Slashdot Mirror
Math Models Predicted Global Uprisings
retroworks writes "Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Sure enough, we're seeing them now. The paper's author, Yaneer Bar-Yam, charted the rise in the FAO food price index—a measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over time—and found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide. It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse, and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest."
Is that with hindsight or without?
How many "models" are going unreported because they didn't work out too well?
No sig today...
hari seldon did that first with psychohistory I seem to recall..
What worries me about this sort of knowledge, is that it could make it possible for political leaders to keep the masses working their asses off just above the breadline. But they can avoid pushing it so far that they get the kind of political activism that might result in regime change.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
I've read a lot of those old "doomsaying" articles and in general they're interesting. But the Malthusians have been preaching the same apocalypses for a long time now and they've generally failed to come true.
I agree resource scarcity is essentially at the root of most of our problems, and over at http://www.dictatorshandbook.n... the discussion basically revolves around the idea that religious wars are a proxy for resource grabs, while bad governments either prevent more violence or promote it to achieve short-term political gains.
Bring on the world war and let's get back out of everyone's face. And let the MiddleEast burn, so we can do something nice on the ashes.
Hey speaking of predicting uprisings, I'll bet Dice's models never predicted so many Slashdotters would bail out in disgust their commentary on the new Beta was ignored! See you on Usenet at comp.misc.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Meanwhile, here in Norway the VAT for food items was reduced from 25% down to half. The consumers didn't notice because the shops just pocketed the difference and pretended nothing had happened.
Everything is not always the govt's fault.
http://news.slashdot.org/story... A rare instance of getting it right. This very prediction was predicted before the riots happened. Predicted when, and wasn't too terribly far off I suppose. Of course slashdot having no memory didn't even realize it was already covered.
Oohhhh, and if we don't always, constantly show "empathy" (and of course, soon after, give free money and lebensraum to people who fuck up, and want everyone else to take responsibility for it) for others, we are BAD people.
Right.
This place is turning into a low-rent knockoff of Comment Is Free.
Fuck "empathy". If Third World assholes can't keep their legs crossed and they end up in a Malthusian catastrophe, why should we bail them out.
But even he was unable to forsee the Mule.
You never know...
AngryPeople + BadGovernment = Uprising
Do we really need complex systems theorists to tell us that "if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe"?!?
Okay then, where do I apply for D.O.T.O.M.O.O. (Department of the Obvious Made Obviously Obvious)?
RT.
Spot on. But some expect some self hating bleading heart to mod you down anytime soon.
Racist much? Maybe not. Islamaphobic much, though?
If you mean hating an ideology that wants to subdue or kill all others then I suppose I am just as islamaphobic as the allies in WWII were naziphobic.
Coming from a country where it's a political hot potato to have insurance cover birth control but not viagra... I find your comment incredibly stupid.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I demand that Scrooge McDuck release all the grain that he has hoarded in his Money Bin, right now!
Efficiency goes up as well. Today 10 farmers or 10 hectares can produce much more food than it could 300 years ago.
"Past performance is not indicative of future returns".
The Green Revolution has run its course. Increases in yield per acre are stagnating, in some cases, dropping, because of resource depletion and bad farming practices.
Because the easy wins have been made, and improvements in yields are stagnating, if not, falling (because of loss of topsoil, aquifer depletion, salination, etc).
Yet, the Third World population is spiralling out of control. Our looming resource-depletion Armageddon will start in places like Egypt first, where they have drastically exceeded the land's carry capacity, and they're culturally totally incapable of getting a grip on the situation. They think Allah will make it all good, and will do so until Western border guards start shooting at the refugees.
When the end comes, it'll hit us HARD. I, for one, are hoping we're tooled up for a fight, because it'll literally be a fight for survival.
At what cost? Loss of wild habitats, sterile monocultures , pesticide poisoning of what little wildlife is left, fertilizer runoff causing o2 depletion in the rivers, soil erosion due to constant tilling, huge CO2 footprint due to fossil fuels required to produce agrichemicals and machinery to work the land and so on and on and on.
The methods of 300 years ago had survived for millenia. The way we've abused the planet in the last century we'll do well to be able to maintain this production for the next 100 years, never mind 1000.
>Sadly people like you are part of the problem. But keep your head in the sand if it makes you feel better.
People like me ? And what pray-tell kind of people, am I ?
You know exactly fuckall about me.
You don't know if I'm married or single. You don't know if I have children. You don't know if I'm monogamous, polyamorous, a swinger. You don't know which gender I identify with, what my sexual orientation is, whether I'm religious and if so what religion.
You don't know if I like anal sex, giving or receiving, you don't know whether I like bagels or pizza more.
You literally know absolutely nothing about me - except the one thing I have told you in that comment: a clear indication that I believe birth control should be readily available.
Considering I am not biologically capable of having children - clearly this is not out of personal concern.
Absolutely everything else you may think you know about me is based entirely on extrapolation from that solitary un-contexted statement with zero affirming evidence.
I will therefore, take your declarations regarding my head and sand (about which I'll tell you something new about me: I know that this expression is fucking stupid because no animal actually does that - least of all the ostrich and I should know as I live in their native habitat) and being part of "the problem" as just more utterly ignorant claptrap.
How can you know whether I'm part of what you perceive as the problem ? How can you know what I propose to do about it ?
You have no idea of my thoughts on *anything at all* !
Yet you feel you know me well enough to make such declarations based purely on what you imagine I may, possibly, think.
Now that is arrogant and stupid in the extreme - just like the comment I replied to.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
That is the problem with random mutations. They are unpredictable, both in when they will appear and in how they will affect society.
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
At what cost? Loss of wild habitats, sterile monocultures , pesticide poisoning of what little wildlife is left, fertilizer runoff causing o2 depletion in the rivers, soil erosion due to constant tilling, huge CO2 footprint due to fossil fuels required to produce agrichemicals and machinery to work the land and so on and on and on.
And how exactly does it contradict simple fact that food availability does not go down?
The methods of 300 years ago had survived for millenia. The way we've abused the planet in the last century we'll do well to be able to maintain this production for the next 100 years, never mind 1000.
Oh yes, lament about 'good old days' and abuse of planet while using your computer, living in nice apartment, driving a car and enjoying modern medicine. We are quite adaptable species, when environment changes we will adapt again.
The so called bread price was always a key trigger for uprisings. If the price climbed faster than the actual income of the people, hunger was unavoidable. And of course people tend to become violent when they have suddenly not enough to eat.
In 2006, the food index was only 127. Yet, there were 15 large scale riots, 9 large scale strikes, 6 wars, of which at least 2 new wars in 2006, and countless other conflicts not mentioned on the wikipedia page about conflicts in 2006. And I just picked a random year.
Conflicts (general): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Strikes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Riots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Food index: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsi...
But it's not like there's no progress possible regarding the state of affairs from three hundred years ago, is it? Replace pesticides with better weed management (physical or mechanical techniques), overuse of fertilizers with more reasonable dosages (aren't the Israelis are onto something with drip irrigation?), fossil fuels with sustainable energy sources etc. Really, when you think about it, it appears to me that we increased agricultural production hand in hand with minimizing human labour by merely switching to an agricultural equivalent of carpet bombing. I'm thoroughly convinced nowadays that what the world will need in the centuries to come will be some advanced robotic equivalent to human labour and its fine hands - the agricultural equivalent of precision guided missiles, so as to speak.
Ezekiel 23:20
>Well going by that whining self righteous queenie rant you're obviously fairly young, early 20s, maybe teens and probably gay.
You got every single one of your guesses wrong.
I am in my mid-thirties, married, polyamorous and bisexual and my wife is currently pregnant.
> quite clear that you're the sort who think people have no responsibility for the amount of children they have if they can't get free birth control
Nope, I didn't say that - I do however have the capacity to do math and say that if poor people have ready access to birth control for free they are more likely to use it - because people who spend their entire income on a place to live and a meal don't have anything to spare on your ideas and abstinence doesn't EXIST in the real world.
>Actually it wasn't clear at all. Is english a 2nd language for you?
Yes, actually, but it happens to be one I have a university degree in - from how terrible *your* English is -you MUST be a first language speaker however. To paraphrase G.B. Shaw: nobody who had been taught English could possibly use it so badly - only native speakers rape English.
>Being gay doesn't mean you're incapable, you just don't want to.
That sentence was badly put I admit -it should have read "get pregnant" not "have children" - I'm having a child in June.
> So if you were angling for a bit of sympathy you're out of luck pal.
I have neither the need nor the desire for sympathy - I was EXPRESSING sympathy, not asking for it.
You know... the headline on this site says it's for smart-asses, you are only *half* qualified to be here (the second half - I'm saying you're an ass).
And you still know practically nothing about me - but you have told me a great deal about you: you are a judgmental moralist who blame the oppressed for their own oppression. You call me part of the problem - I say you ARE the problem.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Yeah , it got nothin' to do with Lance Armstrong, Nascar, the Olympics or any of the successful racists out there, dedicating their lives to racing.
Nah, this is just /.
Kinda remind you of slam dancing in the pit, back in the 80s/90s.But with fewer skinheads.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Availability is a technological issue that in most cases is solved, and if it is not is because bad management of resources or access to technology. The scarcity argument was ok 100 years ago, not today, even with GMO. Food prices go up and down because inflation, and inflation is uncontrolled because how the banking system works and because the same system works with speculation. Then there is this false idea that people are in control of their lives. Poor people (I mean, really poor) will always have more children, it is their scape. You will be amazed to see research that demonstrates that it is not only the lack of access to birth planning techniques but also how sex is an scape in very problematic areas... and a cultural requirement in some areas. So poverty is the cause for big, unplanned, families.
http://www.quasarcr.com/
I am assuming you didn't read the story. Check the list, not all of them are third world countries. France, Sweden, Greece... come on, the US, a first worl country is in that path to. But, what they all have in common? the same economic system.
http://www.quasarcr.com/
Sure, keep displaying your ignorance with that false dichotomy, and demonising people who don't want to pay to have their countries filled up with illiterate, violent scum.
Sure, you might be happy to have your kids pack-raped by roving gangs of young Muslim men. YOU might be happy with suffering disrespect and hatred at the hands of foreigners in your own country. Just don't inflict it on me or my kids, and furthermore, don't expect me to pay for it.
I DON'T want to be forced to pay through the nose for the slum-ification of my country because some fucking liberal hipster wants to smoke shisha.
But it's ok to bail out banks that can't keep their act together and invest sensibly, right?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Wait, your insurance covers birth control but not viagra?
What magical country is that that is run by women instead of old, impotent assholes?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We need a model to tell us that food shortages increase the risk of uprisings? How about one that tells us the probability of riots when the temperature increases. Sounds like someone got funding, and produced a study proving the obvious.
And, I may be completely off base since I didn't read TFA.
Just another day in Paradise
I don't know if that country exists - but my insurance covers either, provided you have a doctor's prescription.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
By the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you are an uninformed brain-fucked moron who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. Truely.
First, there is nothing like a 'Third World' anymore. Go, look it up. http://www.gapminder.org, you stinkin' wet assfart. Go get your facts straight. Strike that - get some facts, your leprous waste of perfectly good matter, energy and space.
Second, to you honestly think that the few millions the USA and Europe fork over - barely a fraction of a hundredth of a percent of GDP - make up for all the human misery they brought to all the developing countries, the havoc and tragedy they caused and all the resource that got stolen by US American and European companies? Fuck you sideways, you retarded dirtbag. You really ought to put out of your misery, you developmental challenged pile of shit.
Thirdly, did you ever take a look at the population figures of Europe and the USA in the late 19th, early 20 century? I guess not, you miserable asshole. Average family size? Eight children per woman. Not even sub-saharan Africa nowadays has such a familiy size, you degenerated brainfuck.
Fourthly, do you know who consumes the most resource, by absolute measure and per-capita? Europeans and US Americans. So don't give me 'take responsibility for others' shit, you child-molesting monkey-shagger that likes to lick his own shit. Take responsibility for your own turd.
Fuck you, fuck your parents, siblings and children. Fuck the red-necked pit of incest you crawled out of and please, please die soon, along with you uninformed attitudes and your colonial-themed, supremacist memes.
Check the list, not all of them are third world countries.
Why is that list at all relevant? He hasn't even shown correlation between being on the list and some sort of sensitivity to food prices.
the same economic system.
So everyone has both Greece's huge black market economy and Sweden's relatively enlightened socialist policies? Or is it something like a lot of people buy food with money?
I came here to see how good looking the math models were.
It's not about bailing them out, it's about stop raping them with stock marketing on food and water prices.
Imagine having nothing to eat, but there's a huuuge warehouse full of food just a few miles from you away. It belongs to a bank, there they stockpile food to decrease availability and to increase prices. Suddenly someone buys the well you were drinking from or is building a huge dam, that will dry out your rivers, and now you have to buy your water. But I forgot, "fuck empathy".
It's neither of those things. The fertile crescent and parts of N Africa suffered a sever drought which coincided with the GFC. 10% of Syria's population was internally displaced between 2007-2011, forced off their farm and into the cities. The cables leaked by Snowden included a (correct) prediction of civil war in Syria due to the internal displacement, the diplomat even correctly predicted the city where it started.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Shocking! Who would have ever guessed before the advent of complicated math models that food riots tend to occur when food prices go up !
Next up, complicated fluid dynamics models that show that when it rains, you may get wet.
You do realize that the "spawn" are themselves "people starving without their fault", right?
Or did you think they used their magical time machine to go back and drag their parents into bed?
Just maybe we might want to consider making it illegal to use farm land to make ethanol. And maybe we could keep prices down in the US if we halted the export of agricultural products and seafood. And if we were ever intelligent enough to close our borders and have enforced birth control quotas we could regain economic sanity.
>In other words you're a cheating gay man in denial - plenty of gay men get married and have kids and plenty of men like to dress up their cheating as some kind of acceptable lifestyle. Even Elton John was married to a woman once btw.
Judgemental and moralistic - but no, I don't cheat. There are no lies or secrets in our household. I have my boyfriends and girlfriends - and so does my equally bisexual wife. It's part of what we have in common. I love watching her eat pussy, she loves watching me suck cock.
What we don't do - is give a flying fuck about whether you approve or not.
I am also no gay - I'm bisexual. I like sucking cock, I LOVE eating pussy - if anything I'm bi but closer to straight.
>Sadly it doesn't seem to help your clarity. Please explain exactly which part of "Coming from a country where it's a political hot potato to have insurance cover birth control but not viagra" translates to "birth control should be readily available". Or perhaps you just use google translate for everything?
The clarity problem is not with my expression but with your comprehension. Then again, with a mind as narrow and closed as you're displaying - I'm surprised you can remember to alternate your breathing between "in" and "out".
>Ah yes, quote or paraphrase some well known cliche - the last resort of those who can't think up their own counter arguments.
Says the guy who writes entire posts that sound like his paraphrasing Fred Phelps.
>Actually the plural is spelt "ass's" Mr English Degree.
Actually the apostrophe in English is used only:
1) To indicate letters left out in a word (when writing in accent or if a word's spelling has changed historically). E.g. "Wham, bam thank you Ma'm".
2) To indicate possession.
Ass's would only be correct if you were talking about something owned by an ass.
E.g. "You're ass's pimples are filled with less bile than your comments".
3) In contractions e.g. "What's up with that ?"
The plural form of ass is asses and the the possessive plural is asses' .
>Its only people who have no morals who *don't* judge others.
Judge all you want - but don't try to force your morals on other people.
Also - "different morals from you" is not the same thing as "no morals".
>But I guess language degrees don't require the comprehension of simple logic.
The do when your second major is in Philosophy specializing in logic - in fact, that requires advanced logic skills (simple won't cut it). When you throw in a third major in computer science - you kind of have to be *really* good at logic to get that degree.
Now ask yourself- just how good does somebody have to be at these things to get special dispensation from a university allowing him to take computer science as an extra, credited major when he is enrolled to for a degree in English Literature and Philosophy ?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The FAO food price index doesn't appear to be especially "up" right now:
http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsi...
So how does this model work again?
"while using your computer, living in nice apartment, driving a car and enjoying modern medicin"
Sure, I use modern tech , but I use public transport and I don't have 10 kids. There's something called sustainability.
"We are quite adaptable species, when environment changes we will adapt again."
Oh dear, is the old hand waving "it'll be alright in the end, we don't need to worry or change" argument really all you've got?
"Lillith held up a mirror to life, and chopped off all the bits of life that didn't fit".
I'm getting bored with this, you're also not the first person who has come up with this bigoted crap that bisexual men don't exist. You're not only judgemental, bigoted and reprehensible in every possible way - you are, like every other person like you I've known - an ignorant idiot as well.
Thank you for the incredible sense of superiority you've made me feel. I would almost imagine you're hitting on me - except for the fact that you are so utterly not my type.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Mmm... the entire article is about the relationship between food prices and uprisings. My reply went to the other guy who mentioned third world people reproducing like rabbits was the problem, which is not. That is why that answer. About the economic system, I don't know what your doubt is about my claim. Each country has its own variables, but the game is the same.
http://www.quasarcr.com/
Why is this modded troll?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Its probably just gas.
because people who spend their entire income on a place to live and a meal don't have anything to spare on your ideas and abstinence doesn't EXIST in the real world.
It's a hell of a lot cheaper to buy condoms than it is to raise another child...
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
"while using your computer, living in nice apartment, driving a car and enjoying modern medicin"
Sure, I use modern tech , but I use public transport and I don't have 10 kids. There's something called sustainability.
Ooh, you use public transport so it is all right. That minuscule reduction in somehow balances all resources spent to to build your house, your computer and million other modern conveniences that you have no problem accepting. But that's all right, you use public transport so this make your life 'sustainable' and gives you right to bitch about how *others* abuse the planet.
"We are quite adaptable species, when environment changes we will adapt again."
Oh dear, is the old hand waving "it'll be alright in the end, we don't need to worry or change" argument really all you've got?
We will change when we need to change. I see it as better argument than your pathetic hypocrisy.
He attempted a coup in 1992, but that failed.
He gained the presidency though legitimate elections in 1998.
Though he certainly wasn't very committed to democracy while in power.
But even [Seldon] was unable to forsee the Mule.
Dunno -- my vote is still that the Mule was another leftover positronic-brain-based robot with a (bad pun alert!) chip on his shoulder.
Seldon probably correctly assumed that all such robots had been lost or destroyed millennia earlier.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Why don't you educate yourself instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
The tripe that bisexual people don't exist at all is one of the most common forms of biphobia. I know it may be hard for you to wrap your head around but I am genuinely attracted to people *regardless* of their physical sex.
Indeed I more commonly identify as sapiosexual - I am attracted to minds and intellect, not to physical appearance or shape.
Your simple-minded heterosexist view of the world is offensive but that isn't what I hate about it - what I hate about it is that it causes other people harm.
We have a massive problem all over the world right now caused by the likes of you. LGBTQ people have suicide rates far above the norm in societies everywhere -and the highest of all for trans people.
That you are ignorant and there is a mountain of scientific data proving your bigotry false doesn't concern me much - what does concern me is that everytime you spout your crap you are helping to kill some innocent kid - and in my book that means putting a bullet in your head is saving lives.
I know that most of the LGBTQ community wouldn't agree with me saying that - they think that sounding militaristic harms our cause and mostly, I think they are right and since I'm a pacifist I would never physically harm you - but believe me you make me want to.
Not because of hatred for you, not because of anger, not because I could care two shits what you think - because what you SAY is KILLING people.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Talk to YOUR government about that. I sure as shit didn't for the current POTUS.
Life is not for the lazy.
There has been a lot of protest in recent years in Venezuela for several political and labor issues. But recent protest were sparked by food scarcity, food cost and rampant criminality. Even university staff members struggle to have enough money for spending in food.
Hopeless. It makes me feel hopeless that people would vote for someone out of white guilt and tribal pride. Not once, but TWICE!!
I just read that most people know more about pop culture than their own congressman. Fucking ignorant little shits. If they're feeling the pain and stress, they deserve every bit of it. Suffer and suffer some more! Ignorance should be painful.
Life is not for the lazy.
I blogged about their first paper back when it was news. Might be interesting to review at least because I blatantly copied two of their graphs. Graphs that seem to document solid correlation. I think the causality is quit obvious too. The "we're always just three meals from anarchy" rule of thumb. The societal mechanics are obvious. Can any of you skeptic commenters actually refute the correlation and the causality?
the entire article is about the relationship between food prices and uprisings
So what? Where's the correlations? Especially for countries like Sweden or France.
About the economic system, I don't know what your doubt is about my claim. Each country has its own variables, but the game is the same.
A system is not "the game". Everyone has wants and there are resources of varying degrees of scarcity which can be used to fulfill those wants. This economic game is the same for everyone, yes. But how they decide to meet those wants with those resources, the "economic system" in other words, can be very different.
...libertarians...libertarians...
You can tell when you're on Slashdot. Way too many people are obsessed with libertarians.
As to your claim that one size fits all, it's worth noting that the countries on the list have vastly different economies, governments, and problems that they face. Greece for example has a huge amount of tax evasion.
The difference between nations is more in whether the people makes a fuss about it.
Let's consider an analogy. This would like claiming we have similar life issues and the only difference is that I'm making a fuss about my death from cancer in six months while you're not making a fuss about your 50 years of future life expectancy.
"Past performance is not indicative of future returns".
The slash and burn method has run its course. Increases in yield per acre are stagnating, in some cases, dropping, because of resource depletion and bad farming practices.
Fixed that for you. The problems we're getting in farms these days like pesticide resistance, salination and soil erosion are due to bad farming practices, but not the green movement. Decreasing yields are due to arable lands being systematically destroyed by bad practices as not doing crop rotation and relying on nitrate based fertilisers to compensate. Soil erosion is often directly linked to farmers removing trees from the edges of fields.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
>It's a hell of a lot cheaper to buy condoms than it is to raise another child...
You are actually right about that - but there are two problems with condoms.
1) It is something men have to do - suggesting condoms as the sole solution here disempowers woman to make birth control decisions about their own bodies. Poor communities tend to be more sexist already.
2) Among the poor children are often seen (incorrectly) as an investment rather than a financial burden, and this may even appear true on a very shallow level (more than one libertarian have told me poor people have more kids because kids make more money than they cost) - the trouble is that if you spend less on a child's upbringing than that child is likely to earn over a lifetime - it means you're not investing in an education that allows for social mobility. Sure your childs contributions may slightly reduce the family's suffering over his lifetime, but he is nevertheless almost certainly doomed to be another generation in poverty.
Trying to get this message across widely while dealing with traditionalists and anti-birth-control religions is hard enough already, to compound it by focussing only on a birth control method that more than half the worlds' population have no control over is to take a difficult thing and make it quite impossible.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
"But that's all right, you use public transport so this make your life 'sustainable' and gives you right to bitch about how *others* abuse the planet."
Having a child is THE most enviromentally damaging thing any one person can do because that child will on average live for 60 years. I currently have none and don't plan on having any , so yes, it doesn't give me the fucking right to bitch about feckless morons having 10 kids then whining that they can't feed them.
"We will change when we need to change. I see it as better argument than your pathetic hypocrisy."
Nothing hypocritical about my argument whereas yours is nothing but lame vague on a wing and a prayer hand waving. You say we can change , we can cope , blah fucking blah , well tell me - how come there are still 4 MILLION people homeless after typhoon haiyan in indonesia if we such a resilient species? We seem to be pretty bloody useless at coping with natural disasters frankly.
*yawn* Cry me a river.
Nice response to the topic of DEAD CHILDREN.
I don't need to be critical of you - you have pretty much done a bangup job of proving that you don't belong in civilization.
Now me... I wouldn't consider "The Next Anders Breivik" an admiral ambition...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
s#admiral#admirable#g
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
"But that's all right, you use public transport so this make your life 'sustainable' and gives you right to bitch about how *others* abuse the planet."
Having a child is THE most enviromentally damaging thing any one person can do because that child will on average live for 60 years. I currently have none and don't plan on having any , so yes, it doesn't give me the fucking right to bitch about feckless morons having 10 kids then whining that they can't feed them.
Here goes another strawman devastated by might of your logic. It is not about you non-existent kid - it is about YOUR lifestyle depleting oil, rare earth metals and multitude of other irreplaceable resources. So either go live in cave eating only what you can raise (without depleting soil of course) or stop embarrassing yourself with your white rich kid understanding of 'sustainability'. Also how much child is environmentally damaging varies - you can be sure that 10 kids born to some forgotten tribe in Amazonian jungle are much less damaging than your single person.
"We will change when we need to change. I see it as better argument than your pathetic hypocrisy."
Nothing hypocritical about my argument whereas yours is nothing but lame vague on a wing and a prayer hand waving.
Let me use smaller words then. You are depleting planet resources. You are bitching about others doing the same. That's hypocrisy.
You say we can change , we can cope , blah fucking blah , well tell me - how come there are still 4 MILLION people homeless after typhoon haiyan in indonesia if we such a resilient species? We seem to be pretty bloody useless at coping with natural disasters frankly.
Do you expect them to become 4 million corpses tomorrow? If not, they are coping and they proved to be quite resilient. In time they will build back.
"So either go live in cave eating only what you can raise (without depleting soil of course) or stop embarrassing yourself with your white rich kid understanding of 'sustainability'"
Oh spare me. I've probably been on this planet a lot longer and seen a lot more than you have from your mums basement sunshine. And if you'd ever visited africa you'd know the majority of people there have mobile phones and a lot have computers and cars especially in the cities so your standard issue westerner-using-up-resources-guilt-trip argument has been dead and buried for a long time.
And aside from going and living in the middle of a jungle or desert there's not a lot I can do about using tech given society is based around it now. However I DO have a choice about how many kids I have and so does everyone else on this planet.
"you can be sure that 10 kids born to some forgotten tribe in Amazonian jungle are much less damaging than your single person"
Sure, for one generation. Then those 10 kids each have 10 kids. Am I more damaging than 100 tribesmen? Doubt it. What about 1000 , or 10K? Where does it stop?
"Do you expect them to become 4 million corpses tomorrow?"
A large number have serious illnesses due to the conditions which some have already died from. But hey, you don't give a shit because Harry Potter will come along, wave a magic wand and make it all better , right?
Oh dear. One minute its poor trannies killing themselves because someone said something nasty to them, now your latest hysterical and pathetic attempt at moral equivalence involves dead children (which is NOT the topic btw) and anders breivik in a vain attempt to win an argument you lost 3 posts back. You nauseating and sad individual.
I answered yes, as "different economies" have different black markets, not that they would be smaller or larger.
But then we find that your answer is actually "no".
For Greece, their huge black market is tax evasion. In other countries, they have something else. China for example has piracy. Nigeria has a lot of scams. Somalia has pirates.
All which are very different than Greece's black market. Or for that matter, Sweden's black market.
I recognize that one can blur or refine an equivalence so that any two things can be conflated or distinguished. Here, I believe the differences matter a great deal. Keep in mind that the story is a claim about how greater food scarcity leads to societal instability. Since different economic systems can lead to vastly different ability to afford food, this means that economic systems effectively make food and other such things less scarce and more available.
That's my answer to the question "Sure, why not?"
Some other AC started talking about libertarians.
So what? Nobody else was in the thread.
Talk for your country. In my country they were by no means obligated to play roulette with my money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Tansexual kiling themselves because of bullying and people like you - and you're response was "cry me a river" - this from somebody who claims to be speaking of morality.
How are you DIFFERENT from Breivik ? You both are happy to see people dead who don't share your specific set of morals - the only difference is he had the gutts to pull the trigger himself. You kill by your cowardly words.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *