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@disruption @threat The economist really likes to paint everything as a gloomy picture. The way I see it - the modern internal combustion engine is a threat t
by wrong_variable 11y ago
@disruption @threat
The economist really likes to paint everything as a gloomy picture.
The way I see it - the modern internal combustion engine is a threat to civilization.
Car Makers especially americans ones have a lot of blood on their hand. Everything from helping redesign cities to make it impossible to not afford buying their product.
To making walking a crime ( jay walking ).
"Young city-dwellers are turning their backs on owning a costly asset that sits largely unused and loses value the moment it is first driven."
Good - we really cannot have 7 billion people drive cars.
- monk_e_boy 11y ago"we really cannot have 7 billion people drive cars" ... I think we will have to... for a while. Education is the best way of reducing population. Cars (or any type of personal transport) is crucial, moving the effort from humans to machines, leaving the human with more time and options. This leads to education and caring about the environment, politics etc. So for a while we'll have to have 7 billion people using cars (or at least that's what the goal should be) then this will drop to 6 billion, then 5 then 4 etc. We can power cars using solar. Terrestrial or orbital.
- smhg 11y ago> Education is the best way of reducing population. Going slightly off topic. Overpopulation can be solved in 2 ways: reducing population or expanding our habitat. Education contributes to both, but the second sounds like a more feasible path to take.
- merpnderp 11y agoThere are around ~400k people born every single day. If we expand our habitat to other planets, we'd need the capability to launch a million people a day to have even the remotest impact on population in the near future. Unless anti-gravity or some new weird physics is invented, this isn't ever going to happen.
- mikeash 11y agoIt's the net change after accounting for deaths that would count here. So the pertinent number is about 200,000/day. Not that this changes your overall point.
- smhg 11y agoDoes that mean you assume reducing population to be easy/easier? Increasing our habitat isn't simple. But it at least is likely to get more feasible over time. While reducing population seems to be the opposite of our 'nature' (not that we aren't able to go against that) and it requires the cooperation of basically everyone. Which isn't required by the former. Cooperation seems to get [insert mathematical function] harder when more people are involved. Sidenote: expansion would of course not exclude taking care of existing habitats.
- chillwaves 11y agoThe problem is more of over consumption than over population, but I can see why the two would be confused because their is significant overlap. However I find the "over population" argument a red herring to make wealthy Americans feel better. I can assure you if we cut the population of the planet in half but consumed at US levels, that is unsustainable. Just like if we double the population but consume at India levels we'd be fine.
- duncan_bayne 11y agoWhat evidence have you that 'US' levels of consumption are unsustainable? This seems to be a modern article of faith since Malthus.
- superuser2 11y agoThe sentiment that interplanetary colonization is more feasible than education is perhaps the most characteristic HN filter-bubble statement I've ever heard.
- smhg 11y agoI absolutely didn't intend to say anything about the importance of education. The transfer of knowledge is one of the most important features of humankind. The comment was intended solely as an extra view on the overpopulation subject.