Growth is not possible

[Aetius Romulous]

Re: Growth is not possible

Because of Genesis 1:28

Check. Done that. What's next?

[GRG55]

Re: Growth is not possible

You can't get an argument from me on this.
I strongly agree - it's time we started making serious efforts to discourage population growth.
And I do see your basic point - we allow irresponsible people to have many children that we all pitch in to pay for, indirectly.

The fastest way to reduce the size of families is to raise education levels and incomes. There's a robust correlation there. Even the statistics now coming out of India show that the newly emerging "middle class" are having fewer kids, and spending more on each of them, including educating them. That's got to be a good trend...at the moment.

[Rajiv]

Re: Growth is not possible

Nothing is impossible for God including continued exponential growth -- take it to the "Limitless"

[Aetius Romulous]

Re: Growth is not possible

Exceedingly well-said gnk...

Bubble capitalism is nothing more than late-advanced capitalism dining upon itself. I think EJ has said as much. However artificial (or financialized/FIRE) growth of sufficient scale requires a Greater Fool of equivalent scale to absorb this papered-over parody of productive capitalism. That Fool was China (as it invested its trapped export profits in U.S. Potemkin Village Fannie/Freddie paper). In fact Wall Street was so enamored with its financialized profits that it concurrently facilitated the massive malinvestment/overbuild of US housing stock to the tune of about 4 million homes. These homes rationalized the lucrative paper. Habitation was an afterthought, as attested to by hundreds of vacant subdivisions all over America.

Alas China will not be fooled twice. Nor is the world making any more Chinas. Thus the Ponzi bankers find themselves in a cul de sac. Marx never predicted the sheer imaginativeness of late-capitalism in its efforts to prolong itself. Who could have?

Since capitalism will never embrace a sustainability model (tantamount to the banks slitting their own throats), it will opt for radical supply destruction instead. Only war profits and subsequent lucrative re-build (Marshall Plan II after WW III) can furnish the necessary scale. And what adversary presents a big enough sink? Why, Iran of course. The bonus is that Iran represents the Zionist's Public Enemy Number One. So you get all the benefits of large-scale protracted war while making the world safer for Israel. I call that a plan.

You couldn't hire a more malevolent poster-child than Iran's Ahmadinejad. Is he on the Zionist payroll? Well I suppose you could hire a better one --Bin Laden. But as he's already on the payroll, that would be double-dipping.

Is it possible Peak Oil will save us from ourselves? Armageddon will require goombahs of energy. Maybe we'll run out before we can annihilate one another.

Well, at least that would be a plan.

Unfortunately however, history is nothing more than plans gone awry, blindsided by events in plain site, rewards and penalties occurring by chance, always the result of trying to predict a future that is unpredictable.

If Armageddon ever does occur, it will be because of events we will have never foreseen, despite the best laid plans of men.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Growth is not possible

this is more Lefty nonsense. Defining growth is extremely complex. Of course, we can't have growth based on cheap fossil fuel any more but this is a temporary hiccup in the long history of man's ingenuity.

The economy will continue to contract but eventually it will grow again based around a new model. The timescales for this are large - always have been.

Any time the economy falters the Lefties come out with their limits to growth nonsense. It's short sighted and unimaginative (and dull).

Chris, you and I are in agreement: "Any time the economy falters, the Lefties come out with their limits to growth nonsense. It's short-sighted and unimaginative, [not to mention,] dull."

I was in contact with the Member of the BC Legislature, John Horgan, New Democrat, on more or less this same discussion. In fact, it was yesterday that I contacted his office. And the point that I made to him was that environmental crap does NOT belong in the NDP agenda as opposition party in British Columbia. I wrote to him that his job was to improve roads, raise speed limits, get natural gas central heating into BC homes, build hydro-electric dams, build nuclear power plants, lower land costs, ease development restrictions, and lower new home prices in BC. So his job was to create jobs for us and to get the dead-economy in BC going again; his job was NOT to go off of the traditional New Democratic Party (social-democratic) message and stray into a green agenda.

Needless to say, the downfall of the Obama Administration in Washington has been their straying off of the traditional message of liberals and socialists in the U.S. and their adoption of a West Coast type of stupid green agenda.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Growth is not possible

Because of Genesis 1:28

As I posted, we have to confront all religions, especially all mono-theistic religions to-day that worship at the alter of endless population growth.

Just looking at Riyad, a camel-crossing in 1960, now with some eight million people. Same thing with Doha. Same thing with Jeddah. Same thing in Tehran. Same kind of over-population thing in Tel Aviv, Gaza City, Cairo, Mexico City, Port-au-Prince, and throughout the developing world.

[jiimbergin]

Re: Growth is not possible

Nothing is impossible for God including continued exponential growth -- take it to the "Limitless"

Rajiv,
A lot of us here agree with you, but I don't think you will convince those who do not.
Jim

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Growth is not possible

Nothing is impossible for God including continued exponential growth -- take it to the "Limitless"

Rajiv,
A lot of us here agree with you, but I don't think you will convince those who do not.
Jim

But what if there is no God, no Allah, just up poor organisms here copulating ourselves into ever lessening space with finite resources?

[jiimbergin]

Re: Growth is not possible

But what if there is no God, no Allah, just up poor organisms here copulating ourselves into every lessening space with finite resources?

Jim,
I know you won't believe me, but I know that God exists. He has performed way too many coincidences in my life not to exist.
Jim

[Aetius Romulous]

Re: Growth is not possible

For me, it's that nagging thought "who decides and why"?

If any group can force another into a set of behaviors that suits only them, the I believe you have a fundamental issue with things like equality and basic human dignities. Trading off the destinies of others so the survivors can live in increased prosperity is just not right by any standard. Especially when we measure that prosperity as blunt, vacant consumerism.

To divide the planet into combatants who attempt to out dual each other for primacy and survival has been done, and done always to ill effect for all.

I find the whole concept inhumane and disgusting, which I mean in the most polite and diplomatic way.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Growth is not possible

For me, it's that nagging thought "who decides and why"?

If any group can force another into a set of behaviors that suits only them, the I believe you have a fundamental issue with things like equality and basic human dignities. Trading off the destinies of others so the survivors can live in increased prosperity is just not right by any standard. Especially when we measure that prosperity as blunt, vacant consumerism.

To divide the planet into combatants who attempt to out dual each other for primacy and survival has been done, and done always to ill effect for all.

I find the whole concept inhumane and disgusting, which I mean in the most polite and diplomatic way.

Putting the Islamo-fascists out of business in Tehran by using the military might of America is a plan that appeals to me in several ways:

1.) I wouldn't end-up as a lampshade;

2.) the dollar would become backed by real military might, and America would be feared and respected;

3.) America and the West would have a future, maybe even Saudi-Arabia too;

4.) oil might go down in price;

5.) Islamo-fascism would be out of business, probably everywhere;

6.) democracy might take-root in Iran;

7.) there would be peace through strength, and the atomic bomb would not be dropped upon Isreal nor any other nation;

8.) the world and the UN would have direction;

9.) the economy would boom, especially in America;

10.) the dollar would be welcome again everywhere in the world, just like it was after WWII;

11.) justice would be served against the Islamo-fascists in Tehran;

12.) gold might drop sharply in price;

13.) Bin Ladin's days would be numbered in no more than two digits.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Growth is not possible

Six more reasons:

14.) victory in Tehran is defineable, achievable, and maybe even easy;

15.) a victory in Tehran provides a smoother and easier exit from Iraq;

16.) a clear-cut victory would prove to the Muslem World just whose side Allah is on;

17.) America would have many allies in this battle, both in the Middle East and outside the Middle East;

18.) any resistance in Iran could be met with "the rubble treatment", just like the IDF gave Hamas in Gaza;

19.) America would not have to waste time and effort with political correctness in this fight; Arminishod could be put on trial and hung, just the way America handled So-Damn-Insane in Bagdad a few years ago.

[Aetius Romulous]

Re: Growth is not possible

I don't think I share your point of view. Mine is different -

Give Iran The Bomb

[friendly_jacek]

Re: Growth is not possible

Putting the Islamo-fascists out of business in Tehran by using the military might of America is a plan that appeals to me in several ways:

Everything you said before the last 2 posts made sense. The last 2 posts make no sense though. Wasn't war in Iraq supposed to achieve similar goals?

[gnk]

Re: Growth is not possible

Everything you said before the last 2 posts made sense. The last 2 posts make no sense though. Wasn't war in Iraq supposed to achieve similar goals?

Did'nt you know that if you find yourself in a hole, you have to keep digging?

Am curious what Russia and China would think about a US war against Iran. I'm sure they have opinions.