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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Slagle who wrote (68800)	1/3/2007 10:17:15 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Hi Slag. <So you think the world population will plummet by 2100. Why? > I have noticed that I am aging. My skin and other physiological aspects seem to be replicating what I saw in my parents, grandparents and other aging people. They all ended up dead. That is, unfortunately, something that seems to still be a part of how human life works. Unless there is a spectacular change in the way human physiology functions in the next 80 years, nearly everyone who is alive now is going to be dead by 1886. I suspect my days might be over before then, so I won't be around to say "told you so". Our telomeres gradually fizzle out and that's just how things work. So, if there isn't going to be a population implosion, we need a replacement programme. So, I take a look around what's going on with everyone I know and what everyone else around the world is doing. I am getting elderly and have only 1 grandchild with another on the way. My brother has only 2. Others of my age mostly have none. In the good old days of the 19th century and the 20th century, my great great great grandfather [one of them] had 11 offspring, and one of those offspring had 10 offspring and one of those offspring had 11 offspring. I don't know what the others did, but maybe they weren't so prolific and I know some died at young ages so they didn't have any. As we know from looking at population growth rate graphs over human history, the human population grew slowly for thousands of years then took off a couple of thousand years ago [as exponential curves do after a long slow increase]. Lots of graphs here, but check out the growth from 2000 years ago: globalchange.umich.edu I can see how that happened from my own family background. Now what? Check out birth rates around the world. Even in Catholic countries like Italy, the HQ of Catholicism, the birth rates have plunged. Italians have about 1 child per couple. Look at Japan and China. Look everywhere. India's birthrate has plunged too, though not yet down to China levels. Moslems are still breeding pretty quickly. Women everywhere are choosing to have none, one or two children. That's collapse numbers. Then, other effects kick in. Having children, like most things in human life, is a cultural event when women have choice through contraception. In the good old days, the presence of a sex drive ensured a good supply of children. Now, sex drive isn't enough. Women have to WANT to have children. When they have grown up with no babies or siblings and not many around where they grew up, it's a different cultural experience for them than when babies were everywhere and it was what women did. Until now, there were still plenty of babies around. Now, cultural norms have moved away from babies. It's now weird to have children. That could cause a double plunge in replacement. Sex drive not enough to do the job and no cultural norm for having children either. That's a recipe for a failed replacement programme. China has figured that out and I think they have ditched their one child policy. Japan is positively trying to encourage women to have babies. Tax cuts and other incentives are sure to come next, but I think BIG tax cuts will be necessary. So big that governments won't do it and the breeders attracted to the cash will NOT be the ones you want doing the job. As is happening in NZ with the welfare process, the state-run breeding programmes are a disaster. Then, there's catastrophe. I'm sure you have heard of AIDS in Africa. That's a catastrophe. If H5N1 gets going with its current mortality rate, that'll make AIDS look like the common cold. Nuclear war is always an option. Those thousands of umpty megatons of bombs were built to be used. They are ready to go at a moment's notice. They have already been used twice. That could cut population significantly. Economic crash, and social collapse, could cause famine and conflict as in Zimbabwe, but on a grand scale because politicians and publics will NOT respond in a rational way. Perhaps the world is so grossly wealthy, with nearly all economic activity falling into the category of entertainment rather than survival, that there wouldn't be famine. Then, there are tsunamis. A Tunguska-sized Pacific Ocean bolide impact would cut populations a lot around the Pacific Ocean. That's not at all a certainty, but it's a risk. That all adds up to a big population reduction by 2100. I don't see it as a deliberate thing by "elites". I see it as a natural consequence of choices people have. Mqurice