The two sides of capital intensiveness.

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DarkSteven -> The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/17/2011 6:45:52 PM)
The dark side of spending money on capital equipment is that the equipment replaces human labor. Yes, of course the economy gets stimulated for the equipment manufacturer, but after that it's simply a labor replacement. The bright side is that any jobs at that company will pay well. For example, the semiconductor foundry industry is extremely capital intensive, and they will pay top dollar for the people who work with that expensive stuff because salaries are a drop in the bucket compared to capex. So the conventional wisdom about getting trained for the high tech fields is correct regarding how good the jobs are, and incorrect regarding how many they are. Ain't no simple optimal solution. Few but quality jobs vs. many crappy jobs.

willbeurdaddy -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/17/2011 8:56:01 PM)
I think youre missing an important piece...if technology CAN efficiently replace human labor than not developing it ultimately just raises prices for the consumer, which is a drag on the economy. Its more than "simply a labor replacement". So the net result of technology is all positive...jobs are needed to invent and manufacture the technology, the consumers standard of living goes up, with more to spend on other goods, and the economy benefits from the jobs that additional spending allows. Even if it were a "simple replacement" in that using the technology exactly replaces the human cost, there are still the jobs created for developing and manufacturing the technology. Those jobs then have the exact same economic value as the lost jobs, even if they dont match in numbers.

Termyn8or -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/17/2011 11:49:18 PM)
And taken to it's logical conclusion that will eventually leave ONE PERSON working for each company. There was a Twilight Zone episode or something like that, in which the machine eventually replaced the last person, the big boss. However that doesn't mean to go the other direction, to hurt productivity just to provide jobs. And the rich do not want to see an idle class living off of others, so what is the solution ? If it is public service then you wind up with damn near everyone working for the government in one way or another, something we are approaching faster than many realize. The only real solution unfortunately is population reduction, en masse. I dare anyone to even attermpt to come up with another long term solution. T^T

Aswad -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/18/2011 12:30:54 AM)
Living standards reductions. You dared me. Health, al-Aswad.

NeedToUseYou -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/18/2011 3:05:26 AM)
Only a few things can happen IMO. 1. We get our act together, and finally increase energy production in a non-destructive scaleable manner. This would do a lot for humanity at least in the short term, in that, it would universally raise standards of living, require less work for a good life, and as energy costs fall it also opens up for more recycling to be profitable, thus further increasing the carrying capacity of earth. Even that would only keep this system going longer, though not forever. 2. We get practical space flight going that requires employees. Really, getting into space and harnessing any amount of the universe further than 10's of miles above our head totally elevates this "employment" problem for quite a long time. I mean seriously we are pathetic creatures trapped on a little speck of dust, and fighting over nothing, when the whole of the universe is there begging us to use it, but really, imo, number 2 still depends on number 1, and probably will be made possible by number 1. 3. We could morph into a progressively more socialist world, and eventually a wholly communist one. As this would in theory take care of the inevitable permanent class divide that will take place at some point. 4. We could morph into a more authoritarian type of world, more wars, more death, more disease, this would provide employment, in terms of bodies for slaughter in the war machine. Most likely this would be a would of extreme wealth for the few, and ever increasing poverty for most people with little chance of changing the roles one was born into. 5. We could slowly but surely keep progressing towards a virtual economy. Were the economy is based on producing digital content, digital designs, virtual worlds etc... I think this is possible to some degree but also requires some other technologies to develop, like the practical 3d printer and 3d scanner combo. As in if everyone or nearly everyone had a flexible 3d printing solution that could print a variety of products then a large demand for custom designed personal products would arrive. As in Shoes designed and printed just for you, or whatnot, as then a person sitting at home would simply design things, and others would pay them for the right to print their design, that could employ millions. Game designers will probably increase in number dramatically when computer graphics arrive at a level equivalent to 3d realistic real time worlds, then you will see the death of movies (IMO), and the rise of the next generation of entertainment, and this entertainment will require millions to create, control, direct, etc.. the "game experience. Anyway, I'd prefer some of those outcomes to others, but it looks like the lead visions of the future our governments are running towards is the mundane socialist utopia vision and the competing world of poverty for the masses and wealth for the few. So, my vote for a "better tomorrow" is shit loads of money in anything related to computer speed increases, energy research, 3d printing, 3d scanning, revolutionary methods of space flight, of course that then includes other fields of research but the thrust should be in those areas. Anyway, the only good future, requires we largely eliminate the need for labor in mundane tasks like putting barbie dream houses together, so I don't fight it, I'm glad that less people are trapped in jobs a robot can do, my only wish would be that those in positions of "power" had a bit more vision than fighting the inevitable, or maybe they want those bad futures I don't know. Whichever, these kind of things are the will of the people as whole, and the outcome will be determined by them. Those are just off the top of my head I'm sure there are some more "options". But it doesn't have to evolve into death of billions, that is a choice, we all are determining now, by what we decide to do, who we elect, what we value, and where we direct our personal energy and money.

DarkSteven -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/18/2011 4:51:05 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy Even if it were a "simple replacement" in that using the technology exactly replaces the human cost, there are still the jobs created for developing and manufacturing the technology. Those jobs then have the exact same economic value as the lost jobs, even if they dont match in numbers. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "economic value", but if it's total dollar amount, I disagree. The jobs for designing/manufacturing the technology are pertinent until the machinery is delivered, and then they stop. The jobs they replace, would have continued indefinitely. quote: ORIGINAL: Termyn8or However that doesn't mean to go the other direction, to hurt productivity just to provide jobs. And the rich do not want to see an idle class living off of others, so what is the solution ? If it is public service then you wind up with damn near everyone working for the government in one way or another, something we are approaching faster than many realize. T^T Two undesirable extremes: Machines replacing everyone, with hardly anybody working; and a welfare state with everyone working unproductive jobs doing nothing, just to boost employment with no other benefit. Gotta be middle ground. Classically, a business supports three types of people: the customers, the employees, and the stockholders (with the management being both employees and stockholders). A recent development is that companies are seen as serving the employees less and less, and this is seen as a fine and natural evolution. It isn't.

willbeurdaddy -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/18/2011 7:47:58 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DarkSteven Classically, a business supports three types of people: the customers, the employees, and the stockholders (with the management being both employees and stockholders). A recent development is that companies are seen as serving the employees less and less, and this is seen as a fine and natural evolution. It isn't. Depends on the nature of the business. If its manufacturing, it is inevitable.

Termyn8or -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/18/2011 3:15:05 PM)
"Two undesirable extremes:" Agreed. But the market is not allowed to correct itself. Welfare of whatever sort keeps people from starving. Harsh ? Wait until the system is forced into the inability to provide this safety net for those who reproduce without regard for their abilities to produce that which is needed to support their progeny. The process started long before we were born. Understand what I mean here, there should have never been a tax deduction for children, there should never have been public schools. People should have been taxed and taxed hard for having children. They drain the infrastructure. There is only so much of a worldwide market for anything and everything we could possibly produce. To live within our means, the smarter among us do not have fifteen kids, we might have two. Well the country should think that way, as of about 100 years ago. Too late now. What happened to Planned Parenthood and tha ZPG advocates ? They were right and what has come to pass is EXACTLY what they predicted. Politically incorrect ? Sure I know that, but imagine this country with a population of about seventy million. It would be a veritable Utopia. Without the extremely stupid market here, the moneylords would have never been able to turn this republic into an ogliarchy under the guise of a democracy. Think what would have happened if those with the chickens in evey pot had died. Our reward for saving England was our slow and painful demise, which is coming to fruition. And our reward for interfering with natural selection is coming with it. Don't like my words. They are not pretty, but the truth is not always pretty. I have no rose gharden for anyone, promised or not, and anyone with a brain can see that our standard of living is dropping like a rock and will continue to do so until there are less living. But wars cost money we no longer have. This is what I am sayiong, this shit should have been dealt with properly long before we were ever born, in fact before most of our Parents were born. Aswad is absolutely right, lower standard of living, and it will continue to drop until they have a concert in Bangladesh for us ! US aid ! Live long enough and see. T^T

tweakabelle -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/18/2011 6:59:57 PM)
quote: Classically, a business supports three types of people: the customers, the employees, and the stockholders (with the management being both employees and stockholders). A recent development is that companies are seen as serving the employees less and less, and this is seen as a fine and natural evolution. It isn't. Isn't that the truth! Free market economic logic is that capital serves its own interests and its own interests alone. The rights of stockholders are paramount - everything else is secondary. So while the social need is full employment, the imperatives to minimise labour costs and maximise profits work in other directions. As I write, the airline Qantas, which a few weeks ago forecast 6 month profits of c$500 million, is trying to shed a thousand jobs here in Australia, yet expanding through low cost operations and new jobs overseas. Losses (in terms of unemployment and job losses) are socialised (by throwing workers onto the dole) while profits are privatised (distributed to Qantas stockholders). Why isn't Qantas charged the cost of supporting those now-unemployed workers? Why does the taxpayer foot the bill while Qantas retains all the gains it obtains on the back of that State subsidy? The number of jobs is minimised, and the location of those jobs is immaterial - hence outsourcing. This had led to the perverse situation where there is no necessary connection between wealth creation and job creation. (If in doubt, ask any Wall St desk jockey. How many jobs did Wall St trading create today?) This rupture is central to the issues raised in the OP. One solution would be to find ways of ensuring that capital serves a balance of its own, national and social needs, restoring the link that used to exist between wealth creation and job creation. This will go some way towards addressing the issues raised in the OP.

Real0ne -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/18/2011 7:09:30 PM)
are you kidding? when I go through these companies literally 95% of all the jobs in most factories can be elimiated through automation. elaborate but eliminated nonetheless

Termyn8or -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/18/2011 7:42:29 PM)
"Free market economic logic is that capital serves its own interests and its own interests alone." Yeah, and just wait until they see what happens next. Taxes abated, no workers hardly at all to support the tax bases of the governments which facilitate their business. I swear if they could relocate all the airports to China they would, but it simply cannot be done because people simply do not want to fly from China to China exclusively. People who operate purely for capital's sake are parasites, and therefore cannot exist without hosts. I bet that just bugs the shit out of them. In the US, if they could ship EACH AND EVERY job out of here they would, but they simply can't. They would even try in their shortsightedness, because that is how they are. They need buildings and people working in them to sell their fucking junk. Even taking it all online they will still need ports and truck drivers. They tried to export construction jobs and Chinese drywall ate the steel studs and screws out of people's houses. They sell prefab housing, and you know damn well they would like the bulk of that work done in a third world country. Some of them can see that this doesn't work, so their goal now is to turn the US into a third world country. And all others, but they can't afford all the governments in the world. They can certainly afford ours though. Sure they pay taxes here - in a fucking congressman's office or something, not to the IRS. Can't be supporting the infrastructure, that is not the responsibility of our shareholders. Those shareholders are increasingly foreign based. Even the land is being sold off. They want to sell the fucking roads here. In England they wanted to sell the forests. ( did they ever pull that off ? ). This situation is unsustainable, but the hubris of this big money makes them think they are invincable. That will be their fatal flaw, but it will take time. That's why I don't bother bitching about it that much anymore. It will take however long it takes. I have told people how we might speed up the process but nobody cares, they want to play their ipod or whatever, WEEE machine or some other stupid thing. Look in the want ads, I mean WANTED on craigslist for example. All they want to pay for is ipads and shit like that, jailbroken cellphones, fucking junk. I am selling off some machines but I tell you what, as long as I am able to do anything I will retain enough machinery to be able to make weapons. I think they will be in vogue again one day. T^T

Edwynn -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/18/2011 11:35:45 PM)
quote: The jobs for designing/manufacturing the technology are pertinent until the machinery is delivered, and then they stop. The jobs they replace, would have continued indefinitely. If improved technology is the bane of society, let's keep in mind the coal shovelers on the steam trains in our memory. What is being missed here is the basic economic equation that marginal productivity of labor (which begot by advance in technology and improved education) is related to increase in wages, under the usual formula. What is also being missed here is the unfortunate political steps taken to counter all that, and the further damaging political regime that promotes outdated (FAR outdated) energy policies. That being the reason that the US and even Germany are starving for engineers outside of any sector other than oil, which consistently out-bids everybody else as it stands now. Everybody. But they don't stop there, they allow cheap workers into the country by the truckload, while kicking visiting engineers out of the country every six months. Does this have anything to do with why real wages in the US have been held nearly constant for over 30 years while the highest tier incomes have skyrocketed? Just a thought. Passage of the Gingrich/Clinton "Work Opportunity and Personal Responsibility Act" in '96 was the worst thing that could ever happen to any economy. Its requirement eliminated the education part of welfare and forced them into the lowest tier jobs right away. Yeah, that's how the formerly most advanced economy keeps up with things, right?

Aswad -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/19/2011 11:00:58 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: NeedToUseYou Even that would only keep this system going longer, though not forever. This neglects the evolutionary arms race, which dictates that unless recycling is more profitable than producing and discarding in the short term, it will not occur. Thus, the elevated standard of living will accelerate the downslide, not halt it. There is no problem in employment, except for the unemployed, unless you count the necessary and inevitable rise in crime. And in the US, crime has become new jobs, in line with the American Dream, with the privatization of jails leading to lobbying for more jail time for more people, which is another way to pay welfare with a surcharge for not admitting it's the same thing shuffled onto a different piece of paper. quote: 3. We could morph into a progressively more socialist world, and eventually a wholly communist one. As this would in theory take care of the inevitable permanent class divide that will take place at some point. That's one way to end the species... with a whimper, not a bang, as the saying goes. quote: 4. We could morph into a more authoritarian type of world, more wars, more death, more disease, this would provide employment, in terms of bodies for slaughter in the war machine. Most likely this would be a would of extreme wealth for the few, and ever increasing poverty for most people with little chance of changing the roles one was born into. Complete militarization of the world is problematic, but at least it wouldn't be a slow, lingering death for the species. It would either be a crucible through which a future is born, or an end to the species with a bit less of a whimper about it. Preferrable to #3 and #5, but not a very interesting or good option, IMO. quote: So, my vote for a "better tomorrow" is shit loads of money in anything related to computer speed increases, energy research, 3d printing, 3d scanning, revolutionary methods of space flight, of course that then includes other fields of research but the thrust should be in those areas. Give me the land I need and the budget, and I'll put us into the Space Age, as far as subluminal travel goes. We don't care about it as a species, or we would've done it ages ago. Heck, we go so rarely that even having a quick look at an asteroid is a big deal. About a million people have a billion ways to make this wet rock a lot more habitable and interesting, but few people have both the insight to determine which ideas are viable and the money to pay for those ideas to come to fruition. And probably none have the clout to get all the necessary patent licences and political cooperation required to make real advances outside of wartime. It took four years for MRI machines to get a function that could be served by a plastic caliper, a webcam and a bit of duct tape. That's a function we actually cared about, unlike going to space or having a planet to go from. A buddy of mine replaced a six digit service contract on an equally expensive piece of gear with a twenty buck device, a spare laptop and two hours of work, again medical field. As long as not a single individual here can figure out who made the ticket system for our trams, who operates it, and how to do anything if the damn thing goes down, I'm not optimistic of any plan involving "getting our act together." Except China, of course. They've decided to colonize Mars, and their track record is singular: they will do it. As a non-democratic state, they can make it happen in less time than it will take the rest of us to decide how long to table the question for, if it is ever raised. The future speaks Standard Mandarin, and complains of the hassles of integrating narcissistic westerners as harmonious citizens of Qin III, and the associated cost of reprogramming. [:D] quote: Those are just off the top of my head I'm sure there are some more "options". But it doesn't have to evolve into death of billions, that is a choice, we all are determining now, by what we decide to do, who we elect, what we value, and where we direct our personal energy and money. The future is made by a few of us who drag the rest kicking and screaming into it. Humanity as a whole is ever just along for the ride. Health, al-Aswad.

Aswad -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/19/2011 11:32:39 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Edwynn That being the reason that the US and even Germany are starving for engineers outside of any sector other than oil, which consistently out-bids everybody else as it stands now. Everybody. Definitely. A relative cashes USD 150.000/yr gross in a reasonably average job in our oil industry here in Norway, working 2 weeks out of every 4. The downside is spending the working weeks on an oil rig. Comfy, but a bit isolating. For reference, about USD 80.000/yr is average income for a whole middle class household up here (both adults working full time in jobs requiring higher level education, plus some cash subsidies for the kids, universal health care, public schools, etc.). I sometimes go up to the highest point hereabouts to shoot some pics of the rigs coming in for overhauling, a zillion tons of steel easily maneuvering a passage boats take at a quarter the speed while dumping a few third world nations' gross national product in waste gas burnoff. They load up on a few hundred new workers each time, leaving the unemployment rate below 3% in the area (IIRC). The decent ones end up with courses and advance through the ranks. The rest get benefits, on the job training, some courses and a steady wage climb, but keep working in the drydock. It's a decent living, and the occasional couple of weeks in Dubai or wherever isn't exactly a chore for most people. quote: But they don't stop there, they allow cheap workers into the country by the truckload, while kicking visiting engineers out of the country every six months. We simply don't let said engineers in. Well, if they've got a company literally begging to have them, we let them in. Don't throw them out, either, but expect to spend a few years living off whatever cash your boss can spare, since it may well take that long to get a work permit if you're not heading into the oil industry. Cheap workers are okay, but have to be paid union rates, so they usually get paid under the table. If you don't have any marketable skills, savings or resources, you're pretty much set for life, however. Just don't get an education or a job or anything stupid like that, or you'll be deported by armed police for filing the wrong paperwork. I figure it'll go real well for Norway when our oil runs out. Health, al-Aswad.

tj444 -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/20/2011 12:15:37 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DarkSteven The dark side of spending money on capital equipment is that the equipment replaces human labor. Yes, of course the economy gets stimulated for the equipment manufacturer, but after that it's simply a labor replacement. The bright side is that any jobs at that company will pay well. For example, the semiconductor foundry industry is extremely capital intensive, and they will pay top dollar for the people who work with that expensive stuff because salaries are a drop in the bucket compared to capex. So the conventional wisdom about getting trained for the high tech fields is correct regarding how good the jobs are, and incorrect regarding how many they are. Ain't no simple optimal solution. Few but quality jobs vs. many crappy jobs. well, that really depends.. on where the said capital equipment is located, now doesnt it? If the equipment is located in the US, then the profits and jobs stay in the US. If the equipment is moved offshore, then thats where the profits will go and stay along with the said few but quality jobs.

Termyn8or -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/20/2011 2:47:55 AM)
FR OK then there is only one conclusion, which could have happened but didn't. The US retains it's supremacy in engineering and manufacturing. People help make this work and most places have employee shareholders. They work to set up this automation that puts them outy of a job but maybe, just maybe never collected a salarty. Then each of them shares in the actual direct profits, and decides how much dividends to pay collectively. Each employee is a shareholder, that is from whence the profits are derived and the old sweat equity comes into play. Those who worked directly on it get a cut, and those who just put up money get a cut. Therefore hardly anyone works but not only do people collect money, that is because a product is actually produced ! I don't know the inner workings of Bosch, but they make fuel injectors for ay least half of the cars in the world, unless Hitachi is really kicking ass....... But there could be only like five guys working there. We got this fuel injector making machine running, so let's keep it running. And even with only a dozen guys, the are down to a four day week. And when we get a few more of these injector making machines, we will still work a four day week, but make X times the money. X being how many machines.Take a lesson folks. But see the American businesscape is not so conducive to this because of unfair and ridiculous environmental regulations. God dammit, what kind of environment do you think fucking China is ? An American businessman went to Japan in the fucking 1970s and asked his colleague what is that smell after having a whiff of the pollution, sewage and everything. The Japanese guy said "That is the smell of money". This shit goes around the world like a fire burns a piece of paper. Are we ash ? T^T

DarkSteven -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/21/2011 7:35:36 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy quote: ORIGINAL: DarkSteven Classically, a business supports three types of people: the customers, the employees, and the stockholders (with the management being both employees and stockholders). A recent development is that companies are seen as serving the employees less and less, and this is seen as a fine and natural evolution. It isn't. Depends on the nature of the business. If its manufacturing, it is inevitable. I sure hope you're wrong. IMO, manufacturing is the most egalitarian of industries. It pays blue collar types enough to fortify the middle class.

Aneirin -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/22/2011 4:48:31 AM)
Either population reduction, or living standards reduction, although I am inclined to think world population needs addressing more than living standards and that because as the population increases the demand for housing, food and water also increases. So we create more industry that needs more land and resources to operate and with that a workforce no matter how large or small needs resources itself to operate the industry thus putting yet more demand on the dwindling resources. Ok, welfare, we provide a subsistance allowance for the disposessed, a sum so they can live, but it is also something else, it is to some extents a pacifier, as if there was not welfare what would the dispossessed be doing, as everyone has the desire to survive, it is a human driving force that has got us to this dilemma, which if left unchecked will become a disaster. Whsat use morals when survival is the name of the game, people will steal to survive. So how to counter the dispossessed trying to survive, a bigger police force with more power perhaps the resultant of an authoritarian society, but imprison the dispossessed and that leads to yet more demand on resources, so the only option is to kill, deplete the population starting with the poor, but where will such a premise stop, if numbers of acceptable population are calculated where does the counting stop, will it be the dispossessed that are the prey or will others further up the economic ladder be affected, and being dispossessed is a chance in life we all have to wonder about as the future holds no promises. But the flip side of the coin regarding what could be the hunted dispossessed in society, depending on how many there are and their desire to survive, they could pose a force to be reckoned with to the authorities, which could lead to change of reigime, perhaps the arab spring is an indicator of those abilities, but one thing is for sure perhaps wars overseas will become a thing of the past as elements in our own countries pose a bigger threat, as there is no point trying to conquer people anywhere else, if first you cannot conquer your own people. Perhaps certain Scandinavian countries in the late forties and early fifties had the right idea under their health plan for the lower strata of society, sterilisation for the feckless, mentally disturbed, criminal and vagrant, distasteful as it is, it is logical and may have created the Scandinavia we see today, small populations, with plenty of space and a good standard of living. Only something that is now being challenged by the humanitarian attitude towards immigrants, for they are coming to rape and pillage the good living standards the Scandinavians have come to enjoy, as people will take what they are offered and will ask for more as they find it easy to receive more, bigger fool those who keep on giving whilst receiving nothing in return, as a sudden stop will result in violence and internal agitation which challenges the status quo or the break up of a county's natural harmony as the resources, the good standard of living is reduced to serve a population greater than that calculated or indeed needed for a country which is to all intents and purposes a company and what it is worth to it's employees. We need to reduce our population, if not world population if the future is to become more promising and perhaps sterilisation of the feckless is a way forward, and might even be a blessing to them, as let's face it, fucking without consequences, consequences which deplete resources not only for everyone else, but the income of a poor family, not forgetting of course the parasitic nature of the embryo as it develops robbing the host of all the essential nutrients which the host may be struggling to get in the first place due to their poverty. I wonder if a well publicised and funded free sterilisation was offered to our countries, how many would step forward ? As to third world countries, has anyone ever noticed, times of boom, the population increases to become a burden in times of bust, it is the same as everywhere else except it is not noticed so much in the more affluent countries. Good times reap good harvests, when harvests fail people starve and die, this is what we are seeing in the drought ridden areas, the same as with us, but we have the resources to counter..... at the moment.

Aswad -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/24/2011 1:02:13 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Aneirin Perhaps certain Scandinavian countries in the late forties and early fifties had the right idea under their health plan for the lower strata of society, sterilisation for the feckless, mentally disturbed, criminal and vagrant, distasteful as it is, it is logical and may have created the Scandinavia we see today, small populations, with plenty of space and a good standard of living. No present government can responsibly implement even passive eugenics. And most do, in various ways, implement some sort of informal programme, like the jails in the USA, the inmates of which could be seen as the growing "designated survivor population" of the USA, depending on whether the non-surviving population decides to take the inmates with them to the grave, and whether any of the corporate entities decide to finance a coup instead (doubtful, on account of the large scale coordination required). The US Surgeon General at the time was more concerned with "halfbreeds", by the way, while Scandinavians and Germans (initially) were concerned with inherited illnesses of significant burden to the individual (e.g. Huntington's Disease). The slippery slope was as buttered up as usual, and political pragmatism combined with vague principles and good intentions and massive inertia led to the evolving of a system that was more into "kill'em all and let whoever sort'em out" than anything else. Then they got their hands full disposing of jews, and that effectively trimmed back the "euthanasia" programme due to lack of spare capacity (cf. BSE-related cullings of bovine; the logistics of any killing on that scale is an immense challenge). Turkey did essentially the same with Armenians, just a fair bit worse. quote: As to third world countries, has anyone ever noticed, times of boom, the population increases to become a burden in times of bust, it is the same as everywhere else except it is not noticed so much in the more affluent countries. Good times reap good harvests, when harvests fail people starve and die, this is what we are seeing in the drought ridden areas, the same as with us, but we have the resources to counter..... at the moment. Actually, it's more like a pressure law thing... the container volume is set by resources, and temperature (auxillary consumption) vs pressure (primary consumption) is constrained by that. In R-strategy vs K-strategy (IIRC), the tradeoff is opposite between the two, one maximizing population (ind. eqv. pressure) and the other maximizing development (ind. eqv. temperature). Investment is what both are doing, in some ways, except it's more akin to a hedge fund, since you've got no effective limit on how big you can lose. Resources are the key. I've heard some say they have faith that nature will find a new balance and all will be well. And the fact of the matter is that they are right. It is what we are seeing in Somalia and Ethiopia right now: millions starving, because the arable land is reduced by 50% since the last major famine, as a consequence of too large resources extracted. The more people die there now, the better (long term), because those that die will not have children of their own to see the next contraction of the birth of a new balance. That's what seems to get lost in the fuzzy idea of nature: nature does strike a balance, and it's near universally catastrophic for those affected. It doesn't matter whether the resources are from a huge number of miniconsumers, or a small number of megaconsumers, which allows us to pretend we're not seeing our futures played out on the UN commercials asking for money these days. The Halocene might well end with a savage trimming of a few branches off the hominid tree, all around the globe, most of the trimming done in the aftermath of the actual event. The 3rd world and 1st world have the same strategy, except the substance (flesh and bone vs plastic and metal). It's the overconsumption that's the burden. The how and why adapts to circumstance. Health, al-Aswad.

DarkSteven -> RE: The two sides of capital intensiveness. (8/24/2011 4:35:29 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Edwynn That being the reason that the US and even Germany are starving for engineers outside of any sector other than oil, which consistently out-bids everybody else as it stands now. Everybody. Edwynn, I am an engineer. The US is not starving for engineers. I know plenty of unemployed ones.

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