon the die down begins. I think it will be a lot sooner than people think. My personal prediction is that by 2030, the world population will be less than it is now--maybe a LOT less. World population really exploded when the "Green Revolution" began in farming and agriculture technology after World War II and took hold worldwide--espoused and promoted heavily by the United States. The problem with that technology is that it basically embraced non-renewable petroleum and mineral resources to achieve the spectacular increases in food production. That has not changed one iota in all of the decades since--and now those finite resources are being rapidly depleted. In short, all of the population increase that all of the extra food production enabled was a one-shot deal made possible by the massive use of non-renewable resources.
21st century wars are going to be all about controlling and acquiring resources. People in the conquered places will be seen as nothing but a liability, so 21st century war will also be about killing--killing as many of the "enemy"--including civilians--as quickly and expediently as possible. It will be vicious, inhumane, and deadly at a scale never seen in history. We have procreated ourselves into upcoming large-scale death and violence within a huge segment of our own species. And we think we are "intelligent?"
This is what I have been thinking of for years. It would not be that hard to reduce the population by a modern-day "spanish flu". Knocking out 10-20% of the world's population through a simple release of biologic material. It is a fact that the worst poverty exists in places where population increase is encouraged through the dominant religion. No one can violate the laws of supply and demand so eventually human populations will have to decrease. There is a difference between "tasefully decorated" and "jam packed".
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Originally Posted by Joe_Ryder
The rice shortage in the US has more to do with panicky people than any real shortage but the effect is the same either way. Where I live, there is a substantial Asian population. My Inlaws seem to be closely related to half of China so I can see this phenomenon from the inside while maintaining an objective point of view...sort of. Every time the wind shifts, Chinese immigrants run to Costco to hoard rice. I can't say I can blame them since those over 40 lived through one of the worst famines in world history. In the late '60s an estimated 20 million people literally starved to death in China. Though I can see it from their point of view, I also realize that it's the paranoid hoarding that's causing the shortage in the first place. In short there's plenty of rice but it's all piled up in people's living rooms.
However, it's an indication of things to come. There are too many people on this planet already and they're reproducing at an alarming rate. At some point we will either have do some serious population reduction or we'll have to start eating each other. Anyone remember "Soylent Green?" The bottom line is that already there isn't enough food for the people that are already here. 50 years ago, they expected to colonize and terra-form Mars to feed our growing population by 2010 but reality shows us that such is unlikely for a thousand years or so. Since we seem to be so inclined to use our resources to fight wars for resources, the funding for such star-trekking is unlikely to ever happen.
Some folks are under the impression that they can run to the wilderness and hunt or fish for survival. Though fish is a wonderful source of nutrition, we can only eat it once a week or risk ingesting lethal levels of mercury. Hunting sounds great till you've got 100 million other people with the same idea.
Here we are with rapidly shrinking water tables, we're running out of oil, and now the food supplies are just beginning to run low. To top it all off, people are living a lot longer. Scientists were telling us a hundred years ago that this was going to happen but nobody would listen and we went on with business as usual. Now we're pretty much hosed. We do indeed live in interesting times. Suddenly people are all concerned about being green and saving the planet. Well, global warming is the least of our worries and there's not a lot than be done about it at this point anyway. Too little, too late.
All the "doom & gloomers" are in full operation mode. The sky is falling! The sky in falling!
It's not doom and gloom. It's math.
The doom & gloomers warned that the dot com bubble couldn't last. It burst.
18 months ago all the experts claimed that real estate and leveraging was the way to permanent wealth. We can all see how well that worked out. Keep going back in history and you'll find more examples. People in third world countries are starving because demand is greater than the supply. You can roll your eyes all you want. 1+1=2. Always has and always will. If you get a different answer, you're in error.
The third law of mechanics states " For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." So far no one has found a workaround to that law. The laws of supply and demand conform perfectly to Newton's third law.
18 months ago all the experts claimed that real estate and leveraging was the way to permanent wealth.
What experts are you referring to? I can name multiple economist that predicated the bust in housing 18 months ago. In fact its sort of ironic that many of the economist that did predicated matters 1-2 years ago are less doom/gloom than the "experts" that seem to only be predicting economic failure in the last 6 months.
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The laws of supply and demand conform perfectly to Newton's third law.
There are no "laws of supply and demand" and to compare economics to physics shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what goes on in economic modeling/forecasting.
There are solutions to all these problems. It just requires objective science and cooperation.
There are many parts of the world that are sparsely populated that can sustain larger populations. Education, migration, and responsible planning could address many of the problems that are plaguing our world.
The problem is that many of the most egregious living conditions are found in dictatorial countries, countries rampant with corruptions, or countries where a caste system is alive and well.
What many people don't realize is that this last great economic expansion that has just burst didn't include the middle class this time. While home values soared, middle class salaries didn't. The increased value was in the home which is now gone.
Remember the "jobless" recovery we just had ? It was all based on debt and inflated values..not increased wealth from salaries/savings.
So, the bubble burst and the realization is here that we, the middle class, are really not that well off as we thought.
What many people don't realize is that this last great economic expansion that has just burst didn't include the middle class this time. While home values soared, middle class salaries didn't. The increased value was in the home which is now gone.
Remember the "jobless" recovery we just had ? It was all based on debt and inflated values..not increased wealth from salaries/savings.
So, the bubble burst and the realization is here that we, the middle class, are really not that well off as we thought.
Quite true. The irony is that many people think they are better off than they actually are. They are living on a debt-financed lifestyle and have very little true ownership. A loss of a good paying job or sudden increase in the interest rates required to service the debt could move people right out of their middle class life style in a minute.
I know many people with a $125k to $200k combined household income who have very little hard assets, savings and little investments beyond their 401k and 403b plans.
There are solutions to all these problems. It just requires objective science and cooperation.
There are many parts of the world that are sparsely populated that can sustain larger populations. Education, migration, and responsible planning could address many of the problems that are plaguing our world.
The problem is that many of the most egregious living conditions are found in dictatorial countries, countries rampant with corruptions, or countries where a caste system is alive and well.
The idea that there are sparsely populated places on the planet that can "sustain larger populations" is bunk, pure and simple. Places that are now sparsely populated are so for a reason--they lack adequate water, are too hot, too cold, too swampy--simply stated, lacking some critical element to sustain a large human population. In fact, there is ample evidence--desertification in sub-Saharan Africa, deforestation in equatorial South America, water crises in more places than one can count, etc., etc.--that human population density has already exceeded the "carrying capacity" in many places in the world. As to "objective science and cooperation," no amount of technological horse**** is really up to the task of regrowing a rain forest, regenerating extinct species, rebuilding complete ecosystems, or "fixing" ravaged landscapes--humans may be smart, but we're not THAT smart. As to "cooperation," all of human history shows that when humans and their societies have to compete over inadequate resources, peace and cooperation are usually the first things that go out the window. In fact, resource scarcity usually foments the very dictatorships, caste systems, and corruption that destroy freedoms, free enterprise, and democracy. At least that's been the case for the last 10,000 years or so.
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The sky is falling! The sky in falling! 
