From: Vadim Kogan (vadim@XCF.Berkeley.EDU)
Date: Fri Apr 08 2005 - 09:42:01 PDT
On Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 10:57:30AM -0400, Stephen Grammont wrote:
> Ryan,
>
> At this rate Nationalization or worse (and there is much, much worse
> possible!) will happen sooner rather than later. Like it or not the
> resources of this Earth are limited. Those of this country are also
> limited. And it is those resources that our collective economies and
> way of living are based on. Use up the resources before switching to
> alternatives and society as we know it ceases to exist. These are
> facts. Facts, for some people who like to confuse fact with opinion,
> are things which are politically and culturally neutral. They are that
> which can not be argued with, so hopefully nobody will make a fool out
> of themselves by arguing :-)
Your statement is correct. Also the following statement is correct: if we
eat all the pickles currently in the jars then the society as we know it
ceases to exist. Also the following statement is correct: if all dogs have
10 legs then the society as we know it ceases to exist.
I would go even further and actually just say that as you wait a bit, the
society as you know it ceases to exist, and it is a Good Thing<tm>. What
passes for a "society" nowadays is not exactly great anyhow. And "society as
we know it" is changing all the time with or without any specific factor
(e.g. oil reserves).
The evolution seems to be faster as the pressure to evolve is greater.
Serious lack of certain resources or serious increase in demand for
something limited would force a huge number of people to seek alternatives.
Preservation measures (i.e. measures taken to assure that the resources do
not get depleted) are of considerably less interest to most (as most agent's
utility function is not maximized by spending time on something that has
little to no benefit to them or their immediate family).
I would further argue that near-complete depletion of oil reserves would be
good. Certain individuals and economies might get screwed more and more in
the process, but they will have an equally increasing incentive to mutate to
fit the new environment better. E.g. instead of having an artificial
limit/requirement for more efficient cars passed on by the government, there
would be an actual market-driven need for more efficient cars (e.g. you
will not be able to sell any noticeable number of <30mpg cars). This
supply/demand would result in large financially-stable companies investing
serious time and money into alternative fuel. This is just cars, same will
happen with other oil-based industries.
Green people seem to produce a couple of warnings: oil is limited and
oil-produced pollution sucks in the long run. Putting the two together
suggests that pollution is limited. However, it's possible that pollution
levels at the current levels of oil-consumption efficiency at the end of oil
supply would be too bad to deal with, so pollution has to be dealt with in
advance. That I wouldn't know about. But in the long run it appears that
we'll run out of oil (or switch from it as it becomes too expensive) before
we destroy too many species on earth.
Oil is a renewable source. That is, it'll come back with time. The
assumption is that human technology won't be reverting to oil after it
switches off oil. So in a few hundred years it'll be back.
Oil is used for a lot of things. I suspect that for most uses there exists
some research into the alternatives. Some of that research is part of the
science hampered by idiots. You know, the people who would do their best to
stop you from doing something, even if that something in no way harms them.
E.g. people who use their "moral" values to screw stem cell research. Or
people who don't let you have a nuclear power plant, even though by design
you assure them that any accident will be limited to your own property. Or
people who just don't like certain tools and make it illegal for you to have
such tools. The list goes on. Never underestimate the power of stupid people
in large groups. If you're concerned for the future of the society for some
reason, I suggest that you don't waste your efforts on individual bits of
the puzzle that will disappear by themselves (e.g. oil usage), but rather
spend time trying to solve a considerably longer and more harmful problem of
idiots controlling the progress. That's a man-made problem and it will
exist if not deal with for as long as you have any sort of society.
Environment problems, oil reserve problems, etc, etc. are all bound to
disappear for purely economic reasons in the long run.
While possibly sad for some people, survival of the fittest IMHO is quite
good. If the environment gets real bad, a number of individuals (in some
cases covering the whole species) will die off. The strongest will survive,
creating a considerably stronger ecology. I really don't think it's that
easy to terminate all life on earth, although it's possible that all large
life would die off and we'd have evolution set back a few million years.
However, chances of that happening in my lifetime are too small to consider,
so that doesn't fit into my utility function. And those who claim that their
utility function involves "the good of the earth" should not be hypocritical
and entertain the idea that removal of humans may be in fact quite an
efficient way to increase "the good of the earth" factor.
Sorry for the long OT.
Vadim.
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