TITTL prediction

[jonny2mad]

No. That's causing a potential future problem because of the demographics - who pays for the retirement of the baby boomers. The dire economic conditions (at the moment) are mainly caused by a broken monetary system and unpayable debts inherited from corrupt banks, plus peak everything sending costs higher than they would otherwise be.

Completely agree, but as I said, those high costs are causing people to put off, sometimes 'til forever, the prospect of having children. They want to first be able to...
-pay off their student debt
-find the deposit for a place to live
-pay for a wedding
-get a job which they have reasonable confidence won't vapourise as soon as they become a mum/dad
-be sure they have some reasonable prospect of keeping the children in the style to which they're accustomed.

The economy isn't allowing for any of this at the mo., for an increasing fraction of its participants. People, frankly, are being rather sensible.

So you think a generation is growing up who will just opt not to have kids? I'd like to think it was possible.

Well westerners are choosing to self destruct they dont have kids and bring in people who do, not sure what the hell that does apart from get rid of a weak society, and replace it with one that doesnt wish to commit suicide .

[JavaScriptDonkey]

It sounds like a Jevon's Paradox.

I agree that people are slowly being forced to become less extravagant and accept a smaller portion of Earth's wealth for their allotment as the population expands.

This could quite naturally lead us to a place where there are so many people and so little surplus than any event could be disastrous but I'm not convinced we could get that close on a global scale as population and resources are not evenly distributed.

Over-shoot is relative to resources and once die-off begins we return below over-shoot only to build back up again. So rather than expecting a single one way transition I think we are in for a series of successively lower plateaus as our resource constraints limit each recovery to a lower stable population.

I don't expect it to be peaceful and I do expect it to be a sudden surprise to many.

[ziggy12345]

I think everyone on here is familiar with experiments where some life force is given a limited amount of resources and space with the resulting exponential growth, overshoot and die off. This experiment has been carried out on various life forms from simple bacteria to large mammals and even to humans on Christmas Island and the results are clear that after 50% of the available resources gone the life force has one generation before mass die off.

A lot of people on here think that humans are somehow isolated from this mathematical certainty and that we have the intelligence and free will to collectively change our way to the betterment of the human race and the world and live in peace and harmony in some sustainable utopia.

This is of course complete bollock. The laws that govern groups cannot be controlled or altered by the will of individuals. All that can happen is that the system progresses to a chaotic state and the jump from one level to the next is triggered by some random unpredictable event.

Even if some sustainable future existed we lack the will power and ability to do what is required to get there. Most individuals don’t have the will power to reduce their calorie intake to improve their health or give up smoking and you believe these people are going to choose to live the rest of their lives in abject poverty to save the planet? Give me a break.

The future is clear and already written. Petroleum man is doomed and like it or not if you are below the age of 40 you are going to see how its played out assuming your not one of the first to go

[Tarrel]

I made myself a little unpopular last week. It all started so innocently, over dinner, with a discussion about the merits of specialist kitchen gadgets over more general-purpose equipment. My adversary (a rather precocious 20 year old house-guest) was arguing that she just couldn't possibly manage without her fully-automated-electronic-garlic-crusher-thingy (or whatever it was). "Yes, but it's all more stuff!" I said. "Well, what's wrong with that?" she replied.

Before I realised it, I was fully into a rant on peak-resources, climate-chaos, system-dependency and rise of the Asian middle class. I soon found the whole table looking at me in a weird way, except my OH, who was looking absolute daggers and would have given me a swift kick if I hadn't been too far away.

It would be nice to think I'd left them slightly better informed, but I can't help thinking the over-riding view was; "Dad's going cabin-crazy in Scotland"! I really must learn to pick my fights, and moments, more carefully.

[JohnB]

I recently added another gadget to my downsized kitchen. The one with exactly the right number of bits of cutlery, plates, mugs etc, plus a minimum of electrical stuff, for my simple cooking. I decided that mashing potatoes with a fork was scratching my saucepans, so I pinched my potato masher back from the kitchen next door! If I carry on at this rate, I'll need something bigger than a beer glass to store all my cutlery in .

[vtsnowedin]

I made myself a little unpopular last week. .....
snip ........! I really must learn to pick my fights, and moments, more carefully.

Oh been there and done that. A bit too much wine and I was waxing eloquently about how western women have got themselves educated to the point where they are not smart enough to reproduce themselves. This in front of two PhDs and a High school teacher all childless so far.

[Catweazle]

Use mechanical devices whenever possible, you only get one skeleton, it wears out, and you might need it when you are older.

[RenewableCandy]

I made myself a little unpopular last week. It all started so innocently, over dinner, with a discussion about the merits of specialist kitchen gadgets over more general-purpose equipment.

1. General stuff takes up less room
2. General stuff is more robust
3. It'll still work if the power goes off
4. It'll still work for the 12% or so of us for whom specializt stuff is always, always bloody back-to-front.
5. It takes a lot less time to wash up afterwards

A bit too much wine and I was waxing eloquently about how western women have got themselves educated to the point where they are not smart enough to reproduce themselves.

The UK went through a phase of that in the wake of thatcher, but seems to have come out the other side. It's places like Singapore where that kind o'thing is really an issue. But imho it's not education that deters people: it's the feeling of competition for money, both between and within households.

[Tarrel]

It'll still work for the 12% or so of us for whom specializt stuff is always, always bloody back-to-front.

By that, do you mean you are left-handed? Our youngest son is. When he was younger, we equipped him with some stuff from Anything Lefthanded. Even got him a left-handed cake fork don't you know! (That was before I cottoned on to peak oil, resource depletion and the general dark-side of "stuff".) Seriously though, there were some things that turned everyday life from a pain to a pleasure for him, such as left-handed scissors and a left handed ruler.

[RenewableCandy]

Yer not wrong...I have lefthanded scissors and I'm saving up for a set of lefthanded kitchen knives...and psyching myself up to risking putting them in our kitchen and having someone hurt themselves because the knives behave unpredictably!