bordsilver, "Holy crap. yikes" I remember reading of one of these plagues that the 'die off' is not from lack of food or water, but that the entire population just rolls over and dies. OC
I'm not quoting UN figures OC, just information I've listened to on the radio. I don't put great faith in wikipedia because I don't want to check sources, but it is a handy reference, especially if you couldn't be fucked doing a lot of research and it helps prove a point, this gives a good pictorial overview of the current fertility rates in continents across the world. The brake is on now OC, and the brake is not famine or AIDS or war, it is economics. It stands to reason that as each third world country joins the race for consumer goods, there is going to be more competition and it'll cost more. It's laughable really, modern society is it's own fertility control. We can wealth ourselves into non-existence.
Emanance's outlook I fear is what we are currently in. If you start looking at world events with that post in mind, it really starts to fit to well. Constant bubbles in markets, especialy this latest mark down in PM coupled with extreamly low interest rates and further state borrowing at the tax payers expense. Money printed into existance and more money needs to be created just to pay the interest on the original. A normal person who traditionaly would have put money away in savings can no longer keep up with inflation, PM dont seem to be the store of wealth they really are so people then move into stocks which are only rising because of FED now buying into stocks through many different ways. Once everyone is back into stocks, just wait for the excuse for where 80% of the value disappered over a weekend. People will swollow it and the reminders will come out that there is risk to everything. Surprise, central banks, the wealthy etc, turns out they had been selling their bonds / shares on the quiet and buying PM's while cheap. There will be another call of insider trading like during the GFC but it will be forgotten once the new season of Big Brother airs and another flash war in someplace no one has heard of. The entertainment flows and people forget there is a real issue they had been going to do something about. Those that make it through that bubble (theft) count themselves lucky but they are just the next lambs to slaughter and the dance starts again. Why bleed a nation dry in 1 day when it can be a cash cow for many years for a few.
Slightly off topic but definitely worth a watch. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IipwQryubIE[/youtube]
Between JulieW's & MyNamesNotBen's post I have to admit, these are both in line with my own conclusions. A return to a simpler more frugal existence is inevitable whatever the scenario. On one hand poor economic performance is forcing the worlds working poor into a life of frugality. On the other a depletion of the worlds resources will make it a reality for everyone. All you can really do is do what you can to prepare your family for these outcomes.
Gino, Rinchin, "React". Social disruption. OC Yep. 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? Violently. One of the lessons from 'Weevils in the Flour' (~ 400 word pictures of the Great Depression) was that society stuck together and did not break down into violence. Families supported each other with a mattress on the floor etc. Tenants often lived in a house rent free and looked after it for the landlord, one of whom was my (rich) grandfather. People even gathered to protect the tenant from eviction, and in fact returned the furniture to the house from the nature strip. The police, having supervised the eviction, took no further action. I have NIL hope of that in the future, my greatest fear is home invasion. OC
The world population is not going to increase beyond approx 2015 according to Demographers (not politicians/economists who would have us to believe anything), see Demographic Winter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZeyYIsGdAA interestingly the film shows that with the birth rate fall in Japan so consequently did the GDP fall in a parallel manner. even in 3 rd world and Islamic countries this is happening.
The world population will continue to increase significantly into the foreseeable future. The growth rate is the birth rate - the death rate. Barring some cataclysmic event, the birth rate will continue to outpace the death rate. Even a miniscule 1.098% annual increase (which is that of 2012) means that in 2012, the world population increased by about 77,900,000....that's 77,900,000 resource hungry people more than in 2011...and this number already factors in those who died in 2012. Our children and their children are in big trouble people and our own generation is to blame to a large degree.
