All you have to do is search for word chains like "water scarcity" and "2012 World Water Week" and then spend some time reading and researching this serious problem facing some parts of the world
Missing Link, If a 'Mother Nature' event did take place, and it took 75% of the worlds population with it, it would cause total disruption of the world economy and world trade, and send us all back to some sort of tribal barterers. It would take many generations to get back to square one, and the vast human knowledge would be the only real thing that would get us there. JMO OC
Spot on this is my biggest worry and the longer we go before the house of cards comes down the worse it will be. Not just because there will be even more paper assests to unravel. The longer they can put it off the further into this next generation we get. Im 30 and know we had it too easy in a lot of ways, theres many lessons my parents generation learned that we simply missed out on and im still catching up. But the next generation coming through are a different breed alltogether. No concept of a fair days work for a fair days pay and save for things. Sadly they aren't even learning information in lots of their classes anymore, is all about how to google the answer. Even when I got o the doctor he googles my symptoms. How will these people get on in the real world post dollar crash? We often laugh that they couldn't function without their smartphone, once it unravels we get to see if they can. The bigger threat is that with no experience of the slightest hardship and no knowlege of the real world how will they react to this situation? Their closest education or experience is movies and video games.
That depends, doesn't it. If you want to commit your well-being to a bunch of psychopathic politicians and central planners who believe they know what's best even though everything they do leads to disaster repeatedly, then you are correct. On the other-hand, if you have a few neurons still functioning and can see the odds of another GFC are increasing and that central planners are all just lying and developing plans for you to be bailed-in on the next roll of the banking crisis like they did with Cyprus, then you are wrong.
There is an increasing amount of information suggesting that will not be the case OC. Birthing rates are falling across most countries in the world, it is anticipated that world population will peak sometime in the next 50 years and then decline. Islamic nations are facing the greatest threat to their future prosperity as the birthrates in those countries has dramatically changed over a very short space of time. OT but it is possible that Muslims may breed themselves into a small minority on the world stage. @bordie, have a lie down son, maybe take a Bex and have a cup of tea.
There is a creeping inevitability to serfdom for the many, lawless poverty stricken badlands, and an exceedingly high degree of social control within an economic zone ruled by the new aristocracy. Almost every large city has the skeleton and the flesh is appearing day by day. The grip of social control is vice-like and the sheeplike responses of 'most' Australians will mean that the queues at the food points will be orderly and the heavy hand of the law upon some miscreants who try and queue jump will be roundly cheered by all. A few petrol shortages will squelch any organised burn-out parties and small business trashing by angry young men and women who will be banished back to the future badlands from whence they came. The MSM will decry the lack of resolution of the crises whilst distracting the masses with tales of children suffering and obese landlords ripping off the poor, honest and formerly hardworking Australians (when they had jobs in the dead manufacturing industries), and how their jobless children have no respect for 'the Australian way'. Some bright spark will suggest conscription and militarisation as a solution because the (Asian nation fo some sort) is coming for our mineral/food/beach wealth. Some gang members will see that as training for future control of the badlands. Public servants growing fat on the bureaucracy will tut-tut about the beggars and the price increases at their favourite coffee shops, and whisper in the photocopy room as rumours of 'cuts' removes all vestiges of independent thought or action and only the socially inept are stripped from the workforce and thrown on the pile of dispossessed queuing for their food stamps and blankets. Eventually the new society will rise with generational unemployment and off the chart crime statistics in the badlands and decentralised cities run as fiefdoms spread across Australia. At the head of this will sit thousands and thousands of bureaucrats governing with the full force of the law behind their every larcenous move - just like the good old days. Of course if PMs rise I won't be so sour of a morning.
Had a Professor of Sociology from UQ in the other month (so he was probably a raving Pinko I don't know), he has a theory that the future of our society will be based upon Landlords and serfs. His crumbed barra was ready and he left before I could question him further. I'm gonna try to make sure I'm on the Landlord side rather than the Serf. Lord Shiney! has a certain resonance to it. RC can be my Squire, he can take orders. :lol:
My vision of the breakdown in society based on an economic collapse; [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRM2YcGpmxg[/youtube]
Hi Old Codger, I am not talking about an "event" but rather attrition due to too few resources and too many people competing for those resources. Fresh or potable water just happens to be one resource that is already scarce in some areas and people are even killing for it. Much more important than any pm like silver or gold is clean drinking water, nutritious food, a place to call home (not necessarily huge nor in a wealthy neighborhood), and of course security in whatever form you feel is adequate. Some stackers get caught up in trying to spend as much as they possibly can on building silver stockpiles with little interest for the more important concerns. I get it that stacking can be an addiction for some....but just like any addiction....it's unhealthy to revolve one's life around collecting chunks of metal whose value is not guaranteed by anyone..
Then there is the other way this pans out: http://www.brotherjohnf.com/forum/Thread-You-couldn-t-be-more-wrong http://forums.silverstackers.com/topic-40314-no-global-economic-collapse-any-time-soon.html
Emanance, If the world population simply grew and doubled every 40 something years as it is now, until human society broke down due to many shortages etc, I expect that our world society would degenerate unto something i do not want to think about, and will be glad i will not see. Famine and conflict would be with us all every day. The economies would break down in much the same way as we fear today, just for a different reason and trigger. Whatever scenario comes to pass, it will be horrible. If you have ever seen a mouse plague you will know what i am thinking of. Here is a link, http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/spectrum/worst-mouse-plague-ever-spreads-across-australia/ I have seen a couple in Victoria over the decades. 100s of mice under one sheet of corrugated iron and then they spontaneously die off in a few days. JMO OC
and, https://www.google.com.au/search?q=...mCkwXa54DIAQ&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=662 Hope that works, pics of a mouse plague.
Shiney, "There is an increasing amount of information suggesting that will not be the case OC. Birthing rates are falling across most countries in the world," I disagree completely with the UN projections for the next 50 years. Three of the 6 continents are still in rapid population growth and Africa is now well over a billion, even with famine, civil wars, and AIDS to put a brake on it. Sth America is the same, and Asia is so desperate that China has the 'One Child Policy' time bomb to contend with. They have 120 males chasing 100 females and that will only get worse! Even the USA is still growing rapidly! As is Australia. Only Antarctica is stable! ;-) And you cannot get away from the FACT that world population is heading for 8 Billion in about 7 or 8 years, say 2020. The UN says we will not hit 9 billion until 2050 - BULLSHIT! Again, JMO OC
When I was about 11 or so in 1950 I was taught that the world population was TWO billion! About the same time, the population of Australia was 8 million, and the population of Melbourne was ONE million. I still remember the headline in the newspaper when it hit a million. Now the figures are 7 Billion, 23 million and 4.2 million. All in 63 years! OC