Immigration, baby boomers & 'making whoopie.'

[wulf42]

I find myself wondering these days, where we will be in 10 years. We're facing record immigration rates right now,

I tell ya! somewhere between Pakistan and Afghanistan i wonder how long it will take

the R.C.M.P. to brush up on learning Sharia Law??

[Wild Bill]

the ability to send men to Mars isn't even in place you have mining in deep space as an everyday financially feasible solution to food and fuel shortages...you're not looking at this realistically,

The ability has been there for years. No one has simply paid for the hardware! NASA's budget is mice nuts compared to the military's.

The techology is all there. What's more, retrieving an asteroid can be done robotically far cheaper than a manned mission. Still, we have the technology to do a manned mission. We just have to pony up the money!

Food can be grown cheaply in space, once we're established there. Wheat under a dome will grow nicely on the moon and can be shipped back very inexpensively with a mass driver.

Fuel is much less of a problem here on earth if you have oodles of solar energy beamed down from orbit. The idea actually was seriously debated by the American Congress back in the early 80's as a solution to the energy crisis. It was voted down for several reasons, none of them technical but rather just "cheaping out".

As I said, this is all rather old news. Have you actually looked what's going on with space industrialization or did you just blow it all off as "unrealistic"?

I'm not arguing that we don't have an immense 'luddite' inertia. We most certainly do! As I like to say, most people stopped learning any hard sciences after their beans sprouted in that jar of tissue in grade school. I AM arguing that very smart and capable people have already worked things out! It is NOT unrealistic!

We aren't doing it not because we don't know how, but because as a society we're not smart enough to KNOW we know how!

We never do anything as a big change unless our backs are to the wall. Hell, the Big 3 auto companies didn't ditch carburetors until 1986, about 10 years later after the rest of the world went to far more reliable and efficient fuel injection. Westinghouse Canada was petitioning our government for protection from cheaper, off-shore vacuum tubes against their own brand, in 1978! The entire world had switched to solid state technologies more than a decade earlier! The market was long dead and they were still looking for tariff protections!

Did you happen to catch that documentary on CBC about "Who killed the electric car?" GM crushed the prototypes when people were pleading to be allowed to buy them! Now GM has barely survived bankruptcy and is pinning its hopes on (you guessed it!) electric cars!

We just don't seem to be a pro-active species. We only progress technically if we are in fear of starving, freezing or losing a big war.

How computers slipped through that argument I just don't know. Law of Averages says the odd one must, I guess!

Edited September 16, 2009 by Wild Bill

[Bonam]

The ability has been there for years. No one has simply paid for the hardware! NASA's budget is mice nuts compared to the military's.

The techology is all there. What's more, retrieving an asteroid can be done robotically far cheaper than a manned mission. Still, we have the technology to do a manned mission. We just have to pony up the money!

Food can be grown cheaply in space, once we're established there. Wheat under a dome will grow nicely on the moon and can be shipped back very inexpensively with a mass driver.

Fuel is much less of a problem here on earth if you have oodles of solar energy beamed down from orbit. The idea actually was seriously debated by the American Congress back in the early 80's as a solution to the energy crisis. It was voted down for several reasons, none of them technical but rather just "cheaping out".

As I said, this is all rather old news. Have you actually looked what's going on with space industrialization or did you just blow it all off as "unrealistic"?

I'm not arguing that we don't have an immense 'luddite' inertia. We most certainly do! As I like to say, most people stopped learning any hard sciences after their beans sprouted in that jar of tissue in grade school. I AM arguing that very smart and capable people have already worked things out! It is NOT unrealistic!

We aren't doing it not because we don't know how, but because as a society we're not smart enough to KNOW we know how!

We never do anything as a big change unless our backs are to the wall. Hell, the Big 3 auto companies didn't ditch carburetors until 1986, about 10 years later after the rest of the world went to far more reliable and efficient fuel injection. Westinghouse Canada was petitioning our government for protection from cheaper, off-shore vacuum tubes against their own brand, in 1978! The entire world had switched to solid state technologies more than a decade earlier! The market was long dead and they were still looking for tariff protections!

Did you happen to catch that documentary on CBC about "Who killed the electric car?" GM crushed the prototypes when people were pleading to be allowed to buy them! Now GM has barely survived bankruptcy and is pinning its hopes on (you guessed it!) electric cars!

We just don't seem to be a pro-active species. We only progress technically if we are in fear of starving, freezing or losing a big war.

How computers slipped through that argument I just don't know. Law of Averages says the odd one must, I guess!

Actually your view is over-pessimistic. All areas of technology have been undergoing rapid progress and development. And furthermore the pace of progress has only been accelerating. Not only in computers and information technology, as you say, but in all fields, whether it is communications, imaging, mechanical components, biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, etc. As for NASA, yes, their budget is tiny, and we would be further ahead in space had it been higher. But private access to space is becoming more and more prominent, and once that starts to ramp up our progress in space, too, will grow exponentially. Government funded programs like NASA can do and have done some of the basic research and pioneering, but it is the private sector which undertakes the largest enterprises in our society.

[wyly]

A false statement. The finite resources of our planet do not in any way prohibit continued population growth. For one, we can still produce and utilize thousands of times more energy on this planet than we currently do, and this will become possible as our technology continues to progress. That means centuries more of exponential growth can be sustained on Earth, which could be made to house trillions of humans. And secondly, there is nothing stopping us from expanding our civilization to other planets in the future, just as earlier generations of mankind expanded their civilizations from tiny European nations to cover the whole of the Earth. The voyage from Europe to the Americas in the 15th century was longer than the voyage today from Earth to Mars could be. The economic viability is not there yet, but it will be, especially if populations continue to grow.

trillions of people!!!...let me know when humans can eat energy...we have six and half billion people now most of the fishery zones have already reached saturation point for harvest and have either failed or are already in decline, we are cultivating all the best arable land and are destroying marginal land in effort to grow more food and Global warming is removing even more land from use...1 billion people experience food shortages right now and you think the planet can support trillions????....as it is right now the planet has an estimated double that it what it can support in a sustained harvest, some estimates put that number as low as 1 billion people...

[wyly]

The ability has been there for years. No one has simply paid for the hardware! NASA's budget is mice nuts compared to the military's.

The techology is all there. What's more, retrieving an asteroid can be done robotically far cheaper than a manned mission. Still, we have the technology to do a manned mission. We just have to pony up the money!

Food can be grown cheaply in space, once we're established there. Wheat under a dome will grow nicely on the moon and can be shipped back very inexpensively with a mass driver.

Fuel is much less of a problem here on earth if you have oodles of solar energy beamed down from orbit. The idea actually was seriously debated by the American Congress back in the early 80's as a solution to the energy crisis. It was voted down for several reasons, none of them technical but rather just "cheaping out".

As I said, this is all rather old news. Have you actually looked what's going on with space industrialization or did you just blow it all off as "unrealistic"?

I'm not arguing that we don't have an immense 'luddite' inertia. We most certainly do! As I like to say, most people stopped learning any hard sciences after their beans sprouted in that jar of tissue in grade school. I AM arguing that very smart and capable people have already worked things out! It is NOT unrealistic!

We aren't doing it not because we don't know how, but because as a society we're not smart enough to KNOW we know how!

We never do anything as a big change unless our backs are to the wall. Hell, the Big 3 auto companies didn't ditch carburetors until 1986, about 10 years later after the rest of the world went to far more reliable and efficient fuel injection. Westinghouse Canada was petitioning our government for protection from cheaper, off-shore vacuum tubes against their own brand, in 1978! The entire world had switched to solid state technologies more than a decade earlier! The market was long dead and they were still looking for tariff protections!

Did you happen to catch that documentary on CBC about "Who killed the electric car?" GM crushed the prototypes when people were pleading to be allowed to buy them! Now GM has barely survived bankruptcy and is pinning its hopes on (you guessed it!) electric cars!

We just don't seem to be a pro-active species. We only progress technically if we are in fear of starving, freezing or losing a big war.

How computers slipped through that argument I just don't know. Law of Averages says the odd one must, I guess!

you've read to many Popular Science magazines this is all fantasy science fiction stuff...the technology for man missions to Mars hasn't even been worked out and you have wheat fields on the moon, let everyone know how you plan to get fresh water up there...a far less expensive option...reduce population...

[Bonam]

trillions of people!!!...let me know when humans can eat energy...we have six and half billion people now most of the fishery zones have already reached saturation point for harvest and have either failed or are already in decline, we are cultivating all the best arable land and are destroying marginal land in effort to grow more food and Global warming is removing even more land from use...1 billion people experience food shortages right now and you think the planet can support trillions????....as it is right now the planet has an estimated double that it what it can support in a sustained harvest, some estimates put that number as low as 1 billion people...

Yes, trillions. Humans do not "eat" energy, the energy can be used to produce food in hydroponic gardens, which can be built thousands of stories high, above ground and below. Artificial light would be used instead of sunlight, and they would grow using ocean water desalinated with that same energy. The 1 billion estimate or other estimates (the more reasonable ones are in the 2-3 billion range) assume only a static and low level of technology. Thousands of years ago the Earth's carrying capacity was in the millions, today, thanks to our technology, it is in the billions, in the future, it will be in the trillions. As for 1 billion people today having a food shortage, that is not because we can't produce enough food, but because of economic, political, military, and social issues.

[Bonam]

a far less expensive option...reduce population...

Also a self-destructive one.

Our ancestors didn't say, "gee, you know, we've run out of space here in Europe and it's kinda hard to go across the ocean, let's just stop having kids!" Neither will we do that, when the time comes.

[Bonam]

you've read to many Popular Science magazines this is all fantasy science fiction stuff...the technology for man missions to Mars hasn't even been worked out and you have wheat fields on the moon, let everyone know how you plan to get fresh water up there...a far less expensive option...reduce population...

Oh and as for water on the moon, they've already found substantial amounts of ice there. All we need to do is melt it. But in my opinion food production for Earth use should for the near future be done on Earth, we have more than enough space and water right here.

[wyly]

Oh and as for water on the moon, they've already found substantial amounts of ice there. All we need to do is melt it. But in my opinion food production for Earth use should for the near future be done on Earth, we have more than enough space and water right here.

show me the link to SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNTS OF ICE ON THE MOON!!!!

enough space on earth, seriously I don't want insult you but you have no idea....show me where this ample supply of arable land and surplus of water is to feed trillions of people...

[dlkenny]

Great post. The 75 Trillion figure is frightening.

I think this may destroy Obama and his health care in the history books, if he ever manages to get it through.

Collective action problem. For a firm to survive, they need to reduce the manufacturing and thus sale price of products. In doing so they end up reducing wages in the employees pockets, and thus, purchasing power even further. Combined with the fact that most of the population wastes large portions of their disposable income on useless crap, like replacing the Iphone every year with the new model.......well if things really do get tough, and the market for knick knacks & trinkets dries up, how many more out of work??

I personally think that credit may well be the worst evil that man has ever constructed.

It's not credit as such but the invention of compound interest, it's like trying to stop a runaway freight train. I read today (an old article on Bloomsberg) that Japan's ratio of debt to GDP is over 200% which means that Japan is far beyond bankruptcy, they simply do not have the financial resources in that country to ever pay the debt. This hasn't happened yet in either the US or Canada but it will. After the dollar was devalued from gold in 1974 it began declining in value and hence inflation (the price of things didn't go up, the value of the dollar has gone down). Every dollar in the US is debt, it's a loan to the federal government with interest, meaning that every dollar that is in the US has to be paid back with interest. That's impossible because that means that every dollar has to eventually be paid back with interest, but those same dollars that will be used to pay it back will be subject to that very same interest, it's a run away freight train.

Consider what banks do as well: For every dollar deposited they can lend out twenty more dollars. So if you put $5 into a bank account, that bank can turn around and issue you a piece of plastic (a credit card) for $100. There is no money anywhere to back that card, they simply issue you a piece of plastic. Once you use that card they then charge you interest on that fictitious money. The money that gets transacted to the company where you used your credit card is nothing more than a number from a computer, there is no asset. This is called Fractional Reserve Banking and the whole system is a system of IOU's that cannot possibly be paid back because it's all got debt (and interest) attached. To me this is legalized counterfeiting and if anyone else did this we'd be jailed for usury. Eventually something has to give and I think if more people understood this ponzi scheme that there would be very serious consequences.

Edited September 17, 2009 by dlkenny

[wyly]

Also a self-destructive one.

Our ancestors didn't say, "gee, you know, we've run out of space here in Europe and it's kinda hard to go across the ocean, let's just stop having kids!" Neither will we do that, when the time comes.

fortunately for the planet many countries have already reached the conclusion there are too many people, countries that are slow to react will pay the price...

[dlkenny]

Also a self-destructive one.

Our ancestors didn't say, "gee, you know, we've run out of space here in Europe and it's kinda hard to go across the ocean, let's just stop having kids!" Neither will we do that, when the time comes.

This isn't as far fetched as it sounds. We don't have to kill people for the population to be reduced, it's the same phenomenon that happens to yeast when you make beer: When the population gets too great they are killed off by a shortage of sustenance and by too much of their own waste (the alcohol). Everything is cyclical in the same way; money markets accelerate before they collapse, yeast grow exponentially and then die en masse, and people will do the same thing eventually. Unfortunately we have the ability to kill each other too and when things become critical nobody should doubt that great wars will ensue simply because of the desire to survive.

The planet can only support so many people and nature has a way of eliminating the poorest, sickest and weakest of every species and humans are no different. When we reach the saturation point the poorest, sickest and weakest will succumb to disease and famine, and the powerful will wage war to ensure their survival.

Unfortunately it's already happening, you don't need to look far to see that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Also, if you look at the world's poorer nations the powerful are killing their own for possession of perceived valuable goods such as diamonds, gold, silver and land. In these same countries you can see extreme poverty and sidelined people struggling to survive against diseases. As the world population grows this problem will only grow. Hopefully people are smart enough and come up with more sustainable solutions than unchecked capitalism.

Edited September 17, 2009 by dlkenny

[Goat Boy©]

Consider what banks do as well: For every dollar deposited they can lend out twenty more dollars. So if you put $5 into a bank account, that bank can turn around and issue you a piece of plastic (a credit card) for $100. There is no money anywhere to back that card, they simply issue you a piece of plastic. Once you use that card they then charge you interest on that fictitious money. The money that gets transacted to the company where you used your credit card is nothing more than a number from a computer, there is no asset. This is called Fractional Reserve Banking and the whole system is a system of IOU's that cannot possibly be paid back because it's all got debt (and interest) attached. To me this is legalized counterfeiting and if anyone else did this we'd be jailed for usury. Eventually something has to give and I think if more people understood this ponzi scheme that there would be very serious consequences.

Fractional reserve does not exist nearly to the extent that youtube tells you. If what you were saying was true, there would be no reason for a bank to refuse credit, ever. This fictional money is transferred in transactions and finds its way back to the banks, in effect, the banks cannot take a loss. WaMu certainly proved this to be true.

Fractional reserve does exist, but nowhere near the 1/20 ratio quoted. Canadian banks are even further restricted beyond the US banks, but they are regulated on the amount of cash they must have on hand to back deposits. Furthermore, in Canada the government carries the risk, a minimum of $250,000 of every single persons secured deposits are backed by the CDIC.

[Goat Boy©]

This isn't as far fetched as it sounds. We don't have to kill people for the population to be reduced, it's the same phenomenon that happens to yeast when you make beer: When the population gets too great they are killed off by a shortage of sustenance and by too much of their own waste (the alcohol). Everything is cyclical in the same way; money markets accelerate before they collapse, yeast grow exponentially and then die en masse, and people will do the same thing eventually. Unfortunately we have the ability to kill each other too and when things become critical nobody should doubt that great wars will ensue simply because of the desire to survive.

The planet can only support so many people and nature has a way of eliminating the poorest, sickest and weakest of every species and humans are no different. When we reach the saturation point the poorest, sickest and weakest will succumb to disease and famine, and the powerful will wage war to ensure their survival.

Unfortunately it's already happening, you don't need to look far to see that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Also, if you look at the world's poorer nations the powerful are killing their own for possession of perceived valuable goods such as diamonds, gold, silver and land. In these same countries you can see extreme poverty and sidelined people struggling to survive against diseases. As the world population grows this problem will only grow. Hopefully people are smart enough and come up with more sustainable solutions than unchecked capitalism.

I predict it's only a matter of time before the entire continent of Africa as well as many Pacific Rim countries erupt into a permanent state of war. Might be a decade, might be a century, but it's coming. It's also going to be interesting to watch China as that massive population gradually increases it's standard of living, not to mention India's many times higher pop. growth rate.

[Jerry J. Fortin]

India will become the most populous nation in less than a quarter of a century. With south east Asia accounting for nearly fifty percent of the worlds population at that point it will become the centre of world attention.

[Wild Bill]

you've read to many Popular Science magazines this is all fantasy science fiction stuff...the technology for man missions to Mars hasn't even been worked out and you have wheat fields on the moon, let everyone know how you plan to get fresh water up there...a far less expensive option...reduce population...

The water is already there! You just have to mine it. Something else we've also known for years. I guess you just missed it.

So far, all you've given us is "crazy Buck Rogers stuff!" We haven't seen diddleysquat that says you have an INFORMED opinion!

That being said, you're entitled to your opinion. However, you're not giving anything to debate other than your "feelings". It would appear that you yourself have never even read any Popular Science magazines, let alone anything deeper on the subject.

If I'm wrong I apologize. I would genuinely be interested if you could SHOW me!

Unless you can give some informed rebuttal I really don't see much point to this. Besides, it is "thread drift".

[Michael Hardner]

Unfortunately it's already happening, you don't need to look far to see that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Also, if you look at the world's poorer nations the powerful are killing their own for possession of perceived valuable goods such as diamonds, gold, silver and land. In these same countries you can see extreme poverty and sidelined people struggling to survive against diseases. As the world population grows this problem will only grow. Hopefully people are smart enough and come up with more sustainable solutions than unchecked capitalism.

Unfortunately, this thread says more about the cultural industry that promotes doomsday scenarios as a modern kind of reality horror story.

The planet keeps increasing in population, and has been pointed out so does our technology and our energy resourcefulness. We're in much better shape not worse. Our population is increasing at a declining rate.

As for starvation:

Hunger Statistics

Despite have billions more people - the percentage of people in the world who are hungry fell 57% from 1970 to 2005. Of course, it's not in anyone's interest to talk about good news.

[Pat Coghlan]

So who pays? The way I see it, their are two choices:

Immigration en masse that makes today look like a camp out, or state sponsored programs actively encouraging Canadians to have more kids. I believe that this will actually turn into a crisis, it's going to be interesting to see where we end up. Also, it will rather ironic watching the dogmatic anti-immigration crowd receiving services that wouldn't be possible, without immigrants.

Anybody have any thoughts? This is all theory, how wrong am I? Let's have the monkey wrenches in the wheels.

It's very simple. Families with 2 spouses in the workforce will rarely produce more than 2 kids. If you want a higher birthrate, you have to make it easier for families to have a spouse at home.

In Canada, we continue to tax individuals, yet we qualify families for benefit payments based on their FAMILY income.

If you want to even attempt towards creating a more tax-friendly environment for families with children, you start by either creating a joint tax return - as they have in the US - or allow each spouse to claim 50% of available benefits based solely on his/her individual income...which for stay-at-home parents would be zero.

Actually, I'd go a bit further and ask the government to at least take a position on whether they want larger families or not. That would make it much easier to judge whether tax policy is in line with stated objectives...which currently do not exist.

If nothing changes, then please don't complain when you try to sell your home in 20-25 years and only get a fraction of what it is worth today.

[Goat Boy©]

The water is already there! You just have to mine it. Something else we've also known for years. I guess you just missed it.

So far, all you've given us is "crazy Buck Rogers stuff!" We haven't seen diddleysquat that says you have an INFORMED opinion!

That being said, you're entitled to your opinion. However, you're not giving anything to debate other than your "feelings". It would appear that you yourself have never even read any Popular Science magazines, let alone anything deeper on the subject.

If I'm wrong I apologize. I would genuinely be interested if you could SHOW me!

Unless you can give some informed rebuttal I really don't see much point to this. Besides, it is "thread drift".

I find myself wondering about this, as one of the biggest reasons for the current LCROSS mission is to search for possible water on the moon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCROSS

Set for impact, October 9 of this year.

[Wild Bill]

show me the link to SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNTS OF ICE ON THE MOON!!!!

enough space on earth, seriously I don't want insult you but you have no idea....show me where this ample supply of arable land and surplus of water is to feed trillions of people...

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Lunar+ice+ri...ence-a019256031

There's one!

There are a number of highly probable examples if you do a google. There are some explorations underway to 100% confirm what is already expected.

Still, even if the moon is totally barren of ice, so what? Simple chemistry says we can burn hydrogen with oxygen to get water. Or better yet, use the gases in a fuel cell for electrical power and still get water as the byproduct!

http://www.asi.org/adb/04/03/10/04/oxygen-extraction.html

"Moon dust is a mixture of many different minerals, and nearly all of them contain oxgyen in considerable abundance. One of the most common lunar minerals is ilmenite, a mixture of iron, titanium, and oxygen. (Ilmenite also often contains other metals such as magnesium which we'll blithely ignore here.) For this discussion, we'll concentrate on extracting oxygen from ilmenite because there's lots of the stuff available, and because the chemical processes involved are fairly straightforward."

"The process starts with regolith-handling robots bringing raw moon dust to the pilot plant. There, with a system we could design to be the size of a briefcase for the first flight, the pilot plant takes over.

Once the process is going, the hydrogen we get from electrolysis of water can be recycled and used for the next load of ilmenite. But to get it started with an initial supply of hydrogen, we need only heat the raw regolith to about 600 degrees C. That will drive off hydrogen (along with a host of other interesting gasses, such as helium) that we use to reduce the first load of lunar soil."

So we don't need to mine frozen water after all! Of course, mining it saves a bit of work.

Again, old news.

As for arable land, forgetting for the moment that we have HUGE amounts of farmland here in Canada lying fallow, since a farmer can't make a living from it, what about the tops of buildings? There are serious proposals in Toronto to set up rooftop garden industries to feed the city with local produce.

Of course, being Toronto they would likely screw up a good idea and end up starving to death. They'd have no guilt about it. They'd just blame cars! Mayor Miller doesn't seem to be a Popular Science subscriber either. Personally, I wouldn't trust him to replace a plug on a lamp cord. Still, if techies were allowed to do the job I've no doubt the idea is viable.

What do you imagine is the total rooftop surface area of highrise office and industrial buildings?

Edited September 17, 2009 by Wild Bill

[dlkenny]

Fractional reserve does not exist nearly to the extent that youtube tells you. If what you were saying was true, there would be no reason for a bank to refuse credit, ever. This fictional money is transferred in transactions and finds its way back to the banks, in effect, the banks cannot take a loss. WaMu certainly proved this to be true.

Fractional reserve does exist, but nowhere near the 1/20 ratio quoted. Canadian banks are even further restricted beyond the US banks, but they are regulated on the amount of cash they must have on hand to back deposits. Furthermore, in Canada the government carries the risk, a minimum of $250,000 of every single persons secured deposits are backed by the CDIC.

I don't get my information from YouTube by the way, I'm a professional money manager. I read money magazines and books on financial education and the fractional reserve system is used every time the bank issues a loan, a credit card or a mortgage. Only difference is that in Canada the currency for debt instruments comes from the Bank of Canada in the form of a loan to the bank. This is why we have prime lending rates, it's the rate at which your bank borrows money from the central bank to loan to you and why they rely so heavily on credit ratings. By adjusting the prime rate it encourages the bank to lend (or not lend) money because it changes their risk based on what that money is costing the bank.

In Canada at least the Bank of Canada doesn't attach interest to every dollar that exists in the country as happens in the US. In the US the Federal Reserve Prints money and loans it to the country through the government with interest attached to every dollar. In Canada it only attaches interest when it lends money to private institutions like banks and that money is created through fractional reserve. In the US economy they also have compounding fractional reserves where the reserve itself can be made up of printed money instead of a real asset. I'm not 100% sure of the percentages required but I seem to recall that 1 dollar in reserve is enough to print 94 dollars of US currency. To me the US system seems like a house of cards teetering on collapse.

You might be right about the 1:20 rule but the principle is the same whether they're lending at a 1:20 or 1:5 ratio. In the US up until 2007 (the meltdown) the US banks were lending at a 1:20 ratio, they lobbied congress for the capability to do so. The situation in Canada was never as bad as in the US and that could be attributed to some of the regulations that exist in Canada.

The bottom line though is that the dollar was devalued in 1974 and like any currency it's buying power is gradually being eroded, it's value deteriorates over time and so things with real value (gold, silver, clothing, food, gasoline, lumber) appear to get more expensive. So as this happens, things require more and more currency to purchase them (hence, inflation) and salaries typically do not keep pace. In fact when the Bank of Canada releases inflation rates they do not include energy and food prices in that calculation which is an atrocity in itself since some salaries, and in particular, wages under union contracts, are adjusted according to the rate of inflation.

Eventually there becomes not enough money. This happened in Germany before WWII. There's an old joke about the 1920's in Germany where a woman took a wheelbarrow full of money to the bakery to buy bread. She left her wheelbarrow outside while she went in to talk to the clerk and when she went back outside to get her money, somebody had dumped the money out on the sidewalk and stolen her wheelbarrow. It could be said that this is what caused WWII, in that Hitler was elected on the promise to fix the problem of their money not being worth anything.

This illustrates well my previous point about military conflict arising from the destitution of societies. Nobody wants to be the one to be left to suffer while somebody else gets to live a good life. It's human nature, it's already happening and will continue to happen as the human population grows.

[lictor616]

I find myself wondering these days, where we will be in 10 years. We're facing record immigration rates right now, and their are a lot of thoughts against this. However I see nothing but continuing reports, that it is expected as many as 30% of the workforce is expected to retire in the next decade, as the baby boomers call it quits.

Who is going to pay for all of this? CPP, EI, Universal Health Care......can these services survives this? I don't believe so, going from this entire population paying dues, to them all drawing benefits.

So who pays? The way I see it, their are two choices:

Immigration en masse that makes today look like a camp out, or state sponsored programs actively encouraging Canadians to have more kids. I believe that this will actually turn into a crisis, it's going to be interesting to see where we end up. Also, it will rather ironic watching the dogmatic anti-immigration crowd receiving services that wouldn't be possible, without immigrants.

Anybody have any thoughts? This is all theory, how wrong am I? Let's have the monkey wrenches in the wheels.

in all likeliness Canada will be more like the places from which the immigrants are coming FROM... that's only reasonable to assume right?

In all probability we may see violent crime rates soar, poverty sky rocket, and of course we invite the very real possibility for ethnic tensions (since we import groups who are in conflict with each other from all over the world)...

At the very best Canada of the future will be no better then our own today (perhaps a little poorer and a little less cohesive... if you can imagine that)

At the very worst, we can foresee civil war, third world type society and perhaps even genocide in the next 40 years...

In other words we have nothing to gain from this wacky experiment, since diversity does not provide us with any strength whatsoever.

We are in effect, dicing our future to be "nice"... We are reconciliating ourselves with our own dispossession ... Such a development is probably without precedent in the entire history of the world. And we will have to pay richly for it...

Edited September 17, 2009 by lictor616

[lictor616]

Also a self-destructive one.

Our ancestors didn't say, "gee, you know, we've run out of space here in Europe and it's kinda hard to go across the ocean, let's just stop having kids!" Neither will we do that, when the time comes.

If men do not act: nature will. Depopulation will HAVE to happen one way or the other.

[Wild Bill]

If men do not act: nature will. Depopulation will HAVE to happen one way or the other.

Why? If technology can feed us and keep us warm in greater and greater numbers, why would Nature have to step in?

[dlkenny]

Unfortunately, this thread says more about the cultural industry that promotes doomsday scenarios as a modern kind of reality horror story.

The planet keeps increasing in population, and has been pointed out so does our technology and our energy resourcefulness. We're in much better shape not worse. Our population is increasing at a declining rate.

As for starvation:

Hunger Statistics

Despite have billions more people - the percentage of people in the world who are hungry fell 57% from 1970 to 2005. Of course, it's not in anyone's interest to talk about good news.

I'm not talking doomsday. I like good news and I really hope that people can be smart enough to avoid the type of collapse I've talked about. I hate to break this to you though but the world does not have infinite resources. I think I read that the world could support 14 Billion people if we all lived as squatters. In theory too, under an ideological communism (I do not mean marxism, I must make this clear) where everyone contributed but only created what was needed it would do away with the need for constant growth. Under capitalism everything must grow and because of the nature of compound interest it grows exponentially, gradually increasing the rate of growth until the growth becomes unsustainable and collapes. We see it every 20 years in the real estate markets and every 10 years in the stock markets that capitalism works this way.

Ideological communism would be a system of elected governance where no person owned anything, where the world itself was the society that owned everything. In this system, every person would be required to contribute in a way that they are capable in return for having their needs met. Some people argue that in general people would lead much better lives because the productivity would be shared amongst the people instead of being tied up in social stratification and large corporations. Nobody would go hungry, everyone could have an education, and there would be less environmental impact because there would be no concern for efficiency or productivity and production could be done in a more sensitive manner.

I must note that I'm not a devout socialist and I do not have any conceptions about changing the world. I simply try to look at the viablility of other systems. As things stand we are in a capitalist society and the markets and world conditions do correct themselves through natural ebbs and flows. For this reason I think that government meddling only postpones and makes the corrections worse than they need to be. If it weren't for Franklin Roosevelt reducing the money supply after the market crash in 1929 it's unlikely that the Great Depression would have been as bad as it was. Likewise, today with the governments printing so much money it's creating a disaster waiting to happen.