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The Problem With Abundance

GRW writes "Peter de Jager, "a speaker/writer/consultant on the issues relating to the Rational Assimilation of the Future", asks, 'What do traffic jams, obesity and spam have in common?' He answers that 'they are all problems caused by abundance in a world more attuned to scarcity. By achieving the goal of abundance, technology renders the natural checks and balances of scarcity obsolete.' His article is a thought provoking discussion of the unintended consequences of technological change."

22 of 686 comments (clear)

  1. scarcity by mandalayx · · Score: 5, Funny

    Personally, I'm happy to slaughter the sacred cow of "scarcity." Imagine fitting all your porn on a 1GB hard drive. Now scarcity is not so cool.

    1. Re:scarcity by Shakrai · · Score: 2, Funny
      Personally, I'm happy to slaughter the sacred cow of "scarcity." Imagine fitting all your porn on a 1GB hard drive. Now scarcity is not so cool.

      Would the parent have been modded insightful instead of funny if he had used 'mp3s' instead of 'porn'? ;)

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    2. Re:scarcity by Tackhead · · Score: 2, Funny
      > More importantly, what happens to "family time" when you can fit all your porn on a 1GB hard drive?

      Something good, because with barely enough capacity for an hour of half-decent video, you'll get bored and go back to fucking the wife pretty quickly? *rimshot*

  2. Ok by scumbucket · · Score: 1, Funny

    Time to get out the flint and steel, bearskin rugs, and head for the hills!

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  3. The problem with abundance... by Paladin144 · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...is that I don't have enough of it.

  4. He seems to know what he's talking about by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Funny

    Today we are surrounded by an excess of food and the body continues to follow a proven survival strategy -- it stores energy in fat for lean days which no longer arrive.

    Given Peter de Jager's mugshot I think he has some authority on the matter.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  5. But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    By this point, you've probably already bred, and thus your genes continue. Now, if you got fat and drove way too fast when you were 10 and died, it may work out.

  6. heh by Neurotoxic666 · · Score: 4, Funny

    'What do traffic jams, obesity and spam have in common?'

    Simple. Stupid fat f**ks read spam on their cell phones while driving and cause traffic jam.

    --
    You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
  7. Re:Aren't obesity and traffic self-limiting? by raider_red · · Score: 5, Funny

    Of course, there's also the issue that if I can't get to McDonalds because I'm stuck in traffic, I'll lose weight.

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  8. What was the point of this article? by Eric+Savage · · Score: 2, Funny

    This is like Fox News, the story doesn't tell you anything more than the headline did. Weak.

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  9. Re:Aren't obesity and traffic self-limiting? by BlackHawk · · Score: 3, Funny
    • If I get too fat, I die. If I drive way too fast, I have an accident and die.

    And does one person becoming so obese that they die going to prevent another person from doing it? Experience shows us that it does not. So no, obesity is not self-limiting.

    As for driving "too fast", that is also solved by technology, and not at the cost of speed. In my grandfather's day, any fool who traveled 75mph for a period of 6 straight hours was a fool. His tires wouldn't hold up under the strain, nor would the fuel supply hold out. Today, I routinely visit my mother 9 hours away on a single fueling stop and often exceed 75mph on the freeway, and barely blink. Steering is no problem either, unlike for my grandfather, who had to contend with a car with the aerodynamics of a rounded brick and a steering system unassisted by any power.

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  10. Re:Peter de Jager by Knights+who+say+'INT · · Score: 2, Funny
    As the former brazilian Federal Reserve chairman put it, "specialists have been able to predict nine of the five major crisis in the past decades".

    Or if you like Dilbertiana, from Scott Adams' "The Dilbert Principle"'s chapter on machiavellic methods: "Always predict disaster. No project is so succesful that you can't point out a few examples of what you 'were afraid that could happen'".

    It's a whole industry. I'm reminded of Alvin Toffler.

  11. Yeah, but by Greyfox · · Score: 3, Funny

    If you eat right and exercise, you die too. No way around that...

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  12. Re:It's the Star Trek problem... by IMarvinTPA · · Score: 2, Funny

    Perhaps they have something along these lines for a thought process: "Well, when they asked me 'What do you want to do when you grow up?' I would think to myself and go 'Beat people up', but they told me I couldn't do that. Then one day, I relized that Guards sometimes have to beat people up, and bam! There I was. The thing with the really dangerous criminals is, they need lots of beating. Just the other day I was like 'Eat your gruel' and WHAM. Nothing like a good satisfying job."

    Just my thought.
    IMarv

  13. Re:Seems to me by bigjnsa500 · · Score: 2, Funny
    Just because there's a plate of food in me

    If its already in you, then you ate it.

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  14. Re:Abudance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    They are both married. Neither one gets any.

  15. Re:Abudance by RealErmine · · Score: 2, Funny

    How do you tell which one of us has "more" love?

    I believe this is one of the rare disputes that can only be settled by a fight to the death.

    --
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  16. Re:Abudance by public_class_name_ex · · Score: 2, Funny

    // Those are states, not measurable quantities.

    There is an abundance of truth in this boolean variable. I would not like to set it false, I just think it shouldn't be so true.

  17. Re:Aren't obesity and traffic self-limiting? by jazman_777 · · Score: 2, Funny
    Of course, there's also the issue that if I can't get to McDonalds because I'm stuck in traffic, I'll lose weight.

    But you'll be hungrier so that when you get there, you'll eat twice as much. How revolting!

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  18. Re:Abudance by BattleTroll · · Score: 2, Funny

    According to my ex-fiance here's a proper equation:

    # Carrets x clarity x color x cut x setting cost = totally love amount.

    Clarity guide: FL = 10 IF = 9 etc.

    Color Guide: D = 10 E = 9.5 etc.

    For example, in the case of my ex, here expectations of my love for her were: 2.5 x IF x D x Round x Platinum == $25k

    My calculations came out much less; obviously a conflict of opinion ensued.

    If your wife's diamond is less than that of your friend's, you're in deep trouble as this quantiatively proves you love your wife less than your friend loves his.

    And if you're wife buys into this love equivalence equation, you have much more pressing concerns to worry about.

  19. The guy is a nut case.... by 3seas · · Score: 2, Funny

    "The human body is designed to run on scaracity...."

    tell that to groups like Christians Childrens Fund.

  20. Re:Natural Law by slappyjack · · Score: 2, Funny

    For fucks sake, just take the posts and:
    s/Natural Law/the way things work in reality without congressional torts, legislation, or "What If" comics/gi

    But since I got nothing else to do but shower:

    A) You could say: Gravity also happens to be "just the way it worked out" But it happens to be consistent enough a well defined physical law.

    B) "it is also conceivable" that once you travel far enough away from earth gravity doesnt exist and shit just floats around and bumps into each other, but as far as we're concerned it does not exist.

    C) it is also "quite possible" to concoct a million theoretical things out of your head that have no basis in what we know as physical reality.

    D) The fact remains that in the real world of not making things up, everything we know of dies.

    E) "Natural Law" is a figure of speech used in order to prevent the need for us typing out:

    "the way we ("we" defined as "we as a species") have observed things to work for as far back as we remember and is continuing to work today and we can find no compelling reason to think that this way of things working is going to change any time in the near of far future"

    F) I also just want to go on record to say I hate discussing things with fuckers like you.

    G) jesus christ. NOW I remember why I wasn't coming around here anymore.