Honda ,I think you have a pretty good handle on it ,people look around as they are “seeing the USA ,in their brand new Chevrolet " (move over Louis ) and see this vast great land, mostly empty and think,” wow .plenty of room we will never fill this up" but the caveat is ,vast areas are basically uninhabitable or off limits. Every time I go by Mt.Trashmore ,I am reminded of this .
Given enough time we will fill it up ,with less for the individual .
What do you recommend?
It will sort itself out in time… Wont be pretty… Nature loves “Stasis” and right now…we are far from it… Given enough time…it will get back to it. Human worries and concerns really dont enter the arena.
Musk is the complete opposite. An engineer...
I don’t think Musk has an engineering degree.
Per Wikipedia:
...at the age of 24, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics at Penn's College of Arts and Sciences, and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
“What do you recommend?”
Well limiting family size would be a good start. Of course in many countries now there is a negative growth rate from births.
How come you cant see who agreed with you now ?
Anyway ,like anything else too much of anything drives the value down ,if there was a shortage of people to do the grunt work and stoop labor and provide the "cannon fodder " the paradigm would change,less wars and higher wages .During the renaissance skilled workers were extremely valuable ,one popular comment around here back in the good old days was "truck drivers are a dime a dozen and there is an operator behind every tree " at least that atittude has finally changed a bit .
The biggest problem and it will get worse is the amount of people chasing the good life as a nation our middle class declines as the third world rises to meet us ,I predict a lower median in the near future.(too many people )
Well @Bing and @kmccune surely do make excellent points… I cannot argue. But what you two are saying is “Sacrilege” these days ! Nobody mentions this stuff…and its so readily apparent or it seems so anyway.
I always find the population stats confusing…we are multiplying at an alarming rate and yet as @Bing mentions…the negative birth rate. I am always confused by that statistic… How can that be true ? Oh well…I dont study this stuff…if I did maybe I would understand more. It just seems confusing.
I do know that No One seems to want to touch this subject…the one about too many mouths to feed…too much greed…too much everything. I guess its corrosive to the model of consumerism in a capitalist type of light.
What do I know… Im just a lowly “Mechanic” at this time…albeit with an Engineering Degree, an IT Degree and a Sciences Degree…
Blackbird
I am old enough to remember the population explosion nay-sayers back in the 60’s and 70’s. The world’s population is well beyond what many predicted as an Armageddon of starvation and war. Didn’t happen. Human innovation allowed the population to double, increased lifespans and reduced starvation by over half since 1970. The US’s own carbon footprint has decreased back to 1994 levels even though the country’s population grew. Never underestimate human ingenuity.
Discussions on population growth have been around for over 100 years. AlwaystThe tough question to answer is; In a free society, how do you encourage people to not have so many children?
@Mustngma Education and increased individual wealth automatically slows down population growth. Latin America was forecast to become unlivable from over population. Growth there has slowed dramatically.
Educating women has the most profound effect on population growth. It’s no wonder that in those countries and cultures where women are kept DELIBERATELY uneducated ( I will skip mentioning the list for political reasons) we have the highest population growth. These societies are doomed to failure with or without oil.
As long as technological and food science advances keep ahead of population growth we can avoid famine. However, in many countries the quality of life will deteriorate due to population density.
Unchecked car ownership growth will add greatly to deteriorating quality of life in large cities.
As for Musk...I hope you're talking just about Tesla....You do know he founded PayPal?? He made BILLIONS from that venture.
Not quite…
Per Wikipedia:
In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk received US$165 million.
Some fascinating and intellectually stimulating discussions here, that’s why I keep coming back. (About time for the off-topic police to come and shut down the fun, isn’t it?)
In regards to @Mustangman 's comment: “The world’s population is well beyond what many predicted as an Armageddon of starvation and war. Didn’t happen.”
Seems to me, in large swaths of Africa and the Middle East, as well as some parts of Asia and Latin America, people ARE living in a perpetual state of (civil and religious) war, starvation, and disease. Just because it isn’t happening in our backyard (yet) doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
True, Ed, but it isn’t exactly Armageddon. There are many spots around the world in a constant state of turmoil for various reasons. Given that, I was surprised to find out that starvation is LOWER as a percentage of a population that doubled in 45 years. My point was to downplay the naysayers predictions. Many before have not come to fruition, in great part because we underestimate humans’ creativity to solve problems.
I don’t, however, want to underestimate humans’ ability to CREATE bigger and better problems for themselves, either!
As for Tesla, at the end of last year they had about 1.2 Billion in cash reserves and they were losing 250 million a quarter. That kind of burn rate will collapse the company in a bit over a year. The 260 million in orders for the Tesla 3 just pushes that out one quarter. Unless Elon pulls a rabbit out of the hat, Tesla has a year and a half to ramp production (and sales) from 55,000 cars a year to about at least 200,000 a year. Seems daunting.
God help me but I can’t shut up. Clank, bang, zip, OK OK. Please don’t get me into international politics, corruption, health policy, and the primary need for stable infrastructure and laws. We send in doctors to fight ebola and they kill them. Frustrating but we still continue even after being charged with spreading ebola, HIV, and now Zika on purpose. Wow, long way to go.
Point well taken, @Mustangman . Perhaps the world only seems to be un-ravelling because they only tell us about the bad stuff on the news. In many ways, it seems like the world was a better place before we had the internet and cable news. You barely even heard about stuff that happened on the other side of the world. . . these days it comes to us 24/7 thru the internet and cable news.
My late mother always held the view that the world is not actually getting worse, we just hear about a lot of things that used to be kept quiet. She said she dated a cop back in the 1950’s and he told her a few stories about heinous crimes he had been called to the scene of, some awful stuff. She asked him why she hadn’t read about it in the paper, he said they keep stuff like that out of the paper because they don’t want to give lunatics any ideas. These days they put stuff like that on the front page to get eyeballs on the page.
As far as Tesla goes, I guess that’s why its high-risk, high-reward with these unproven start-ups. But then all the so-called “growth investors” have already jumped in and driven the price to outrageous levels. As a “value investor” I just cannot relate. I prefer an established company that pays cash quarterly dividends, and increases them year after year after. . . .
I already mentioned to Carolyn, that we can no longer see who’s flagging our comments, whether to agree, like, etc.
She said it’s being looked into
That’s a nice feature. When you get a like and a disagree or an agree and disagree for the same comment, its kinda nice to know where someone is coming from to understand a little. I’ve even gotten a disagree on a pretty hard to argue with statement like gas today is up to $2.05. How could anyone disagree with something like that but they do. I.m starting to think they just don’t like short people.
@kmccune, my suspicion is that whatever’s keeping you from seeing who’s agreeing/disagreeing/liking is also interfering with the toolbar (all B’s), the attach file button, and the touchy login. I’m told there is some conflict between some of the site features, and the site lackeys are working on it. Again, I regret the ongoing malfunction. On the other hand…if you use the mobile version of the site you can see who’s rating what.
Guys it seems that over 90% of the local news even is filled with tragedy ,I honestly think that back in the day some PTBs had a better handle on things .
I will make no bones about it ,I am a fan of Mr Musk and what He does .but I cannot stand the wannabees defending Him like He is some kind of Deity .
As always ,"truth in everything " can you handle the truth ? It hurts but ,usually I can .It may cost the taxpayer some money , but Musk has shown some results for our investment (electric cars that verge on the practical ,etc) so much Gov’t money only results in more bureaucracy .
I just can’t respond to that in less than ten pages and then I’d upset a few people but one of the issues is what one person thinks the “truth” is, is different that what another thinks the “truth” is. When you try to drill down to the actual primary original cause of something, people go nuts according to their world view.
We have a local TV/Radio station that decided about ten years ago to focus on happy thoughts instead of hard news. So now they always put a positive spin on everything and at noon show puppies that need to be adopted or have a chat around the coffee table. They have gone from one of the best stations to barely hanging on and it is really boring. It also doesn’t help your understanding of what in the world is actually going on.
So the good news? Saudi Arabia will be out of money by 2017 but they have vowed to increase production to make up for their losses. What happens in the ME then is anyone’s guess with riots in the street. So back to cars again, we are flush with oil but our electrical grid is in very bad shape and subject to attack.