X-Message-Number: 5499
Date: 30 Dec 95 01:48:29 EST
From: "Mark A. Plus" <>
Subject: Re: Very Happy New Years?

In a message dated Thurs., 28 Dec. 1995, Peter Merel writes:

>Rodney Perkins writes,
>
>>Yet another resource is John McCarthy's WWW page called "Sustainability of 
>>Human Progress" at http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
>
>Hey, this is really cool - thanks! 
>
>However I'm not much reassured; McCarthy quotes some good sources that
>suggest we can feed 10 billion people worldwide with our present
>technology, and that predictable improvements via genetic engineering
>and so forth can boost that to enough food for 15 billion.

[snip]

>But the one thing this really impresses on me is that, even accepting
>McCarthy's rosy figures about carrying capacity, unless we have
>Drexlerian nanotech soon, real resource limits will be experienced this
>century. Whether the experience is of the apocalyptic sub-Saharan
>variety, or only the profoundly uncomfortable Chinese kind, is a fine
>question.

I'm not especially worried about resource constraints on future population
growth and economic progress, especially since the real costs of energy are

still decreasing.  (As someone put it recently, we're not running out of oil, we
keep running into it.)  And the L.A. Times reported on Sunday, 1 October 1995
that Brazil's "cerrado" region in the southern part of that country is becoming
the next great breadbasket, even if China has to import food from now on.  


What does worry me, however, are the realities of ethnic conflicts in a world of
10-15 billion people, even if generally affluent.  Economic development and

population pressures tend to force people from different ethnic backgrounds into
regular contact, only to exacerbate traditional frictions or else create new
frictions between groups that haven't had much contact with one another before.
Consider the tense relations between Korean shopkeepers and their black
customers in L.A., or all the conservative Muslims who disapprove of the
American lifestyle while selling us their oil and dragging us into their wars.
And what's the Bosnian mission all about?  Even if economic rationality could
decently sustain a world population of 15 billion people, the nonrational

reality of prejudice could still make such a future unlivable for many people.

Mark Aristos Plus, Minister of Venturism
By working hard and saving my money (which I reluctantly have to use in the
meantime), I intend to become an abiolytic >H and a facultative anagorobe.

Look out for my Web Page, still under construction, which will debut sometime in
January.


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