IBlackKiteI said:
Therumancer said:
Overpopulation is a very great concern and I reckon it's something we should be more concerned about than a hypothetical World War 3, though the idea that 9 tenths of the human race should be exterminated in a global conflict
for the apparent betterment of humanity is one of the most crazy things I've read in a long time. Aside from the idea of wiping out the majority of the human race (which would probably also include the majority of our best thinkers and workers whose talents would be needed to stabilize the world after such a catastrophe) a conflict that disastrous, that can actually result in that number of fatalities will irreversibly scar the entire planet, even if WMD's aren't used, and it would drag on for a very,
very long time. We aren't gonna be building some great space exploring utopia if there's practically no materials left to build it with, not enough people to do it, no places where people can be educated on how to do it, not enough habitable areas and food sources left for reasonably sized populations to exist anymore and create it, etc. If you'd envision the world after something like that it'd be like a dead, grim stone age with the odd peace of modern technology no one can really do anything with lying around.
Yeah, we need to do something about overpopulation before it gets too severe, but it's not that great a concern that a war with the express purpose of wiping out most of humanity would make any kind of sense whatsoever. And those kind of space endeavors should only be undertaken if the profit is most definitely worth the insane investments that kind of thing would require.
Wars happen. Conflict, whether its among one individual and another or groups of some kind is a part of human nature and occurs for a ton of reasons. But the state of world now, the fact that as many have already said, warring with someone nowadays will hurt your country more than benefiting it in just about every possible outcome, means that a World War just won't happen, at least not as long as the current state of the world exists. Between
world powers things like ideological or theological concerns just don't exist as a reason for great conflicts anymore (and even then these kinds of things rarely were an actual
reason for wars, more of a motivator or justification) and many of these kind of ideas still left are dying with the older generations and being replaced by those of the younger ones who are overall much less concerned with whatever archaic, unreasonable ideals or prejudices their forebears may have had a long time ago. In short, nobody wants to go on a holy or nationalist crusade anymore. I'm not trying to say that newer generations are inherently smarter or better or anything, but on the whole people question more than they used to. They won't support a lot of hardship for little gain, and you can forgot ridiculous claims that WW3 will be started by some single tyrannical dictator with some kind of evil, genocidal agenda because
noone will allow that kind of person to become a world leader in the first place, and even if they did noone would want to follow them.
Of course, all this applies to how things are
now. Only last century Hitler, a dictator with an evil, genocidal agenda, came to power and effectively created the most destructive conflict of all time, but a number of things were going on and a number of factors existed which allowed him to become powerful enough to create it, things and factors which thankfully don't exist right now...
Well, that's part of the problem and the gist of my point. Nobody has the willpower or the guts to do what is needed. The reaction "OMG, the death of 90% of the human race" misses the simple point of necessity. That's the level we need to reduce humans to if we're going to survive as a species, that reduction allows everyone to live at an acceptable level, while directed resources towards much needed space exploration, and allows the planet to heal itself.
Understand also that it's easy to look at this in a jaded fashion in the first world and think of your surroundings as the world. To be honest the first world accounts for a tiny percentage of humanity as a whole, close to 90% of the population lives in abject poverty as it is, with conflicts being sparked because all those people want better lives
and to have the things the first world does, but the planet simply cannot sustain it.
A big part of the trick to ending conflict and getting humanity off the planet so we can expand our population with our reach is to get the population down to the point where nobody needs to fight because everyone can live in a high degree of comfort. When you look at nations like China, India, or heck, the entire African continent, you can see how we're facing a situation of life killing us just as surely as a zombie plague in a work of fantasy.
Yes, a lot of good people would die during such a war, BUT that's the cost of the survival of the species as a whole. There will always be more great thinkers and upright guys.
The thing is that overpopulation is not a problem that can be solved slowly, some overpopulated nations like China talking about how their strategies are working and the population is going down kind of miss the point, such reduction takes generations, and even so reduction to the point that we need to see is not something people are going to endure willingly, at least not to the point where a government could do it without turning into a regime of psychopathic murderers, and if your going to go there, you might as well just get it over with by having a massive war and hash out all these differences once and for all. Time is a factor, as guys like Steven Hawking have pointed out, we don't have centuries for slow, gradual, long term changes to get up into space seriously, and as environmentalists have pointed out the current planetary resources won't last that long either. We're not talking with issues you can say "well this is something people need to be concerned about" and put it off for other generations, or hope a slow, unnoicible solution solves the problem, this issue has gotten to this point by being ignored as it is, which is why I advocate massive, global war, which will also let us get everything out of our system. I suppose if there was a single world government someone could institute a cull using a lottery system, but honestly I think war and people fighting for their survival works better social Darwinism and all of that.
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As far as things like World War II happening again, well the world is on the brink right now, all it takes is someone to drop a match. The illusion of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) has been what's holding it back.
People here will hate this point, but understand that right now in the US we already have events going on that are very similar to how the Nazi party got started. We have popular "Democratic" leaders with socialist leaders who come forward claiming to represent
the people, and demonize the rich, your already seeing a lot of people pushing to pretty much steal what the wealthy top percentages of society have in the name of "being fair". It doesn't come with Hitler's ethnic cleansing agenda, but then again things are a lot different at the moment. Back when Hitler was doing his thing wealthy Jews owned tons of land and controlled huge amounts of the money. Countries like Romania joined in with Hitler to kill the Jews largely because they were concerned about the "Re-Romanianization" of land and property held by the Jews, basically kill the people owning the property, take their money, and then give it to the state or in some cases the previous owners who sold it.
Now to be honest on a certain level I actually agree with the principle of re-distributing some of the wealth. I believe strongly in capitalism and a lot of the things that are being exploited, but I believe some people take it too far and ruin it for everyone else. As I've pointed out before I empathized with "Occupy Wall Street" and it's objectives, BUT I didn't believe they could achieve anything without violence (and I've been proven pretty much correct, Rome might not have been built in a day, but it wasn't built by a bunch of hipsters sitting around on their butts refusing to bathe either). As I've said many times I'm pretty middle of the road politically as I have a number of very strong left and right wing
positions it's just the areas I swing heavily right on come up more often on the forums. On both sides I very much believe in calls to action and people actually doing things rather than bureaucracy and talking about doing them. It sucks, but at the end of the day humans are still barbarians, and change comes at the barrel of a gun, or tip of a spear, we just delude ourselves otherwise, and in doing so we have created these deadlocks that are dragging down all of our achievements since at the end of the day two sides bickering for years does
nothing but spread the rot both sides want to avoid.
The point here is that the demonization of the wealthy and the successful has gone well beyond where it should be, we're seeing the development of what amounts to a class war, and a brewing politically lead "workers uprising" on a level that even I can't support. I do not think Obama is the "American Hitler" so to speak, but I believe he's paving the way for something very similar, probably without realizing it. When it does happen, such a leader will be very popular with the masses, not viewed as a demon (Hitler being an international man of the year is something people tend to forget... among other things). By not sticking to their guns in this government shut down, The Republican party just cost itself a lot of capital and while many people might see that as a good thing, I think it's opening these doors. We have an increasingy large government, increasingly draconian police and surveillance measures, and a hatred of the rich. Scale matters, and without opposition I wouldn't be surprised if the government makes a move to try and outright seize a lot of private assets in the next few years without a serious opposition, in actions that go far beyond the limited action I feel need to be taken against specific groups (major banks, etc...) that are largely responsible for ruining things for everyone else.
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