Thoughts

Babun do you really think a central government is the best way, there's so many issues that would come with that like who gets what, who puts in what, resistance from corrupt countries, I don't want to be in a federation with them which could very easily lead to war etc, plus after reading brave new world the idea of a central gov doesn't sound great

And depending on who you believe the banks already run America so it's too late for that anyway

VivaStPauli wrote:Ah, and the largest point by Babun, which Ninis (or Idiot <3) just picked up:
I agree that NOBODY is worth 100 or 1000 times the salary of anyone else. I can totally live with a doctor making 5 times the income of a carpenter, though even that already seems like a lot.

But to think that Capitalism is a system, which permits the allocation of millions of times the resources to single human beings than others receive... Just look at a billionaire. Let's take Steve Jobs. I don't know what his net worth was, but for the sake of argument let's say it was 20 billion.
I have like 10 grand saved up, which already is a lot.

This means Jobs would have had two million times the money I have. That ain't right. That can't be right. I'm a decent human being, I help old ladies across the street, I sometimes give to charity, I never get aggressive, and I go down on my girlfriend - I'm a moral person.

Why the shit would I get a million times less than someone else?
And why the shit do I get to live with running water, basically free health care, and enough food to keep me healthy, while people die of Malaria and starvation in the Congo?
That ain't right.

IMO, as long as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs paid their taxes and earner their money through legal ways, they have all the right to have 2 milion times your money.
The other point, however, is much more interesting and important. IMO they shouldn't. Everyone in the world should be guaranteed a minimum which basically should be food, a very modest housing, basic education and healthcare.
This is precisely something a World government could do, provide the basic stuff that all the world should have, in return for precisely for countries to respect humans right, control population, enviroment and so on.

fatman123 wrote:Babun do you really think a central government is the best way, there's so many issues that would come with that like who gets what, who puts in what, resistance from corrupt countries, I don't want to be in a federation with them which could very easily lead to war etc, plus after reading brave new world the idea of a central gov doesn't sound great

And depending on who you believe the banks already run America so it's too late for that anyway

A central government doesn't mean only one government that controls everything, far from that. Just a world government, or you could call it organization, it could even be runed from the UNO, that tackled some global issues that the countries can't tackle individually, mainly financial, human rights, enviorement, poverty.

rwo power wrote:@Babun

You know there are some very simple ways to reduce population growth, but they would be totally not popular.

Like castrating women?

VivaStPauli wrote:Ah, and the largest point by Babun, which Ninis (or Idiot <3) just picked up:
I agree that NOBODY is worth 100 or 1000 times the salary of anyone else. I can totally live with a doctor making 5 times the income of a carpenter, though even that already seems like a lot.

But to think that Capitalism is a system, which permits the allocation of millions of times the resources to single human beings than others receive... Just look at a billionaire. Let's take Steve Jobs. I don't know what his net worth was, but for the sake of argument let's say it was 20 billion.
I have like 10 grand saved up, which already is a lot.

This means Jobs would have had two million times the money I have. That ain't right. That can't be right. I'm a decent human being, I help old ladies across the street, I sometimes give to charity, I never get aggressive, and I go down on my girlfriend - I'm a moral person.

Why the shit would I get a million times less than someone else?
And why the shit do I get to live with running water, basically free health care, and enough food to keep me healthy, while people die of Malaria and starvation in the Congo?
That ain't right.

I think you misunderstood me or think I'm a very good man I was talking about the flaw in the system. Individuals aren't at fault if they excell in a flawed system. In that sense, Jobs etc. did a great job. Capitalism is crap though... That's where we should try to change. more later...

On food: rapid developments on genetically modified crops might have something to say about that. We are constantly developing crops that produce more, are able to survive in more scarce environments, etc. Big governments should stop blocking their development. I'm not sure if it'll offset the population growth, but it's a mistake to assume current production levels.

On wastefulness: generally agreed.

On capitalism: you make the mistake to assume that amount earned is equal to effort placed. Amount earned is a measure of how scarce a set of skills is. For all I know a construction workers works his ass off 10 hours a day, whereas a neurosurgeon works only 30 minutes a day and flirts with nurses the rest of the day, but the neurosurgeon's skill-set is much more limited.

Babun wrote:

rwo power wrote:@Babun

You know there are some very simple ways to reduce population growth, but they would be totally not popular.

Like castrating women?

Well, women are the bottleneck. You can castrate a million guys, but even a handful could create thousands of offspring, while the number of kids per woman is strictly limited. In a way, the Chinese and Indians restrict their population growth already by killing off daughters as they prefer boys. If they wouldn't do that, the population explosion in these regions very likely would be even worse.

VivaStPauli wrote:Ah, and the largest point by Babun, which Ninis (or Idiot <3) just picked up:
I agree that NOBODY is worth 100 or 1000 times the salary of anyone else. I can totally live with a doctor making 5 times the income of a carpenter, though even that already seems like a lot.

But to think that Capitalism is a system, which permits the allocation of millions of times the resources to single human beings than others receive... Just look at a billionaire. Let's take Steve Jobs. I don't know what his net worth was, but for the sake of argument let's say it was 20 billion.
I have like 10 grand saved up, which already is a lot.

This means Jobs would have had two million times the money I have. That ain't right. That can't be right. I'm a decent human being, I help old ladies across the street, I sometimes give to charity, I never get aggressive, and I go down on my girlfriend - I'm a moral person.

Why the shit would I get a million times less than someone else?
And why the shit do I get to live with running water, basically free health care, and enough food to keep me healthy, while people die of Malaria and starvation in the Congo?
That ain't right.

It's estimated that good sales of the iPhone can boost the US GDP by 0.25% by some study that circulated the news a few months back (I can look for it if anyone's interested). 0.25% of 15 trillion is a lot of money (.0375 trillion). All due to the company he founded based on his ideas. Think of how many products Apple sells, how many people it provides employment to (72,800 as direct employees, probably an awful lot more than that through suppliers and the sort), how much money it produces, etc. It's completely fair he earns millions more than you.

just yesterday i was watching a documentery on the future of earth by Michio Kaku and for the first time i felt that there's hope for humanity. Thanks to you that didnt last long. But the thing is technology might be the answer to all these problems, that's if we survived this slump and made it to a technological age.


on Capitalism: *bleep* capitalism...i know you guys expect to read a better argument but thanks to capitalism i have to keep billing hours to keep my job and that's what i should be doing now

Babun wrote:
I think you misunderstood me or think I'm a very good man I was talking about the flaw in the system. Individuals aren't at fault if they excell in a flawed system. In that sense, Jobs etc. did a great job. Capitalism is crap though... That's where we should try to change. more later...

That's what I mean as well. The system is at fault. A system that allows for one individual to be alotted a thousandfold the resources another individual is, is inherently flawed.

rwo power wrote:

Babun wrote:

rwo power wrote:@Babun

You know there are some very simple ways to reduce population growth, but they would be totally not popular.

Like castrating women?

Well, women are the bottleneck. You can castrate a million guys, but even a handful could create thousands of offspring, while the number of kids per woman is strictly limited. In a way, the Chinese and Indians restrict their population growth already by killing off daughters as they prefer boys. If they wouldn't do that, the population explosion in these regions very likely would be even worse.

That's a pretty myopic outlook lol.

Look at any developed somewhat secular state and you'll see that the empowerment of women and giving them life choices and employment opportunities has pretty much curbed population growth to very reasonable levels.

The same needs to be done in other countries but they first need to go through the linear stages of development which they can't for the reasons Vivia outlined..and even in that case the likelihood of those oppurtuinities being squandered by nepotistic and corrupt governance is pretty high.

I don't even blame capitalists, they're just creating sustainability within their own systems and exploiting periphery societies to the point at which it's advantageous to them. The pursuit of rational self interest but in a more complex manner and taking sustainability into account.

In a wierd sort of way it's praise worthy.

The exploitation of colonies resources in both classical and contemporary times, stunted population growth during the slavery era that led to the retardation of West African economies. All more important issues in my mind than people doing the best thing for themselves with the dark reality of scarcity looming.

Capitalism is not flawed. It is well known that humans work on incentives and, like it or not, if these people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates did not dream of becoming rich, then we would not be using any computers or phones or anything. We would probably be still stuck in the 17th century.

But, i don't think any country in this world follows unbridled capitalism. Like Viva mentioned, even the champions of free trade have trade controls in their own country and subsidizes some of its workers heavily. So there is no way any of us can criticize capitalism as it has not been implemented to full effect and a lot of the people still make huge amounts of money by lobbying the government to give them special privileges which is obviously wrong.

Atleast a 1000- fold difference in incomes is absolutely necessary for any sort of progress we want to achieve, because money is a big incentive for people to work hard at acquiring a specialized skill set.

Le Samourai wrote:
That's a pretty myopic outlook lol.

Look at any developed somewhat secular state and you'll see that the empowerment of women and giving them life choices and employment opportunities has pretty much curbed population growth to very reasonable levels.

The same needs to be done in other countries but they first need to go through the linear stages of development which they can't for the reasons Vivia outlined..and even in that case the likelihood of those oppurtuinities being squandered by nepotistic and corrupt governance is pretty high.

I don't even blame capitalists, they're just creating sustainability within their own systems and exploiting periphery societies to the point at which it's advantageous to them. The pursuit of rational self interest but in a more complex manner and taking sustainability into account.

In a wierd sort of way it's praise worthy.

The exploitation of colonies resources in both classical and contemporary times, stunted population growth during the slavery era that led to the retardation of West African economies. All more important issues in my mind than people doing the best thing for themselves with the dark reality of scarcity looming.

I agree with all these points. There has to be an answer to curb exploitation. Perhaps an empowered universal police and justice system?

kiranr wrote:Capitalism is not flawed. It is well known that humans work on incentives and, like it or not, if these people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates did not dream of becoming rich, then we would not be using any computers or phones or anything. We would probably be still stuck in the 17th century.

But, i don't think any country in this world follows unbridled capitalism. Like Viva mentioned, even the champions of free trade have trade controls in their own country and subsidizes some of its workers heavily. So there is no way any of us can criticize capitalism as it has not been implemented to full effect and a lot of the people still make huge amounts of money by lobbying the government to give them special privileges which is obviously wrong.

Atleast a 1000- fold difference in incomes is absolutely necessary for any sort of progress we want to achieve, because money is a big incentive for people to work hard at acquiring a specialized skill set.

I don't think money is what motivates all of our great minds. I'm not saying that all introverts are alike, but we tend to be the more imaginative types and I myself am in no way motivated by money. I understand its importance for things like bills, food and clothing (not all that fancy stuff either) - for instance, even if I make it big, you won't see me in flashy cars and big houses. I think there is a flaw in capitalism (keep in mind that I am in no way very knowledgable on this topic), I just have grown up analyzing the world and have certain beliefs.

I recall someone bringing up taxes, but nobody mentioned how little the wealthy people fork out. If they earn more money, shouldn't they be paying more in taxes as well. Once again, I'm no expert but I did watch the ESPN 30 for 30 film "Broke" and they mentioned how much athletes get taxed as opposed to the wealthy (please correct me if I'm wrong).

The birthrate is also alarming and it's not the rate at which people are having children that bothers me most, it's the amount of people who have children and refuse to take care of them. I live in a nice part of Manhattan and so many of these wealthy people have children and leave them to be raised by babysitters. So many kids are being neglected and this leads to unfit humans (in a sense that so many of these kids will grow up with issues) - my mother teaches at a public school and see these things on a daily basis.

Anyway, sorry if I was all over the place, I just wanted to contribute something to this thread after reading a few posts. It's been great reading all of your opinions on the topic at hand.

Money is an important incentive Tetra as it gives buying power. This buying power is not just related to luxury items. Let us take the example of Warren Buffet. He pays himself only about 100,000 dollars annually. But money is an important incentive for him because it gives him the ability to buy more businesses or invest in many more companies which is what he loves doing. And while doing so he has created value for many of the investors who invested with him. It is important that society allocated 100,000 fold resources to a person like him than say, me, because of the value he adds to so many people around him.

So, what i am trying to say is, money is a tool that allows to do more of what you like. In that sense money is an important incentive for those people who have that specialized skill set that Barrilete was talking about and it is important that most of the resources are allocated to such people.

Kiranr, I'm a math student in Germany and there's one in India. What's the real difference between our skillsets?

Babun wrote:Kiranr, I'm a math student in Germany and there's one in India. What's the real difference between our skillsets?

he will work for 1 euro per hour whereas u wont go below 20

Babun wrote:Kiranr, I'm a math student in Germany and there's one in India. What's the real difference between our skillsets?

Assuming you and the student from India are the same level of knowledge and intelligence and there are equal opportunities for both of you in the market place, then both of you would get paid approximately the same amount either in India or Germany.

But just look at the number of assumptions here and there may possibly be more which i have not thought about. It is just not possible to create a system where people are paid based on their skill sets. You get paid based on what the market is prepared to pay you based on your skill set and the specific opportunity out there.

My thoughts are with u Babun (ohh my english) and i guess nothin's wrong with u m8 !lool.....well i'll share my MIND-LOL later......btw didn't u get inspired from a movie Babun !!!
Well now SerIously, A grEat n very veryy interesting topic .

The other day in my Ethics class the topic was brought up of whether we should limit population growth all over the world through one-child policies or if it should only be limited in nations that have severe problems such as China (where it is already in effect with some problems). The general consensus was that we should not be restricted; only countries with population problems should be. While I understood the arguments made about personal freedom and whatnot, as well as how a country like Canada does not actually have many people given the land we have, I felt like the only person in the class, outside of maybe my professor who may have just been playing devil's advocate, who felt that we should restrict it soon everywhere anyway (admittedly not taking into account how hard this would be to do).

If we wait, things will only get worse as the world's population continues to rise, and the countries that so many people argued could afford to have more people are countries where the standard of living is so high that each one extra person causes a lot more damage to our planet. Personal freedom is all well and good, but when does it reach the point when people will voluntarily put their own wants aside for the greater good? When we are truly at the point of no return where people will actually take responsibility for their actions? Or will we continue to point fingers? It also annoyed me that nobody in my class was willing to say that, government policy or not, they would voluntarily not have (many) children. Everybody was saying 'well I want 3 kids so I have every right to do it since it's not like our country is the main villain in the global crisis' - actually, every person is responsible, no matter where you were born, since geographical location really doesn't mean anything here.

I plan on having 1 child, or 2 kids maximum if my future wife insists, but I mean really how important is it to people to have a set number of kids to a person's individual rights? Will it really inconvenience you that much to have only 1 child? And what about how it inconveniences others? Honestly, at a certain level my belief in abortion (that it should be legal) is influenced by the fact that it annoys me how much value our global society puts on individual rights. A human can survive easily without eating any meat for example, and yet we still do it despite the massive carbon footprint that the industry leaves because we don't want to hurt individual rights. For this reason alone I'm considering not eating meat. When the day comes when shit hits the fan, which it very well could in my lifetime, I don't want people pointing fingers. We all caused this problem, now let's all fix it, even if it means rattling the preconceived notions of what we as individuals 'deserve.'

Would that really help though?

Canada's natural population is actually projected to decrease in the coming years (or is at least stable) and Canada is underpopulated. All having less children does is place a limit on production possibility.

Unless Canada were to start simply giving their extra resources to underdeveloped states there's very little population control within Canada can do to help anything. They have already loosened immigration policy to allow unskilled workers in and alleviate population growth and pressure from other countries.

There's very little they can actually rationally do other than that.

Meat and the global warming issue on a whole is another thing. But it's worthy to note that linear industrial development in currently undeveloped economies will result in an increase in CO2 emissions and consumption of resources. So those people in Africa that are starving right now will provide added strain to these issues whenever they do become developed.

As BC said, some degree of innovation is necessary to solve issue, it's not possible to solve them through conservation.

There's still not enough jobs in Canada to satisfy our labour supply in many industries, and in terms of the pollution each person contributes here despite our small population, we are nowhere close to staying within the carbon emission boundaries that have been set for us. My point is that on an individual level, Canadians pollute a lot, so identifying ourselves as not part of the problem is naive, which is why I think it's irresponsible to believe that having a bunch of kids in the future won't harm the planet - I'm not talking about the productivity of our country or the overall carbon footprint, I mean on an individual level the impact that we have does not change just because of where we live and that we identify ourselves with being Canadian. If Canada becomes more industrialized and we need more people, then immigration can be the driving force there, but more children will always make the ship sink that little bit faster.

And I'm not so sure that relying on innovation is a sustainable game-plan because nobody knows how long it will take in order to acquire such technology. There are already many available technologies that are not even widely used that could help us, but we don't use them because the people who could implement them choose not to. Even if we did all that we could right now with no innovation whatsoever, we would be in a considerably better position, arguably a better one than any single technology could achieve, but to a certain degree it feels as though we are all waiting for things to get really bad before we really take serious action (not including those wonderful people in some Scandinavian countries )

I like the discussion here. To stay on point I'd like to reitirate my general opinion.
The growth of the population shouldn't be just stopped. We need to reduce the current number of the population by almost half. Even that won't help us in the long but we'd buy time to find the "innovation" to colonize objects in outer space.
The way I see it nothing will be done until it's too late. That's why I expect a big bloody war in next decades to come.

@Babun

Well, a pandemic with high lethality rate could do the trick, too.

Idk Babun, you sound a bit too much like the guys back in 2000 predicting that the finite life of our oil resources was going to end society as we knew it. What actually happened: oil didn't run out by 2010, it was just harder and more expensive to find (off-shore oil drilling, etc) and advances in shale-gas drove the price down and made a lot more reserves available. We can't use current production to assess future production. Or the guys who said back in 1990 that the next major war would be fought over water supplies (at the time acid raid was making a lot of water supplies not very safe). That didn't happen either.

I'm sure we'll find a way.

@BC, I'm an optimist by nature and by no means a doom monger however the issues can't be brushed aside anymore.

About the predicted oil crisis: the crisis was delayed by finding new ways to make more amounts of oil available however the reserves are going to run out and the mobile vehicles still run on oil products for the most part.

Water war: fresh water isn't unlimited... This is where technology could become useful. Actually, earth possesses huge amounts of water but not in drinkable form. If we could find an efficient way to separate sweet water from salt in oceans the problem could be solved easily.

No technology is going to produce food out of nowhere though. If you don't give the earth enough time to regenerate no technology is going to help. You could increase the amount and the rate if production by genetic manipulation. In any case, the basis will run out.


Off to uni