Text 1881, 121 rader
Skriven 2006-06-06 11:49:00 av Robert E Starr JR (2327.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Soylent Green (Re: At
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* * * This message was from Jonathan Biggar to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
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Mox Fulder wrote:
 > On Fri, 2 Jun 2006 01:31:45 +0000 (UTC), Jonathan Biggar 
<jon@floorboard.com> wrote:
 > [...]
 >
 >>Perhaps the brain tumor comes from a knee-jerk reaction to Stein's
 >>statement rather than deeply considering it?
 >
 >
 > No, it comes from the absurdity and wrongness of those statements.

No, it comes from you declaring them absurd and wrong without actually 
examining the basis behind them.

 >>Stein happens to be 100% correct.  We are no where near "running out of
 >>resources".  So the more people on the planet, the more labor is
 >>available to exploit resources that haven't yet been tapped.  In fact,
 >>it's a well known-economic result that more people tend to produce their
 >>own economic growth.
 >
 > It's too bad you can't see how idiotic this sounds. "Nowhere near 
running
 > out of resources?" What about crude oil? We are consuming more oil 
than we
 > are extracting, and those reserves are *not* unlimited. Finding more oil
 > would only postpone the inevitable, and not by much.

First off, I believe the world's oil resources are much higher than most 
believe.  Second, so what?  We burn oil while it is cheap and switch to 
something else when it is not.  *Not* doing that slows economic growth 
and compounds the pain and misery of the third world because it takes us 
that much longer to grow their economy enough to lift them out of poverty.

 > Natural energy sources like solar power, wind, tidal energy and so on,
 > certainly are more than enough to produce all the energy we need, but in
 > the real world, that energy can't be magically exploited. All those
 > alternative energy sources require a major change in the infrastructure
 > *to be of any use*. The energy may be there, but if we do no have an
 > effective and efficient way to use it, we are screwed. If you have an
 > unlimited supply of canned food, but no can opener, *you are going to
 > starve to death*.

Now you're changing the subject.

 > "More people" is *not* what we need to exploit those resources.

Wrong.  More people = more labor = more ability to exploit resources of 
*any* variety.

 > What we
 > need is less blind and sociopathic greed from the corporations that
 > killed the electric car, for example. The electric car was not a 
fantasy.
 > It was real. It was here. It worked. And it was deliberately destroyed.

Marxist platitudes don't substitute for rational argument.

 > India has a population of one billion, with a "B"--half of them are
 > below the poverty line, and illiterate.

You're ignoring the *great* strides that India has taken in the last 50 
years or so to raise their population out of poverty.

 > I'm supposed to believe that the
 > solution is for that population to grow even more? One BILLION is not
 > enough? Really? What is the magic number, exactly, that will make babies
 > come out of the womb knowing how to read, and already holding a graduate
 > degree and a job?

Ah, more rants, less light.

 > It's simple: More people consume more resources and produce more waste.

And more people *produce* more resources to support their consumption. 
And waste isn't that forever, it's just a resource waiting for a 
rational to recycle it.

 > Those resources do not come from a magical faucet in the sky, and that
 > waste does not disappear into a magical hole in the ground.

You're simply wrong.  Given enough energy and labor, any waste can be 
recycled into useful resources.

 >>Perhaps you're unaware of the famous bet between Paul Erlich (of "The
 >>Population Bomb") fame and Economist Julian Simon over Erlich's claim
 >>that we were running out of raw natural resources?  Erlich lost.
 >
 >
 > "More than 2.6 billion people--forty per cent of the world's
 > population--lack basic sanitation facilities, and over one billion 
people
 > still use unsafe drinking water sources. As a result, thousands of
 > children die every day from diarrhoea and other water-, sanitation- and
 > hygiene-related diseases and many more suffer and are weakened by
 > illness." http://www.unicef.org/wes/
 >
 > Explain that bet to the millions of people who don't have access to 
clean
 > water. We are *all* losing here.

Sigh.  Unable to access resources is not the same thing as them running 
out.  Lack of access to clean water is a problem not caused by not 
having water, but that we haven't brought the world up to late 20th 
century sanitation standards.  There is *no* critical lack of raw 
resources that is causing that problem.


-- 
Jon Biggar
Floorboard Software
jon@floorboard.com
jon@biggar.org
                                                    
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