Modern Fears of the Future

[August1991]

Apparently, we in the civilized world are doomed to failure, destruction, oblivion. From what I can understand, the Western Left and Right have several predictions of our collective end.

Let me start on the Right then consider the Left.

1. The Western Right seems to argue that we must protect ourselves against backward foreigners invading our territory.

(See Mark Steyn, Donald Trump.)

2. The new Western Left seems to fear greenhouse gases or global warming or climate change.

(See David Suzuki. The Left has a penchant for changing names.)

3. The old Western Left believes that a greater divide between rich and poor will cause our demise.

(See Thomas Piketty. Or Naomi Klein, who manages to combine both forms of Leftist fear.)

=====

To respond, let me start on the Left:

3. Going back 30 years or so, I think that I can dispense with the Old Leftist trope: there is less poverty in the world today than ever before. Thomas Piketty's math makes no more sense than the math of Karl Marx. True, this century may see the world's first trillionaire (the 19th century saw its first billionaire) but this means nothing.

2. The new Western Left fear of "Climate Change"? In the past, many people have presented various "scientific" threats to humankind. Thomas Malthus was one of the first; Dennis Meadows a more recent example. IME, any extrapolation involving people is often wrong since people learn and change their behavour.

Nevertheless, I understand the idea of an externality and a tipping point. I'll admit that the new Left is sophisticated.

1. Should we fear foreigners (Muslims, Mexicans, etc) as the Right would argue?

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. Or, to use Ann Coulter's viewpoint, despite many Canadians leaving to the US since they had that option, Canada's population increased by 60%.

Rather than discuss statistics, I have a different argument (that Steyn has occasionally discussed). Steve Jobs (a westerner) invented the iPhone. It's so simple to use (it requires no manual) that around the world, billions of people now use it.

Many view Steyn as Churchill in the 1930s - but somehow, I believe this threat is different.

Edited September 14, 2015 by August1991

[eyeball]

1. Should we fear foreigners (Muslims, Mexicans, etc) as the Right would argue?

I think people should be way more fearful of the right's fear myself. It's overblown and leading us towards some really dark places.

[Canada_First]

I think people should be way more fearful of the right's fear myself. It's overblown and leading us towards some really dark places.

Muslims from the ME and Islamic nations hate Jews and Israel and view them as the enemy. They view homosexualty as a crime and apostasy punishable by death. Muslims view women as second class humans.

Are these qualities that we want integrated into Canada's societal fabric?

[PrimeNumber]

Muslims from the ME and Islamic nations hate Jews and Israel and view them as the enemy. They view homosexualty as a crime and apostasy punishable by death. Muslims view women as second class humans.

Are these qualities that we want integrated into Canada's societal fabric?

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

[Exegesisme]

Climate change is real, out of human hard ability, and in human soft ability.

Farther more:

http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums/topic/24921-8-controled-climate-change-of-earth-political-philosophy-for-human-future/

​

Edited September 14, 2015 by Exegesisme

[Canada_First]

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

White Christians are second class citizens in Canada.

[PrimeNumber]

White Christians are second class citizens in Canada.

I'm not even going to start on that one. Nice try though.

[Moonlight Graham]

Muslims from the ME and Islamic nations hate Jews and Israel and view them as the enemy. They view homosexualty as a crime and apostasy punishable by death. Muslims view women as second class humans.

Are these qualities that we want integrated into Canada's societal fabric?

You're stereotyping all Muslims, and that's wrong. Not all Muslims hate Jews and Israel, not all view homosexuality as a sin, not all want to "kill apostates", not all view women as second-class citizens.

[Canada_First]

You're stereotyping all Muslims, and that's wrong. Not all Muslims hate Jews and Israel, not all view homosexuality as a sin, not all want to "kill apostates", not all view women as second-class citizens.

These are the laws in the ME nations. It's not a long stretch to think that a good amount of them do in fact agree with it since they practice a strict form of Islam.

[Moonlight Graham]

These are the laws in the ME nations. It's not a long stretch to think that a good amount of them do in fact agree with it since they practice a strict form of Islam.

I'm sure a good amount do believe the things you mentioned, but again we can't stereotype them all. The trick is how to figure out the good ones from the bad ones. In Canada's immigration now, we're essentially looking at criminal backgrounds checks, but if it's not a crime in their country how do we know? That goes for people from any country, not just in the ME.

[Bonam]

I'm sure a good amount do believe the things you mentioned, but again we can't stereotype them all. The trick is how to figure out the good ones from the bad ones.

Why do we need to?

For all the arguments about immigration's effect on Canada (or on other Western nations), people rarely consider the effect on the home countries of the immigrants. Developing and war-torn countries have great need of what few doctors, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, etc, that are there, and yet we drain them all away. When we take all the brightest, most skilled, most progressive people out of these societies and bring them to Western countries, what do we leave behind? How many of the problems faced by developing nations are at least in part a result of immigration policies that siphon off all the best talent that their struggling education systems manage to produce?

[eyeball]

Why do we need to?

For all the arguments about immigration's effect on Canada (or on other Western nations), people rarely consider the effect on the home countries of the immigrants. Developing and war-torn countries have great need of what few doctors, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, etc, that are there, and yet we drain them all away. When we take all the brightest, most skilled, most progressive people out of these societies and bring them to Western countries, what do we leave behind? How many of the problems faced by developing nations are at least in part a result of immigration policies that siphon off all the best talent that their struggling education systems manage to produce?

People were considering the brain drain years and years ago alongside concerns about draining many developing countries of their natural resources and taking advantage of desperate labourers and lax environmental protection etc etc.

The problem is nobody acted on those concerns, and usually just laughed at them. You see a lot of that.

Edited September 14, 2015 by eyeball

[Moonlight Graham]

Why do we need to?

For all the arguments about immigration's effect on Canada (or on other Western nations), people rarely consider the effect on the home countries of the immigrants. Developing and war-torn countries have great need of what few doctors, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, etc, that are there, and yet we drain them all away. When we take all the brightest, most skilled, most progressive people out of these societies and bring them to Western countries, what do we leave behind? How many of the problems faced by developing nations are at least in part a result of immigration policies that siphon off all the best talent that their struggling education systems manage to produce?

I completely agree.

[Argus]

You're stereotyping all Muslims, and that's wrong. Not all Muslims hate Jews and Israel, not all view homosexuality as a sin, not all want to "kill apostates", not all view women as second-class citizens.

Just most of them....

[Argus]

I completely agree.

So then you agree we should be targeting Europe for our immigrants, instead of the third world, right?

Edited September 18, 2015 by Argus

[jazzer]

Muslims...view homosexualty as a crime and apostasy punishable by death. Muslims view women as second class humans.

Are these qualities that we want integrated into Canada's societal fabric?

Have you read the old testament lately?

[Canada_First]

Have you read the old testament lately?

Islam is a massive religion and political movement that is trying to take over large parts if the world through dispicable violence in the Middle East and Africa. Even trying to equate that with Christianity is disgusting.

Muslims are supossed to take the Koran literally. Christian bible is not. Huge difference. Thats why the bible comes with the Catechism. To help people understand what the Bible is saying and what it means in todays world. The Koran needs no accompaniment as its to be taken literally. As it was written centuries ago.

Of course not all Muslims are that strict. But the ones causing the problems are. Thats what is important.

[jazzer]

Muslims are supossed to take the Koran literally. Christian bible is not. Huge difference.

Many orthodox jews and Christian fundamentalists follow the bible literally.

[WIP]

I don't know how much of this crap I want to step through so.........

3. Going back 30 years or so, I think that I can dispense with the Old Leftist trope: there is less poverty in the world today than ever before. Thomas Piketty's math makes no more sense than the math of Karl Marx.

Pure Neolliberal bullshit! And it has nothing to do with either Marx or Picketty. This fabrication that global poverty has declined in the past 30 years is only based on a report by the Asian Development Bank, which set the poverty rate goalpost at $1.25 per day. That wouldn't be much 30 or 40 years ago, but it would be laughable if it wasn't for the real misery that the growing numbers of calorie-deficient people around the world have to live with. Inflation would require setting that goalpost higher, and so would the rising cost of basic foods, which make up a large share of the spending of urban poor in third world cities around the world. That touches on another fallacy of the modern era...that the migration out of rural common lands to cities is an improvement for third world poor. This facade is only maintained because subsistence farmers growing their own food don't make a presence in economic measures like GDP, which will only consider these people when they are selling their labour to buy food.

True, this century may see the world's first trillionaire (the 19th century saw its first billionaire) but this means nothing.

On the contrary, it means that income and wealth stratification increases, and like the mafia, most of the profits continue to be kicked up to the top of the pyramid.

2. The new Western Left fear of "Climate Change"? In the past, many people have presented various "scientific" threats to humankind. Thomas Malthus was one of the first; Dennis Meadows a more recent example. IME, any extrapolation involving people is often wrong since people learn and change their behavour.

I've been wondering ever since I first joined this forum, just how airtight and selfcontained is this bubble you live in? The forcasts by the Club of Rome, which included Dennis and Donella Meadows...if anyone's wondering about the reference, made predictions based on various responses society would make to pollution and increasing resource scarcity. We seem to be tracking very closely with the expectations based on the assumption that we would mostly ignore consequences and carry on business as usual: Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse

The book’s central point, much criticised since, is that “the earth is finite” and the quest for unlimited growth in population, material goods etc would eventually lead to a crash..........................................

The results show that the world is tracking pretty closely to the Limits to Growth “business-as-usual” scenario. The data doesn’t match up with other scenarios.

A finite world! Imagine that. I thought the world would just keep growing and stocking new metals and minerals in the ground to keep industrial civilization humming along! And fwiw Malthus may have been wrong on a lot of things, but his basic reasoning that population (uncontrolled during his time) would outstrip available food resources, was sound reasoning. Malthus prediction was delayed because the discovery of coal and then oil, provided lots of quick, cheap energy that saved Englands forests from being completely cut down for firewood. And a substantial portion of the lower classes emigrated to the Americas and other colonies, while imported food from those colonies allowed England to grow larger without threat of starvation. Since world population is still growing...Malthus cannot be delayed much longer! The UN FAO is forecasting that we need to grow more food by 2050 than has ever been produced since the dawn of civilization just to maintain adequate food supplies for the estimated 11 billion population by mid-century.

[eyeball]

Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse

It may be too late to convince the world’s politicians and wealthy elites to chart a different course. So to the rest of us, maybe it’s time to think about how we protect ourselves as we head into an uncertain future.

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.

[August1991]

I don't know how much of this crap I want to step through so.........

Pure Neolliberal bullshit! And it has nothing to do with either Marx or Picketty. This fabrication that global poverty has declined in the past 30 years is only based on a report by the Asian Development Bank...

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.

Edited September 21, 2015 by August1991

[Michael Hardner]

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

Cite:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#Current_trends

Since the mid-1990s, there has been a steady decline in both the worldwide poverty rate and the total number of extreme poor. In 1990, the percentage of the global population living in extreme poverty was 43.1%, but in 2010, that percentage had dropped down to 20.6%.^[4] This halving of the extreme poverty rate falls in line with the first millennium development goal (MDG1) proposed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who called on the international community at the turn of the century to "halv[e] the proportion of people living in extreme poverty…by 2015."^[12]

Various projections for the prospect of "ending" extreme poverty by 2030. The y-axis represents the percentage of people living in Extreme Poverty globally.

This reduction in extreme poverty took place most notably in China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Vietnam. These five countries accounted for the alleviation of 715 million people out of extreme poverty between 1990 and 2010 – more than the global net total of roughly 700 million.

[dre]

The problem with trying to use

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.

First of all, using the fact that poverty is in decline globally to argue extreme concentration of wealth is A-OK is really just silly. Poverty has been in steady decline for 200 years. Both health and wealth have increased world wide during that time. 200 years ago the worlds average life expectency was 40 years and the average income was only a few thousand of todays dollars.

The biggest reason for this isnt free trade its technology and the industrial revolution.

Global Stats Guru, Hans Rosling illustrates it quite nicely here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

[August1991]

The biggest reason for this isnt free trade its technology and the industrial revolution.

I disagree. Why?

Without free trade, we would never have had the industrial revolution. And free trade? It's just another technology.

===

Once upon a time, Japan was going to destroy the American economy. Now, apparently, the Chinese or Mexicans will invade and impoverish Americans with their cheap labour. Well, what of the Sun? It shines on us all for free! The Sun provides light and heat and works for nothing!

Should we fear Sunlight because it works for nothing?

[sarcasm]The US federal government should prevent Sunlight from entering America because Sunlight reduces the wages of American workers. Sunlight will work for nothing! If we let sunlight into North America, it will impoverish American workers in a race to the bottom.

Edited September 23, 2015 by August1991

[WIP]

Cite:

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

Using the World Bank definition of $1.25/day, as of September 2013, roughly 1.2 billion people remain in.............blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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; or the fact that third world economies were mostly rural and functioning through barter and trade between farmers, vendors and craftspeople at local markets. There wasn't much of an economy to monetize before the enclosure tactic found its way to the third world and started forcing people off of farms and out of rural villages to fill cities and serve as desperate sweatshop labour for all of the proposed new low-paying industries made possible by eliminating tariffs and quotas in the target markets.

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!

I could add a point I made when sifting through hard-to-get data on income and quality of life in Bangladesh, around the time of the factory fires and that factory collapse that killed 1000: the $1.25 number or any other number is not weighed to discount the effects of increasing inequality....as everywhere it is tried, capitalism distributes most of the gains to the owners of capital, and with no income redistribution, a small minority of millionaires and billionaires will pull up the national average even if most of the population are actually below the designated poverty line.