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World Population Expected To Hit 7 Billion In Late October
kkleiner writes "A new report documents the prodigious rate at which the world's population is growing. It was just 1999 when we reached 6 billion. And now within the next month or two we will have surpassed 7 billion. What does the continued increase in world population mean for humanity and for the the planet?"
Child #7,000,000,000 gets the prize of officially being recognized as "Not actually a bundle of joy" and, on average, a harsh subsistence existence. Congratulations!
More quarrelling, more hunger, more poverty, etc.
...in world population mean for humanity and for the the planet?
It means we're all fucked.
What does the continued increase in world population mean for humanity and for the the planet?"
War
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
Paul Ehrlich, famous for writing the population bomb, entered a wager with Julian L. Simon that used the price of some indicator comodidy metals to gauge resource scarcity as a predicted result of overpopulation. Anyways, historically speaking, Simon came out the winner when the index prices fell between 1980 and 1990.
That being said, and my own personal admiration for the free market being laid out in the open, I do believe that there will be a decade where the proverbial Ehrlich's will come out on top. It is simple physics; the high concentration deposits of minerals will be depleted and we will all be left wondering what to do. It is certainly scary that in 13 years the population can rise by 1 billion.
Anyone that has ever seen a photo of the Earth from orbit knows resources and even space on the Earth are limited. This idea of constant growth is inherently insane. Space travel isn't the solution to the population problem since it would require moving nearly a billion people a decade just to keep up with the current growth rate. Space is about long term survival not growth. Most of the fisheries have already collapsed and much of the world is facing water shortages. Civilization existed for thousands of years without gasoline but it can't survive without water. Either we limit population or mother nature will do it for us. We can't high tech our way through the mess since we are already running short of things as basic as copper. The two biggest critical shortages are water and land suitable for growing crops. Extracting water is expensive and they aren't making more land. We change or change gets forced on us.
like most people, I stopped sensibly digesting the numbers when we crossed 4 billion.
Still using 32-bit ints?
This enormous wave of young people -- kids born in the 80s, 90s, 00s -- are going to topple established trends in ways we cannot imagine. This population increase of one billion people in ten years means that one in every seven people on this planet is under the age of majority. In ten years you'll start seeing change on the scale of the Arab Spring like you wouldn't believe.
Around 40% of the corn produced in the US goes to ethanol.
It's obviously not a question of whether we can support 7 billion people, since we basically are, but whether we can support the increasing growth rate. If you look at this graph, you can see the population is projected to level off around 10billion or so. And if you look even closer, you can see it's really a question for India (and to a lesser degree, Africa): can India handle its massive population growth? If so, then the world can handle it, too. If not, then they are going to suffer a lot.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Unfortunately the areas that are experiencing the highest population growth are not first world countries. They are the countries which are unable to sustain their population, and depend on government (usually not available), or international hand-outs to survive.
If we want to solve this problem, we must cut aid to areas which cannot sustain itself. I realize that's harsh, but creating a life does not entitle it to live. There's a reason we fight to survive, and getting hand-outs (for the long term, not just some short-term disaster) due to unsustainable population areas means we're just making it worse.
Cut off the aid, and let the population re-balance itself on what can be sustained by these 3rd world areas. This will lower demand on resources as well, and allow the world to grow at a more moderate pace.
> I did not know I was being graded
Now you do. Everybody who reads your post evaluates it, and in this case that evaluation doesn't take long.
> fuck off and die
If he does that, you'll still have to deal with his offspring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb
Back in 1968, this book was published talking about how there was going to mass starvation across the globe and everyone would die because the globe couldn't handle the population of the 1970s. Obviously, there is always hunger around the globe and that shouldn't be discounted, but the UN report notes that the percentage of the world's population who qualify as "undernourished" has fallen by more than half, from 33 percent to about 16 percent, since Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. That was when the population was around 3.5 billion, or half of what we're about to hit.
So I'm skeptical of alarmism.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
More people means more capacity to produce. Love them or hate them Japan, russia and china are showing the world how to manage (or how to not manage) demographic shifts. Places with money are taking steps to reduce massive overpopulation, places without it are still growing.
For decades we all assumed chinas vast population was their great weakness, not enough resources for everyone etc etc etc. As it turns out the most valuable resource is people, with energy (not electrical energy, more personal ability to work energy) and education, because everything else can be created from those two things. Not enough coal, uranium, oil etc? No problem, we'll invent something else. Too many people? No problem, we'll figure out how to make birth control.
Yes, it means more people, especially in africa, will probably starve to death. That's another problem we can solve if we bother to.
The biggest problem we face isn't 7 billion people, it's politicians who are unwilling or unable to make tough choices about how to deal with whatever specific challenges that creates in the long ru. I don't think anyone is really fond of chinas 1 child policy (or moreover its implementation), but the alternative is the mess that is india, where children are legally obliged to support parents, and there's no incentive, to have less children. Education and food production can catch up, or keep up, with the people we have, if we create reasonable incentives to limit family sizes and solve problems. And if governments aren't willing or able to make choices like that the people in those states are beyond anyones ability to meaningfully help in the long run anyway, so we'll try, and fail.
- People are dying from eating organic foods because organic foods have much higher rates of e.coli
- Non-chlorinated pools are also bacteria farms.
- Most studies have shown life expectancy is higher in urban areas than rural areas, though I don't think we understand why currently
- Chiropractors have really come under fire in recent years as charlatans with little to no medical evidence of their claims
- Drug companies certainly have their faults, but avoiding medicine is a good way to die young.
Your five points of advice are absolutely fantastic.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I know you were kidding, but I got tired of people talking about 'unused land' back when the world population hit six billion, and I did the math to show how stupid an idea it is.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Our industrialized society makes large families less important -- in fact kids are a monetary drain. But to non-mechanized farmers as are common in the third world, kids mean more hands working in the field, more likelihood of survival.
Then there's death. A family here with one kid will actually see an improvement in finances if that kid were to die. That farmer family's kid dying means they might not be able to tend the crops and produce enough to eat.
Then by old age if you and your kids haven't each produced lots of kids, there's nobody to take care of you.
Humans are complex social creatures. When we over populate some people will not notice or care while others will suffer. Going even further, we will create methods by which more people can feel at ease and even some of the suffering people can create an incorrect context to feel better about it. We can lower statistical thresholds on just how bad poverty is... among other things.
We still have an influential amount of people who refuse to admit and another who refuse to adapt to the climate crisis we are in-- which is CAUSED by over population... sure, blame technology for it-- if there were fewer people wasting and polluting the climate could handle it better.
If you think a quality of life on par with the EU is a good goal, then you've already picked something impossible because the planet can only sustain about 2 billion people at those living standards; and possibly over the longer term the climate may not handle that either (but likely it would be slow enough we could adapt?)
JOBS: the big deal is jobs. there may be enough food to go around even today and we can ignore the fact it'll not keep up with population growth; because we don't have economically viable means to distribute the food / resources to WORKING peoples of the world who deserve equal right of access. We don't have enough gainful employment for the world; we have far far less meaningful jobs because we must create consumerism in order to prop up pointless jobs; this increases the resource consumption at a higher rate than population growth in order to maintain continual economic growth (which isn't sustainable either.) After we remove the cheap exploited labor and replace it with robotics there will be even more people unable to find work and we will have to invent even more meaningless jobs... something which seems unsustainable as well.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
> I benefit from the Third World consuming fewer
> resources,
Our consumption of their resources is *why* they consume less. You are the cause of their resource scarcity.
> [I] approve when its denizens kill each other.
America has been dependent on the rest of the world for its wealth. When the rest of the world tires of trading us their wealth for our Monopoly money, you'll see that America might not be first world forever. And I'm sure you'll have a blast if *your* neighbors start to kill each other.
> the slow zebra should get eaten.
Every zebra will slow down one day. Even you.
Current Population:
http://tinyurl.com/currentpopulation
6.9 billion people
World fertility rate for population replacement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility
2.33 children per woman
From:
http://tinyurl.com/futurepopulation
According to the United Nations, the global population could be as high as 11 billion in 2050 or as low as 8 billion, if the right programs are put in place now.
Population growth stretches natural resources to their limits. Deforestation, food and water shortages, and climate change are all intensified by the addition of nearly 80 million people a year to the world's population.
Does the 7 billionth baby gets a free car?
Don't worry, the ecosystem will balance back before we get to the non returning point. It's been proven that if a population isn't controlled anymore by any selective pressure, a new selective pressure will arise and reestablish the correct population/resources ratio. Don't you see what's going on? Population increase is going on in already over populated area which are usually poor and undeveloped. This create a the perfect environment for a new epidemic. The first world is also extremely reliant on petrol and electronics. A solar flare big enough to knock down completely our power grid could let most of our population to starve. The economy is going badly, there's unrest in developing nation, political tension all over the world. Don't you see what's coming? We're on the edge of the ravine and all it takes is a small tips for our civilization to collapse. Hell we'll surely give it to ourselves. Don't believe me? Look back at the roman empire.
National Geographic has been running a series of articles that try and answer the summary's question:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/7-billion
Hush, you fool!! Killing off all the people stupid enough to believe that hippie claptrap before they can reproduce is a great way to chlorinate the gene pool.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Repeat after me:
No one born with a hungry mouth is truly innocent.
No one born with a hungry mouth is truly innocent.
For all those that like to include their religious beliefs in moral discussions with others, here's an alternate concept for Original Sin for you. Sure, it's unfair that babies and other children die of malnutrition, or that simple, inexpensive medications, vaccines, and treatments aren't available to the majority of the world even when they're commonplace in the first world, but as has been stated time and again, Life Isn't Fair. In the developed world it's easy to ignore the problems of those in abject poverty even when we benefit, exploiting that abject poverty to get shoes, clothes, and lately, cheap consumer goods and cheap electronics at prices that would be unheard of if we had to pay people living at our own level to make them.
Some can argue, and probably successfully in specific cases, that this economic imperialism that we engage in benefits workers in these countries, since they make a wage and can use money to buy some of what they need as opposed to living by subsistence farming or sharecropping, but I'd bet that in many cases, lots of people in these situations don't make living wages even for the economics of their region, despite doing a dirty, or dangerous, or unhealthy job.
Meanwhile, first-world families that play their economic cards right end up owning more and more of the pie. My parents' house is paid off. My brother will probably have his house paid off by the time he's 50. We own two houses, one almost paid off with a tenant paying more than the mortgage, and our residence will be paid off quickly once the rental is paid off. My wife's parents' house is paid off. As a family group not interested in lots and lots of children, we stand to benefit our descendants greatly, with advantages from birth in control of real property and, depending on how many children, real property that provides significant income. If we're intelligent stewards of what we own, and if children and further generations are intelligent stewards of what they inherit, our family stands to rise economically above our fellows quite dramatically.
A French author named Jean Raspail wrote a novel called, "Camp of the Saints", about a large scale invasion of the third world into the first world. I think some of his premises were flawed, in that many in the first world cooperated far, far too easily with the invaders compared to what would actually happen, but the concept of a population the size of Mexico City leaving third-world Asia and Africa and migrating to Europe and North America in such scale that it's impossible to stop them short of mass-murder is scary, and the further the first world gets ahead if the third world, with more and more breeding in the third world coupled with less and less in the first, the more plausible this scenario becomes.
If you want to help the third world, encourage those living in it to innovate. If you provide money via charity, you need to ensure that the money stays local, that the innovator stays local and doesn't just use the opportunity to escape, and that lots and lots of ideas, even if most fail, get seeded. Most companies that start up in the West end up failing, and most ideas or inventions prove unworkable, but those that do stick around often become revolutionary and profitable. The third world will evolve into something better only by engaging the people in it to do something about it, and it makes a lot more sense to empower locals than it does to try for foist our inexperienced ideas upon them.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I usually don't feed trolls but I would dare say, that the majority of the Earth's population would not agree with you. Let's take a look at the two countries that make up over a third of the world. China and India... Well there's not much to look at. The people there are doing okay but far from all the nice USA vices that you have listed, except maybe the coal fired power plants.
Your message seems to be targeted to 1st world nations and I hate to break it to you, but the first world nations aren't the biggest, except maybe the US (who is 3rd in population) and Russia (who is 10th in population). The biggest nations in the world have an organic diet, basically whatever food they find. Swim only in non-chlorinated pools, or discharge channels whichever comes first. Exercise...Well that's not exactly top on their list when they are starving. Have never even heard the word chiropractor. Do not even have an option to "Big Pharma". (sarcasm) In fact look at how wonderful the people in India are doing.(/sarcasm)
When it comes down to it, if I had to choose between "clean" water and actual clean water. I'd choose the latter over crapping myself to death. I don't know where this idea of, "we're making the Earth worst," came from but the underlying point is that the Earth came built with all kinds of stuff to make our lives horrible, very, very horrible. It is through burning fossils, radiating ourselves, hacking birds with forty foot grinders, and pumping our food supply full of wonderful artificial crap; that you actually have survived long enough to type your rant on the things that have kept you alive. (AKA, it's real hard to take that jog though the fresh country air when some animal is tracking you for food, or to swim in a non-chlorinated pool when you have Polio from swimming in non-chlorinated pools)
Everything in this world has a trade-off, nothing is perfect and that includes the ecosystem with or without us. Intelligence breeds destruction as you may see it. I, however, believe that we have within our grasp the ability to ensure our own survival either on or off of this lump of rock we call Earth. There will be things that we must give up and there will be things we must accept going forward. There will always be people who cannot stand change, who fight advancement; either because they fear it or poorly understand it. You, dear troll, have no idea, nor do you care to understand. It's just easier that way isn't it? By all means, move out to the *real* country of the African savannah or the the south-central regions of Utah. Let me know how you like it.
Our consumption of their resources is *why* they consume less. You are the cause of their resource scarcity.
No.
This is one of the most retrograde ways of thinking available to the third world. A good deal of the Left in Latin America adopt this thesis (read Eduardo Galeano, an Uruguayan author, for an example). But the third world is sucks because it's own failings. I'm a citizen of Brazil so I'll take the examples from here since I know it's history better.
Back when Brazil was a Portuguese colony it showed an amazing period of growth when gold as discovered in the current Minas Gerais state (indeed, Minas Gerais means General Mines). Since the gold industry created a small middle class, a small number of industries (textiles) and trade (food, from southern Brazil and leather from northeastern Brazil) was developed internally. This could be the seed for Brazil starting it's own industry early on it's history. By 1785 the Portuguese taxed us to hell (the "derrama", a full fifth of all gold profits besides normal taxes) and then prohibited the industry at all to be developed in the colony. Besides a few angry manifestos, the Brazilians did nothing. It should be noted that Brazilians had no representation in the Portuguese Cortes.
Ten years before the Americans fought their independence war. It was the time for Brazil to do the same. We didn't. We never did, actually. Brazil stopped being a colony after Portugal was invaded by Napoleon and the royal family fled to Rio de Janeiro. Brazil was then elevated to the status of United Kingdom of Brazil, Portugal and Algarves. By 1822 a royal prince "gave" the Brazilian independence and took the crown to himself. As part of "reparations" Brazil gave (a lot of) money to Portugal and promised not to conquest the other Portuguese colonies. Instead of kicking their asses back to Europe, like the Americans did to the English.
My country own history is similar to much of the history of Hispanic America and Africa. The third world is shitty because of it's own failing and nothing else. Of course, the first world did nothing to help but it's not it's responsibility. It's a dog eat dog world and countries should look for themselves.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
The problem is MORE in a world that has BILLIONAIRES, than in a world that has BILLIONS.
When your read the wistful apologies for the super-rich in bullshit, futurist/crypto-eugenics, trans-human nonsense like Kevin Kelly spouts in his first answer to this Slashdot piece?
http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/11/09/06/1458254/Kevin-Kelly-Answers-Your-Questions
You either see the FNORDs or you don't. He makes some argument that the qualitative lifestyle difference between the billionaire and the impoverished isn't that much - and uses it as an argument to discount money as a unit of value.
That is the position of a professional enabler.
Because those aren't status-tokens, when you can't eat.
Every motherfucker in a Hawker-Sidley executive jet destroys the ability of the planet to sustain thousands of people in comfortable existence, with their obscenity.
The world would be safer with another billion peasants, than another thousand like Kelley and Brand - and the masters, for whom they carry water.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Non-chlorinated pools are also bacteria farms
Not necessarily. Pools can also use UV or oxygen to kill bacteria. Being non-chlorinated doesn't mean not using anything to kill bacteria, it just means not using something that's also pretty hostile to humans. Chlorine isn't the best way of killing bacteria in pools, it's just the cheapest.
Note: This post in no way endorses the trolling of Dr Bob.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
7 BILLION PEOPLE. That's an insane amount of people putting an extreme burden on our delicate ecosystem. Earth is already at the brink of death, it's been estimated that when we hit 10 billion, there's no turning back.
While Dr. Bob is clearly a troll, it's amazing to me the number of non-trolls that accept this part as absolutely true without need for proof. High population isn't killing the environment, inefficient consumption of resources is killing the environment. Per capita, US citizens use far more energy, and put out far more CO2 than the average for the world. We have 4.5% of the world's population, but contribute 18.5% of the CO2 emissions.
The only way more people = environmental destruction is if we refuse to tighten our belts and the rest of the world decides they want to live as wastefully as we do. We need to stop feeling entitled to use and abuse resources however we feel like at the moment simply because previous generations could get away with it.
That's why the richest countries, that are well fed, healthy, and at peace, have uncontrollably booming populations. Wait... Italy isn't replacing it's population? The United States is growing only through immigrants?
Wealthy countries have stable or falling populations for several reasons. Being relatively free, they can make choices that amount to running their lives wisely. They can afford condoms and other forms of birth control. They aren't so miserable that their only form of pleasure is screwing; they have the electricity to run their TVs and Nintendos 24/7. There are numerous other minor reasons, but they're mostly similar to the preceding.
Poverty is largely caused by tyranny and secondarily by rotten religious beliefs. End those and the resulting problems (slowly) solve themselves.
That's a shallow belief, resulting from not bothering to consider the difference between all the effects of productive and unproductive countries. Taiwan and South Korea are productive countries, and by being productive they use resources. Do you really think we (the US) would be better off if Taiwan and South Korea were impoverished stinkholes? Do you think we'd be worse off if (for instance) Uganda be came a free and rational country, attracting investment and becoming productive, and in so doing using more resources?
Failing to consider all the results is the second greatest cause of "unintended consequences". (The first being failing to understand human nature.)
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Japan and Europe haven't figured out some great secret of population control. It's simply that the more wealthy a nation becomes the less it's citizens reproduce. China is one of the few nations in the world that actually enforced population control. It helped keep population in check, but then so did starvation, war and inept government policies over the last century. The interesting thing in China is that increased affluence is also leading to a decline in childbirth. And coupled with the irrational value they place in boys over girls has lead to a situation where China has far more men than women. But beyond that, the Chinese government has already become concerned with the prospect of population decline, that future generations would be able to sustain the nation, it's social programs and public works projects.
And the real problem there has always been that everyone has been crammed into cities while the rest of the country is considerable more sparse. Even with the population they have there numerous apartment developments that sit vacant and cities built around factories that have become ghost towns when those factories closed.
Japan has already been suffering from the consequences of population decline for a long time and it's going to get worse. It's such a big concern that they're offering money to couples who have children. Every developed nation in Asia ranks near the bottom for birthrates. Most of Europe isn't far behind. If non-immigrant birthrates were counted in the US I'm quite certain they'd be pretty low too. Of course Europe, but especially the US still has a strong immigrant population that reproduces more readily. In the long run, that may prove to be a very good thing.
It's also been shown that the developed world produces more than enough food to feed the world's entire population. The problem isn't a lack of food, it's corruption in third world nations. It's no secret that much of what we donate to Africa never makes it into the hands of the people who need it.
As for other resources, well, fossil fuels are a concern. But there are numerous methods for generating electricity that are not dependent on fossil fuels and use largely renewable resources. And electricity is probably the most important resource we have.
I recently read Ringworld and found it quaint that the big concern was unchecked population growth. I think it's been sufficiently proven that population will never grow incessantly. There are far too many forces in play here influencing growth. I'm convinced that we're at a point where a blanket implementation birth control is unnecessary. What is important are things like the economy and the careful management of resources.
Your argument boils down to the assertion that an exploited person and/or people is responsible for its exploitation because it doesn't rebell against the exploiters. In other words you assign guilt to the victim. Fortunately, the civilized world doesn't work that way. There is an obvious cost to any rebellion: it can go wrong or sideways and many more people die or suffer than would have under the status quo.
BTW, the American colonies were split on the whole independence thing. In retrospect, it is easy to say that the revolutionaries did the right thing. But when the colonies rebelled many Americans fought on the British side.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
> This is one of the most retrograde ways of thinking
> available to the third world
I totally agree. If I were in the "third world", I'd be trying to elevate my standard of living by either using national resources within the country, or trading them for something of worth. I would not be whining about being a victim.
But I'm not in the third world, and I'm telling what I presume is a fellow American that he is more involved with the third world than he'd like to believe.
Not if everyone wants to live in the style to which Americans have become accustomed. As I note in the link, for that to happen (given current tech), "We're going to need three or four New Earths."
To change that, you need to either (greatly) improve the tech, or (drastically) change the living standard and policies. Or a combination of both.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
At any given moment it is a pie though, as at any given moment thousands of children are being born to parents who can't feed them. And it also doesn't matter that farm techniques using heavy equipment, water management, and crop rotation exist when those farmers can't afford heavy equipment and still rely on ox or mule to plow a field. Unless you're willing to pay for their farming equipment and to help multiple groups of subsistence farmers organize to allow for the practical use of such equipment and techniques on their farms.
For production and wealth, any time that a company goes to use cheap labor at local rates to obtain or build a product that they then sell at first-world prices for orders-of-magnitude profit is exploitation, and it's extremely cut and dried when using children, or incredibly long shifts, or other techniques like Company Scrip instead of an open market for employees to buy their basic necessary goods, or when companies use other countries to engage in environment-harming practices that are patently illegal in the market that the good is targeted toward. That kind of exploitation goes on all over the place.
As for illegal immigration, fifteen million people did not appear in a single month. They drifted in over years and years, and in many instances were encouraged to come by businessmen who wanted cheaper labor than they would get by hiring normal domestic workers. Some came to work agriculture, picking fruit, cotton, cabbage, or other grunt work paid by the bushel or load rather than by the hour, some came to work textiles where they're paid by output, not by the hour, some came to work second and third shift jobs as cleaning and maintenance staff, essentially out of sight and out of mind to the normal Americans they served. They came because these shit jobs and shit living conditions are better than their home countries, so we import third-world workers, illegally and with a wink and a nudge, because if we don't, then we have to actually *gasp!* pay people more to do these terrible jobs. Instead, we increase the labor pool with desperate people and congratulate ourselves on our savings, despite what we do to our social systems in the process.
I don't believe that the Obama Administration wants to happily grant an amnesty to everyone undocumented in the US who have committed no other real crimes. I figure that since our immigration courts are backed up to hell and gone, partially because of the blocking of the appointment of Federal judges, and partly because it's not cut-and-dried throwing out an illegal immigrant in a situation like having American children or an American spouse, and because business really does love its cheap labor. I see it as a lesser of evils. I don't doubt that others think I'm wrong on this. Either way, ceasing to prosecute deportations on these people and instead focusing on criminals that actually generate real victims is probably a better approach anyway. Once the real criminals are gone, then look into those whose principal infraction is coming here without a visa.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If you did this and eventually rose to a position of power (where you could implement the program on a national scale) you would have been assassinated or had a coup carried out against you. The people who are sucking the wealth out of the Third World countries know that they're responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents, removing one more obstruction to their accumulation of ever-more-grotesque levels of wealth wouldn't cause them a moment's lost sleep.
This is not to excuse leaders like Alan Garcia from doing more, but I was told of a particularly intransigent highland Peruvian politician who received a cell phone call saying, "Look at your daughter's chest, and vote the right way" on a mining concession. He was appalled to see her playing with the red dot of a laser gun sight aimed at her. He retired early from politics.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Are you sincerely indifferent to whether your neighborhood becomes a war zone?
Even if he isn't, he can never admit it because he's an Internet Sociopath (TM). It's like being an Internet Tough Guy, only even more pathetic. They're fairly common in Slashdot discussions, maybe because of the site's libertarian leanings. He doesn't actually have anything to contribute to the discussion, he just wants to make sure everyone knows how tough and coldly rational he supposedly is, unlike the rest of you sheeple with your "ethics" and "caring about others".
I was living in Peru during Garcia's first term. One of his first actions as president was go to New York and tell the international banking cartels that the debt run up by the earlier military dictatorship was unmanageable and they were only going use X-percent of the country's export earnings on debt service and the rest on improving the lot of the majority. The program was working pretty well the first couple of years, and then from nowhere the Sendero Luminoso suddenly acquired a huge amount of funding and training and went on to destroy the country's economy. Want to destroy the economy of a modern country? Take out its electrical distribution system. Over and over and over. Power lines that run for hundreds of miles are very safe, easy targets (the Sendero weren't know for their bravery). In Cusco we had a trickle of potable water for a few hours every couple of days, my brother-in-law in Lima would have electricity perhaps three days a week. When speculators attacked the currency hyperinflation was inevitable. Since Garcia was extremely popular nationally the PTB resorted to an economic coup.
He was re-elected because people thought he would renew the popular programs of his first term, but apparently in the intervening two decades he's sold his soul. Chavez and Morales are extremely popular because the wealth of their countries are, for the first time, being directed towards the lowest-earning 90 percent of the population, rather than the highest-earning 3 percent.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
"BTW, the American colonies were split on the whole independence thing. In retrospect, it is easy to say that the revolutionaries did the right thing. But when the colonies rebelled many Americans fought on the British side."
Also, it owed a lot of its success to support from France. Without it, chances are the revolution would have failed and I don't know enough about Brazilian history to know whether they could expect help from a friendly super power.