How do young people view the future?

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Actually Wes I have been politically active most of my life.

I am a moderate, third party person (I side with neither Democrat nor Republican, I'm a centrist). Oh sure, I tried both, first Republican, then Democrat, but neither meets my needs.

I know who my congress people are, and I have sent them some letters in my time (this is understatement). I am a registered voter who votes on issues and politicians every time the ballots come out. amongst other things, such as get myself arrested for peacefully assembling more than once.....


The truth is that 20 years ago the same lack of attention existed, and I fear that 20 years from now, unless things change drastically, it will be S.O.S.

One of my professors said pretty much the same thing, and held up the 1960's as an example of 'good' citizens doing their job. Yes even the dirtiest nastiest riots he viewed as 'citizens doing their job'.

He also all but drilled in our heads that 'Government should be scared of the people, not the people scared of government'.

One of the most common reasons why few people actually 'do something' is because they feel they have no power. One of the reasons why so few exercise their vote is because they feel that one vote really doesn't do anything.

The problem is not laziness, the problem is that people feel powerless to do anything.

[WesHollywood]

Only thing I know is eventually we will overpopulate the planet and overrun its resources. I do not know well from any other countries perspective but many here lives in poverty and nor do we have the resources to feed every soul but yet the large sums comes to the hands of wrong men.

The problem with overpopulation is that those who favor irresponsible procreation have no vision. They look around, see all the open land and say, "We have room for plenty more Catholics....whoops, I mean people."

What you really need to look at is traffic jams, over building in urban areas.

Even that will not convince them. But, try this. There have never been enough JOBS on this planet. Overpopulation should be judged by how many can not find work. Surprise, Surprise! It is the poor who get f*cked. Meanwhile Pope Benny 16, (same guy trying to crush GLBT rights) is sitting over in Rome telling illiterate people who do not even have indoor plumbing to keep procreating! I say we deport all these poor to the Vatican! They helped create the problem let them solve it, instead of the American taxpayer.

[MysteryGuest]

My take on overpopulation: there may come a time when it becomes a serious problem. If that time comes, it is likely that there will be government regulations on procreation like China has. Personally, I think this is a good thing, since it will likely involve some sort of "parent licence," ensuring that only those who would really make good parents have children rather than letting the ignorant or poor people have more children that they can't support and who end up dying young or joining gangs and such.

That will last for some time, but ultimately man will realize that there is actually plenty of space available in, well, space. We will start by terraforming and colonizing the moon. From there we may build some orbiting space stations to live on. After that we will probably move on to Mars and, later, assuming it becomes feasible, other galaxies. We have already discovered quite a few other planets with climates similar to earth, I predict that that's where we'll go first. Even if it isn't feasible to colonize other planets (which I doubt) we could always build enormous spaceships designed to house a self sustaining biosphere and live in those. There are even theoretical "star stations;" basically spheres that are built to encapsulate stars, deriving their power from the star and still emitting all of the necessary rays of sunlight to nearby planets to ensure that they get the energy they need.

Overpopulation will not be an issue for long, I predict.

[WesHollywood]

My take on overpopulation: there may come a time when it becomes a serious problem. If that time comes, it is likely that there will be government regulations on procreation like China has. Personally, I think this is a good thing, since it will likely involve some sort of "parent licence," ensuring that only those who would really make good parents have children rather than letting the ignorant or poor people have more children that they can't support and who end up dying young or joining gangs and such.

That will last for some time, but ultimately man will realize that there is actually plenty of space available in, well, space. We will start by terraforming and colonizing the moon. From there we may build some orbiting space stations to live on. After that we will probably move on to Mars and, later, assuming it becomes feasible, other galaxies. We have already discovered quite a few other planets with climates similar to earth, I predict that that's where we'll go first. Even if it isn't feasible to colonize other planets (which I doubt) we could always build enormous spaceships designed to house a self sustaining biosphere and live in those. There are even theoretical "star stations;" basically spheres that are built to encapsulate stars, deriving their power from the star and still emitting all of the necessary rays of sunlight to nearby planets to ensure that they get the energy they need.

Overpopulation will not be an issue for long, I predict.

So, basically what you are saying is that 9% unemployment is not a problem for the United States.

[MysteryGuest]

Actually, I didn't say anything about unemployment. Or are you implying that the unemployment issue is potent enough to upset future advances? I'd disagree with that.

[WesHollywood]

Actually, I didn't say anything about unemployment. Or are you implying that the unemployment issue is potent enough to upset future advances? I'd disagree with that.

It really helps to read a thread before posting. My contention is that overpopulation should be judged based upon how many JOBS the planet can provide, and to adjust our birthrate, (as the Chinese do) toward a future population.

Roman Catholics, Indians, and Africans just squeeze out as many as they can, and are relegated to the bottom of the food chain. The actual term used to describe these groups is demeaning, "overpopulation pigs." (Please don't shoot the messenger). Under the current system, those who plan parenthood live the better life, those who do not live a meanial existence.

Someone should really explain this to Mexico. Seriously, would you bring a child into the world if you believed they would spend their life washing dishes in the back of a taco shack? What kind of parent would do that? Only an ignorant one in my opinion, which is why overpopulation will continue. We Americans are not able to get into this issue where the rubber hits the road and implement population controls. So we will probably go on bringing children into the world whose destiny is to starve.

These are not new ideas, nor ideas I necessarily support. Until mankind can deal with the overpopulation issue, nature will handle it in a very cruel manner.

[Pix]

My take on overpopulation: there may come a time when it becomes a serious problem. If that time comes, it is likely that there will be government regulations on procreation like China has. Personally, I think this is a good thing, since it will likely involve some sort of "parent licence," ensuring that only those who would really make good parents have children rather than letting the ignorant or poor people have more children that they can't support and who end up dying young or joining gangs and such.

Government usually doesn't work that way, though I can see them denying disenfranchised minorities and the poor the right to breed and reserving it for their own special classes (and perhaps anyone who can buy a license), though granted these people will likely be better educated than most (though I don't confuse being educated with being intelligent). They will care little or not at all if the parents will be good to their children. And it would be so unpopular that it may already be too late by the time most governments resorted to such drastic measures. Btw, even many in China defy the limits of children they can have (each extra child they have means less social benefits they receive in their system, and doctors who sterilized mothers or aborted babies against the mother's will have been prosecuted by Chinese authorities).

But I did find your optimistic scifi musings enjoyable (and I do mean that in a good way!).

[cloud999]

Even that will not convince them. But, try this. There have never been enough JOBS on this planet. Overpopulation should be judged by how many can not find work.

Job creation is a function of economic policy, not population. You can eliminate unemployment in the US tomorrow by banning all labor unions and removing the minimum wage. You'd then argue that American workers aren't making a living wage...but it's a living wage by India's standards.

Perhaps you are not aware, but the European countries you so idolize, like Italy, ran roughly 10% unemployment rates during boom times. Why? The cost of their welfare-states, combined with labor union laws that make it near-impossible to fire/layoff individuals, make roughly 10% of the population too expensive for local businesses to hire. In countries like Italy and Greece, these permanently unemployed 10% were provided for by the government. Germans actually have a mocking name for these people permanently on welfare.

This is the system you and your president are brining to the US...so get used to permanent 9% unemployment. This is what you wanted.

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P.S. My hospital just stopped hiring in anticipation of the estimated $100-million cost of Obamacare on our hospital system over the next two years. We're the second-largest private employer in the state (over 15k employees). That's how regulation can kill job creation. Fewer employees = fewer services = longer waits for treatment. And co-pays were increased to offset the cost of Obamacare's mandated "free preventative services." Guess what my fellow employees think of Obamacare. My boss is hoping that Republicans will kill Obamacare before its most destructive measures hit our department.

Hell, the publicly-funded hospital that treats mostly urban poor in my city just laid off 400 workers...so we're all sweating bullets right now. The people dying for lack of insurance will soon be dying for lack of workers and hospital beds.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Work work... and more work. All totally unnecessary. We have wasted the most precious resource on menial crap, the human mind. Shame on us.

I was reading not too long ago that above 80% of the 'jobs' we have today can readily be replaced with technologies that automate the whole process.

EXAMPLES: That burger flipper in the Fast Food joint - there is a machine that can do that far more efficiently churning out 'perfect' hamburgers at a far faster rate with more 'quality control' (that is to say with exact portions of ingredients so the company doesn't have waste).

Go into most of the super stores and we find that even the cashier is being replaced by machines... Drudge work is being replaced with technology and can be replaced totally in the 'near' future.

It is predicted that by 2050 (mid century) we could have a machine doing most of the work, and even have machines that fix machines too!

We have the technology to actually economize resources, tally it all up, and distribute those resources evenly across the globe. None of the economic systems we have come up with to date is actually economic.

Economy:
1. thrifty management; frugality in the expenditure or consumption of money, materials, etc.
2. an act or means of thrifty saving; a saving: He achieved a small economy by walking to work instead of taking a bus.
3. the management of the resources of a community, country, etc., especially with a view to its productivity.
(source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/economy )

Capitalism certainly doesn't do that. The 'free market' system doesn't care about being economic.... It's all about profits, even if that means making cheap products that have to be replaced every two years with all of those resources ending up in a landfill, or floating about in the middle of the ocean creating a continent of trash. Shame on us.

Right now with all of the technology we have, if we redistributed the resources of the world, put tabs on it all, and brought recycling up from its currently low percentage to around 80%, we could feasibly put everyone in decent housing, have them clothed, have them eating decent food and have education and health care.

No, everyone will not be living in a McMansion, no everyone will not be owning 2.3 vehicles, no everyone will not be wearing the latest inf Fashion, no everyone will not be eating steak. However the over all quality of life for all of us could be far higher than it is.

No one really needs to work 40, 60 80 hour weeks. No one really needs to be a slave in the cog of some giant corporation turning out inferior, planned obsolescent goods. This is a myth. Money and the pursuit of money is a myth. We do not need to do that anymore.

Poverty is an illusion, created by the mis-distribution of wealth. We have allowed greed and profit to overshadow ethics. Most of the poor who are in abject poverty (starving to death) are not starving to death because there is a lack of food, they are starving to death because their government is to greedy to move those 'gifts' of food and resources they get to the people who need it.

Energy crises? BS. There is no energy crises, what there is is an unwillingness to give up cheap oil and curtail our behaviors and change how we live to work with renewable energy resources.

We have the technology to harvest the cold at depths in the oceans Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC). We also have a handle on passive solar for heating and a half decent technology to convert light to electricity. We have mastered the art of hydroelectric generation, we even know how to do it in low flow (short dams) that are far easier on the ecology and allow fish to actually do their thing. We have wind, and alcohol (Look at Brazil, a fine model for oil independence).

We do not need sugar cane nor corn to produce alcohol, there are plenty of weeds on the side of our roads that grow wild that could be used. Shh don't tell, because the Corn Companies need to stick it to the little folk to make the All Mighty Dollar.

We do not have to rely on limited resourced to make most of the products we use. Plastics from oil is as primitive as can be. The first plastics were made from plant materials, and while no one talks about it, there has been a few leaps forward in that area. We could use the left over materials from soy to make plastics, the left over products from corn, the chaff of wheat.... And oil too. We no longer NEED petroleum.

The problem is not so much that we are at 7 billion strong and growing, the problem is that we are stuck with a system of economy that is primitive and outmoded, coupled with our collective unwillingness to give up the past and move on to future technologies.

Not enough jobs - We don't need everyone working. We have machines that do that. And the jobs that would be left over could be redistributed, no body needs to work more than a day a week, there are more than enough of us to tend to those machines.

Sure it sounds silly to have 7 people doing the job that one person does today, that is because we are locked into this mindset that a person does a better job at a job. Profit has created this mindset. Practicality and need didn't.

Education - higher education, is profit based as well. Shame on us. There is no need to make university into a factory to churn out educated minds at a profit. All that does is stratify society, the rich get richer, the poor are left out in the cold asking 'Do you want fried with that?' we have the ability to make a machine that can ask that question and a machine that can churn out fries from here to infinity.

We are consumers, another false ideology that is a product of greed. We are taught from the day we pop out of mom that we need designer labels, that we need the latest technology, that we have to live in a 5 bedroom Mc Mansion, drive 2.3 cars, live in the suburbs, rack up a ton of credit debt, work 40+ hours a week, have the latest gadgets, on and on that sicking list goes.

We believe it is our 'job' to consume, buy, consume, buy... We don't need to and would be better off if we didn't.

[cloud999]

We have the technology to actually economize resources, tally it all up, and distribute those resources evenly across the globe.

Let's do that, right now. Global GDP last year was $63 trillion. Global population last year was 6.8 billion.

$63 trillion / 6.8 billion = $9264 per person per year. That's a high estimate, of course, because GDP would shrink with less people working and no for-profit companies.

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Good luck convincing Americans and Europeans that they should live on just $9264/year. I don't think anyone living in LA could afford rent with that income. Can you live on $9k/year?