That's the dilemma. Earth has finite resources and providing even a decent standard of living, much less middle-class luxury, to 8 or 10 billion people will have consequences, including effects on our own lives. Morally, there's no way to justify keeping food and medicine and energy away from the poorest people, so we'll have to bear those consequences.
Fracking is fantastic. There are enormous amounts of relatively clean natural gas all over the planet. Fracking is a historical gift to the poor of the world.
Generally, a constant dollar's worth of value requires less and less materials input when the economy grows. It also requires less *labor* input. Nobody has a good word for the part that's not labor or materials ("value added" is one term used but it's not very good ) , but that's where the value increase is coming from.
Maybe that trend will end, but it seems unlikely.
The reason the British took north America seriously in the 17th and
18th century was because of all the timber. In the 19th century, "progress" was bounded by mining, power and food production.
Now? It's mostly trying to guess how many units you can sell without having to keep a bunch of inventory on hand. The shape of the math of that is more about network effects.
Right. Places like India and China are easier to be poor in, right now.
Hopefully, that gets even better. The really restless can come to the US.
All industry is. This is why it's important to take Adam Smith seriously - he put this on a *moral* footing.
It's incidentally Christian, but the phrase "as you do for the least of you, you do for me" is a good principle.
Sure, but the fundamental input to human well-being is the availability of energy. Ten watts average is misery, 1 KW is pretty comfortable. Who woulda thunk that we'd evolve on a planet this wonderfully supplied with oxygen and burnable stuff? Not to mention nicely separated metals and minerals.
Yes. Religion gives a reason for being generous, sort of a "first principles" thing. Without that absolute morality, all you can say is "I think we should share" or "it feels good" or something.
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John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
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If you feel that use your own money. I do NOT volunteer mine for that use.
Not in the least, think 18th century, kids working in mills and other factories, which is what is what is going on in India now. Not so sure about China. Check:
If you are halfway competent you can find or derive the same behavioral rules independent of religion. Not only has it been done (at least as early as 1923) it is now set up well enough where the necessary work is easily teachable. I have learned how to do it, maybe i even know it well enough now to begin teaching how to do it.
The problem with the social-evolutionary theory of cooperative group behavior and altruism is that there are advantages to cheating, especially when nobody is looking. God is always looking.
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John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
Precision electronic instrumentation
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The problem is actually scale. Cheating may result in ostracism but detection depends on group size. For a ... *an* organic tribe size, things top out at about 100 people.
You can argue that religion itself evolved to keep people from cheating on the altruistic group behavior rules. Having one God is cheaper than having a huge 24/7 police force. It makes people carry the rules around with them at all times. And it works.
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John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
Depends. Religion isn't all one thing. The sort we think of evolved to overcome native taboos like killing, when soldiering became a profession.
There's another class of religious appliances surrounding agriculture, a class about food safety, another about human procreation... all these evolved separately.
The big ones are about agriculture and soldiering.
Currently not. We have both and cannot see our own shortcomings.
Now that Zimmerman Complex has been exposed for what it is. Damn near every cop currently under oath suffers from it. It is rare to escape it.
The R-complex in our brains (a physical element) and the psychological complex mentioned above (a mental element), pretty much means we are all destined to failure as a civil society.
You could argue (as people have) that Western J-C religion provided the moral base that let Europe and then the USA develop a powerful scientific, technical, and economic society. Sounds right to me.
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John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
Crutch based philosophy. You insist on continuing to be a self-crippled jerk. It feeds you narcissism as well. I hope you are happy when you find yourself in your hell. I deal with life as it comes without any recourse to wishful thinking. Nor do i need any "reward in the = afterlife" to maintain my integrity.
Maybe in your demented universe, but is has been failing/failed on this planet since the 13th century, and probably a lot earlier. There is evidence of its failings going back over 3600 years. Just for grins look at the problems of church corruption today. Pick your starting point, televangelists in it for the money or child molestation or any of many others.
What in the world are you talking about? Narcissism? I didn't mention an afterlife. I was speculation on the effects of religious beliefs on conformance with the rules and laws of a culture.
The UK has replaced belief in God with surveillance cameras. It doesn't seem to work as well.
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John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
Sounds wrong to me. It was the loss of power of the church in renaissance that triggered all this. Just take a look where the religously dominated countries are in terms of scientific, technical and economic progress.
Even the loss of the communist pseudoreligion in China seems to work.
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