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posted by
martyb
on Sunday March 17 2019, @04:52AM
from the Economics-and-science-may-be-related-after-all dept.
from the Economics-and-science-may-be-related-after-all dept.
The Experts Keep Getting the US Economy Wrong - and of course they do: economics is a mushy, highly politicized bag of conjecture. And, even if economists could somehow collect unbiased data, process it objectively, and report their analysis without fear of being replaced if they present an unpopular result, the "hard" scientists continue to tear away at the foundations of reality with a proof that Wigner was right about his friend after all: there are irreconcilable realities at the foundations of particle physics, we're just living in a probabilistic consensus above the paradoxes. At least, for a little while.
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We all know that no one understands anything that isn't funny.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 21 2019, @01:34PM (4 children)
Why should I keep telling myself that when I already know it in the first place? I don't see the need. It's other people who apparently need to learn that the developed world has solved the problem of exponential population growth.
And in another 100 years, they'll be much further ahead than they are now. In my view everything except possibly a few holdouts will have stable or negative population growth at that point. Malthus won't be a thing by then.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 21 2019, @01:52PM (3 children)
Whoosh.
100 years ago, nobody had cooling in their homes. Portable wireless communication was about as common as quantum computers are today. Chlorination of municipal drinking water had barely started. Access to information was via library and university.
If things continue as they have been, in another 100 years, they (the so-called undeveloped world) will be much further ahead than WE (the so-called developed world) are now.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 21 2019, @02:15PM (2 children)
I've made similar predictions myself. My view is that by 2100, most of the world will be better off than Norway is now.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 21 2019, @04:15PM (1 child)
Keep telling yourself that. Which means: you may be repeating it for all to read, but the only one who is getting convinced by your words is you.
If - big if - a bunch of unlikely (according to history) things go very very right, and a bunch of likely (according to history) things do not go very very wrong, then your view could happen.
My view of 2100 is 80+ years in the future - looking at today from 1939, the state of most of the world is just about impossible to have been predicted in March of 1939.
There are some things that have a whole lot more momentum today than 1939. 3.3x population growth over those 80 years, as opposed to ~2x over the previous 80 years probably being the most significant for the shape of the future. By any measure, we are much closer to the carrying capacity of the planet now, and my view is that, regardless of technological innovations that may increase the carrying capacity, temporarily like desert irrigation with non-renewable water supplies, or permanently like cheap clean power, we are going to continue to squeeze the carrying capacity of the planet until political stability breaks down and sets us back into a global dark age with a significant standard of living regression, and associated population decline, for most of the population. Will that happen by 2100? 2200? 2050? I'd put a bell curve somewhere around 2150, with 1SD placed at 2100.
But, that's just my crystal ball - equally as accurate as yours.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 21 2019, @05:54PM
Again, what would be the point of the exercise?
Unless, of course, you happen to be wrong again.
What would be impossible about it?
And that happened. Meanwhile, we're already seeing that the population isn't going to do that again. I'll note also that the world is much more stable than it was in 1939.
Unless, of course, that doesn't happen.
Why? As I noted before, there's the increasing wealth of the world which in turn means increased ability to feed oneselves and lower human fertility.
That's an interesting opinion. Would be a shame if the future were to do something to it.