And now for something completely different...

[Occhidiangela]

Hi,
And he'll be laughing, by and by.
Ah, yes. The falling optimist argument. He was overheard, while passing the twentieth floor, to have said, "What's to worry? It all seems fine to me."

And, yes, technology generates more jobs than it destroys. Just ask the auto and steel workers in the rust belt. But that's OK, too. We'll simply retrain them all to be neurosurgeons and cosmologists. I'm sure they'll find their new occupations much more satisfying. ;)

Well put, Pete, but about that Malthusian thing. It is unevenly reacted to as a pile of Conventional Wisdom or prophecy.

Fertility rates show that the so called civilized people who would agree with some of the bright ideas of responsible collective endeavour are low. Fertility rates of those who have yet to catch that train ranges from 2.0 to greater.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU

Take the video with a grain of salt, it is a rather gross pile of fear mongering. That glaring weakness aside, uses statistical data to show something that it does not intend to:

The population growth won't stop any time soon, and the eight billion figure I mentioned earlier will be arrived at within about a generation, unless something dire transpires in the interim. The film focuses on a particular political bit of tunnel vision in its scare mongering, but even if that chicken little position is somewhat correct, which I doubt, those who end up "taking over" are still faced with the same problem as any other social group: too many freakin' people with plenty of desires and expectations.

When I was in elementary school, China had about 600 million people and India about 400 million people. A generation and a half later, with two different social norms running, India has surpassed China, each over a billion. I do not care to guess how the struggle for energy and resources, of all sorts, will not result in a hell of a lot more war over the next twenty five years. It's as old an excuse as the one Darius used, or Caesar.

One of the points that irritates me about the linked film is its certainty that "what is Muslim" will not adapt and evolve as its younger generations grow up in juxtaposition with the more liberally minded regions of the world. It occurs to me that plenty of modern, secularized Muslims don't crank out babies at the 6-8 level, so from that angle alone, population pressure is not guaranted to be unending. But it may be. Depends on a lot of things, your propaganda and education pair considered.

Here is an example of the the cultural assumptions that can change, religion notwithstanding.

Italy. Once a great Catholic spawning pool. The Pope was most pleased, no doubt. I am, since it gave us Pete, and some of my neighbors in Italy. :)

My landlord came from a large, Italian family. He had six brothers and sisters. His wife likewise.

The two of them had two kids, Valeria and Alfredo. The weren't gonna have no more. Why? Cost too much, too much desire to set them up for their future.

WIll this generational change tend to happen as more places get "moderinzed?"

I don't know. But if it doesn't, then the Malthusian prediction will merely come to pass a century or so later than predicted, it all being a matter of when rather than if.

Occhi