| > Our entire society seems premised on both population and economic growth. What exactly do we do when the population starts shrinking? Our population is shrinking because it's what happens when the education level (specifically of women) gets high enough. So we use those smart people and build high-tech manufacturing facilities, etc. Low-tech is fleeing our shores because nobody wants to do it and it doesn't pay well. If you want it to stay here, import foreigners from poor countries but instead of keeping them foreign, make them citizens and keep their wages here. This stuff is trivial. It's only made hard because we don't want to share. If we try for a team victory it's almost inevitable. > I believe one of the largest fallacies of the Twentieth Century was that the idea set in that everything was going to keep growing Yes. Not that we shouldn't expect progress, which comes from increased understanding, but expecting unlimited growth is crazy. > [The idea that the] institutions you grew up with would last a life time. [...] Cities come. Cities go. Nations come. Nations go. To think that the USA or Europe will exist as they do today a thousand years from now is the height of hubris and/or naivete. Can you imagine thinking, after a thousand years(!!) of history and conquest, that Rome would fall? Madness! |