[vision-master]

Learned these terms today.

Comments.......

[AgentR11]

Not very applicable to PO or AGW in practice... The run up for the longest time was about how horrible the upper middle class were going to suffer when their gas got to expensive or global warming flooded their beach houses. The reality has been that PO and AGW are doing absolutely horrible things to the lower and working classes; while those high on the hog remain, high on the hog; insulated from just about every noticeable impact by their wealth and the adaptability that wealth brings.

The bottom half of the economy simply gets priced out of the market at a certain point, but that point remains easily affordable to the upper half of the economy. How do you express Schadenfreude towards the family in poverty being driven further into poverty; while Bob still drives his SUV and the real impact of fuel prices is that Bob has to put up with less traffic.

[GoIllini]

Arguably this is what Ehrlich was up against in the '70s after he penned "The Population Bomb". There were famines in the developing world and population growth was slowed and we did experience high oil prices and responded with greater efficiency. But the western world made it through all of that hardly noticing and came out scoffing at Ehrlich.

I think the same story is repeating itself, just that now we have to accomodate some Chinese and Indian folks. Obviously the US has a huge advantage by controlling 35% of the world's agricultural productivity, but there are more middle-class people in the world and there may not be room for some lower-middle-class families to have two kids anymore. Maybe just one.

At the end of the day, we are still mammals and there's a lot of things quietly working to gracefully control population in the long run. Just thank your lucky stars you live in the US where we've got plenty of food and your biggest problem is that you can only afford to have a single child.