[Newfie]

Evil, while I understand your intent I think the method is flawed.

There are a couple of problems. One is that the only folks incold convi ncento not have kids are he kind of folks we need. The ones who would never listen will breed no matter what. Thus I find it very hard to even try to convience folks to not breed.

It’s a perdickerment and/or conundrum for me at least.

[evilgenius]

Evil, while I understand your intent I think the method is flawed.

There are a couple of problems. One is that the only folks incold convi ncento not have kids are he kind of folks we need. The ones who would never listen will breed no matter what. Thus I find it very hard to even try to convience folks to not breed.

It’s a perdickerment and/or conundrum for me at least.

As I was writing it I thought how hard it is to imagine a world where people all live like the best raised people do. It takes spreading the wealth across the whole world in the same way that it has happened in the West. In the West your average person lives like only a king could a few hundred years ago. But I'm not just talking about monetary wealth. I'm also inferring something about class. That's a much harder thing to address. The advances in standard of living have not necessarily touched class. People in certain classes in the West tend to have more children. Those are what most refer to as the 'lower' classes. I should say here that I say tend and not certainly. I'm also not advocating for lower class people to lose freedoms when it comes to reproduction. What I am saying is that those in the upper classes tend to take things like having kids as something that requires forethought and planning. They prepare to have kids. Part of that is asking whether they should. That process is also influenced by what their peers think.

Of course, that brings the subject of Prince William and his wife Kate up. You aren't supposed to be able to achieve to a class level higher than theirs, and they have just had a third child! What kind of an example is that? Fortunately, they can be looked upon as outliers of sorts. The most important things are the memes percolating amongst groups of people, and our ability to understand and put those memes into proper perspective.

I'll give you an example of a meme that has run amok in the US in order to help make my point. The anti-tax crusade has had a huge affect upon American life. It hasn't just fattened the pockets of the super rich. Teachers aren't affordable anymore. People still teach, but it isn't an economically rewarding profession. Roads and bridges are in disrepair. Projects that should be done in response to growth are not getting done because of it, or a substitute for what should be done is going forward under the guise of public/private partnership. The retail world increasingly has had to use marketing that appeals to lowest price, causing things like differentiation according to quality to fall in importance. These, and many other things, suffer because people don't want to pay taxes. The anti-tax advocates have had a great influence, but the way they think, the memes they've spread, are probably the real culprits when it comes to the backwardness Americans face in dealing with their social and physical infrastructure. People could simply look upon tax as a cost and come to a different sort of equilibrium within the economy. Wages could be higher, so that the amount of tax they pay doesn't eat into the funds available to live the way they would like to. The poorest people hate unions, though. And they agree with how the legal structure has been crowded with laws allowing things like independent contracting to flourish. People don't see how the anti-tax memes have actually made them poorer. Memes have a way of coming as multifaceted arguments, and of appealing to basic things that are much more easily seen by those who aren't sophisticated enough to cotton onto what is coming at them, what a thing is really asking of them.

When it comes to having children, the memes people have to deal with extend well beyond taxes. They get into religion and other very old subjects, such as the idea of nationhood or racial dominance. There are also many memes circulating that have to do with gender. Even the idea of what love is is subject to a great many memes. Every time a young man murders his girlfriend because she wouldn't worship him and had the audacity to want for an independent state of being he is doing so at the behest of many memes which have influenced the way he thinks about love and his own self-identity.

It's no accident I refer to an emotion, love, when I broach this subject. Memes work mostly because they easily trigger human emotions.They short circuit reason and gain ground because of emotion. No one wants to eliminate emotion. What I am saying is that we would be better equipped to handle manipulation coming from that direction if we all possessed what the upper classes have traditionally possessed.

[rangerone314]

The answer to this question is "Yes, it CAN".

An equally important question "Will collapse of global civ be avoided?" and the answer to that question is "NO, It WON'T".

[Newfie]

Any prticular reason for that post? You see something comming?

[Newfie]

Any particular signs? What has brought this to your attention?

I moved to a conservative investment position some time ago. Don’t know it will do any good. I’m not seeing any particular bad signs ATM. However I don’t expect to see signs of an imment financial collapse. If it occurs it will be fast.

[Ibon]

My crystal ball grew dim years ago and is no longer consulted. It sure has improved my mental health!

[onlooker]

Yes, dwelling on the timing and severity is NOT good for mental health. In my case, accepting that a worse case scenario can happen,counter intuitively allows me to NOT be so "involved " with all this doom

[Newfie]

This helps.

582D8E11-CA71-4728-9381-0FA4B22C529F.jpeg

[onlooker]

This helps.

582D8E11-CA71-4728-9381-0FA4B22C529F.jpeg

Ah yes!

[Cog]

This is one of the metrics I look at to see if there are any recessionary pressures building. Default rates on personal debt. Not seeing anything here to alarm me.

https://www.transunion.com/blog/consume ... redictions

Unemployment rate is very low, oil prices are reasonable. Banks are well capitalized. Just not seeing where this recessionary talk is coming from.