Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum Are we really that dumb?

A favorite description of mankind is that we are dumb for letting the planet get into the condition it is in. I've been thinking about that and I'm not sure that dumb is a good description. The thing is that we are pretty smart to have been able to get the planet into this condition. And the reason we have gotten it into kind of a mess is that we just weren't evolved to live in large masses.

The huge number of people we have on the planet is the main reason that it has gotten a bit messed up. But the only reason that there are so many people is that we are so adaptable. Most life forms on Earth are adapted to a fairly specific environment. Most life forms have to rely on evolution to provide adaptations to meet changed conditions. We humans however can generally look at a different environment and almost on the spur of the moment produce cultural changes that allow us to live in those conditions. So we have been extremely successful at moving into all the habitats that used to be filled by other animals (or plants for that matter).

But at the same time we were adapted by evolution to live as hunter gatherers. Life was generally a feast or famine situation. Some years we would have good hunting/gathering, but some years we wouldn't. And there was no way to predict what would happen this year, as compared to last year. So we didn't really learn to think on a long term basis. We basically lived from year to year and didn't really have any thing to push us to think about the far future (like 2 or 3 years ahead).

Then came the growth of technology, particularly the industrial revolution. Since we hadn't been evolved to think about the far future, we just basically kept on the same way we started out. Work for something to keep us going through this year. We did start thinking farther ahead, maybe 5 or 10 years, or even to the time when we would be too old to work. But it was still a pretty short term thing. When we evolved what we did had a fairly small effect on the environment around us so we didn't realize that with the increased population we would start having a large effect on the environment.

Also it is hard to get people to see the long term effects of their actions, because in a hunter gatherer society I suspect that conservatism is a valuable thing. Fixing something when it ain't broke can lead to all kinds of troubles, so it works best if we keep on doing things the way we always did. There has always been a place for innovation, but it always had to battle against the ingrained conservatism. So evolution really hasn't adapted us to quick responses to things that don't have an immediately obvious result.

So the fact that we have lasted this long seems to say we are pretty smart, it's just that we have new challenges, and our innate conservatism is fighting to keep things the way they are. We can work things out and technology is what will get us through it.

Bill Gill

That is a very challenging post Bill. I have often felt that what you are saying is what is happening. Will we be able to ensure that our predicted population can continue to swarm over the planet as we threaten to do, without reaching a breaking point? Maybe we can, but as well as technology we are going to have to do something about our deeply held feelings of entitlement.

I think that until the citizens of first world countries realise they are not entitled to use 2/3 of the world's resources things will continue to look very bleak indeed. Similarly the rest of the world is naturally wanting all the things that the wealthy countries have. We have evolved 'entitled'. Our culture praises aspiration and greed, and more and more having it all is a substitute for contentment.

I do hope you are right. It really is time to start thinking differently. We have found out that growth cannot continue forever, despite what we were told.

Bill



this is a huge planet !

there are only slightly below 7 billion people today.

if you were to place all of the 7 billion humans in a 1 meter square space , they would only occupy an area of 52 miles squared.

I would think that the main reason we have messed up the planet so much in such a short time is because we really are stupid people , we are stupid people because we are supid enough to rely on the stupid smart people for guidance , if we were smart people we would be powering almost everything using solar power and wind or other alternate energy sources that are highly available but are not affordable.

and if we would have taken that road decades ago the planet would not be in the shape its in today.

we had it , we didnt use it because it was priced out of range.

its still out of range for most people of the world.

so even though we have made many glorious progressions in technology and science and in almost all aspects of creature comfort.

YES , we really are that dumb.
or it would be better if we said that
those who could have been smart and chose to be stupid even though they were smart enough to know better are really that dumb.

in other words the people as a whole are not dumb , its the stupid smart people who really are that dumb.

Ellis



the citizens you call the first world cant afford to buy the
needed equipment to reduce their resource consumption , and
the overall cost seems to be increasing along with the overall reduction of income that would be used to buy that equipment with.

our stupid leaders have chosen to give our economic strength or power to the china vs where they live
by choosing free trade ( due to the love and worship they have for money )

so what was looking like a recovery from fossil fuel usage is
now more of a dependence on fossil fuel.

what was once shipped only a few hundred miles is now shipped several thousand miles from the china.

so how stupid is that?

its cheaper ( monetarily ) to use the slave labor in china
even if you have to ship every product half way around the world and that is why the worlds economic situation is in decline.

the U.S. had a civil war supposedly because of slavery.
does this mean that slavery is only slavery if it is occurring in the U.S.

and that all the first world countries now approve of the slavery in china and that is why they do business with china?

is the world trade organization a means of legalizing slavery
for the rich?

its really messed up and its a stupid situation we have gotten ourselves into.

do we need donald trump as president or even better the owners of international harvester , true faithful americans who will not budge on american values.

not this crap we have as leaders today.

I almost forgot to mention this ...

the U.S. has found a way to compete with the slave labor in china , we are now using our prison inmates to produce products.

which opens up a whole new can of crap.
( used to be can of worms , I just like to call crap crap)

so a prison inmate can now learn to build missles and all sorts of defense equipment along with furniture and who knows whats next.

this way when he gets out of prison he will have a trade.
problem is he will have to get another prison sentence in order to find work!!!

the company using the prison labor must pay the prison and the state where the prison is located in $0.12 an hour for the prisoners labor , much cheaper that the current
wages in china $0.30 an hour.

less jobs = more prisoners.
more prisoners = more money for the rich

I wonder how long it will be before the rich start having other rich people arrested so that they can exploit more slave labor.





did we really win WW2?

You are right about the amount of space that would be required to contain the people of the Earth, but you are overlooking the amount of space that is required to support those people. When talking about predators one of the things that is important is the range of each one. For example several years ago I read a story about the Florida Panther which said that the range for a single specimen was about 250 square miles (about 650 square kilometers). I don't know what the equivalent "range" would be for humans, but I have no doubt that it is pretty large. Keep in mind that our "range" includes land to grow our food, land to collect water, and land to dispose of our refuse. And when we multiply that range by 7 billion it gets to be pretty large. And on top of that we need to allow room for all the other life forms on the planet, since it turns out that we may need them a lot more than we think we do. So our space requirements are indeed crowding the planet.

Bill Gill

Bill

on the following page the cultivated land areas are expressed in
km^2 ( square kilometers )
not kilometers squared
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_use_statistics_by_country
the above page list the cultivated area of the world as 11.61%
and the total area of the world is 149,000,000 km^2

1 km^2 = 247 acres

thats 36 billion acres of land


thats 5.25 acres of land for each human on the earth.

http://www.gardensofeden.org/04%20Crop%20Yield%20Verification.htm

on average 1 acre can produce 29.2 pounds of food per day every day throughout the year.

if everyone grew his/her own food in his / her 5.25 acres of the world he would need to eat or sell , 153.3 pounds of food each day.

if we average that out to cultivating the world average area of cultivated land then he / she would only need to cultivate
10% of his / her 5.25 acres of land.

he would still need to eat / sell 15.33 pounds of food each and every day !!!

the average american eats apx 5.4 pounds of food a day so
he still has to sell or export 9.93 pounds of food per day.

there is enough land to sustain the world's food needs as long as we dont mess it up like we have been doing.
using solar power and wind power we could easily cultivate the deserts and quadtruple the current food production.

Paul wrote:
"...the citizens you call the first world cant afford to buy the
needed equipment to reduce their resource consumption , ...."

Paul- Read what you wrote here--- maybe you didn't mean to say what it does!

Surely the answer is not to buy items to neutralise consumption--- just don't buy the stuff in the first place!

Actually one of my favourite quotes is that the entire population of the world living at the population density of Manhattan, could all live on the island of Tasmania! (And everyone on earth would be Australian!)

The fact is, that as Bill points out, survival and sustainability depends on much more than mere density.

Paul, you might like to go back to subsistence farming. I wouldn't. I have no desire to start working from dawn to dusk plowing a few acres of land a day. Actually there has been a series running on PBS, "The Story of England". In that, if I recall correctly, the acre measure was the amount of land a man could plow in one day with an ox team. Anyway after plowing you have to plant, by hand, then keep the weeds out, by hand, and finally harvest, again by hand. If you don't want to do all of that by hand then you have to have modern technology, so you have to pull people off of their 5 acres and put them to work in factories and what have you. That means you are back to our present set up.

Yes there is plenty of land to feed the planet. Of course growing food on that land depends on modern technology. The greatest growth in food production came after we started developing modern technology. With modern technology we first started importing fertilizers so we could start replenishing worn out farm lands. Then we started making fertilizers. So our food production went up some more. Then we started breeding new varieties that produced more. Going back to everybody farming 5 acres would be a serious set back, and everybody would soon have more land than they could farm, as people died off because they couldn't access the modern technology we require to keep the population from having a drastic die off.

Bill Gill

Free download.
http://backtoedenfilm.com/#movie

If'n yer not put off by his references to God as his inspiration, the simplicity of his approach is quite refreshing.

Bill

We were talking about the amounts of land needed for growing food.

I wasnt sugesting that everyone should start farming on the 5 acres they dont even have.



it was just to show that there is plenty of land to farm on.

and it does show that!

when you wrote the following



I was just showing that there is plenty of land/space to support those people.

and I did show that.

solar pannels , Ellis.
reduce resource consumption using solar electricity and solar heat and geothermal heat/cooling and wind power.

these things are what the first world citizens cant afford.

TT

I will have a look at the video tomorow it sounds like it might be interesting.

Paul, if you don't want to have people go back to an agrarian life style don't suggest that you do.

And don't forget that our present way of life is probably necessary before we can get to a fully sustainable life style (including reducing the world population). I believe you have a solar water heater which you built yourself. Keep in mind that a solar water heater is pretty high tech. I doubt if you could have built one 150 years ago. The heater requires pipes which require quite a bit of technology to produce. If they are metal you have to have advanced mining technology, refining technology and forming technology. If they are plastic they are made from petroleum, with all the advanced technology involved in that. All of these are very energy consuming. So in order to get to a solar economy we have to go through all of the stages we have been going through.

I just flat don't believe there is any way to get to the level you are talking about without going through our current level.

We aren't really all that dumb. We just need time to observe what is happening and figure out a way to change. And that involves continuing to use the energy we have available until we develop new energy sources. That doesn't mean we can just sit around and wait for things to fall in our lap, we do need to keep working on it. And we can keep on being as smart as we already are.

Bill Gill

thats interesting , I think your right.



theres a lot of talk about massively reducing the worlds population due to resource depletion and the inability to provide food and water to the people of the world.

facts are that the reduction of the worlds population is to
guarantee that the rich and powerful will have enough resources to survive.

my concern is that these idiots listen to other idiots that
think we dont have the ability to feed and provide for the growing population.

the facts are that we have more than enough resources currently to build and install alternate energy systems that
can feed the growing population.

you see the reason they think we dont have enough resources is because they think tractors and factories can only operate on fossil fuels.

they think that way because thats the way they think the rich and powerful want them to think.

the facts are that what bill is talking about is what bill thinks , not the facts.

150 years ago?
civil war years!!!

pipes date back much further than 150 yeas ago!

the romans used metal pipes.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html



and since they would be using the metal pipes for heating
purposes this lead pipe could be used today if desired.

you dont need a electric motor to circulate the water in the pipe system as the heat from the sun will cause the warm water to rise and circulate throughout the system.



solar cells that produce electricity from sunshine have been around ever since the 1800's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_solar_cells

its already been over 124 years , are we really so dumb that it is going to take longer than 124 years to figure it out?

YES , we really are that dumb !!!


lets hope we dont continue to be as smart as we already are.

because when energy is concerned our smartness has suffered from stagnation on an almost unbelievable scale compared to
everything else we have gained smartness in.

Could the average citizen go to the store and buy enough to build a solar water heater? 150 years ago the average person had to work full time just to keep a roof over his head, clothes on his back and food on the table. He/she didn't have a lot of spare money to buy non-essentials, such as solar heating supplies.

It has taken a lot of technology to get to the point where we can even think about changing our energy sources. And it has taken a lot of fossil fuels to provide the energy needed to create that technology.

We are pretty darned smart to have come up with the technology to get us where we are. And now we are smart enough to come up with the technology to get us through the bad patch we are going through.

Bill Gill

when I built mine there were none in my area.
so the average citizen in my area didnt even know what one is.
so we shoulnt use average citizen, besides I think Im an above avgerage citizen.



thats the way it is today.
believe it or not the solar collector I built cost alot because I used copper pipe and copper fittings.
back then ( a couple of years ago ) a 10 ft 1/2 inch copper pipe was apx $6.00 now that same pipe at the same store has more than doubled its price to over $14.00 each.

back then just the pipe and fittings were apx $125.00

so the average person will probably need to dish out well over a thousand dollars to buy one pre made.

150 years ago you could probably buy a 100 acre farm and a house and barn for $1000.00

this isnt 150 years ago , it is 2012 although I sometimes find it hard to believe.

like the copper pipe prices the solar pannel prices are out of
reach for the average citizen who cannot build his own system.

they are priced so high with installation that by comparison its cheaper to use the electric company.



theres nothing wrong with wishful thinking Bill, or hope I just dont think we are smart enough to get through this without causing the suffering of millions if not billions of people world wide.

we live in a profit driven society that refuses to do the right things as long as profit would be lost in doing the right things.

the amount of faith that I have in todays leaders to do the right things is extremely low.

I dont expect todays leaders to do anything that they should
do.

so I dont expect that we will all of a sudden find some magical potion or spell to cast on our patch as you call it.

I prefer to call it a mire and were stuck in it.

up to our necks.


there is one good thing that came out of the copper price increases that I can think of.

I have found that you dont need pipes at all, they cost too much now anyway.

just using cheap wood and plastic sheeting and black paint can heat your house with solar heat.

in fact every window that faces the sun can become a solar air heater that will heat your house free of charge or at least lower your energy bill, Bill.

just by putting up black curtains...

And according to Answers.com the average income in 1860 was $600. If you are maintaining a family on that income you are not going to be buying a farm.

And all of this solar technology depends on the technology and energy sources that have been developed over the past 200 years. Without that development we wouldn't have the population we have and we wouldn't have the capability to develop new energy sources to replace our current energy sources.

And of course, as I stated previously, our biggest problems have been produced by the immense population that we have now. If we could reduce the population by 75% we would find that our problems would be cut back even more. However, we have to start from where we are, and cutting the population by just a few percent is a long term proposition.

Bill Gill

what was the Title of this thread anyway?

why not reduce the problems that the immense population used to create our problems?

why reduce the population , when the problems will still exist?



long term?
we dont have long term time to fix our problems.

would you rather we just kill 75% of the worlds population
or
stop using 75% of our problem , which is fossil fuels.

do you think that a human produces more GW/toxic fumes than a gasoline engine?

if you do then do you think you would survive longer locked up
inside a air tight garage with a breathing human being
or a breathing gasoline engine.

they both breath in air and expel fumes.

what would be the point in reducing the population when the more intelligent thing to do would be to reduce fossil fuel usage?

Yes, because it is the human who is using the gasoline engine.
Fewer humans = fewer engines. Fewer engines = fewer fumes.

Bill Gill

Bill

so if a human uses a gasoline engine then his human body is producing more GW gasses and fumes than before he used the gasoline engine , the gasoline engine does not produce as much
GW gasses and fumes as the human body that is using the gasoline engine.

is that what your saying?

so we should kill 75% of the people because they use too many gasoline engines?

what if we just kill 75% of the gasoline engines?

would that be more intelligent , more humane , more smarter?

you wouldnt just happen to be a republican would you?

What is wrong with wood* heaters?--- While it is true that solar heaters are becoming cheaper and easier to acquire I remember a form of wood heater in my grandparents' home. The stove (solid fuel or wood), used by my grandma, along with the coal fires in the rest of the living rooms heated a water tank which pumped hot water for the bathroom and kitchen. Some people took it a step further and sent the hot water through radiators and so enjoyed a form of central heating. Sort of like the ancient romans really. I have no idea how the plumbing worked, but there was always hot water (and very simple tech paul).

Personally I think we will be worrying more about getting the clean potable water that we will need if the overcrowding that is forecast happens. There may not be enough available to heat after all!

*PS. In Australia we are convinced that wood burning is not detrimental to the environment. Something to do with captured carbon. I cannot wholly agree!

Ellis



there is nothing wrong with burning wood , it is a great way to
heat your home and your water and turn a steam powered generator to produce electricity if you have a boiler.

its true that burning wood releases CO2 but if allowed to rot
then the wood will release methane.

methane is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas.

http://www.epa.gov/methane/

we have a lot of landfills that capture methane from the rotting debri in the landfill , and the methane is burned in engines to produce electricity , this type of burning is safe and better for reversing the total of GW gasses in the atmosphere.

burning gasoline and oil on the other hand only adds CO2 to the atmosphere.


P.S.

about the wood heater your grandparents had , that is the type
of thing that you remember , I remember my mother telling me about how she would have to get up and go outside in the middle of the night during the winter to get another log for the pot belly stove they had.

I bet it really felt good laying down in a warm room as you went to sleep.

she said the cold would wake her up.

some people these days are using solar collectors to pre heat water that is fed into a steam powered generator boiler.

the sun raises the water temperature to apx 180 degrees then the boiler raises the water to boiling temperature.

much less wood is needed durring a sunny day.

Well, there have been a number of comments since I looked in last night. So:

Ellis: About wood heaters. That is a good idea in some ways, but there are drawbacks.



This is from a paper on the OSU web site. This seems to indicate that we would need over 10 acres of woodland to support one families heating needs. And that is in Eastern Oklahoma. In Western Oklahoma there are not nearly as many trees, you are getting into the plains out there. And of course that only applies to heating, not to cooling and other energy needs. And by the way there is also the problem of cutting all that wood. There is a lot of work involved in wood heating. My brother used to heat with wood. He burned the scraps from his wood shop, so he had a ready source of wood.

Of course wood is a renewable resource. In fact most of the paper we use that people decry so much is grown on tree farms. That means that we keep growing trees to replace the ones that are cut down. So the paper industry is kind of green. The down side is the amount of energy needed to turn trees into paper, and the horrible smell involved. Paper mills stink.

Paul: The use of a gasoline engine produces more pollutants than the person running it. But if the person wasn't there to run it the gasoline engine wouldn't produce any pollutants. And as far as cutting the population is concerned, I said that it is a long term project.

Bill Gill

Getting back to my original thought when I started this thread.

We aren't really all that dumb. I don't see any way for us to have gotten where we are by being dumb.

Let's take a little look at the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution precipitated the growth in population that is a large part of the problems we are now having. So I want to take a quick look at that start.

A number of different technologies are credited with kicking off the industrial revolution, but it seems to me that the major enabling technology was the start of the modern iron and steel industry. Without large quantities of iron and steel the infrastructure that supported the other industries could not have been developed in nearly as large a way. Iron and steel enabled the building of the machines that led the way into the modern age.

The modern production of iron began in the late 18th century. One of the things that made it possible was the use of coal to run the furnaces required to refine the metal and make large quantities of good quality iron, and then steel.

I say that when this process first started the engineers and scientists had no way to understand just how much their work would wind up affecting the climate of the world. What they did was to observe how things worked and apply that knowledge to making iron and steel. Without that initial kick we would not be able to even start to think about how to replace coal and other fossil fuels with more sustainable energy sources.

So, no we aren't that dumb. When the industrial revolution started we didn't even know what kind of questions to ask about what the result of a dependence on fossil fuels would be.

Bill Gill

allow me to re-word the above you posted.

The use of a gasoline engine produces more pollutants than the person running it. But if the person wasn't there to run it the gasoline engine wouldn't produce any pollutants.
therefore in order to allow the person to reduce the amounts of pollutants he is producing by running a gasoline engine he could instead install a solar power system with a power equivalent to that of the gasoline engine to prevent him from causing pollutants.
this way he could be there and produce the equivalent power
of the gasoline engine without worrying about being euthanized.

And as far as cutting the population is concerned there would be no need to reduce the population , I said that it is a long term project but when you consider the amount of energy put into the production of a gasoline engine and the energy required to constantly provide the engine with gasoline fuel and oil from countries located thousands of miles away from the engine.
vs
the amounts of energy put into the production of an
solar powered system that has a power output equivalent to that of the gasoline engine that requires no further energy consumption through the transportation of energy sources such as gasoline from thousands of miles away to allow the solar power system to function because the solar power system gets its energy source from the sun , which is millions of miles away but is delivered freely by the sun.

its pretty clear that the overall amounts of resource consumption of the gasoline engine is severly higher than the overall amount of resource consumption of the solar power system that has the same power output.

therefore since both of these systems are currently available today any intentional population decreases are not necessary.

as people and industry can switch to solar power systems with ease.

if they could afford it.

when I look at a gasoline engine and compare it to a solar panel I cant see how the solar panel could possibly cost more than the gasoline engine.

so YES WE REALLY ARE THAT DUMB

I can actually provide proof that we really are that dumb.

ie...

for 3 trillion dollars every citizen (est at 300 million)in the United States could get a 10,000.00 solar power system for their home.

this would produce the following economical effects.

1) our economy would increase dramatically.
2) solar power businesses would pop up all over the U.S.
3) every citizen would have the money that they were paying out in electric bills to spend on products and produce and services.
4) all of this spending would cure the governments delima over paying their bills.

this would produce the following effects environmentally

1) citizens of the united states that drive cars or buy products sold in the U.S. produce 45% of the worlds CO2 emissions and with the extra money they have they could buy electric cars to plug into their solar power system this would dramatically reduce that amount of CO2 they produce by driving gasoline cars.

2) the heat and air conditioning systems in their homes would not produce any CO2 emmissions.

then they would not only have the extra money from their electric bill they would also have the money they spend on gasoline each week to fill up their cars and trucks.

which causes them to buy even more products in stores from american manufactures.

its a domino effect.

heres the proof...

we have altready given away 3 trillion dollars to failing buisnesses and as economic incentives but that only increased our debt.

it really did not solve any of our problems.

YES
WE
REALLY
ARE
THAT
DUMB

we put men on the moon.

that means that some of us did things that were pretty smart.

from what I can tell about our smartness is like we are in a boat in the middle of the pacific ocean , we have a set of oars and a plug that is currently plugging up a hole in the bottom of the boat.

our captain of the boat sees another boat that is sinking.
and orders the plug to be given to the other boat so that their boat can remain floating.

we can row to shore if we row fast enough he says to the people of the now sinking USS U.S.A.

we can row this boat really fast and according to the smart people I have hired as advisors we can make it.

a sailor ask him why he didnt just give the other boat an oar or even both oars so that they could row to shore instead of giving them the only thing that is keeping them afloat.

a sinking boat requires more energy to propel it forward as it gains mass in the form of water which is causing it to sink.

stroke , stroke , stroke ... yells the captain the sharks are following us.

this stands true for all nations who have decided to help other nations by employing their citizens as slaves.

Ok Paul, you are right, we are that dumb. After all look at James Watt. He invented a steam engine but didn't stop to think that it would lead to an enormous increase in the use of fossil fuels, and that the increase would lead to global warming. He should of course have thought out all the consequences and gone to work on alternative energy sources instead.

Bill Gill

Bill

hero invented the first steam engine that was a reaction turbine.





Im glad to see that you agree that we really are that dumb
and we really are that dumb.

we prove it every day we exist.

steam engines have been around apx 2000 years.
think of the advances that could have been seen if the steam engine would have been made solar powered , there were attempts at providing engines that do not need fuels to operate but these ideas were rugged due to the fact that they did not require any fuels to operate.

just like a modern steam turbine could easily run off of solar power using mirrors to reflect and concentrate the sunlight onto a heat exchanger to turn water into steam.

the stupid intelligent smart people always use the lame excuse that the sun does not always shine.

but they always seem to forget that while the sun is shining the steam power could store energy in some form for the times that the sun is not shinning.

so that if you require 1 meagwatt a day for your plant.
and the sun shines only 6 hours.
you would need to store 18 hours of energy.

if 1 unit will produce .25 megawatts in 6 hours of the 1 megawatt you require during a 24 hour period its obvious that you would need 4 units.

if the sun doesnt shine enough then you can use the electric companies electricity or install more units to provide backup energy when the sun does not shine.

or your grid could be connected to units in areas where the sun is shining and producing energy.

or you could just install a solar power system that will
produce 3 megawatts in 6 hours for instance.

the stupid intelligent smart people can always find some lame reason why they dont think solar power would work , but they
always seem to exclude ways around the times when the sun is not shining.

but we keep building more and more coal fired and gas turbines to power our amazing technology knowing full well that we are ruining the planet and our ability to survive.


therefore

YES WE REALLY ARE THAT DUMB.

I believe that I said "James Watt invented a steam engine", not "the steam engine". I think if you compare the advances accomplished with Hero's engine and the advances accomplished with Watt's engine that you will find that Hero's engine was a great novelty, but not very practical. Watt's engine drove the industrial revolution. That's a big difference. And the technology that enabled Watt's engine was not available to Hero. The ancient Greeks did not have the ability to make large quantities of the metals needed for such large projects as a railroad. The development of these technologies was vital to the industrial revolution.

Of course the inventors who developed these technologies just weren't thinking or they wouldn't have done it. They would have waited till there was a way to use renewable energy sources which were not available at that time. Of course I'm not sure how they would have developed the renewable energy sources without the technologies they did develop. Making all the devices you describe requires large quantities of materials that are just not available without the technologies that they did develop.

Bill Gill

Since I am being nostalgic about my own family's experience with alternate energy I will point out that my auntie had gas lighting in her house well into the late 50s. (About the time the Beatle's emerged.) And when I came to Australia about 2/3 of Sydney was, to my horror, without sewerage! The so-called nightsoil was collected by the night man who accessed it by going down the little lanes at the back of the houses. I must stress this doesn't happen still!!!!

I think that we are not dumb so much as greedy. We have come so far in 50 years-- what will we have achieved in another 50 if we are encouraged to explore our planet and further.

The dumb thing we do now though is to disregard the need for scientific discovery/research that is not tied to a funded project. We are then discouraging the accidental discoveries, or the results of experiments like Hero's, completed for the delight of it and the pleasure of success. Here in Oz our science faculties are starved of funds and students, while the Law and Commerce depts are overflowing.

This IS dumb!

Ellis - A lot of our problem is something I mentioned in my first post.

We were not evolved to handle the world we are living in. It is amazing to me that we are handling it as well as we are. We evolved basically as hunter gatherers, such as the aborigines of Australia. This lifestyle calls for a large helping of conservatism. If you have a working hunter/gatherer lifestyle making changes just for the heck of it can wind up killing you. There is however an occasional need for innovation to take care of unexpected problems, so the ability to innovate hasn't been weeded out by evolution. The result is that we are slow to accept changes, even when they are needed. Eventually changes are adopted when it becomes obvious that they are necessary, and when the most conservative people have been replaced.

So in my opinion conservatism and a wait and see attitude have strong evolutionary value, but we need the innovators who will be ready to come up with new ideas to take care of new problems. This is what will get us through our current problems.

Evolution doesn't have an goals and aspirations, but I must say that luck really came out on our side when we evolved to be able to develop so far beyond the basic hunter/gatherer lifestyle that we inherited from our ancestors. After all when we were evolving there was absolutely no reason for us to be able to drive a car, but the abilities that did evolve wound up being just what we need to do it.

Of course innovation doesn't just come up when we are facing problems. Sometimes it is just there because somebody found a different way to do something. It may not be a better way, just different. And all the old folks will say that whoever came up with it should be ashamed of themselves, because the old way worked just fine.

Bill Gill

Bill



we already have the cure for our problems , we dont have to
wait.

we just have to implement the cure.

for instance using coal as a energy source.
coal can produce hydrogen...(steam passing/cracking)

burning coal produces GW gasses.
steam cracking coal produces hydrogen.
burning hydrogen does not produce any harmful gasses.

steam can be produced using solar collectors.

1) the economic situation does not change : theres still money to be made from selling coal.

2) coal is a energy storage mechanism.

its things like this that can affect our situation positively
that we already have the capability of doing.

as I have said before in this forum , its not the energy that we use but the way we use that energy.

you say it takes time for us to "evolve" into using new technology , I say it is the profit margin that dictates our
"evolution" to new technology.

not time , reason , intelligence , etc...

Paul, do you have a quick guesstimate of the costs and timeline to do this on a significant scale? That would include the engineering development, test system, and final large scale construction?

Bill Gill

I think you have the cart before the horse. It is much more likely that the ability to drive a car is because the machine evolved around humans' natural innate abilities. Evolution makes us what we are; we design our machines to suit our abilities. We do not evolve our abilities to suit our machines.

I think that was what I was trying to say. We evolved capabilities that enabled us to develop things that we can use that have no equivalent in the 'natural' world. There is no precedent for this in any lifeforms other than our own. We evolved capabilities that enabled us to live more successfully than many other animals. Then it turned out that the adaptation to survive in the natural world enabled us to change the world so that we could survive even better.

The start of this of course came about 2.5 million years ago when one of our ancestors realized that he/she could make a sharp edge on a stone by chipping it just right. That was the first step toward driving a car, and there was absolutely nothing at the time that could have predicted a car.

Bill Gill

Bill



cost : connected to timeline
engineering development : use current coal plants
test system : already tested process
final large scale construction : use current coal plants

there are alot of retired coal plants that could be refitted
and there are many scheduled retirements.

netl
http://www.netl.doe.gov/coal/refshelf/ncp.pdf

it would be a refitting of existing proven equipment on a large scale to current coal plants.

heres a summary of the manufacturing / cracking process and the by products produced.

http://www.sbioinformatics.com/design_thesis/Hydrogen/Hydrogen_Methods-2520of-2520Production..pdf

note: the temperatures needed for the processing of the feed material is really high!

this temperature is the major long term cost involved.
normally burning coal is how this temperature is reached.

but heat alone can release the gasses from the feed material.

natural gas , coal, etc...

this heat can come from solar collectors.

there would be no long term cost to provide the heat to raise the temperature of the feed material in the gasification process.

long term cost can easily out weigh initial cost when you use
coal as a feed material to produce the heat needed for the gassification process.

a average 250 MW coal fired power plant produces 1.7 million tons of CO2 per year.

with a new Coal fired power plant comming online every week in china that number is ever increasing , and according to the remainder of chinas citizens still not using electricity there is no forseeable reduction in new power plants in china.

china doesnt build 250 MW plants they build GW plants

take a good close look at the image below.
and think about the 1.7 Million Tons of CO2 produced by
only 250 MW coal fired power plants
165 GW is about right here in the chart below >>>>>>>>>>>______<<<<<<<<

and the chart only shows the U.S. and China


http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.or...al-plants-dead/

we cant say that the money isnt there and we cant say the technology or ability isnt there , we can only say that the
coal is there , so why not use the coal in a way that would not produce pollutions?

Ah, Paul, can you give me some numbers on that? I am having a problem trying to figure out how an existing coal fired plant could be easily retrofitted to produce hydrogen. Right now they are designed to burn coal to produce steam to turn turbines. It seems to be that there would have to be a massive reconfiguration to use one to produce hydrogen. In fact I doubt you could do it without completely rebuilding the plant. And then you want to build a solar energy gathering system on top of it. I think you are talking about a massive increase in the size of the plant, since it would take many acres of land to hold the solar concentrators.

Please do a cost study of this and get the numbers back to me. Remember, you are trying to sell a concept. To get it across you are going to have to provide a full package showing the design concepts with construction costs and long term maintenance.

Bill Gill


Bill Gill

Bill

honestly bill , I dont have time to do all of that!

heres a web site that can put you in contact with an contracting engineer or consulting firm who
can answer the specific needs you requested.

http://www.thinkenergygroup.com/think.ns...l%20engineering

I can offer this for now however , the steam boilers that I have seen are over 300 ft tall at the top of the boiler.

when I say the steam boiler , I mean the building that houses the fire box at the bottom and the steam tubes located at the top of the boiler.

a boiler building can be seen in the below image , it is the
tall rectangular shaped building.



I cant see any problem in just simply routing the water from the inlet side of the boiler tubes up to the top of the boiler building where a solar concentrator / furnace could be placed.

the remainder of the buildings and infrastructure of the coal power facility could have the mirrors placed on top of them that direct sunlight to the solar furnace plates.

the below image is of a solar power plant that uses sunlight
to heat and boil water that turns a steam turbine.



its easy to tell the difference between the two types of power plants , one does not have any toxic fumes rising off of it
and the other does.

the amount of land that the coal plant occupies is very large
compared to the amount of land that the solar power plant occupies , but I dont know the wattage of the two plants the solar power plant may be only a few MW.

still the acreage that the pictured coal plant occupies would easily lend itself to solar furnace application.

I really like the way the sun beams reflect onto the solar furnace in the below image.


and the way the delicate particles of toxicity dangle in the skies above the coal plant in the below image.



the two images softly yet boldly telling us that we really are that dumb.

But Paul, you are the one trying to sell the idea. I'm the one you are trying to sell it to. A salesman doesn't get very far if he tells the customer to go out and figure out how whatever he is selling is going to work. The salesman has to provide all the information that the customer needs.

Obviously you are better at coming up with off-the-wall ideas than at checking to see if they would really work.

So if anybody wants to discuss parts of my original post I will be happy to discuss those. I'm not interested in Paul's improbable suggestions.

Bill Gill

Bill



Im not trying to sell you anything.
Im just not interested enough to spend several days of my time
finding the needed facts to show you what you want to see.

but getting back to the original thread.

go ahead Bill, sell your hypothesis / idea / theory / or illusion that we are not dumb?

show me some proof of why you think we are not dumb.
from reading your original post I cant find anything
that proves we are not dumb.

humans have been around alot longer than the last few hundred years , but it only took a few decades for the new technology to get us into our current negative situation.

you say technology will bring us out of this situation.

prove it!

meanwhile I will be inserting some of the new technology that you say will save us from ourselves.

heres a nice bit about meat glue.

Ok, then how about the fact that we are pretty smart.

In 1798 Thomas Malthus wrote the first part of his ground breaking theory "An Essay on the Principle of Population". In this work he pointed out that all species are limited in the growth of their population by the availability of food. No species can outgrow its food supply. The idea makes a great deal of sense and every since then people have been looking at our food supply and figuring out how large our population can grow before it crashes because of out inability to grow enough food. So far we have managed to keep ahead of the curve, even though the apparent limit has been reached many times. What has made the difference is that technology has kept us ahead of the curve and we can now grow tremendously larger quantities of food than at any time in the past.

This has led to a massive increase in the world population, which leads to most of the problems we are facing today. We are still ahead of the game but we still have a long way to go.

The current population of the world is around 7 billion people right now. It is growing at a rate of 1.2% per year. But this is much better than it has been in the past. In 1970 the population growth rate was 2.1%, so we have almost cut the growth rate in half in just 40 years.

It will be quite a while before we actually start reducing the population, but with the aid of technology we will be able to support ourselves until the population gets down to a more manageable level.

So we are being pretty smart, just to keep ahead of Malthus, and we are smart enough to work around the problems we have coming up.

Bill Gill

Bill



if you have a room with 1000 republicans and each of the republicans have a 1 ounce gold coin.
and each of the republicans have a pistol but no bullets.

would it be a wise thing to do if you were to put 1000 bullets into the room also?

how many living republicans would there be in the room after a few hours?

how many living republicans would there be if there were no gold coins to kill for?

how many living republicans would there be if there were no bullets to kill for?

how many living republicans would there be if there were no pistols to kill for?




If you have a barn and you paint the barn red , would you accuse the paint on the barn of being red.

but not the paint on your paint brush or the paint in your
paint bucket.


in 1970 the worlds population was about 4 billion and asias population was about 1.6 billion.


then it started a upward swing -- almost straight up...

in 2005 asias population had increased to 4 billion...
by 2050 asias population is expected to be higher than the rest of the worlds population.




what could have supported this upward swing?
republicans , what significant change was there around 1970?

free trade?

north America , europe are the only continent's whos population growth hasnt increased significantly.

would anyone like to guess which continent has increased its population growth rate the most?

let me help ,which continent was given the ability to increase its population rate so dramatically?

how was it given that ability?

free trade!

our problems are not that we have too many people , its that we have too many greedy/dumb politicians.

we voted them in , that makes us dumb also.

and we will vote them in again to continue our dumbness.

free trade is not free by any means , it is bullets thrown into the room.

Paul I could hardly understand what anything you said had to do with whether we are smart. It mostly seems to be a diatribe against republicans. That is politics, not even NQS.

Bill Gill

Bill

you were trying to say that we are not dumb.
I am giving an example of how dumb we are.

voting for politicians who have a track record
of intentionally destroying the economy
is not very smart , free trade is a political subject
but the negative results of free trade are clearly seen in our
economy and most of the worlds economies.

this is an excellent example of how dumb we really are.

Paul, if you have some statement to make you might try just making the statement and then offering a brief example of what you mean. Going off on a diatribe against one group of people doesn't really provide a very good explanation of what you are trying to say.

And then I will reply to what you say you were trying to say.

You have provided an example of what you consider a dumb thing to do. Ok, I agree that it might be somewhat irrational, but it is also just a single thing that is going on. I never said that humans never did anything irrational. In fact I am kind of glad that we do something irrational once in a while. It provides a process to maybe come up with some new ideas that may prove to be very useful.

Ok, that was mostly kind of an aside. But back to whether we are dumb. I gave an example of the fact that we have managed, so far, to bypass the population collapse that Malthus' theory predicted. And then I pointed out that we are actually starting to get population under control. The growth rate has been almost halved in the past 40 years. We have a long way to go, but we are getting there. That is not a dumb thing, actually it is 2 things that aren't very dumb. We have managed to bypass Malthus, and we are starting to get the population under control. These are the big things. You look at the world and see some big things that you think we aren't doing anything about. But in fact there are a lot of people out there who are who are working to develop processes to overcome the problems we have. And as those various processes become workable they will be implemented. But the whole thing is a very complex problem which is not going to be solved by some simplistic solution.

Bill Gill

world population 1970 = 3.6 billion +
here is the wiki page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970#World_population

here is the CIA world factbook on world population broken down by country.
most of these are estimates from 2011.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2119rank.html


and here is the estimate on current world population.
7 billion +

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html

It would be nice if the world factbook had a chart that
generated from a database that clearly showed the population amounts by year and by country.

as it stands almost all of the charts I find on the internet are different from each other.

back to the reply.

the growth rate may have decreased but the growth has not.

as far as I can tell the growth as a percentage of world population ( 1950-2010 ) has decreased in all continents except
asia , india , africa

so you cant say that the worlds population growth rate has decreased you can only say that most of the worlds population growth rate has decreased.

otherwise you will overlook the countries that are undergoing a growth rate that will eventually undermine all attempts at reducing the growth rate.

maybe there should be two terms or categories used.

participating growth rate countries
and
non participating growth rate countries

because there is a clear difference in participating and non participating countries where growth rate is concerned.

looking at most charts is very deceiving especially when looking at a chart that shows percentages of world population.

as in the below chart

Paul, population growth will continue for quite some time. I forget the exact estimates and I don't have time to look them up, but if we cut the birthrate to exactly the replacement rate (1 person born for each person who dies) then the population would still be growing for a long time in the future, just because the average age at death is getting later.

And I'm not really worried about where the growth is happening. The world population is the big problem. The fact that the population is growing more in some countries than in others is not a real problem in regard to the total impact we are having on the earth. That is primarily based on the number of people who are drawing their sustenance from the earth. Distribution is a whole different problem.

Personally I want all the people of Earth to have good living.

Bill Gill

well, thats not happening Bill.

unless you consider working 15 hours a day, every day, every year, and sleeping in the factory you work in getting paid $0.30 an hour wages a good life.

that may be a good life for you because you can buy the products they make in those factories really cheap in the factory outlets in the U.S. , but for those slaves it is not
a good life.

While I really don't think that is strictly on topic for a science discussion I will make a sort of an answer. It is bad that they are being treated that way. But there is another side to that. They are earning a living. And they are developing greater expectations for the future. That is how we in the developed nations got to where we are. We started working in sweat shops, then started working to improve conditions. So while they are working under what we consider intolerable conditions they are also on the road to a modern way of life. This has happened in a number of places. After WWII Japan was disadvantaged. So they started making all kinds of cheap stuff. For years saying something was made in Japan was saying it was pretty much worthless. Then they started improving and their wages started going up. So the jobs moved on to Taiwan, and Korea, and Singapore, and the big one now China. This is a hard time for the Chinese workers but with the industrialization using cheap labor they are on the road to a highly improved lifestyle. That is how it has been working for at least a half a century now.

Bill Gill

this isnt about science , it isnt a science topic , and it is
in the NQS (not quite science) forum.



but the working conditions are so bad that many are committing
suicide! but on the bright side they will be replaced by robots.



so the rich demand lower and lower prices which results in
really bad labor conditions.
when they feel as if their appearance it getting tainted by
employees committing suicide they dont improve labor conditions they revert to robotics.

because robots dont commit suicide.

the good thing about this is that there will be less people
subjected to really bad labor practices and some people will
become robotics engineers and manufacturers etc...



so your right , technology has found a solution to this problem we have of greed.

perhaps boycott during their holidays to give them a chance to have a holiday would help the workers.

we would need to determine how long it takes after a sluggish buying period for the factories to begin shutting down and laying off their employees so that we can have a boycott period that will allow these workers to have a holiday.



if there is one thing a republican hates it is trade unions.
trade unions are the thing that put a stop to these kinds of working conditions in the U.S. perhaps either china needs to allow workers to form trade unions or the U.S. government and all governments of the world outside china need to make it illegal to import products made under these conditions.

but then again if the factories pay the employees to lie about the working conditions in china then you would never know what the conditions really are.

here is a in depth story of a worldwide distributor of slave made products.



Im sort of curious when walmart will start building their slave made product super centers with living facilities built into them so that their employees in
the U.S. will also be able to enjoy the benefits of living closer to work as their factory workers in china do.

this way walmart can charge the employees for living there
because the employees will not be able to afford the cost
of living off campus.

Ok, Paul, if you want to talk about politics, and that is what you are talking about, not science.

I assume you want us to quite buying anything made in China. So then you want all those poor Chinese to lose their jobs. The Chinese economy will crash and they will be out on the streets. That will destabilize the Chinese government and make them rather poor neighbors. When a government is having major economic problems history tells us that one common solution is war.

But aside from the possibility of war you are advocating that we cause all those people to be thrown out on the streets where they can starve. In fact the Chinese economy is highly dependent on our continuing to buy from them, and I personally do not want to cause the mass starvation that might well occur if we do quit buying Chinese.

As it is history has shown us that the people working in those sweat shops will start working to force their employers to grant them better working conditions and wages. After all that is the way we did it here.

Bill Gill

There are some areas of China that are very poor indeed. The Eastern part is enjoying a huge lift in standards of living, especially Shanghai and Hong Kong, but Western China is economically and socially quite depressed. They are the areas that have the dirty heavy industries.

Also Chinese people cannot move easily between areas of their own country, and need permission to travel to the wealthy areas of Beijing for eg. Whilst things are improving throughout the country there's still a long way to go.

Of course if the economic situation improves for the huge number of people in the western half of China they will create a another huge dilemma as they will all want to have an easier life like the more fortunate people of THEIR OWN country.

If we stop buying things from China they could survive for a long time providing for the domestic market, as at the moment a great deal of their production is for export only. Here in Australia, where we are rapidly losing our manufacturers one by one, I doubt we'd last a month without the boats from China with their TV plasmas, cars, clothing and recently food!

I know this post is not about science--- but importing food especially shows just how dumb we can be--- so it is on topic!

For One thing. Hong Kong and China are not the same country, regardless of whether Hong Kong Island is owned by China. They speak different dialects, China (mandarin) and HK (Cantonese), they have a different currency and a different government. Speak to any HK resident and they will tell you HK and China are different countries. They even have different passports. Those in HK that are poor have, and are still finding it difficult to get jobs and afford a decent living. The typical apartment for most is about 400 square ft. and usually the whole family including grandparents will live in such an apt. Apt. style living is the most prevalent in HK. Only the wealthy can afford to own a house.
Those of course who have enjoyed wealth, enjoy their wealth.
I travel to HK about once a year. The difference in Mainland Chineses and HK residents is quite visible. Those raised in HK have manners and a sense of awareness of each other even tho their living conditions are extremely crowded. Mainland Chinese visitors don't believe in waiting their turn in line and they throw weight about like they own the country.

I remember an interesting comment made by Jackie Chan, a well known actor and Chinese Communist. "The people of China are not capable of thinking for themselves. The Chinese Government must act on their behalf."

Just thought I'd throw two cents worth of information in. Since I can.

As someone who travels to that part of the world; would you say that this statement is true; and if so, to what extent is the Chinese Government responsible for that situation?

I travel to HK not Mainland China. No human is without the capacity to think. Whether they use their mind constructively or intuitively may be questionable. Since you asked me, from what I have seen, those who come from Mainland China into HK are a bit disconnected from the world around them.
Government is not responsible for mindlessness. People who influence policy within government are responsible. All you need is to distract them from reality and keep them entertained.
I think it was a European who once said, "The United States is the most entertained country in the world."

that also applies to the world Bill.

how many countries are having economic problems?

and why?

it would be the best thing that could happen for the chinese people / workers.

suddenly the factories would increase the wages of the workers so that the workers could afford to buy the products that they make for the world that is no longer buying the products.

and buisnessmen throughout the world would begin to build factories in their own country to produce products to sell to their peoples
who work at those factories in their own country.

Im not sure why china hasnt figured that out yet , after all they have
the greatest potential for a stable economy because of the manpower
they now have and the industrial infrastructure they now have.

in fact china would most likely be better off than all other countries
who have chosen to use the low wages in asia and have caused the industrial infrastructure in their own country to decline or dissapear.

because china and asia already have the industrial infrastructure in place.

they could still export just like all countries could export only
there would have to be trade tarrifs placed on imported product prices to ensure that what is happening now does not happen again due to greeddy rich people demanding lower and lower prices so that they can make more and more money no matter what the working conditions are.

you cant have all the people in the world woking in a single
country and expect the world to remain stable.

our current path will lead to world war.

as you say , history shows us that.

I just noticed something in the santas workshop video above.

the film says that the average worker who works slow
will earn 300 yuan a month --- I thought it was 300 yuan a week.

300 yuan a month = 11.75 dollars a week !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

11.75 dollars a freakin week.

working 18 hours a day , yes 18 , thats 7 days a week mind you.

126 hours a week.

their hourly wage is 9 frickin cents a hour.

if thats not legalized slavery then what is?

people should be ashamed of having a store in their community that sells products made by these factories.

and people should be ashamed every time they walk into one of those stores and purchase anything.

"Mainland Chinese visitors don't believe in waiting their turn inand they throw weight about like they own the country." TT wrote.

Actually TT they do own it. The Brits leased it for 99 years and when that expired it reverted to its original owners-- The Chinese. It's like renting a house for a year. You have to give it back after the lease expires. No matter how much you like it or how much you may have improved it you do not own it. HK is actually very important to the Chinese government as it forms an acceptable face to the rest of the world who are wary of the original government, and also helps them to understand the methods of finance etc in the western world as much of the HK population are familiar with it.

Possibly the people of HK regret, even resent, this, and they certainly have different conditions (somewhat like Tibet), but they are now part of China.

Yes, I mentioned that in my reply.

Actually TT you didn't--- you said "whether" the chinese own HK. That implies an argument over ownership. There isn't one. HK is part of China.

Many countries have areas where the inhabitants speak a different language, not just a different form of the same one. Think of India, Belgium, Switzerland, the UK---and so on, and there are plenty of countries where one part is much more 'couth' than other parts!

What will influence us all, and which you have not addressed, is the effect of the millions and millions of Chinese who still live at sub-standard levels becoming eager consumers. I think this would cushion China from some of the effects of a world wide recession (which has not happened yet. Some countries are, for various reasons, still OK.

in one of the videos a person from mainland china was
deported to hong kong , so that says something.

yes , Ellis

your right if china were to build their own economy that is
not so dependent on exports it would certainly help them
to avoid being so attached to the rest of the worlds various economies.

I think that china could even build a stronger economy by
demanding that it maintains a export deficit.

this would encourage chinese employers to increase labor prices so that the employees could buy things from the diverse countries of the world that would then be repairing or refitting their export capabilities.

( chinas export on machinery should not be included in the export deficit as to allow the world to rebuild and repair )

all in all , the bottom line is that china and asia and india
cannot expect to carry the rest of the world forever they must compromise.

What I wrote:
This implies the reasoning of both China and HK as having distinguished themselves separately by government, language, history, social mores and influence. Regardless of whether China owns HK. There was no argument implied as to ownership of the Island by Mainland China. Talk to any HK resident and they will distinguish themselves as separate from Mainland China and its communism. Most will say they will never accept communist rule, and I doubt seriously China will send their army to HK to enforce communism as the rule.
I will not argue that fact. However my experience in HK will still not accept your implied idea that HK and China are one in the same country. HK residents are not allowed in Mainland China without passing inspection and receiving a passport approved visa. In other words there is a border between the two that no Chinese or HK resident can cross without inspection and approval in either direction.
Excuse me? What affects us all is the push to bring industrialization and economic pressure on civilizations that were self sustaining until the Government took their land from them and their farming lifestyle because they thought it convenient to build factories and employ the farmers in their factories.
Eager to become consumers? What are you nuts?
Eager to become brainwashed and sucked into consumerism by materialists who wish to change the lifestyles of independent poeples so they become dependent on manufactured goods and corporate farming?

You really live a sheltered life. Where do you get all of your information? Television and Newspapers? Yahoo?

What about all of the displaced and impoverished consumers who were the factory workers of the USA, and who lost their jobs because corporations decided to move their factories to Mainland China to avoid taxes that paid for systems to prevent pollution and toxic wastes being spewed about in the U.S.? China has less of a concern for the waste products dumped in the rivers where the factories were built as well as the clouds of toxins spewed into the air. China as a government has no love for the world outside of China, and no love for its own people. It is bought and paid for like most of the worlds Governments.

Yes they are eager for all of those things. You don't seem to have noticed that being a farmer is a dawn to dusk activity, particularly if you don't have a lot of technology behind you. The invention of power farming equipment was a major driver in industrializing the industrial world. Now most people work only a part of each day, and have days off at the weekend. This allows them to develop other areas of interest, including discussion of science. If you are a basic farmer you have no time to do anything but farm. And of course in China there has long been a population problem. Without technological means of food distribution much of the population would be starving at least part of the time. I haven't studied how the population of China is spread out, but I bet that there really isn't room for their population to live on the land. So having jobs is the biggest thing in their lives. As I have said before, all the developing nation went through this phase. With our example, even handed down through other cultures, they will hopefully work through it much more quickly than we did.

Kicking people out to live on the land is what Pol Pot tried in Cambodia. When he became leader of Cambodia he forced almost everybody out of the cities to live a farm life. He wound up killing a huge lot of the population, because it just doesn't work. You can have a small scattered population living off of the land, or you can have an industrial society that can provide the resources to help the people to actually live a fulfilling life.

Bill Gill

It was for most a family tradition where all of the family was involved. Industrialism has had its advantages and it's disadvantages. And those that work part of the day don't necessarily have much of a life. They try to make one on weekends when they are not feeling like a cog in the wheel of the workday in an amongst the other industrialized consumers hoping they won't get laid off and lose their pension.
I used to work for Boeing Aircraft Corp. In Seattle Washington U.S.A. The average life expectancy of the factory worker after retirement was 5 years. Some I knew never made it that long.Assuming they haven't lost their soul to the undustrial revolution and have had an education and social support system that isn't qualifying and measuring the individual as a success or failure in the system or as a human being.
You know this having been a farmer?

Guess they had some time on their hands other than just farming to make that happen.

Now with the technical superiority of the new age most of the population of every country is starving all of the time.
Government owns most of it. They even decided to take some of it away from those who used to own it.

Survival would be important, and since they can't fend for themselves what are you gonna do but work for someone else?

Probably not though. With all of the human rights complaints coming into public view. It's not likely that they are going to improve upon the failures of other countries, but instead perpetuate the same policies that separated the rich from the poor so that the few could rule the many.

Just goes to show you that when people are not free, they suffer the atrocities put upon them by those that control them and take away their sense of creativity. Maybe this time communism will really work...

TT- Your picture of historical rural China is quite farcical. The owners of the land were not the farmers, the farmers were serfs, peasants or even slaves and were legally bound to work long hard lives for their exploitative landlords from the ruling classes. That was why the Chinese Revolution was so well supported by the peasant class in China. Of course it all went a bit pear-shaped but the collective farms actually gave more control to the peasants farming them than the previous wealthy landlords ever did, and certainly women were able to enjoy more freedom. Don't forget there are still some women still alive today with the dreadful maimed bound feet left from the customs of before the revolution.

Now most of Eastern China is relatively prosperous, but Western China, which has some areas of racial minorities is not. As in HK these people from Western China have to have permission and 'papers' (internal passports) to travel elsewhere in the country, particularly to the cities of Eastern China. It is not a paradise, but as Bill says now the peasants have jobs and some degree of independence as to their future.

China has a complicated history to western eyes, and we feel it is taking a long time to decide on their future--- but think how long it took us in the west--- Hundreds and hundreds of years. This phase of Chinese development is only decades old and at the moment they are probably doing better than most of their critics.

You and I may be speaking of different histories, or different generations. I was speaking of families that I know that have ties to Mainland China and the last century.
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/mar/07/world/fg-land7
http://www.china.org.cn/english/2006/Jul/175674.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/03/us-china-urbanisation-protest-idUSTRE6721DW20100803
The governments decisions to take the land for either public or industrial use has compromised both the independent farmer and the countries ability to feed itself regardless of the industrial revolution.
About 35 percent of China's labor force is in agriculture (compared to 2.5 percent in the U.S.). There are 425 million agricultural workers (200 million farming households) in China. A little over a decade ago China was home to 700 million farmers. They made up about 60 percent of the population.
"Farmers find it hard to survive in an industrialized society. Farmers want to work in the factories, but transition is difficult and few of them adjust. They have no skills. They lack education. They lack the attitude one needs to learn. They have no sense of time, of living by the clock." The small-scale farmer is largely seen as a dying breed in China, made up mostly of the elderly left behind in the mass exodus of migrant workers to much higher-paying jobs in industrial cities.
Improved farming policies and technologies have given China a high level of self-sufficiency and growth. But the country's top economic planning body warned that this would be hard to maintain. The lack of farm subsidies and expropriation of farmland for urban construction has crippled agriculture. As more farmers move to the cities, lured by better housing, education and other incentives, maintaining the food supply becomes more tenuous.



Obviously a different generation..possibly a different century altogether.
Independence from their previous lifestyles, with no compensation for their losses in education and training to enter the new and completely different lifestyle.
Your gonna have to make up your mind as to whether we are speaking of decades or centuries in your descriptions of serfdom and slavery.
Slavery was legally abolished in 1909.(not saying it wasn't and isn't still a part of the current government)

Tutor, you are still talking about the same things that we went through in the Western world. We got through them and now people have greater dignity than at any time in the previous history of humanity.

The Chinese are still working through this stage. It is undoubtedly bad, but I think that we are better off than when we were subsistence farmers, and the Chinese will be too.

Bill Gill

Really? Not sure which part of the western world you live in. The U.S. has outsourced most all of its manufacturing jobs to help other countries become consumers at the cost of the American Dream as it used to be. No longer is it likely a U.S. citizen will retire from a long term employer employee relationship. The middle class is on its way out and turning into a memory of what dignity was for most Americans who could work one job and support their family. Now a good number of people have to work more than one job to make ends meet and unemployment is higher than it has ever been since the depression era of the 1930's.
We are technologically more advanced, but in just about every way as humans with the capability for compassion and unity still thinking at the level of those who created witch hunts and holy wars.

Tutor - Starting with the industrial revolution (around 1750?) factory workers in the West were treated pretty much the same as Chinese workers are today. At first they pretty much had to put up with it, but then they started getting organized and working with a lot of people who had money and realized that the treatment of workers was atrocious. This gradually led to improved working conditions, although it took a long time. I know in the coal mines there were still a great many abuses well up into the 20th Century. Workers who were injured on the job had no safety net to fall back on. If they couldn't work they had no income. Industrial safety was practically non-existent. Witness the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York City in 1911. 146 workers, mostly female, died in the fire caused by a total lack of any safety precautions. Many times when workers tried to strike to get better treatment the government sent in troops to break the strike. Eventually it was recognized that things had to get better and they slowly improved. That is the state of things in China today. With time they will probably also start improving conditions.

Bill Gill

You mean when they start creating unions to protect workers and ensure decent wages? Then they'll find themselves gaining the same momentum towards wage increases forcing the industry to outsource and send their jobs to the West where the current employment situation is so desperate they'll work for food.

OH WAIT!!!! The idea of a union in a communist country is a non sequitur...

Bill



china has a government that doesnt allow their people to
get through things.

in china if you try to get a union started you get arrested.

in the U.S. you just get fired and added to the terrorist list.

theres a really big difference between what the U.S. went through and what china is going through.


if people that have money in china try to help the workers gain dignity or higher wages then they get arrested also.


its a fear thing like hitler or the bush admin tried to impose with their fear tactics after 911.

in my opinion the only people that really have any influence on chinese labor conditions is the people that buy chinese products.

we in he U.S. could demand from our democratic government that the communist chinese products be labeled with an indicator of the factories labor conditions , and non scheduled non chinese inspections could be carried out at the factories to determine the conditions and if the product is worthy of the label.

also in my opinion the people in china have the military in china outnumbered 1.3 billion to 4.5 million or something like that.

1300 to 4.5

think about it.

about 800,000 of that number is reserves.

however if another revolution were to occur in china because
of unrest then the military would most likely turn.

and leaders would be exchanged , and china would most likely become a democratic nation that allowed its peoples freedom.

that is how we did it , Bill.

VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN!

But, TT, suppose the voters chose, by properly supervised voting, to return to communism. Perhaps democracy has to evolve slowly as it did in the western Europe (Magna Carta was signed in the C12th), rather than be forced onto people almost overnight by others. It also requires expertise not necessarily there in other methods of government. An example of this is the concept of an opposition, which may , peacefully assume government as a result of election. This is an idea that has not caught on very clearly in many countries!!

The Chinese have already had their Revolution, and a massive one it was, in which the peasants deposed their overlords. They then had Mao's Great Leap Forward-- a more 'peaceful' affair, but to our western eyes still horrific. It, and history generally, are still definitely not ignored by modern China. Your last sentence, TT, suggests that your understanding of chinese history is quite unique, in fact as unique as their country is.

Ellis probably knows more about Chinese history than I do, but I have done some reading on the subject. The Chinese have had a civilization for around 3000 years. During that time they have had many dynasties. Generally a dynasty arises at the end of a period of turmoil. The dynasty imposes order and things go along pretty good for a while. After a dynasty has been running along nicely for a while the peasants start getting unhappy because their end of the stick is getting even shorter. Then there will be a peasant revolt, followed by another period of turmoil until a new dynasty takes over. Then things will get good again. Well, at least the lives of the peasants won't be totally hopeless. All through Chinese history the government has been balanced on the backs of the peasants. Historically the last dynasty was ended early in the 20th Century. This was followed by a government that was unable to stabilize the country. During that time large parts of the country were controlled by local war lords. After WWII the communists pushed across the country and chased the Chiang Kai-shek government off of the mainland and took over the country. In many ways this seems to me to count as a sort of a dynasty. So we may start seeing a wave of peasant unrest in the not too distant future, and then a new dynasty. I'm not prepared to guess what that dynasty will look like, but there will probably be big changes.

Bill Gill