The Real Threat to Canada (& Western Civilization)

[Slim MacSquinty]

Although I largley agree with your idea your two examples really demonstrate a different issue:

Isaac Newton could have vacationed in Majorca, safe in the belief that the government (someone else) will worry about future generations. Instead, Newton religiously worked and invented calculus.

Newton developed calculus quietly over his lifetime, mostly in his youth, because of a compulsion, and in an era of science for science.

If that argument doesn't work, let me consider this one: Mrs. Einstein says to Albert: I'm off to Cuba. The government pays for university education in physics now - apply for a student loan/bursary.

Likewise for Einstein, he was a patent clerk when his formula finally got attention, he had been obsessed with light his whole life and had concluded that all energy was related to light, his famous formula was simply his observations of light combined with newtons formula for energy.

I have heard it postulated that there were more scientists alive in the 70's than had ever lived in all of history before this time and that the reason for the decline in progress in scientific breakthroughs was the result of the corporatiztion of science. Which, using your two examples, would be easy to agree with since corporate science simply wants to bring things to market and focuses on finding ways around patents and not on theoretical principals.

There is another statistical fact which also somewhat challenges your hypothesis won't leave as much to their offspring, that they simply have far less offspring to leave their money to, therefore in real dollars it may be less but it won't be distributed as widely. However there exists the real possibility that with higher life expectancies many will work much longer hampering the ability of the gen xers from full employement or alternatively parents who run out of funds could become a burden on their own children.

What many do not realize is the significant role that inheritance has played in our standard of living in western society.

In any case its an interesting topic.

[Oleg Bach]

Remembering when one of my daughters ran a small company a while back that supplied cheap priced prescriptions for little old American ladies and men... (sending Canadain drugs at minimal cost) - Looking over the paper work (snooping) in her office one day I was astounded that some were paying the what would be a mortgage and more just on drugs to keep them alive. Quickly I came to the conclution that by the time these people were dead if unassisted - will not own any property to pass on - or the money from that property to pass on - in effect big pharma is destroying the middle class. A young person who at one time could take his inheritance and buy a starter home will not be able to do that. The adult child or children in less than one generation will drop from middle class to lower middle class and then to poverty.

[Jerry J. Fortin]

In my view, the problem isn't one in which there is a lack of wealth transfer from the old to the young within the family unit, but instead the wealth transfer between the public and private ventures in the form of subsidies and tax breaks and incentives. There is a fundamental difference in the treatment of individuals and business efforts in this and most other nations. I believe it represents a very real as opposed to potential hazard to the financial well being of citizens. The average citizen is a worker, who is taxed from birth to death subsidizing the existence of the less and more fortunate inside our society.

I believe we are on the cusp of an entire new a different phase of human development. Technology is the key to our future and yet it is manipulated by the powers that be to their own ends without concern for the general population. We have the capability to feed every single human on this planet. We have the ability to avoid or prevent wars and famines that would shorten the lifespan of individual, yet strangely we do not pursue the solutions to our problems. We are seemingly stuck in the evolution of society between the rise of democracy and the city states and the information age. Even though we can now communicate without the concern of language or religious barriers, we still seem to get lost in cultural arrogance. How can this be?

The goal of humanity should not be limited to the survival of the species, but instead the improvement of the human condition. We are failing to realize the opportunities that have become feasible through technological development. We remain fragmented and isolated as individuals even as the world slowly shift toward global economic models. The advancements of our society are being limited by our commercial and economic endeavours to the detriment of the individual. We are focused upon dollars and cents instead of peace and happiness. We have embarked upon a path that is rapidly removing the options and freedoms of the individual in favour of the business interests of the monetary system with all its attending concerns and influences upon our consumer based society.

The danger to society as I see it is the degradation of individual rights and freedoms and the rise of corporatism.

[Oleg Bach]

Corporations have created themselves into a singular individual human being - a corporate! It is really a mass of humans...a bio machine with no remorse or compassion - People wonder what the proverbial biblical beast would be - I say beast signifys a brute - a mindless large animal - once you have a huge corporation - you have great influence and power - but no mind - like a dragon without a head and the tail trashing about. This tail can destroy every thing it sweeps across and you can not stop it because there is no head to plead or reason with.

[Wilber]

Most of the innovations we now see were conceivable in 1930. The world's most significant advances now are applications of theoretical ideas developed before 1930.

Dreams are great but the devil is in the details as they say. While most things we now enjoy may have been dreamed of by 1930, I have seem more of them come into reality in my lifetime than any generation in history. Television, helicopters, supersonic flight, space flight, submarines that have taken humans to the bottom of the deepest parts of the worlds oceans, computers and all the things that they make possible which is most everything involving technology these days, to name just a few. More occupations that have existed for centuries have been made extinct by technology and more have been invented by new technology than at any time in history. More advances have been made in medicine during the past 80 years than in the rest of history combined. My mother was a war bride and she took me back to England to visit my grandparents when I was three. We took a train from the west coast to Montreal and a ship to Southampton. We came back the same way. The next time I went it was a nine hour flight on a jet.

I remember talking with an engineer who was involved in the Eurofighter project back in the early nineties. I was asking him about unstable designs such as reverse sweep. He said that the Germans had experimented with reverse sweep during WWII but without success. It is only now that we have the computer power to build stability systems that make such aircraft controllable and the composite materials which are able to withstand the stresses these airframes are subject to while still being light enough. The devil is in the details.