DescentBB

posted this on my daily FB update, and edited to be suitable to post here. Not a Trump thing, Hillary thing, liberal or conservative, American, Euro or Canadian, even applies to folks Down Under. Feel free to ponder and comment:
Over the weekend at the shore, the discussions with a 6 year old boy turn to nature,and how stuff works and interacts. It's a fun mental exercise for the aging biochemist in me, and good to see a little mind soak in things. However, it does remind me of some of nature's immutable laws, and also man's response to them. To wit:
It's always been a contention of mine that man is cheerfully oblivious to the fact that population dynamics affect humans, every bit as much as lab mice. There are proven courses of outcome, seen in lab conditions, verified thousands of times by natural examples. We are not immune. A population of any species will expand to its ideal range, then exceed that range if unchecked to a point at which the population will crash. Generally, the crash is steep and relatively quick, and ugly. Disease, famine or violence within the population will be the causes, no matter whether talking about rodents, amphibians or larger mammals. It can, fairly, be said that virtually all of the environmental 'threats' we see are directly a result of human overpopulation.
At the same time, the activist environmental community seems to dance around the core issue in an almost amazing fashion. I've noticed this phenomenon for probably 20 years. "Fossil Fuels are killing our air, and raising the Earth's temperatures". Yes, and all these people need electricity to survive. "Runoff is killing our waters". Yes, and we need a lot of food to feed all those people. And, so on. Why is everyone so reluctant to face the reality that there are simply too damned many of us?
Coming full circle, this elephant in the room might well explain the rise, in the more affluent world, of Nationalism. Similar to other higher mammals exerting extreme territorial behavior when resources stretch thin, mankind wishes to hoard what is 'theirs' on an increasingly tribal basis, when the only real way out involves global resolve and one hell of a lot of creativity and willingness to focus on end goals. At the end, your stuff isn't going to stave off the outcome in most cases. Anyhow, that's what I think about at the beach, or at least on the drive home.
Thoughts?

Are you recycling all the Paul R. Ehrlich refuse he wrote about in the Population bomb way back in 68? You forget as time passes we find more efficient means to grow food and family size is reduced (except of course in developing worlds). When we run out of land I suspect orbital farms will be built and we will be terraforming Mars.

not at all, but do you think I'm wrong?

Yes you are wrong. Why do you think countries like Germany want more immigrants?

So why does America want LESS immigrants?

tunnelcat wrote:So why does America want LESS immigrants?

The political leadership wants more immigrants to fill jobs and help the economy grow. What America wants is less illegal immigrants.

tunnelcat wrote:So why does America want LESS immigrants?

Because we have had more than enough for decades?

I'll tell you what the political class is really worried about...not having enough young workers paying taxes to provide all of the social programs.

But aren't robots going to take all of the jobs in the near future?

I'm kinda wondering how we are going to get robots to pay payroll taxes.

America seems to less immigrants, even legal ones, PERIOD.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/181313/dissa ... evels.aspx

http://dailysignal.com/2016/11/09/half- ... ws-enough/

http://www.ibtimes.com/undocumented-imm ... on-2054509

Even the EU, and Germany want less immigration. Why do you think Brexit happened and in Germany, the ultra right is gaining ground, using immigrants as their scapegoat?

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... migration/

http://www.economist.com/news/special-r ... drawbridge

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... migration/

Spidey wrote:

tunnelcat wrote:So why does America want LESS immigrants?

Because we have had more than enough for decades?

I'll tell you what the political class is really worried about...not having enough young workers paying taxes to provide all of the social programs.

But aren't robots going to take all of the jobs in the near future?

I'm kinda wondering how we are going to get robots to pay payroll taxes.

Yep. Robots are taking away manufacturing jobs. But don't those robots need maintenance and repairs? Which means our new workforce will need more educated and trained workers for those newer technical jobs. Jobs which will pay higher wages and allow for more income tax collections. So now we're into a conundrum. Education costs too much currently for most of the people in this country today, yet most of the newer jobs are going to require a good education or at least better training. So as is being discussed in another thread, how to we as a nation pay to educate the workers of tomorrow, so that we get that larger tax base we need? It's now a Catch 22 problem.

And on that tack, that brings back the old apprenticeship training that used to train workers for technical trade jobs. However, since most of the trade unions are gone, at the behest of Republican policies and the union's own failures at modernizing and adapting, that means that apprenticeship training also disappeared with them. It was kind of like cutting off our nation's collective noses to spite our collective faces, because now we need apprenticeship training more than ever.

But Spidey, even though Americans don't want new immigrants, we're going to either have to grow our own population, suck it up and bring in immigrants, or suffer the consequences on the world economic stage, because all our worlds economies are based on constant growth.

http://www.businessinsider.com/labor-sh ... ion-2014-7

But back to slick's original post. What happens to our one-sized world once we grow too large to fit within it's area and we've run out of technical ways to survive with less land to live and grow things on, less natural resources and less clean water to drink? Can our technical know how get up past the fact that nature always deals with overpopulation in a very harsh and inhumane way. Survival of the strongest and fittest, the rest die out via violence or starvation.

now, here is a view of the US, and immigrants. Sort of a two-fold issue, in some of these examples. As Woody alludes to, some skilled manual labor(in this example, roofers) pays a quite decent living, yet, the American workforce is actually substandard(drug issues, failure to show up, etc). Now, you can blame the education system or other scapegoats, but I hear this all the time from small employers I know. The current American workforce is sort of soft, and lacking in motivation. That's a societal issue, there.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbus ... li=BBnbfcN

Yes, but as you have pointed out plenty of times, these people become good American citizens over time, so the problem just starts right over again.

Which means there must be another solution, because in a very few generations, they act just like everyone else.

Spidey wrote:Yes, but as you have pointed out plenty of times, these people become good American citizens over time, so the problem just starts right over again.

that was pointed out in the article. Resident population has matured and become highly educated compared to the first generation.

Which means there must be another solution, because in a very few generations, they act just like everyone else.

oh, there will be a solution, alright, as I've been pointing out. It's just that a lot of folks won't like it too much.

Talk about the impact of humans, this little slideshow from Google Earth shows human building expansion in the last 32 years. Las Vegas has really spread out, even while Lake Mead slowly dries up. One can even see a slight rise in the sea level at Stumpy Point, North Carolina. There are many more slideshows to view besides Las Vegas for everyone's interest.

https://earthengine.google.com/timelaps ... =las-vegas

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... li=BBnbfcN


the problem is, so long as half of the US still seems to be unclear on whether the government even has a role in healthcare, and basic necessities, this isn't going to fly, and we'll head into an abyss.

oh,, and to make the US situation a TAD more dire, the robotics that are reflected in those news stories about 'companies putting money back into US factories" are foreign made and thus maintained at the high-paying level by foreigners:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/compani ... li=BBnbfcN

Oh, and the jobs that are coming back ain't so safe of a deal for workers either, thanks to the loss of unions. Profit always tops safety.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... shed-limbs