As noted, Islam appears doomed. One giant suicide bomb slowly destroying itself. Then again, all religion may yet be doomed in the future.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2017 2:29 pmYet that's not a case of a lack of resources, is it? It's neither their ecology nor their lack of human resources that's got them in trouble. It's their misuse of those, which is a fault of their ideology.
You didn't see the viral Capuchin monkey video? No no no, all large mammalian groups have customs based on the notion of what is fair as regards their deemed status in the group.Immanuel Can wrote:But "fairness" isn't manifest anywhere in nature.
Agreed.Immanuel Can wrote:Well, if you check the population charts from the Middle Ages to today, you'll see some interesting things. The problem was not the numbers in the population during the great plagues of Europe: it was urbanization...too many in a confined area, not too many on a world scale.
The EU became a union for the same reason that the United States became united - and each united entity is looking to be ever more disunited.Immanuel Can wrote:I would add that we're likely, in our desperation, to look to bigger and bigger governments to which we give more and more power, until the world is a warring zone of superpower blocks divided along national and ideological fracture lines. The EU is a good example of the sort of bad government toward which people look when they hope that somebody will control the massive dynamics of world economics and national unrest. They sell all their freedoms for the dream that somebody with enough centralized power can control what's happening.
The EU hoped to be more competitive, to take advantage of economies of scale and allow greater freedom of movement and less red tape between member states. However, big societies are hard to organise, like the metaphorical "cats in a sack". I wish I could say differently but it seems that only a command economy can operate sustainably (?) at such large scale.
It would be wonderful for all the large nation states agreed to limit their size, for everyone's sake. However, the benchmark is China. Who can peacefully compete with China? Very large, aggregated blocs. So that is what will come. I expect increasing closeness between some companies and governments to the point where they can be considered a single entity.
Population is a wicked problem. Probably with wicked answers, alas. I figure we may as well make hay while the sun shines .