Modern Fears of the Future

[WIP]

Notwithstanding some sort of galvanizing epiphany I think it's probably too late for protective measures. I suspect there will be lots of time for vengeance however.

When the waterhole gets smaller the animals usually get meaner but like I said I can't and won't discount the possibility that someone or some idea capable of leading us out of the gathering darkness will emerge but...that hope is probably the biggest pie in the sky there is - like imagining we're approaching some technological/economic singularity.

It's like we're in a neck and neck dash in two-lane race towards a one-lane bottleneck.

I don't know whether it's possible to change the warped winner-take-all mentality that saturates our culture today (judging by all of the howling and gnashing at the Pope's criticism of "unfettered capitalism" probably not likely) but when some animals around the watering hole are armed with nuclear warheads, it's easy to envision how the end result of desperate competition for water ( India and Pakistan) or some of the other nuclear confrontations will destroy life and exterminate the human race. The stakes are so high, that allowing things to take their course should not be considered a sane option for the future.

[WIP]

Asian Development Bank? WTF?

Ordinary Canadians see many rich Chinese and Indian kids in their classes now, buying houses, condos. They were not there before.

WIP, make no mistake: Billions of people around the world are richer now, live better now, than their parents 30 years ago.

Why? Free trade. As Deng Xiaoping said: "Who cares whether the cat is black or white, can it catch mice?"

Rao in India did the same.

And before there were rich Indians and rich Chinese, there were rich Latinos sending their kids to expensive private schools in Canada and the United States....reason being that a rich Columbian or Mexican etc. had...and likely still has to worry that his kids may be kidnapped on their way to school. Up till now, the wealthy in Canada have been able to move about freely and unencumbered with bodyguards....worth noting that gated communities are at least 40 years old in the US.. But, as the gap grows more and more extreme, the rich will have to spend more and more money walling themselves off from the public and protecting their children.

[Canada_First]

The more people in poverty the easier they are to exploit.

[Canada_First]

Many orthodox jews and Christian fundamentalists follow the bible literally.

how many?

[eyeball]

I don't know whether it's possible to change the warped winner-take-all mentality that saturates our culture today (judging by all of the howling and gnashing at the Pope's criticism of "unfettered capitalism" probably not likely) but when some animals around the watering hole are armed with nuclear warheads, it's easy to envision how the end result of desperate competition for water ( India and Pakistan) or some of the other nuclear confrontations will destroy life and exterminate the human race. The stakes are so high, that allowing things to take their course should not be considered a sane option for the future.

As scary as nuclear war sounds lets not forget there were some 520 nuclear bombs detonated in our biosphere and we're still here. I'd be surprised if India and Pakistan could launch half that many at each other before virtually wiping themselves out. In either case perhaps the graphic scale of the carnage will provide the galvanizing epiphany I was mentioning to the rest of us.

[WIP]

As scary as nuclear war sounds lets not forget there were some 520 nuclear bombs detonated in our biosphere and we're still here. I'd be surprised if India and Pakistan could launch half that many at each other before virtually wiping themselves out. In either case perhaps the graphic scale of the carnage will provide the galvanizing epiphany I was mentioning to the rest of us.

The bombs India and Pakistan possess are many times more powerful than Hiroshima and those early A-Bomb tests. After the test-ban treaty was signed, all further testing had to be done underground. The US and Russia each have thousands of nuclear warheads, and the rhetoric and apparent NATO strategy of encircling Russia, leads many to be believe that we are more at risk of full scale nuclear war today than we were at the height of the Cold War....when saner, more rational leaders prevailed....who were actual military veterans I might add. During the Cold War, it was not considered reasonable to contemplate engaging, let alone surviving a fullscale nuclear war....it's an experiment that can only be performed once, and it seems like we have the kinds of psychopaths in positions of leadership today who might try to roll the dice on this one!

[bush_cheney2004]

During the Cold War, it was not considered reasonable to contemplate engaging, let alone surviving a fullscale nuclear war...

This is quite false....the U.S. most certainly did contemplate engaging in a full scale nuclear war. I was there....with the hardware and software to get the job done...you were not.

Edited September 25, 2015 by bush_cheney2004

[August1991]

The more people in poverty the easier they are to exploit.

But more people today are richer and live better lives than ever before: from Asia to South America, and even Africa: people live longer, and more of their children can read.

Go back 100 years to 1915: in the midst of a stupid European war, how many people around the world could write their name? How many even knew the word "calculus"?

Now, today, in 2015. How many people are there and how many must put X to indicate their name? And how many can take a derivative?

===

The world does not lack for children; it lacks educated people.

Edited September 26, 2015 by August1991

[Michael Hardner]

Read your cite first, before getting dazzled by graphs and charts contained therein! First law of statistics: garbage in/garbage out:

I mentioned previously a few reasons why I consider this claim of globalization reducing poverty to be total crap: no accounting for inflation...especially on basic food prices...the most important determinant of quality of life in poor urban zones;

That was quite an accusation. It would have been quite an error, if it were true:

Currently, extreme poverty widely refers to earning below the international poverty line of $1.25/day (in 2005 prices), set by theWorld Bank. This measure is the equivalent to earning $1.00 a day in 1996 US prices, hence the widely used expression, living on "less than a dollar a day."^%5B3%5D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#cite_note-Annan_2000-12

Are people forced off the land and into cities to work long gruelling hours for 10 or 15c/hour better off than rural poor growing their own food and trading for luxuries? It's a hard case to try to make to begin with, aside from having no quick financial indicator to measure their quality of life....which is not really a concern of the World Bank or international capitalism anyway!

Except that progress from agriculture to manufacturing jobs were the measure of success we used for our economy in the 20th century, and manufacturing jobs are still valued by first world economies.

Yes - working in a factory even 12 hours a day is a better life than subsistence farming.

I think you have to change your opinion giving the evidence here. I was hoping you would have something to change my mind.

[WIP]

That was quite an accusation. It would have been quite an error, if it were true:

Currently, extreme poverty widely refers to earning below the international poverty line of $1.25/day (in 2005 prices), set by theWorld Bank. This measure is the equivalent to earning $1.00 a day in 1996 US prices, hence the widely used expression, living on "less than a dollar a day."^%5B3%5D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#cite_note-Annan_2000-12

What I've noticed while sifting around for data on the subject, is that virtually every source on the issue of global poverty, and how to measure it, is affiliated directly or 2nd or 3rd hand with some umbrella of globalization like the World Bank or the UN NGO's, who have a vested interest in propagandizing the clearing of the global commons and setting up third world sweatshop industries. But, I notice a few contrary critics of the WB occassionally like this one...about 71 pages in full:

Abstract

The World Bank’s approach to estimating the extent, distribution and trend of global

income poverty is neither meaningful nor reliable. The Bank uses an arbitrary

international poverty line that is not adequately anchored in any specification of the real

requirements of human beings. Moreover, it employs a concept of purchasing power

"equivalence" that is neither well defined nor appropriate for poverty assessment. These

difficulties are inherent in the Bank’s “money-metric” approach and cannot be credibly

overcome without dispensing with this approach altogether. In addition, the Bank

extrapolates incorrectly from limited data and thereby creates an appearance of

precision that masks the high probable error of its estimates. It is difficult to judge the

nature and extent of the errors in global poverty estimates that these three flaws produce.

However, there is reason to believe that the Bank’s approach may have led it to

understate the extent of global income poverty and to infer without adequate justification

that global income poverty has steeply declined in the recent period. A new methodology

of global poverty assessment, focused directly on what is needed to achieve elementary

human requirements, is feasible and necessary. A practical approach to implementing an

alternative is described.

http://www.columbia.edu/~sr793/count.pdf

Except that progress from agriculture to manufacturing jobs were the measure of success we used for our economy in the 20th century, and manufacturing jobs are still valued by first world economies.

And since we're talking fears of the future...which are scoffed at by the OP loaded with hubris, it should be added that the transition to manufacturing should have never been allowed to gallop along and increase output and resource consumption without any restraints! That should have been the lesson learned from the Great Depression, when the normal boom and bust cycles inherent in capitalism, created too much for consumers to buy and absorb. So, everything started grinding to a halt, and finally didn't resume until the great jobs program (otherwise known as WWII) and the skillful application of psychological motivation with new technology platforms...beginning with television, led to demand that seemed unending. Every time over the last half century that demand should have leveled off, some new strategy was concocted to keep juicing the system: first, fueling a rise in real estate prices and new home expectations that pushed even the less-than-willing housewives to go back into the paid workforce they were sent home from after WWII. When that could no longer feed the demand, immigration was increased, and credit became easier and more irresponsible. And during the past 30 years, one new globalization pact after another has been created to keep trying to spur demand by privatizing the last remnants of the global commons in formerly too remote regions in Africa and Asia to include in the modern economy.

But, today we are at a point that none of the major economists (Keynsian or Libertarian) expected: where natural resources beginning with oil, would become so expensive to produce that continued production to meet rising demand would start killing off economic growth worldwide. The worst kept secret today is that there has been no real economic growth since the crash of 08! That crash, attributed to the creation of derivative markets and various levels of corruption, was not likely the original source of the problem: the leveling off of oil production in 05 is the likely culprit!

When the economies stalled...especially after China started decreasing oil imports, someone eventually noticed that there was too much oil on the global markets to justify $100 a barrel, so the price fell....and fell...and seems to have settled temporarily at $50. A price that's too low to keep the flow of capital in keep drilling shales, deep ocean ventures and deep tarsands deposits. The production is grinding to a halt in North Dakota, and next year, those tarsands operations will have to stop production also if the price of oil doesn't rise in time to pay off some of the debt being accumulated. It looks like prices will only rise after production is halted, and could just as easily jump over 100 or 150 per barrel again, at a time when there won't be enough capital available to restart operations that are shut down. So, I'll end this expansive narrative observing that I expect something worse next year and the year after, because over time, the resource base that our globalized consumer economy is based on, is in steady decline, and no one is planning for how to scale it back without some kind of panic causing everything to crash down.

This is the brave new world that the organs of globalization have dragged the citizens of the third world into today! Before, at least they were living at a near sustainable level regardless of whatever hardships they might face at home. But, they are subject to the forces of the market today, and have the least amount of money and are the least able to deal with the failure of this brave new system! On that basis alone, they are not better off if their land is destroyed and they can't go back to their former way of life in the coming decades.

Yes - working in a factory even 12 hours a day is a better life than subsistence farming.

Who says? When I was doing my own personal research into translated testimonies of factories workers in Bangladesh back when their textile mill disasters were even making the MSM, I came across several personal testimonies of men and women who had been forced off the land within the past 20 years, and had no intentions of leaving the farm and moving to the big city and working in a mill. The horror stories of the mills were drifting back to the countryside, and the globalist propaganda that indigent peasants all across Africa, Asia and Latin America (most recently Haiti) drop their hoes and bads of seed to rush to the city for the promise of jobs and opportunity is just that: propaganda!

Most of the millworkers stated that being poor in the countryside was far better than being poor in the city, because at least on the farm, they could grow their own food (and decide much of what they wanted to grow), while in the city, they could only usually afford rice and a few other grains....with most vegetables being expensive and likely contaminated. Yet, because economists can't measure production for personal use, it's tallied as an improvement in wellbeing.

I think you have to change your opinion giving the evidence here. I was hoping you would have something to change my mind.

That's not my job...to convince you or not convince you, that's all up to you, and I'm at an age where my search for truth has nothing to do with influencing and dragging along others. I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with the world, and ever since I first went online, I find most educated and uneducated sources (whatever the topic or issue) have specialized areas of research and understanding (usually sourced in career and personal financial opportunities), while few voices in the ether are trying to develop an all-encompassing understanding of how different factors and competing interests leave us the mess we have today.

[Michael Hardner]

You reject UN data sources so I think we're done

[Michael Hardner]

You reject UN data sources- ok, well can you provide an alternative?

[jazzer]

how many?

A 2011 Gallup survey reports, "Three in 10 Americans interpret the Bible literally, saying it is the actual word of God."

[WIP]

You reject UN data sources- ok, well can you provide an alternative?

Didn't you just say we're done?

[Michael Hardner]

I rethought it and thought I would ask for an alternative

[Argus]

Harper just made a few of my friends Second Class citizens...

People like this, you mean? http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto-18-ringleader-citizenship-1.3245319

[Argus]

Many orthodox jews and Christian fundamentalists follow the bible literally.

No, they actually don't. Otherwise they'd be killing people for having different types of threads in their clothes.

[Argus]

I won't speak of how Europe deals with "minorities" but we in North America have accepted, integrated immigrants. From 1895 to 1915, Canada's population increased by 60%. Admittedly, many of these new Canadians were born in Quebec but many others arrived by ship.

Yes, most of them from the UK or US, which were virtually identical to Canada in terms of culture, values, religion and educational and skill levels.

Between 1900 and 1920 3.3 million immigrants came to Canada, of which about 2.5 million were from the US and UK

Edited September 27, 2015 by Argus

[Michael Hardner]

I rethought it and thought I would ask for an alternative

To follow-up: I was posting on my phone from a remote location and the first post didn't seem to take. When I decided to try again, I thought there may actually be an opportunity to continue this if you had sources that we could agree on, ie. mutually valid. When I saw your response, it seems my first post made it.

[Michael Hardner]

Yes, most of them from the UK or US, which were virtually identical to Canada in terms of culture, values, religion and educational and skill levels.

Yet there was anti-immigrant sentiment since forever, right ? It was invalid then but is valid today ?

[Argus]

Yet there was anti-immigrant sentiment since forever, right ? It was invalid then but is valid today ?

I don't personally know how much of an 'anti immigrant' sentiment there was in 1900 or what your definition of 'forever' is.

People talk about the fact the Irish were sneered at and disliked when they arrived here, forgetting they were sneered at and mocked back in the UK, as well. There was a profound amount of anti-Catholic bigotry alive among UK Protestants of the day, and of course, here in Canada, as well, given so many of our citizens had come from there. The Orange Order was big in Ontario, for example. Let's face it, people everywhere then were pretty xenophobic and suspicious about everyone who wasn't like they were, and there was a profound amount of ignorance about 'the other'.

But you'll note most of the suspicion of immigrants to Canada now is focused only on one particular group. Someone I was reading said that for all the bemoaning and bewailing from the 'anti-racist' set, people focus almost no attention on Hindus, even though they're 'brown', and even though India is our biggest source country for immigrants now. People know almost nothing about Hindus, while they know quite a bit about Muslims. Furthermore people are far more open to outsiders now, far less personally religious, and generally more knowledgeable and sophisticated about the world. So I would suggest discomfort with Muslims isn't based on the same sorts of historical precedents you and others like to use but something entirely new, like, uhm, awareness of the backward social and political doctrines attached to the religion and cultural values of the Muslim world.

[Michael Hardner]

But you'll note most of the suspicion of immigrants to Canada now is focused only on one particular group.

Yes, since 2001 especially.

Someone I was reading said that for all the bemoaning and bewailing from the 'anti-racist' set, people focus almost no attention on Hindus, even though they're 'brown', and even though India is our biggest source country for immigrants now. People know almost nothing about Hindus, while they know quite a bit about Muslims. Furthermore people are far more open to outsiders now, far less personally religious, and generally more knowledgeable and sophisticated about the world. So I would suggest discomfort with Muslims isn't based on the same sorts of historical precedents you and others like to use but something entirely new, like, uhm, awareness of the backward social and political doctrines attached to the religion and cultural values of the Muslim world.

Since 2001. I don't think that Muslims deserve the scorn that's put on them because of some extremists who tried to start a religious war.

[Argus]

Yes, since 2001 especially.

Since 2001. I don't think that Muslims deserve the scorn that's put on them because of some extremists who tried to start a religious war.

The scorn that's put upon them is not because of 'some extremists'. I think Sam Harris details that fairly well when he describes the militancy of the Koran and it's exhortation on the followers of Islam to expand the 'faith' by any means, including the Sword, which, after all, is just what Muhammad did. Hitchens explained the difference between the three major religions thusly. Judaism and Christianity had their reformations which took enormous power away from the 'clerical class' which wanted to keep the religion to themselves and thus keep everyone in ignorance and obedience to what they (the clerical class) said God wanted. This gave them enormous power. Islam has not had such a reformation, and as Harris says, while the punishments in the old testament are deplorable, no modern Christian church believes them to be the literal word or wishes of God. But there is no 'reformed Islamic church" or any version of it. All the brutal directions for punishment in the koran are still taught by mainstream religious scholars and accepted as legitimate, including beating your wife, which Harris said, you can find instructions from Islamic scholars for on the internet.

Add in 25,000 terrorist incidents committed in the name of Islam since 2001 and you get an awful lot of very legitimate distrust for the proponents of this religion which should not be compared to anti-immigrant sentiment from a century ago.

[Michael Hardner]

The scorn that's put upon them is not because of 'some extremists'.

That's what put all of this onto centre stage of the debate and that is why we're talking about it. We were talking about immigration before 2001 but the conversation was different then.

There's no pointing in rehashing our endless discussions on why you (not I) think Islam is so different from other religions. That's for another thread.

[jazzer]

No, they actually don't. Otherwise they'd be killing people for having different types of threads in their clothes.

So you're saying "none" do then?