Speculative future society prediction thread

[Ben Kenobi]

We can prevent this nightmare scenario in December, but I fear we will fail to grasp the opportunity - by the time we realise what we've done, it will already be too late...

People will be laughing at the climate change fanatics the way we laugh at the folks who predicted the end of the world, when they are scooping off H3 particles off Jupiter's atmosphere.

[Kuciwalker]

The capitalists fed us that line at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

They were also right.

If you removed all post-1850 machines from the economy, output would drop by well over 50%.

[RGBVideo]

They were also right.

If you removed all post-1850 machines from the economy, output would drop by well over 50%.

Uhh... let's see, assembly line, power plants with electricity and thus electronics, trucks and automobiles and related machinery, chemical refinement of production alloys...

more like well over 95%

without industrial revolution, all of us except Kuciwalker and Strangelove would be farming 16 hours a day, using our hands. around 3/4 of our production would go to feeding ourselves, and we'd still suffer starvation from time to time.

[MOBIUS]

People will be laughing at the climate change fanatics the way we laugh at the folks who predicted the end of the world, when they are scooping off H3 particles off Jupiter's atmosphere.

Right, well, Ben disagrees with climate change - so it must be real.

We're all doomed!!!

http://www.notstupid.org/

[Ben Kenobi]

Climate change is a religion. Both are non-empirical.

[MOBIUS]

Non empirical - NON EMPIRICAL!!???

NON ****ING EMPIRICAL!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Climate change is about as empirical as it gets, you total and utter clown...

[Combat Ingrid]

At least he admits religion is stupid

[ricketyclik]

Uhh... let's see, assembly line, power plants with electricity and thus electronics, trucks and automobiles and related machinery, chemical refinement of production alloys...

more like well over 95%

without industrial revolution, all of us except Kuciwalker and Strangelove would be farming 16 hours a day, using our hands. around 3/4 of our production would go to feeding ourselves, and we'd still suffer starvation from time to time.

That describes the majority of the world's population right now.

[Kuciwalker]

Talk about coral reefs for instance, where a one degree Celsius increase is enough to cause a serious blow to its ecological balance.

Ever heard of this thing called evolution?

[Kuciwalker]

That describes the majority of the world's population right now.

Yes, the parts of the world that haven't industrialized yet. Thank you for proving my point.

[ricketyclik]

Yes, the parts of the world that haven't industrialized yet. Thank you for proving my point.

But they have. Our clothes come from factories in the 3rd world, where children work all day long for subsistance wages. This is where our purchasing power really comes from. How many factories are in production in your neck of the woods? The number here is in fast decline, as are the minimum wages they support.

[Kuciwalker]

Sweatshop textile mills employing child labor predate the industrial revolution by a good margin.

[Kuciwalker]

Moreover, the fact that they are [b]factories[/i] again supports my point: mechanization of labor increases output by more than a factor of 2, and therefore the machines are the primary labor force as they do more than half the work.

[Kuciwalker]

Kiddo, why don't you stop for a bit and think whether you really want to argue that mechanization of labor has less than doubled individual productivity.

[ricketyclik]

I'm not arguing that the industrial revolution doesn't increase output. I'm saying that as a race, humans are working almost as hard as they ever did.

True we in the west aren't, but most people I know are still spending 50+ hours a week at work.

Hardly the utopia of lives devoted to hedonism and self-fulfilment as promised.