India's population expected to pass China's by 2030

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by DanS
They will be equipped with a lot of knowledge of organization, engineering, and technology with which we aren't currently equipped. We're spending a lot of money to make sure that this is the case.

We're not really spending that much money on these things as a percentage of human economic activity. Almost all basic research is grant funded and just look at what a tiny fraction of the economy those grants amount to world wide. It's terrifying what a low priority as a species we give to increasing our knowledge.

[DanS]

Don't worry, dude. Our problems are solved only partially through technology. That's why I included engineering and organization. These are not touched primarily by basic research.

Take space travel nowadays. We could do pretty much whatever we want in the solar system with current technology. We've had it for 35 years or so. It's just a matter of engineering that technology into something that makes sense that's a problem. The existence of that problem for the last several decades has a lot to do with how we organize our efforts for space travel (i.e., absurdly ineffectively). Our absurd ineffectiveness is an accidental artifact of the Apollo program, which required us to put a man on the moon under a deadline that was basically pulled out of JFK's ass.

Funny how this stuff works sometimes.

[Gatekeeper]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
because its subsidized! so they can offer them at discount rates, cuz the govt covers part of their cost of living, so that way third world farmers cant compete anymore, and then they all starve and die.

Hmm. So basically we let *our* farmers wither in order to let Third World farmers prosper? Problem is, most Third World farmers won't prosper, since a lot of what's going on, ag-wise, is the fact that corporations are becoming bigger and bigger players with every passing year, regardless of whether it's in America or in Third World nations.

WRT to subsidies, it's my understanding that the government only pays so much, and then only when prices drop below a set "basement" level and remain there for so long for crops such as wheat, corn and soybeans (and other ag products as well, I imagine ... I'm just using what's mostly grown in my part of the country). Right now prices are above the "basement" level, so the use of subsidies has actually declined, at least according to what I've read on and off.

On a related note, I am concerned with reports that a good deal of subsidy money, when it does go out, goes to non-family farms that are actually owned by folks who don't live on the land and do the day-to-day work of making a living. A good chunk of these so-called farms are owned by corporations that aren't exactly family dominant, if you get my drift.

Last, but not least, farmers are trying to adjust to changing marketplace dynamics — value-added agriculture is a big thing around here now. From ethanol plants to biodiesel plants to grain separation to labeled beef and more, efforts are under way (or have already bore fruit) to make it so they have more to offer than basic commodity-type crops.

no, i dont believe in any of that stuff. 'national dependence' 'national security' thats all a load of crap that those lobbies hav told us. looks like theyve done theie job, and their scare tactics have worked. who is gonna invade us? mexico? canada? those are the only two countries who can, and only cuz they are right next to us. you think china will? think again. or russia? nah. what about thsoe middle east countries? nope, they dont even have transports.

we face no threat of invasion. and no, were not gonna get burned. there is no lesson to learn except dont listen to special interst lobbies.

Invasion wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I wrote that. To me, it's much simpler — a nation shouldn't have to rely on imports of basic foodstuffs unless it absolutely has no other way to feed its people and has tried to do so. I'm thinking Japan here. The likes of Ethiopia and other African nations? They could easily feed themselves, given the chance and knowhow of good farming techniques. Yes, it's a bit more complicated than that, especially with so much of Africa being torn apart by political upheaval and, more worrisome, spreading desertification (also a problem in parts of Asia).

America might have been better off getting these nations' ag abilities back up to snuff rather than letting its own farmers grow dependent on export markets that, by all rights, should mostly never have existed (in the long term, at least) in the first place, had the recipient nation's farmers been allowed to do their job.

Gatekeeper

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by mrmitchell

Except limits from the laws of physics like KrazyHorse is mentioning, human ingenuity will stretch Mother Nature to provide for us. It has in the past and will in the future.

Blind faith.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by DanS
Economic growth of this sort can continue for an awful long time. As you say, likely the population growth rate will moderate. Right now, the rate is plummeting. The fertility rate has halved in only 50 years. All this even without the self-corrective mechanism having much impact.

No it can't. Economic growth is dependent on the level of development. As the most populated nations become developed and their population growth rates decrease world economic growth will decrease drastically.

[Az]

Sooner or later, but not yet! I'm supremely unconcerned about how my children will cope in 14,000 years.

What kind of moronic approach is that?

[Kidlicious]

Jesus will return in the next 50 years for sure.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Azazel

Sooner or later, but not yet! I'm supremely unconcerned about how my children will cope in 14,000 years.

What kind of moronic approach is that?

he's probably assuming that his horizon of forseeable consequences is far more limited than at most a few decades. This may be a very simplistic approach but it's hardly moronic.

[Az]

he's probably assuming that his horizon of forseeable consequences is far more limited than at most a few decades. This may be a very simplistic approach but it's hardly moronic.

Oh, no, he used the word "unconcerned". It's a world apart from "cannot predict" or something like that.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Azazel

he's probably assuming that his horizon of forseeable consequences is far more limited than at most a few decades. This may be a very simplistic approach but it's hardly moronic.

Oh, no, he used the word "unconcerned". It's a world apart from "cannot predict" or something like that.

it might be justified nonetheless. We are all certainly going to die but are any of us genuinely concerned about that serious situation? It can be appropriate to be unconcerned about a serious situation if you perceive that there is not a damned thing you can hope to do about it one way or another.

[St Leo]

Originally posted by GePap
Oh, sure, if we had limitless energy, then so many things would be solved- heck, we could have replicators.

An interesting point about limitless energy raised in Niven's Ringworld and Clarke's 3001 is that it causes heat pollution that could result in the Earth overheating significantly.

Of course, we are nowhere near the energy consumption of Trantor or Coruscant, but an interesting point nevertheless.

[St Leo]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Blind faith.

Some assumptions need to be made, lest we all become solipsists and curl up in the fetal position.

Faith in progress is reasonable IMHO, but environmentalism is part of progress.

[MORON]

Originally posted by Azazel

Guideline? All I'm saying is that's the only way you can gauge the happiness of a people. You can't say that there is "more total happiness" simply because the group is larger.

It's simple multiplication: Even if we use the binary system, where unhappy people equal zero, and happy people equal 1, there is much more utility in a group of 500 people with 50% of them happy, than in a group of 200 people with 100% of them happy.

And this gets a whole lot more complex.

It is biased on the bases of how you quantify happiness.

If you use happy = 1, and unhappy = -1, than the 50% example would yield 0 happiness, while the 200 people example would result in +200 happiness.

[pchang]

And measuring the the temp. in K, C, F, or even R makes the room feel different how?

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Hmm. So basically we let *our* farmers wither in order to let Third World farmers prosper? Problem is, most Third World farmers won't prosper, since a lot of what's going on, ag-wise, is the fact that corporations are becoming bigger and bigger players with every passing year, regardless of whether it's in America or in Third World nations.

yep. and 3rd world farmers will prosper, because whether its large corporations, or large single plantation owners, their profits will go up and they will be able to hire more workers in the 3rd world. farmers in america can get new jobs - they have education. farmers in the 3rd world die.

WRT to subsidies, it's my understanding that the government only pays so much, and then only when prices drop below a set "basement" level and remain there for so long for crops such as wheat, corn and soybeans (and other ag products as well, I imagine ... I'm just using what's mostly grown in my part of the country). Right now prices are above the "basement" level, so the use of subsidies has actually declined, at least according to what I've read on and off.

nah, in fact they even pay you if you own designated farmland, even if you dont grow anything.

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

July 5, 2002, Friday, Late Edition - Final


SECTION: Section A; Page 19; Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 733 words

HEADLINE: Farm Subsidies That Kill

BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF; E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com

BODY:
J'accuse! I hate to condemn a colleague this way, but our tax dollars are going to pay an indolent New York journalist for not growing wheat on the West Coast.

Could there be a worse indictment of American agricultural policy, rendered even more scandalous by the new $180 billion farm bill signed by President Bush? Actually, there is a worse indictment. By inflating farm subsidies even more, Congress and the Bush administration are impoverishing and occasionally killing Africans whom we claim to be trying to help.

Last week at the G-8 summit conference in Canada, Mr. Bush and other world leaders spoke piously about their desire to help Africa help itself. Earlier, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill traveled around Africa with Bono complaining about African governance (but in a compassionate sort of way).

Our compassion may be well meant, but it is also hypocritical. The U.S., Europe and Japan spend $350 billion each year on agricultural subsidies (seven times as much as global aid to poor countries), and this money creates gluts that lower commodity prices and erode the living standard of the world's poorest people.

"These subsidies are crippling Africa's chance to export its way out of poverty," said James Wolfensohn, the World Bank president, in a speech last month.

Mark Malloch Brown, the head of the United Nations Development Program, estimates that these farm subsidies cost poor countries about $50 billion a year in lost agricultural exports. By coincidence, that's about the same as the total of rich countries' aid to poor countries, so we take back with our left hand every cent we give with our right.

"It's holding down the prosperity of very poor people in Africa and elsewhere for very narrow, selfish interests of their own," Mr. Malloch Brown says of the rich world's agricultural policy.

It also seems a tad hypocritical of us to complain about governance in third-world countries when we allow tiny groups of farmers to hijack billion of dollars out of our taxes.

For example, the U.S. has only 25,000 cotton growers, but they are prosperous (with an average net worth of $800,000) and thus influential. So the U.S. spends $2 billion a year subsidizing them, and American production of cotton has almost doubled over the last 20 years -- even though the U.S. is an inefficient, high-cost producer. The result is a glut that costs African countries $250 million each year, according to a World Bank study published in February.

And when a poor cotton farmer in West Africa goes bust because of our cotton subsidies, he has no savings to fall back on. Rather, he starves. He cannot afford medicine for his sick baby, and the child dies. He cannot afford a midwife when his wife is pregnant, and so she is crippled in childbirth. He cannot afford worming medication for his children, and so they grow anemic and do poorly in school -- and cannot concentrate when Americans lecture them about their poor governance.

Back to the freeloading journalist, whom I'll rat on in a moment. He defends himself by saying that his plot of farmland was put into a federal subsidy program by a previous owner. So he gets $588 each year for what rural America calls "farming the government, rather than farming the land."

Such absurdities -- and particularly the latest farm bill, a transparent political payoff -- accomplish nothing. I grew up in rural America, and if the farm bill revived small towns like Wapato, Ore., a hamlet that once flourished near my family's farm and has now completely disappeared, then I would be sympathetic. But the fact is that 60 percent of American farmers get no subsidies at all, and 47 percent of commodity payments go to large farms with average household incomes of $135,000.

The subsidies go overwhelmingly to farmers tilling the ground, not those raising livestock. When I was a kid, we raised sheep -- a lousy idea, since fewer and fewer Americans eat lamb or wear wool. So in the absence of a good sheep subsidy, we bowed to market forces, and now the only sheep left on my parents' farm are a few family friends. That's the way a market economy is supposed to work.

The bottom line is that farm subsidies cripple Africa and go to people who don't really need them -- like that grasping journalist who gets $588 a year for not growing wheat. Who is that person? Er, it's me.

thats just sick. no one can support farm subsidies

On a related note, I am concerned with reports that a good deal of subsidy money, when it does go out, goes to non-family farms that are actually owned by folks who don't live on the land and do the day-to-day work of making a living. A good chunk of these so-called farms are owned by corporations that aren't exactly family dominant, if you get my drift.

thats correct and thats why there are many farmers against these subsidies, as you can see here

http://www.organicconsumers.org/clothes/subsidies022105.cfm

one again, the govt is choosing winners. thats not the job of the govt.

Last, but not least, farmers are trying to adjust to changing marketplace dynamics — value-added agriculture is a big thing around here now. From ethanol plants to biodiesel plants to grain separation to labeled beef and more, efforts are under way (or have already bore fruit) to make it so they have more to offer than basic commodity-type crops.

and if they can do that, more power to them. but no one should get free handouts from the govt especially not businesses.