Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

[Malacite]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

Actually, China is set for a *massive* collapse. The One Child policy is really coming to bite them in the ass (again, this was on VICE a couple weeks back but also other programs) as dating is a total nightmare in China, and they have so many elderly... not to mention the political system and the seemingly little known fact that China's also up to their eyeballs in debt.

So I'm taking all these predictions about them overtaking the U.S. with a grain of salt; Yeah, they do have way more people which means they should have a bigger economy, but when you factor in the % of elderly (which is rapidly accelerating) over there and the burden that places on them, it's not a pretty picture.


As far as our resources go, well, again we don't know what kind of technology we'll see in the future. In our immediate state no, we probably don't have the resources to sustain a fairly good standard of living for everyone on the planet, but that can change through numerous ways (particularly space exploration, though that's going to take the longest to develop). Also, we really do have to think about the population problem. Yes, I said problem, because Cid's not entirely wrong about there being too many people on an increasingly overcrowded planet - we're already seeing major issues cropping up with regards to physical space, food and water. This is also another prime example of how space exploration can pay off and why it's a crime NASA is so horribly underfunded but anyway;

One positive trend to note, is people are having less children now & birth rates are declining, which will help stabilize things alongside medical improvements etc. I recently heard that, provided you're healthy/don't do anything abusive like smoking etc., the average person's lifespan is actually increasing at about a rate of 1.5 years per yer or something like that which is incredible. Plus there's advancements being made in nanotechnology and genetics and so who the hell knows but it's all looking promising to me.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

Space exploration doesn't solve the problem, it just delays it. If we find another planet to put people we'll just expand the population to fill that one too.

[Taskmage]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

There's not only the hurdle of reaching other planets, but also the much bigger problem of making those environments habitable and productive for humans. I don't see interplanetary colonization becoming a serious proposition for at least 100 years, but that's ROMA data.

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Actually, yeah. The more I look at it, the more insane Mars colonization looks. It would literally be easier to build a civilization on Antarctica. The temperature is about the same, but unlike on Mars there is readily available water, enough atmospheric oxygen that you wouldn't suffocate, and you could step outside without having all the water boil out of your body Total Recall style. Not to mention that when something goes horribly wrong, you can go home from Antarctica. So look for human colonies on Mars some time after Antarctica has become as populous as Europe.

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Seriously, you guys are grossly overstating this problem. Check out this population density map that National Geographic made in 2011. Notice that half of the United States is virtually uninhabited. And that's The United States. Even bigger percentages of Canada, Asia, and Australia are practically empty. It's not like we're going to start falling off into the ocean any minute now. The world looks crowded to you because you live in cities, where the population density is highest. What you see when you look around is not representative of the planet as a whole.

[Malacite]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

Colonization isn't that much of a stretch really - the biggest hurdle with Mars is getting some kind of an atmosphere set up. The soil is actually just fine and there's fresh water galore, but it's frozen - we'd have to start with smaller plants to gradually build up a breathable environment and then build up enough greenhouse gases (ironic isn't it?) to trap enough of the Sun's energy to properly warm the planet since it's much further away than Earth. Canada's also leading the way in propulsion technology with new Plasma rockets that travel much faster than conventional ones, but with the caveat of only being usable in space; they can't be used for launching into orbit. But actually I was thinking more along the lines of Dead Space where they've taken to mining resources from other planets and asteroids etc. Earth's water supply didn't just magically show up out of the blue, it came from collisions eons ago with comets. Hell, didn't they find evidence of frozen water on the moon a while back?!

[Taskmage]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

There is moisture in both places, but whether there is enough to work with is highly questionable. Whether there might be valuable mineral resources is also unknown, but not really related to the issue of population pressure.

As to building an atmosphere, there's also the issue of Mars having no magnetic field to protect the atmosphere from being stripped away by solar wind, which is an even bigger problem than creating a breathable atmosphere in the first place. We can't just stick a space heater down in the planet's core and start it up again. Creating a magnetosphere would take an absolutely absurd amount of energy.

Far more productive to terraform the vast amounts of land already here on Terra to support life.

[Firewind]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

One of the big issues with colonisation of the Moon or Mars is also the issue of gravity. Basically if you spend a few years on the Moon or Mars, you will never be able to return him because Earth's gravity WILL kill you. Your body, skeleton, blood, fluid balance and muscles will be too used to a lower gravity situation and a return to Earth will just be fatal.

It is one of the main reasons why they don't let people stay up in the ISS for more than a few months.

EDIT: Radiation is an issue too. Basically your immune system could be compromised by the higher levels of radiation on the Moon and Mars.

[Feba]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

Check out this population density map that National Geographic made in 2011.

The red color of Taiwan there really makes me question their sources, not to mention their implications. Perhaps the raw population data is more accurate than the income data, but it appears to me that 1- they are simply going by national income levels, not actually based on individual regions/cities, and 2- Some one tossed Taiwan into the Chinese income info, because they're not just legally the same country, they're practically the same country too. It's also pretty suspicious in a lot of other countries as well; for one thing, a lot of China's wealth is in the cities, while the countrysides remain very poor. I'm sure this is reflected in most of the other BRICS countries as well; heck, even in the states there is a clear difference in income levels (although not enough to drop anyone below "high" I'm sure).

It's probably mostly okay just for the sake of seeing a rough population distribution, but I would take it with a grain of salt all the same.

[Malacite]

Re: Social Movements, Low Wage Jobs & More

Here's a rather lengthy but informative (and extremely disturbing/unsettling) read about what amounts to basically fascism:


War on Whistleblowers: How the Obama Administration Destroyed Thomas Drake For Exposing Government Waste | Alternet