Parasitic capitalists - a point to ponder.

[JimC]

It was the reference to nausea, it triggered a memory about French Existentialists that I can't quite pin down...

[Atheist-Lite]

I read The Fabric Of Reality. That Deutsch guy is definately smart but deluded. He's got it all mapped out to the end worse than the Bible. I'm just dealing with today and those who are around, and soon won't be, today by comparison.

[JimC]

I read The Fabric Of Reality. That Deutsch guy is definately smart but deluded. He's got it all mapped out to the end worse than the Bible. I'm just dealing with today and those who are around, and soon won't be, today by comparison.

Right, that has made me determined to survive the coming apocalypse by fair means or foul!

Guns and Gin!

[Svartalf]

Pangloss is the kind of character I've wanted to slap for the entire length of the novel... he gives me nausea, no need for sartre to do that (although he does it too... I'm sure the mofo is responsible for more suicides than Goethe ever was).

[Audley Strange]

The thing as I see it is that humanity has already solved a heap of problems that were supposed to cause widespread devastation.

Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring" (published 1963) describing how ecologically disastrous pesticides were going to cause widespread devastation. It did not happen because people learned to make less toxic and biodegradable alternatives.

Paul Ehrlich wrote "The Population Bomb" (published in 1968) describing how the growing population would exceed ability to produce food, causing massive death by starvation, during the 1970's. It did not happen because people learned to grow more food.

The Club of Rome wrote "The Limits to Growth (published in 1973) describing how we would run out of resources, including oil by the year 2000. It did not happen because people learned to find and extract more oil.

Other predictions included Y2K, nuclear war, nuclear winter, ozone depletion, various ecological catastrophes etc. What they all have in common is that none of them happened because people learned to do what was needed to avoid the disaster.

So now we have Audley predicting disaster.......

Unfair. I'm not predicting disaster, I'm saying that in order to get out of the kind of mindset (consumerist Capitalism) we are in will take more than a clever wording of traditional political philosophies. It will take a massive catastrophe to reset things to the extent we can build something new, not just rebuild. Human may like to think they learn through deductive reasoning, but they don't they learn through experience and no one wants to give up what they have, it has to be taken away.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

http://www.businessinsider.com/scientis ... ter-2012-6

[Atheist-Lite]

http://www.businessinsider.com/scientis ... ter-2012-6

There is no option, this system will crash. Humans need a mega-catastrophe to bring the numbers down, or they are extinct.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

http://www.businessinsider.com/scientis ... ter-2012-6

There is no option, this system will crash. Humans need a mega-catastrophe to bring the numbers down, or they are extinct.

The hottest fires produce the best steel. What survives passing through the fire will be stronger. But most of humanity will not be fit to survive.

[Atheist-Lite]

http://www.businessinsider.com/scientis ... ter-2012-6

There is no option, this system will crash. Humans need a mega-catastrophe to bring the numbers down, or they are extinct.

The hottest fires produce the best steel. What survives passing through the fire will be stronger. But most of humanity will not be fit to survive.

The strong, the prepapred and the lucky. A fire like the one coming only extinguishes fools. You make a good point about most of humanity being not fit to survive though.

[Svartalf]

http://www.businessinsider.com/scientis ... ter-2012-6

There is no option, this system will crash. Humans need a mega-catastrophe to bring the numbers down, or they are extinct.

The hottest fires produce the best steel. What survives passing through the fire will be stronger. But most of humanity will not be fit to survive.

Fuck that... the hottest fires massively decarburize the steel, and the best steels are rather high carbon.

[Tyrannical]

End welfare and you'll see who the parasites really are.

[laklak]

My dogs, they're parasites. Fuckers don't do a lick of work, just lie around all day and scarf chicken strips, fill the back yard with shit and drizzle sand and dirt on my clean floors. I should just eat them.

[Tyrannical]

My dogs, they're parasites. Fuckers don't do a lick of work, just lie around all day and scarf chicken strips, fill the back yard with shit and drizzle sand and dirt on my clean floors. I should just eat them.

They pay you in love

[John_fi_Skye]

:twisted:

[Blind groper]

Humans need a mega-catastrophe to bring the numbers down, or they are extinct.

The utter, inane stupidity of statements like that above, never ceases to amaze me. People who are otherwise intelligent and rational still persist in outpourings of total crap, based on ignorance.

As I have said before, and will say again, the population explosion is over. Global average fertility has dropped from 5.5 children per woman about 50 years ago to 2.55 today, which is only marginally above replacement rate (2.2). It is still dropping and will be 2.0 by 2050 according to the United Nations (well under replacement). By the year 2100, the human global population will be falling.

So humans do not need a mega catastrophe to bring numbers down. The current trend is well on the way to drop those numbers regardless.

At the same time, there is a surge in technological capability like the world has never seen. New Scientist magazine predicts a doubling of human knowledge in the next 40 years. Incredible developments are already under way with things like highly sophisticated mini robots, 3D printers for a revolutionary new way to build almost anything, customised and really, really cheap. New genetic science to give us crops that will (among numerous other things) produce their own nitrogen fertiliser, and generate life saving drugs at a fraction of the cost currently faced. More developments than could be listed in less than encyclopedic length.

Those who predict disaster are short sighted indeed.