I've come to understand that

the morality and relational well-being of mankind cannot be reconciled through the means of politics.  This does not mean no government
is needed.

"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved
    by the level of thinking that created them."

in any case, any chapter of history since the dawn of time ought
to suffice as either proof or evidence.

discuss

>>1

If you consider your last bit (any chapter of ...) to be relevant to your unattributed quote, then if I understand you correctly, all I have to do to prove you wrong is point to a problem, and it's solution.

Napoleon is going to conquer us, oh noes! -> Wellington & Blucher at Waterloo, hoo ray!

Obviously you didn't intend to pose such a profoundly stupid question, so instead, why don't you try and reiterate it in a less profoundly stupid way.

He's saying we need to rely on superior beings other than ourselves.  See Contact.

>>3

I know that's what he's saying, I just think his argument is R-O-N-G wrong.

>>2
i suppose this kind of discussion has no end.  If i ask you how long the so and so solution you point out will last, for maybe a decade or so before the process repeats.
on second point, how would you reliterate it in a less profoundly stupid way?

>>5

You just did it. You enunciated that when you said "the problems..." you meant "the processes that create problems".

To which I don't know for sure that I have a solution because it's very vague. Which processes do you see as causing problems?

But, to go out on a limb, I'll suggest that almost any problem you can suggest could be fixed by cutting the human population in half over the course of the next 40 years, which is well within human capabilities.

IMHO, all human problems are caused by poverty, poverty is just another word for scarcity, and since (unlike some science-fictionalists on this board) I don't believe in any rational probability of the sudden appearance of resources just in the nick of time to save our sorry asses, the only way to reduce scarcity is to control the other side of the equation, the one we can control: demand.

There are two ways to reduce demand: reduce the number of users of X, or increase the efficiency with which X is used while the number of users remains the same (as suggested earlier in some other thread). But as Thomas Malthus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus) explained 250 fucking years ago, this will never happen: as efficiency increases, accessibility increases, therefore the number of users increases. Sometimes rises in efficiency actually increase scarcity. Therefore, the only rational solution to poverty (which I define as the root of all human problems), is a reduction of the number of users to all resources, i.e., depopulation. The better you want to make the world, the more you have to depopulate it (to some hypothetical minimum wherein the population can no longer maintain societal complexity [e.g., Collapse, a la J. Diamond] necessary to ensure resource production).

So yeah, I would say that all of humanity's problems are within our ability to solve... but it does depend on the crux of presuming all of humanity's ills are the result of poverty. There are other perspectives. Some people think we're just fucking evil monsters who will kill and kill until there's no-one left to skull fuck, whether we've got enough twinkies and coca-cola or not.

People need to be born fertile.

Infertile I mean

>>7,8
i think they are

>>9,8,7

Indeed.

>>6

You, good sir, should be nominated President of the f***ing world.

But to further add my 5 Cents, people in this world doesn't really give a shit about "them", them being in this case people further away than, say, 200 miles from your national border. If I, for example, were to choose between having 50,000 somalian children dying or my best friend pushing the daiseys... seriously, I think you can guess the answer.

We lack perspective enough to realize the good for us all, and that means that unless someone suddenly becomes... God... or something, we're not going to have any solution to the problems at hand, and most likely it will continue to get worse.

And as a matter of fact, Democracy and freedom isn't necessarily good things. I don't remember which nation it was, but apparantly someplace in Africa have begun using a free market and all of a sudden everyone's starving. Why? Because all the merchant charge I don't know how much for their goods. Democracy for the win!

I'm generally a pretty cynical guy, and although I DO think that a communistic utopia would be cool (I mean, come on, everyone gets what they want and there's no difference in status), it's I-M-P-O-S-S-I-B-L-E in real life. Greed and fear will rule that out.

The solution of all mankinds problem would be, if you employ Occam's Razor, killing off a lot of people.

>>6
err, what makes you think we can only control demand and not supply?

>>12

Because there's a limit to natural resources, not to mention food as well. Theoretically, this isn't a problem because, quite simply, we could cover a good deal more areas with fields and grow our food right there. The problem is the lack of knowledge and/or interest. People simply don't want to, or can't be farmers.

Oil isn't endless, nor are woods (they can be replanted though), gold, diamonds, whatever. Heck, there's not a limitless amount of iron in the world, but a heck of a lot of it. The whole point is that things of biological origin (which... ok, does include oil and woods to some extent) can be mass-produced with no real shortage (oil is a lot harder to make though, and requires a lot of time), but we can't really mass-produce metals, can we? And there is always a demand for those things, copper, iron, aluminium, everything's needed to keep a decent society standing... Of course, you don't HAVE to have these, but then you're left with a small village class : Africa.

For the record also, I'm not >>6 , just someone who agrees.

>>12&13

I am 6... and 13 did a good enough job of replying... but since I can't control my verbal diarrhea (sp?), I'll just say that if you read the Wikipedia article on Malthusian economic theory (which is well understood and accepted by modern economists) that I linked to, you'll find that humans historically always exploit every resource fully.

That is to say, we cannot control supply in a positive sense, because supply is and always will be at the highest economically-profitable level. We cannot increase supply without losing disproportionate amounts of economic value in other areas. It is possible to _reduce_ supply, but this would exacerbate the problem.

>>11
And as a matter of fact, Democracy and freedom isn't necessarily good things. I don't remember which nation it was, but apparantly someplace in Africa have begun using a free market and all of a sudden everyone's starving. Why? Because all the merchant charge I don't know how much for their goods. Democracy for the win!

Which is why we have these things called "laws" that guard against price gouging, collusion, monopolizing, and the like. But the problems of one undevloped nation in Africa that probably just switched to a capitalist model and has a weak government show that capitalism is a sham, don't you know?

<Inst#cspell>
>>14
See Chinks, their economy is highly energy and capital inefficient. For every pound of product produced in a Chinese factory, about 2.5 times the resources are consumed in comparison to Western factories. Also, for every 1% of GDP growth required, compared to India, 2x the FDI is required.

>>15

You're actually reinforcing the point you're arguing against.

In a purely free, purely democratic system, like a radically libertarian one, or an anarcho-capitalist one, there would be nothing to prevent price gouging, collusion, or monopolizing. You're just agreeing with him. :P

>>16

I think the point you're trying to make is that hypothetically you get more product Y out of resources X by increasing efficiency. This is a point I've already addressed, and the answer is that some resources are essentially finite and you will eventually run out of them anyways.

It really matters very little if you use oil half as fast or twice as fast, most of us will personally meet people who will live to see the end of oil as a viable commercial product. If not us, our children, if not our children, our grand-children, but a hundred years or so is as far as I can imagine stretching it. And please don't resort to the naive point of view that all we use oil for is fueling automobiles and heating homes, you know very well that it's used in almost every stage of manufacturing in every product made by industrialized nations at multiple steps.

We're not talking about finding an alternative fuel, we're talking about finding an alternative to thousands of common applications which are as of now very inexpensive, and while those alternatives will be found, they won't be cheap, and that cost index increase across the board on all industrialized products will brutally reduce the standard of living for billions.

>>17
<Inst#cspell>
Actually I just saw a statement I knew was not necessarily true.

<Inst#cspell>

Also, population will naturally reduce itself. As populations become more affluent, their birth rate decreases, and in certain First World countries, the population is actually declining.

If you're talking about the expense of lubricants and solvents, with greater cost, there will come greater efficiency, and while this will not wholly offset the cost increase due to the end of the oil age, it won't be as extreme.

Fundamentally oil is just carbon + large amounts of energy. The problem with oil is the "high amounts of energy" part, that in order to synthesize chemicals in oil large amounts of energy must be expended.

>>18

You can declare victory if you like, but I think you just misinterpreted me. I _never_ said you could not reduce supply, you were the first one to actually even use the term.

You can reduce supply all you want... but there is no conceivable rational reason to do so. Retards can do a lot of things that economists don't spend a lot of time thinking about, because nations aren't run by retards (or individuals), they're run by groups of elites, which are usually pretty good at gauging their own self-interest and acting to further it.

>>19

"Lubricants and solvents" is short-hand for a list the size of a phonebook full of specific items, but I suppose it is adequate short-hand for what I mean.

And I think your belief in the inevitability of greater efficiency is perhaps naive and optimistic, but neither of us can see the future. I wouldn't put my stock in human ingenuity getting us out of every problem in the knick of time (and I do mean the knick; I haven't read anyone who imagines the oil age lasting past this century).

Furthermore, you're assuming that total wealth will continue to increase to the point where a significant portion of the population can be called "affluent", which I don't imagine to be true. As affluence increases, demand for the few remaining resources which all modern affluence is built upon becomes greater, exacerbating the crash, reducing the standard of living across the board for everyone.

Even if the theory about declining birth rates in affluent countries has any causal relation inherent in it (it may just be a coincidence as of yet, it is a very recent phenomenon), the fact is if the total of exploitable oil known to have ever existed and been used, plus the exploitable oil known available to be used, was a 90 degree gauge a la the fuel gauge on most cars, it would be at 1/3rd of a tank... and there is no fucking gas station (I don't know what you're even implying in your third paragraph).

<Inst#cspell>
I'm not saying that "greater human ingenuity" will get us out of every problem. I'm saying that there are currently expensive devices that will increase efficiency, but they are currently not cost effective. As the cost of production increases, the situation will change so they will now be cost effective, that is, they are not just "environmentally friendly", but they are business friendly as well. Since the high cost of resources encourages more efficient processes, factories that use more efficient processes spend less money on raw materials and yield greater profits.

I'm not saying that this will save us from the end of oil, I'm just saying this will at least soften the blow.

>>Furthermore

This is the situation in China. The current high cost of oil is not entirely due to the Iraq war, and the resultant market jitters. In fact, developing countries, as they become more affluent, use more and more resources.

>>I don't know what you're implying in your third paragraph

At some point, chemicals derived from petroleum will be synthesized at great expense.

<Inst#cspell>
>>20
>>There is no conceivable rational reason to do so.
Easy. Inefficient use of resources saves money in the short run.

>>This is the situation in China... become more affluent, use more and more resources.

Isn't that what I said? In what sense do you disagree with my predictive chain that a world rise in affluence -> increase in rate of depletion of resources -> world decrease in affluence?

<Inst#cspell>
Okay, I'll actually read your thesis instead of picking on various points independent of their place in the whole.

>>Therefore, the only rational solution to poverty (which I define as the root of all human problems), is a reduction of the number of users to all resources, i.e., depopulation. The better you want to make the world, the more you have to depopulate it (to some hypothetical minimum wherein the population can no longer maintain societal complexity [e.g., Collapse, a la J. Diamond] necessary to ensure resource production).

Not exactly, the more people within the society, the faster resources can be harvested. Hunter gatherers are not necessarily more prosperous than Tokyo residents. Of course, at some point, adding more people to the society is no longer cost effective, the benefits of additional population will not outweigh the costs of maintaining the additional population.

>>Isn't that what I said? In what sense do you disagree with my predictive chain that a world rise in affluence -> increase in rate of depletion of resources -> world decrease in affluence?

I disagree in that, you are not providing quantifications. I'm not exactly sure you can say the average Tokyoite is worse off than the average New Yorker due to the higher cost of living. You have to know what their incomes are, relative to the cost of living. In your predictive chain, yes, increase in rate of depletion of resources will cause inflation, but as long as rise in real incomes outpaces the pace of inflation, the world will increase in affluence.

When we look at the Chinese situation, the higher oil prices they suffer are negated by the increase in their incomes. When we look outside China, the inflation due to higher oil prices are negated by deflation due to cheaper Chinese products.

<Inst#cspell> Replace inflation with increase in cost of living

>>When we look at the Chinese

Good point, but I just don't imagine it'll survive for long. I'm sure you noticed how often I keep referencing Malthusian economics, and I'm sure know what they are, but just incase I'm wrong and you don't, Malthusian economics is the simple prediction that resources increase algorithmically while population increases exponentially.

If you accept that belief, you must accede to an eventual massive collapse in societal complexity brought upon by inflation wherein the niceties of life become wildly unaffordable in order to feed the burgeoning population... or you must believe that population will be controlled somehow.

I'm not sure I believe in the feasibility of world population control, let alone in the sort of automatic leveling off you mentioned earlier. Perhaps it could happen, but it requires the whole world to reach affluence BEFORE the cheap and easy resources disappear, doesn't it?

Just a significant portion of the population.

Oh, by the way, you probably would like to thank AIDS. It's chomping heavily into population growth in Sub Saharan Africa, the part of the world with the least potential for development(though you can say it's because of AIDS).

>>27
The critical resource for human life is food. We have a lot of food available, and there is a lot of natural habitat we can axe and chop for conversion to food production if things go awry. Oil, the critical resource for our current civilization, is estimated to last for another 50 years. We already have a replacement technology(Nuclear Fission) for the energy needs. Since oil is essentially organic, a lot of the deriatives of oil can be replaced by by biological substances(though at a greater cost and lower effectiveness, of course).

By the way, http//www.google.com/...

Decrease or maintenance in population is the norm for almost all developed countries, barring the United States(heavy immigration)

>>29

Nuclear Fission supplies the energy we need, but what about the oil used as raw material for all kinds of goods? Clothes, furniture, you name it. I don't know the exact sum, but a WHOLE LOT of our every-day appliances are in some way or another made using oil as a basis. You can't really replace that with uranium, can you?

Also, with growing democracy and freedom, you have a growing disdain for the "danger" of nuclear power. For example, in Sweden it's just been decided to close down one(or maybe it was both) of the major plants. What reason? F***ing hippie Enviroment Party demanded it and those damn Danish SOBs complained about the danger of having it close to their border (ignoring the fact that their F***ing coal-plants are sending off their smog to Sweden).

The point I'm trying to get to is that the further society goes, the more complicated the matters get when keeping a nuclear-powered plant. PLUS the fact that you can't produce stuff with them, which you can, and must do with oil.

France I believe derives most of its power from Nuclear Fission. Even Greenpeace and other environmentalist organizations are beginning to do an about face, due to the lack of other alternatives.

>>PLUS the fact that you can't produce stuff with them, which you can, and must do with oil

Back to biological lubricants, are we? There's already biological plastics available and in development. Oil for manufacturing is not exactly unreplaceable.

http://www.hydromall.com/grower/suite101/organic_plastics.html

>>Back to biological lubricants, are we? There's already biological plastics available and in development. Oil for manufacturing is not exactly unreplaceable.

Filthy lies! :P

Okay, I stand corrected, if stuff like this is being developed, then I guess the need for oil is lessened.

>>33

Unless of course a major oil-company buys the patent for the new biological lubricant and then stops production and research of it.

>>32,33,34

No, the need for oil is not lessened.

The organic plastics under development are wildly more expensive to produce than petroleum based ones in practice. :P

I would like to note, since people are missing the point, that no-one was ever talking about an inevitable population crash, but instead a desired one. The abundance of food on the planet isn't a good thing, it's a bad thing! Having plenty of food ensures one thing, and that's subsistence.

There are other resources though that are about to run out, and they will IMMEDIATELY BE REPLACED BY ALTERNATIVES (so please don't bother pointing out what they are. we all already know). The devestating point is, all the alternatives are VASTLY MORE EXPENSIVE THAN THE PETROLEUM BASED ONES. When the costs of the more expensive alternatives filters into the economy, I predict MASSIVE INFLATION, causing MASSIVE DECLINE IN WORLD STANDARD OF LIVING IN AFFLUENT AREAS because to maintain a level of comfort equivalent to that in a modern affluent nation will require VASTLY MORE WEALTH.

The things capitalized are ideas people keep missing. If you read this thread over you will see that no-one ever cared whether or not there was a replacement for oil as a fuel or production item. The question is whether there is a replacement for ALL OF ITS FUNCTIONS THAT IS JUST AS INEXPENSIVE OR NEARLY SO. And there is not.

Massive inflation fails. As resources near depletion, their price will naturally increase to the point where alternatives are more cost effective.

It's hard to argue with a "decline in world standard of living in affluent areas", but it is very easy to argue with "massive".

>very easy to argue with "massive".

Yeah, you're right, adjectives are usually indefensible. It's clearly just my opinion.

Still, remember I said so if it turns out I was right. :P

(and pray to whatever G-d you still believe in that I'm wrong).

Also, I do believe in your mechanism of natural replacement... but what you don't seem to enunciate clearly enough is that once they rise to the point of synthetic replacements, most steps in industrial manufacturing will cost *double* what they do now in times of man/hours. Synthetics consume lots of time and energy compared to yanking shit out of the ground.

So while we just keep going around and around in circles around this point, which ultimately comes down to just my prediction... I do believe that all those cost-increases are going to result in a lot of cases where something has just GOT to give... and people will have to give up a lot of what they now enjoy. I think even if you predict that the cost-increases will be minor, you still have to predict a net-decrease (though it may be small) in quality of life for the citizens of the most affluent nations as a result... there will be a plateau.

Until someone gets around to perfecting cold fusion or zero-point energy production. :P

LOL, most of the time I'm not even making counter arguments, but just describing resultant processes.

Since you're claiming that industrial products will double in cost and time, source?

Depopulation and affluence tend to come together. The more educated and affluent the society, the more expensive (in both physical and parental resources) it is to raise a kid and the less kids people have. The world will depopulate on its own, assuming that developing countries can develop. So depopulation is not the answer, is this what I am understanding?  

The ultimate ceiling to growth is finite resources. I seriously doubt that these resources will exhaust themselves so quickly as to create a massive crisis. Over time as resources become scarcer, the cost to procure them will soar and be replaced by substitutes, which will become increasingly cheaper yes? I do not see why the affluent will be undermined. If anything, focus of resources to the affluent will continue making them richer, while the lower classes will be further marginalised.

>>39
The more educated and affluent the society, the more expensive (in both physical and parental resources) it is to raise a kid

I don't see how. Wouldn't an affluent society make it easier to have many children. Education usually comes without cost, especially in socialist countries; food is not a worry at all; there are parks everywhere. What more would children need?

>>38

I never claimed that industrial products will double in cost and time, I claimed that many processes in industrial products will (at least) double in cost (which is a measurement of time). The reason why I believe this is because some of my courses at university are with people whose day-job is in polymer research, and they keep telling us how important synthetic petroleum-products are, while simultaneously telling us how expensive synthetic petroleum-products are. Having taken a lot of economics courses, I find that conjunction frightening. :P

But as far as sources, here you go:

(Congressional Budget Office: Rising Price of Fuel)
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5225&sequence=0

(Thailand Board of Investment: Rising Price of Rubber)
http://www.boi.go.th/english/how/press_releases_detail.asp?id=440

(Baltimore Sun: Price of Oil relative to Price of Synthetic)
http//www.baltimoresun.com/...

(International Scientific Conference on Animal Meal: Soaring Price of Synthetic Amino Acids: "Why is this relevant you may ask?" Because bio-productive sectors use tremendous quantities of plastics for which there is no cheap synthetic replacement... they are *already* feeling the crunch of the end of the oil age)
http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/health_consumer/events/event02/eco_en.html

(International Association For Energy Economics: They predict the point at which synthetic carbon-based fuels will become cheaper than organic ones. Their guess? 8 times more than the price of oil in 1984, or something like 4 times more than what it is now)
http://www.iaee.org/documents/vol_5(3).pdf

(Automotive Digest: A graph showing how the price of giving an oil change has been continually increasing while the price it is SOLD at has not, destroying the profit margin of mechanics.)
http://www.automotivedigest.com/research/research_results.asp?sigstats_id=570

I have about a dozen more sources, so when you get done with those let me know.

Also, I'd like to appeal to common sense: it costs more to make something than to dredge something out of the ground. Why? Because that something had to have been made at some point. Not necessarily by people, but perhaps by natural processes. Why is that thing under ground? Because it took tremendous, geological amounts of time to make it. Therefore, I would think that a rational person would guess we're left with 3 alternatives: making X is very slow, making X is very expensive, finding X is fast and cheap.

When you can no longer find X... prices for everything involved with X will go up.

Lawl@Anonymous political debate: When you sound like an idiot you can just hide behind Anonymous.

>>40
No, because paradoxically, having kids becomes more expensive. Higher cost of living means that feeding the kid is more expensive, in a more affluent society, you expect and are expected to provide expensive medical care for the kid, you have to pay for the kid's education, entertainment, clothing costs are higher... etc.

>>40
College. Car. Clothes. Luxuries. Attention.
Richer people spend more money and time on their kids because they need these things (especially college), which means less kids. This is fact.

>>41 When you can no longer find X... prices for everything involved with X will go up.

People stop using X. Start using Y.

>>44
They don't need those things; they want those things.

>>42

I don't know who you're talking about, but I think that most people in this thread are making cogent points. Who are you talking about? Why do you think they are idiots?

>>45

Where'd post 41 go?

If "X" is the class of things involving petroleum in its content or manufacture, and "Y" is the class of things which don't involving petroleum in any way, then I am certain that "Y" does not contain a complete set of replacements for "X".

>>47
Then Y,Z,W etc.
It is possible to have a complete set of replacements for X, though it need not necessarily be made of one thing.

>>48

Reread my statement asshole. Y is not an alternative material. Y is not silicone or alumnimum. Y is the class of all things not made with petroleum. The world can neatly be divided into things that are made with petroleum (X) and things that can not (Y). Everything can be divided into dichotomies like this, that's why logic works, thats why statements are all either true or false.

I never once implied or imagined that Y is "made of one thing". Your reply is a non-sequitor, evident of not having read what you were replying to.

>>40

>Education usually comes without cost; especially in socialist countries; food is not a worry at all; there are parks everywhere.

None of that is free. :P

The education is paid for by taxes, and the richer a country is, the more money it spends on education per child (there is one notable exception :P). Socialist countries (and here I'm thinking more like Sweden and Canada than USSR or China) are often worse about this Capitalist countries... the price to educate a Swedish person is enormous. Intransigent fish-eating giant-headed fucks.

All the non-necessary social services like parks, busses, immunization, are a big factor in increasing the cost to society (cost to society being a cute way of saying cost to the tax-payer) drum up this figure too.

Oh, and food isn't a worry at all to be sure, but the more affluent a society is the more you spend per person on food. Food costs more in most affluent societies than in most poor societies; isn't that weird? The reason why is because most poor societies are agrarian, while most rich societies are industrial. You have to factor in transport costs. Therefore, by my bad math, its about 85 times cheaper to raise a child in Nigeria than in the United States, and over a hundred times cheaper than in Denmark, the tax-you-to-death capital of the world.