Thoughts

Sometimes, I wish I wouldn't realize many things which are actually aparent. Let's start with the biggest. The earth population is nearing 8 billions. In 30 years, the figure will be doubled. Some of you know, the real reason behind any kind of war, genocides etc. were financial problems or better said lack of resources. How is the mother earth going to feed so many people at once at the current rate? Impossible to say the least! I'm 99% there'll be a war bigger and bloodier than everything the humanity has seen before. The resources are just going down the drain, curing the symptoms isn't the solution.
Next thing, when I poo I flush the content with 5L of sweet water. In many areas of the world, people would kill for 1 bottle of drinkable water. Didn't I mention sweet water reserves are going down the drain as well?
Next is the efficiency. Laugh at prehistoric men etc. all you want but they were 1000 times more efficient than the modern man. We make fun of wasteful kings like Luis 14 or other luxury lving nobility from middle ages. They were wasteful but were so few in numbers that all in all their wrongsdoings didn't matter.
Right now, every individual of a first world country consumes and wastes more food/ energy recources than any nobility before. There're millions of them. Not to mention the garbage problem... We move 1 ton of metal 1000 kilometers per year to move a single human being most of the time. How ineffictive is that?
The next thing is our capitalistic bubble. We have managers or individuals who earn 100-1000 more times than your regular worker. Does he put in 100-1000x of their effort in their work?
What's the meaning of money then? Back in the middle ages money was equal to the effort put into a service or good. The only exception was when a merchant charged too much due to a buyer not knowing the real worth. That pricinple lived on became capitalism. I'm living off poor people all over the world No way, I put 100x more effort than 80% of the people on the planet earth.

More later on...
/rant

Is something wrong with me?

Great read, I'm looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts on life and the direction it's going.

Babun wrote:The next thing is our capitalistic bubble. We have managers or individuals who earn 100-1000 more times than your regular worker. Does he put in 100-1000x of their effort in their work?

Theres a lot of economic information that suggests most people (particularly those in industrial jobs) are paid at the marginal product of their labour to a decent degree of accuracy, plus you need to take into account the value of higher level education and the added wage that brings (skill premium) as well as how easily someone unskilled can do the job of a skilled person (elasticity of supply).

Plus theres the skill bias of technology which means new technologies only increase the productivity of skilled workers and because people are paid at their marginal product this raises the ages of the skilled workers (greater efficency=greater demand=demand curve shifts right) without benefiting the unskilled workers at all

I think the function that embodies all this is called "constant elasticity of supply" (and i only finished uni a month ago ), im not saying i nessecarily believe this, but theres a lot of evidence out there to back it up

fatman, use your common sense. How could one justify 1000x or more access to resources for a single individual compared to someone who lives next to him?
Do you get where I'm coming from?

THC 10 wrote:Great read, I'm looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts on life and the direction it's going.

I think there's only one direction for the life to prevail and to solve our problem with resources.
We need to colonize other planets by making their surface livable, getting access to new resources etc.
If you ask what was the creation purpose of homo sapiens I'd say the life is bound to die out once earth passes it's age or the sun won't shine anymore. To get around the problem you need the most complex known biological structure in our universe-> human brain.
We're social animals so the correct answer would be human brains in plural. Instead of wasting our last resources on iPhones, iPads etc. humanity should concentrate all its focus on finding a way to colonize or gain access to resources outside of earth.
Resources shouldn't be contricted to the terrestrial ones. For example, I read articles about scientists trying to find oil or similar structures on other planets. Well, there're 1000x more chemical molecules which give you energy by burning or one could convert mechanical energy into chemical one ( electrolysis). Why concentrate on finding oil then? I could understand the search for water though.
The way it's going on right now, we might have to kill each other some day, THC

Not a rant babun, what you said is reality. I will post my thoughts once i reach the inspiration point

Babun wrote:fatman, use your common sense. How could one justify 1000x or more access to resources for a single individual compared to someone who lives next to him?
Do you get where I'm coming from?

I do see where your coming from and like i said, i dont believe any of that, im just playing devils advocate . To be comepletly honest ive spent this whole year studying economics and i dont think i've ever been expsed to more bullsh*t in my life, i think its stupid that some tool behind a desk can make 20 irrational assumptions about the real world just so he can express a natural pheonomena via an equation and say he understands why markets do what they do

Talking about Adam Smith ?

RealGunner wrote:Talking about Adam Smith ?

i wouldnt have a clue who he is? he an economist?

fatman123 wrote:

RealGunner wrote:Talking about Adam Smith ?

i wouldnt have a clue who he is? he an economist?

Wait, are you serious?

RealGunner wrote:Not a rant babun, what you said is reality. I will post my thoughts once i reach the inspiration point

I dumped my thoughts here because I feel increasingly annoyed by the BS spread by politicians etc. When you have the bigger picture in front of yourself and then hear how politicians try to persuade us to more "economical growth" ...

fatman123 wrote:

Babun wrote:fatman, use your common sense. How could one justify 1000x or more access to resources for a single individual compared to someone who lives next to him?
Do you get where I'm coming from?

I do see where your coming from and like i said, i dont believe any of that, im just playing devils advocate . To be comepletly honest ive spent this whole year studying economics and i dont think i've ever been expsed to more bullsh*t in my life, i think its stupid that some tool behind a desk can make 20 irrational assumptions about the real world just so he can express a natural pheonomena via an equation and say he understands why markets do what they do

What's economical growth? Throwing away more unused stuff ( bread or other edible products which expire with time, surprise, surprise, we throw away much more than we consume ) or dumping more garbage onto a foreign country? Does everybody need a car? The question is a serious one

Seriously, someone explain me the terminus economical growth. I failed to get its point all these years

Oh, the myth about appropriate pension for all people after retirement. In Europe, we live with a reverse pyramid. One working individual takes care of up to five pensioners The situation is only possible, for we live in capitalistical bubble by exploiting other countries. In other words, one worker doesn't support 5 elderly alone, the rest of the world does so with him

If you read my first post you'd know that the bubble will eventually burst in near future. All of the retirement systems in Europe or USA won't work anymore because people will increasingly be paid for their real effort.

In my eyes, the best solution is at the same time the oldest one possible. One should be paid as much as they have working offsprings in society. Why are child birth rates are so low in Europe? There's actually no need to raise a child like in old times. People needed their offsprings to take care of them even in stone age Right now, raising a child is like raising a pet
The closeness between family members or friends has increasingly gotten loose due to the current pension systems. People fail to see any dependence between their relationship with close friends/ family in big cities. There, everybody anonymously lives for himself

Off to uni...

Correct me if I'm wrong but your rant has a couple of main points:

1- World has limited resources and with exponential growth of population and resources consumption we are headed to disaster.
2- Old times were better, middle ages people received a fairer payment, there wasn't as many poor people, etc.

Regarding 1:
It's true that world has limited resoruces and it simply can't sustain perpetual exponential economical or population growth. At current rate of energy consumpton growth, the earth atmosphere would reach boiling point in about 400 years, whichever the energy source used.
However, there's still margin of increase in energy and food producion. That shouldn't be a problem, but we need to control population growth sooner or later. Population generally stops growing once a country develops, and in most parts of the world is slowing down, but where it isn't there should be some kind of control. Religion is a bad factor on that part.
We can avoid extreme scarcities and wars if we invest in technology (new energy sources + food productivity increase through genetic engineering), and expand democracy and secularism.
You don't mention another incredible big factor, which is Oil peak. Since 2007 oil production can't be increased, so there will be scarcity in the future.
However, so far humanity tends to improve and this leads me to number 2:

2- People love to complain about how the past was better than the present. In almost everything they are nearly always wrong. Medieval times were not better than today in almost anything. No, people didn't receive a more fair salary for their work than today: 80% of the population were semi-slave farmers, who were bound for live to their field and had to give a big part of their crops to their nobles. They worked from dawn to sunset, were miserable and barely had any rights. If there was a colder year, a draught or a war, all this regular farmers faced famine who killed lots of them. Regularly there were plagues that killed 20% of people. Also, in middle ages there was slavery, something most people doesn't know, no education and complete lack of health care.
Oh, and nobles were inmensily rich and all they did was make wars with one another and scratch their asses.

In general, the world has been improving steadily since industrial revolution and the creation of Science. Most of the world lives better than in 1.700. Yes, there's famine, poverty and scarcity in some places, but you have to put it in context too: Etiopia suffered a great famine a year ago. Well, in Ethiopia there are 77 milion of people living in a desert. A century ago there was 7 milion people. The fact that population has multiplied for 10 clearly means that people had more food and longer lives than before, so that points out to a better standard of living, only if it's just a little.

Obviously, the world could be fairer and better, but it can't be perfect. The way should be to continue expanding democracy, secularism, rationalism and science, and from a political point of view, continue with world integration. The EU is just a first step, but it would be important than sometime a World democratic government, who had power in global issues (poverty, human rights, enviroment, finances, maybe others) was created.

Where exactly is the problem? Earth existed nicely before humans showed up and it will exist nicely afterwards. There have been enough species that messed up their environment and let it utterly collapse (probably starting with the cyanobacteria that originally created the oxygen atmosphere of the Earth and thus thoroughly poisoned their environment and made it uninhabitable for themselves). The universe won't care if the human species perishes and it would be interesting to see what comes afterwards.

rwo power wrote:Where exactly is the problem? Earth existed nicely before humans showed up and it will exist nicely afterwards. There have been enough species that messed up their environment and let it utterly collapse (probably starting with the cyanobacteria that originally created the oxygen atmosphere of the Earth and thus thoroughly poisoned their environment and made it uninhabitable for themselves). The universe won't care if the human species perishes and it would be interesting to see what comes afterwards.

The problem is that we like to live and survived. Basically we are genetically programed to be extremeley eager to survival. So people doesn't want to die, neither to see humanity disappear. Sooner or later humanity will disappear. 1 bilion years from now when the sun expands if we haven't been able to set sail to the stars or towards the end of the universe if we have been able.
However, the later, the better. We are the way of the universe to know itself.

Well, for some reason I always considered humanity a rather failed experiment (I've been writing stories and texts about that since primary school ), so actually I've been looking at this with some bemusement for years.

When my parents told me I should see to it that I get a good pension, I already told them quite a while ago that they will be the last generation where that system works. They didn't want to believe me, but now they slowly start to see. I have a reason for it that I never wanted to reproduce, as I don't think the way humans act is in anyway feasible for much longer. But frankly, I don't really care. I published my writings and if people don't listen, it won't be my problem anymore when my time is up. *shrugs* I don't feel like fighting windmills and human stupidity. (I actually used the name "Cassandra" as nick for a while, lol).

And who says we are "the way" of the universe to know itself. In my understanding there will be ample more ways and maybe one or the other will (have) be(en) a bit more intelligent than the human species.

free_cat wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong but your rant has a couple of main points:

1- World has limited resources and with exponential growth of population and resources consumption we are headed to disaster.
2- Old times were better, middle ages people received a fairer payment, there wasn't as many poor people, etc.

Regarding 1:
It's true that world has limited resoruces and it simply can't sustain perpetual exponential economical or population growth. At current rate of energy consumpton growth, the earth atmosphere would reach boiling point in about 400 years, whichever the energy source used.
However, there's still margin of increase in energy and food producion. That shouldn't be a problem, but we need to control population growth sooner or later. Population generally stops growing once a country develops, and in most parts of the world is slowing down, but where it isn't there should be some kind of control. Religion is a bad factor on that part.
We can avoid extreme scarcities and wars if we invest in technology (new energy sources + food productivity increase through genetic engineering), and expand democracy and secularism.
You don't mention another incredible big factor, which is Oil peak. Since 2007 oil production can't be increased, so there will be scarcity in the future.
However, so far humanity tends to improve and this leads me to number 2:

2- People love to complain about how the past was better than the present. In almost everything they are nearly always wrong. Medieval times were not better than today in almost anything. No, people didn't receive a more fair salary for their work than today: 80% of the population were semi-slave farmers, who were bound for live to their field and had to give a big part of their crops to their nobles. They worked from dawn to sunset, were miserable and barely had any rights. If there was a colder year, a draught or a war, all this regular farmers faced famine who killed lots of them. Regularly there were plagues that killed 20% of people. Also, in middle ages there was slavery, something most people doesn't know, no education and complete lack of health care.
Oh, and nobles were inmensily rich and all they did was make wars with one another and scratch their asses.

In general, the world has been improving steadily since industrial revolution and the creation of Science. Most of the world lives better than in 1.700. Yes, there's famine, poverty and scarcity in some places, but you have to put it in context too: Etiopia suffered a great famine a year ago. Well, in Ethiopia there are 77 milion of people living in a desert. A century ago there was 7 milion people. The fact that population has multiplied for 10 clearly means that people had more food and longer lives than before, so that points out to a better standard of living, only if it's just a little.

Obviously, the world could be fairer and better, but it can't be perfect. The way should be to continue expanding democracy, secularism, rationalism and science, and from a political point of view, continue with world integration. The EU is just a first step, but it would be important than sometime a World democratic government, who had power in global issues (poverty, human rights, enviroment, finances, maybe others) was created.

Thank you for constructive critic

1. On to your first point. Yeah, you got the first part right but left out the other part. We knowingly throw away or waste resources which are known to be limited. Personally, I wouldn't care much about metal and similar products however food and water are another story. Every bakery or supermarket in Germany throws away more food than the consumers buy. I'm not talking about helping to ease famine somewhere else in the world. I'm talking about the misuse or mismanagement of limited resources we have. Next, you mention the population ratio to the amout of resources. I have to add the more developed a country is the more every individual living in that country consumes. For example, I consume roughly as much as 50 Indians would. Your version of population is restricted to quantity, add quality and you'd know the consumption of resources doesn't grow linear but exponentially.
2. In no way, I think middle ages or the past were better or any individual compared to present time. I don't give a damn about nobilities either. I think I was vastly misunderstood.
I used them to draw a comparison between goods consumption of an individual and as a group compared to present time. They had little choice so had to work efficiently with the limited resources they had.
Contrary to them, we have much more choices in front of us. Instead of making our consumption effective, we find new ways to waste already scarce resources.
I compared an individual to a nobility from the past from consumption point of view. Do you know why I everybody lives better? They're offered much more access to resources than ever before.
Imagine Europe is full of those butt scratching individuals but without wars and they're multiplying everywhere else from the point of consumption.


Now we go to your solution, yeah, a cap for birth rate would solve the problem short term. We don't only need to stop the growth of human population we need to descrease the number by a LOT.
A central government would be the best solution however how would one realize such a body? Its possible but very difficult. People may wise up due to pressure come next 20-30 years.
I think it's also hard to implement. Tell a couple they shouldn't produce a child= the point of every living being on earth. Who are you tell them who is allowed to have a child and how isn't? What will you do if a girl conceives anyway? There're religious and moral barriers everywhere, even in Europe.

rwo power wrote:Where exactly is the problem? Earth existed nicely before humans showed up and it will exist nicely afterwards. There have been enough species that messed up their environment and let it utterly collapse (probably starting with the cyanobacteria that originally created the oxygen atmosphere of the Earth and thus thoroughly poisoned their environment and made it uninhabitable for themselves). The universe won't care if the human species perishes and it would be interesting to see what comes afterwards.

Don't derail the thread, Mäuschen. If you're programed to be self destructive that's your choice. We're discussing here how to keep humanity and life overall alive. If you aren't interested in the topic how to keep the life intact make a thread about whether it makes sense to keep humanity+ living beings alive.
I see many people with your point of view and they disgust me to say the least. If you don't like living that much or humanity as whole seems worthless to you why are you living? Just go die

See what I did there? I was kidding but hope you got the message. Even earth has got limited life time...

@Babun

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

rwo power wrote:@Babun

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

This sounds incredibly frightening, when it's Germans discussing it, like us

VivaStPauli wrote:This sounds incredibly frightening, when it's Germans discussing it, like us

That's why I prefer not to elaborate on it

But we've shown how it goes: Germany has a birth rate so low, that our population is actually slowly shrinking - this is a model for the world to follow, and it would solve a lot of problems.

BTW, regarding Babuns thought on wasting drinking water: don't fret it, honestly. It sounds weird, but your "wasting" of water doesn't hurt anyone. First of all the fresh water reserves in and under Germany are in no way connected to places like Africa. Secondly, we have water treatment plants. When you flush your toilet, that water is treated, freshened up, and re-inserted into our water cycle.

Water doesn't just disappear, and you can't just move it to areas where it is too sparse, other than building a pipeline to there. So this really isn't that much of a problem.

Water is sparse in regions because either there is no water there, or because they lack the infrastructure to access said water. You don't hurt those people by using water.

We (Europe & America) are hurting the developing countries with one thing though, and we're hurting them tremendously: our hypocritic insistance on deregulation and neo-liberal free market capitalism.

Because we preach water and drink wine. The biggest advocates of free-market capitalism with huge deregulations to follow are the international monetary fund, the world bank, and their biggest fans, the USA and England.

Funnily enough, have you ever tried importing steel into England? Or corn or coal or sugar into the US of A?
They have incredibly high tolls on that. Those are exactly the kind of protective taxes they advocate again.

Because of this, the African countries can't form subsidary agrarian economies which they could then use as a basis for generating wealth. The easiest way for a country to go from shit-heap to proper economy would be to farm the land, sell the surplus, and use the money for industrialization. This won't work, however, when the European Union makes the export of most food stuffs into the Union impossible, by the way of high tolls, artificially inflating the prices of, for example, African wheat, and at the same time hugely subsidizing European farmers.

It's retarded. It costs the EU billions, and it makes those little African children starve even harder than any iPhone factory ever could.

running arround the grass kicking a ball
god dat effort
pays you exactly what you deserve

i would trade ronaldo to give a daily dinner to 30.000 african children, i wouldnt miss him tbh lol
but still i wonder why those africans *bleep* each other and give birth to children that will have a miserable life, at least at first

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 aint right but most people credit what steve jobs does or better what he has to offer to the public
whereas only the old ladies you helped will care for your actions, they aint gonna pay you millions for that

the system works just the way it should.
though i understand that he invented something and he gets the price for it, its us who give credit to it
i would be all for it if someone invented a cure for cancer and spread it allover the world, give him the money, the millions of dollars, he deserves it

but i aint give a shit about ipod, ipad icrap. apparently other people do, the majority does and he gets rich.
its all about us

im not wellinformed about him so i dont know if or what exactly he invented
just sayin

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