Hi Steve, I agree with your view (paragraph extracted below) about world over-population and its consequences. In my view, the most serious problem that's looming very fast is the shortage of freshwater. Only about 5% of the water in the world is freshwater and its supply is strictly limited by the weather cycle.
(Incidentally, Brian McAndrews's recent suggestion that the value of an international currency could be based on potable water is an excellent one. There is nothing more basic or universally required than this resource.) The other ill is that developed countries are increasingly unable to supply the number of specialists that they require -- mainly in science, engineering and medecine so far. So they have to import them from undeveloped countries. I've mentioned this several times recently and I'm sorry to be tedious about it but no-one has commented on it. An hour-glass job structure is developing in advanced countries. In England, despite having a lower unemployment rate than most countries in western Europe, we are accumulating an ever-growing number of people of working age (approaching 2 million) who are not working (according to Labour Force surveys). Although our population is roughly stabilised, there is a growing underclass of unqualified young people (approaching 300,000) and a growing number of early retirees who decide not to register for employment. There's a serious imbalance. It's probably starker here because we were the first into the Industrial Revolution and are now the first to experience the intrinsic problems of a post-industrial society. (America is, of course, ahead of us in its development of post-industrial service industries, but the picture there is still complicated by the massive immigration that occurred early last century with its new inputs of energy and enterprise. So I think England is showing the effects of post-industrialism more clearly than America so far.) I think we must face the fact that either a skill-divide will continue to increase in all developed countries (with all its consequent social repercussions) or that a radically new education system must be allowed to evolve in those countries in order to supply the pattern of skills required. Keith (SK) <<<< You may think me a "Johnny One-note", but the only innovative, constructive idea I can see addressing the ills this list addresses weekly is population shrinkage. Redistribution of money creates not one iota of sustainable well-being; it would give an instantanious burst of consumption, and then slow depletion/burnout. Latent consumption (savings of the rich) would be converted to immediate consumption with its concomitant waste production. The growth paradigm is cancerous. If there were 1B instead of 6.2, everyone would, on average, have 6 times the natural wealth including waste sinks, clean air, pure water, fuel, timber, topsoil, and opportunity. And labor would be revalued upwards, as capital would still seek to be employed in enterprise. >>>> __________________________________________________________ “Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.” John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
