Re:The New Population Bomb: Four Mega Trends That Will Chang...
by billswift on Thursday January 28, 2010 @01:40PM
(#1084605)
I love your description of Scribd - does anyone here know what audience scribd was intended for or what problem it was supposed to address? I can't see any possible benefit from the way it works and wonder what I am missing.
Re:The New Population Bomb: Four Mega Trends That Will Chang...
by ryanwaggoner on Thursday January 28, 2010 @04:28PM
(#1085088)
The cynic in me says that the problem they were attempting to address was the lack of money in their pocket, and the solution they came up with was to release a platform ostensibly about displaying PDF files for the web (which is ridiculous to start with, but whatever), so they could get users to steal other people's content for them, and then run ads against that content. Huzzah!
Re:The New Population Bomb: Four Mega Trends That Will Chang...
by CWuestefeld on Wednesday January 27, 2010 @03:07PM
(#1081554)
Only read half so far, but so far it's interesting.
It's NOT just a return to Malthus and Ehrlich, although the latter is cited several times as a sort of parallel. Even so, I think they miss the point of why Ehrlich lost his wager with Simon. While it's true that prosperity is helped by constant increases in manpower, it's not the biggest factor.
Our climbing prosperity is primarily due to improving know-how. And barring really extreme circumstances, we're not going to forget the technology that has allowed us to feed more with less work, and other feats.
That technology will still exist into the future, and because IP isn't rivalrous (claims of Disney and RIAA notwithstanding), it'll be available the whole world.
Re:The New Population Bomb: Four Mega Trends That Will Chang...
by billswift on Thursday January 28, 2010 @01:38PM
(#1084598)
>due to improving know-how
The biggest factor is educated manpower. That is more important than any other factor by a fairly large margin. Not least because increasing manpower even without education increases market size, which is an independent benefit of its own.
Re:The New Population Bomb: Four Mega Trends That Will Chang...
by applicative on Wednesday January 27, 2010 @03:11PM
(#1081569)
The update on ye olde population hysteria seems to be this: Erlich thought there would be too many people. He was wrong, but he didn't distinguish between people. The real problem will be that will be too many of the wrong kind of people ... foreigners mostly.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/65877
And PDF version:
http://andrewgrahamnyc.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/the-new-p...
Thanks for the links. I wish I could mod you up more than just +1
It's NOT just a return to Malthus and Ehrlich, although the latter is cited several times as a sort of parallel. Even so, I think they miss the point of why Ehrlich lost his wager with Simon. While it's true that prosperity is helped by constant increases in manpower, it's not the biggest factor.
Our climbing prosperity is primarily due to improving know-how. And barring really extreme circumstances, we're not going to forget the technology that has allowed us to feed more with less work, and other feats.
That technology will still exist into the future, and because IP isn't rivalrous (claims of Disney and RIAA notwithstanding), it'll be available the whole world.
The biggest factor is educated manpower. That is more important than any other factor by a fairly large margin. Not least because increasing manpower even without education increases market size, which is an independent benefit of its own.
(Link to this speech has now changed to: https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/spee...)