I dunno about birth rates falling. the UN just said we passed 8 billion people. So the birth rates aint falling. When I was born in 1965, we were 4 billion. AT the turn of the 20th century we were only 1 billion. No wonder WEF and the Davos and the Illuminati's main concern is how to cull the human herd. And in fact, I DO agree with them. We ARE far too many, far far too many.
I'm curious. One of the last we spoke, I asked if you had yet read Henry George' Progress & Poverty. George's outline of what stimulates the creation of poverty relates directly to Colinvaux's. For example, where C. notes that "Wealth and poverty are both inventions of agriculture-based humanity, but poverty is more of an invention than wealth," G. gives this a mechanism: rent. Those that own property (or any other necessary resource) can simply increase the cost to those that need it in order to prevent aspirants from attaining the wealth the property holders dominate. Of education (which G. notes many "…attribute to it something like a magical influence"), the two agree as well. A diploma or skill "…can operate upon wages only by increasing the effective power of labor." With no market for that labor—no niche—no improvement of condition. Once again, I think P&P is a book you cold sink your analytical teeth right into.
I remember the 2016 post; it inspired me to buy the book and I've since recommended it to others who have bought it. I wonder if the population growth slowdown (i.e., Millennials being unable to afford kids) is in line with being "rich" people who can't afford their niche (never going to buy a house, for example) instead of poor people who have kids anyway because it's "cheaper" to not buy a house. This culture seems to have pushed higher costs lower on the social ladder, in other words, making the rich-adjacent classes have to spend so much more to live (in some ways) than the actual rich (renting can be more expensive than buying, but it's all they can get approved for), or the "Sam Vines boots theory" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory.
I notice that in my rural neighborhood of collapsing houses and vintage mobile homes. The poorest neighbors are constantly spending or working to keep things roughly status quo, e.g. barely working clunker truck in front of dilapidated or even sinking dwelling surrounded by refuse and sometimes sewerage. Being modestly wealthy in comparison I spend almost nothing to achieve a better result. The poorer neighbors simply never have enough wealth or the wherewithal to make long lasting repairs of build infrastructure. No small sums of money, of the sort imagined by proponents of BIGs, would end this problem. Any such funding would sink into the mire here and in most rural areas I have lived. Education might help but only to the extent that it forced my neighbors to realize their predicament and take political action which might include taxing the rich out of existence or taking even sterner measures.
I dunno about birth rates falling. the UN just said we passed 8 billion people. So the birth rates aint falling. When I was born in 1965, we were 4 billion. AT the turn of the 20th century we were only 1 billion. No wonder WEF and the Davos and the Illuminati's main concern is how to cull the human herd. And in fact, I DO agree with them. We ARE far too many, far far too many.
I'm curious. One of the last we spoke, I asked if you had yet read Henry George' Progress & Poverty. George's outline of what stimulates the creation of poverty relates directly to Colinvaux's. For example, where C. notes that "Wealth and poverty are both inventions of agriculture-based humanity, but poverty is more of an invention than wealth," G. gives this a mechanism: rent. Those that own property (or any other necessary resource) can simply increase the cost to those that need it in order to prevent aspirants from attaining the wealth the property holders dominate. Of education (which G. notes many "…attribute to it something like a magical influence"), the two agree as well. A diploma or skill "…can operate upon wages only by increasing the effective power of labor." With no market for that labor—no niche—no improvement of condition. Once again, I think P&P is a book you cold sink your analytical teeth right into.
The much more popular Substack blog Astral Codex Ten has already done it, so I tend to avoid reviewing it myself. I will get around to reading it one of these days: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty?s=r
I remember the 2016 post; it inspired me to buy the book and I've since recommended it to others who have bought it. I wonder if the population growth slowdown (i.e., Millennials being unable to afford kids) is in line with being "rich" people who can't afford their niche (never going to buy a house, for example) instead of poor people who have kids anyway because it's "cheaper" to not buy a house. This culture seems to have pushed higher costs lower on the social ladder, in other words, making the rich-adjacent classes have to spend so much more to live (in some ways) than the actual rich (renting can be more expensive than buying, but it's all they can get approved for), or the "Sam Vines boots theory" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory.
I notice that in my rural neighborhood of collapsing houses and vintage mobile homes. The poorest neighbors are constantly spending or working to keep things roughly status quo, e.g. barely working clunker truck in front of dilapidated or even sinking dwelling surrounded by refuse and sometimes sewerage. Being modestly wealthy in comparison I spend almost nothing to achieve a better result. The poorer neighbors simply never have enough wealth or the wherewithal to make long lasting repairs of build infrastructure. No small sums of money, of the sort imagined by proponents of BIGs, would end this problem. Any such funding would sink into the mire here and in most rural areas I have lived. Education might help but only to the extent that it forced my neighbors to realize their predicament and take political action which might include taxing the rich out of existence or taking even sterner measures.