[extropy-chat] destroying gardens?

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Sun Jul 3 14:38:59 UTC 2005



--- Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:

> At 11:45 AM 25/06/05 -0700, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> 
> 
> >--- Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:
> 
> snip
> 
> > > Why do humans periodically kill large numbers of other humans?
> > >
> > > If you consider the period length and the exception cases you
> will be
> > > half way to the answer.
> 
> snip
> 
> >War, crime, and other mass maladies, are the result of population
> >pressure
> 
> It isn't just population or densely populated Europe would be at war
> all the time.  Near as I can tell it is the ratio of resources to
> population, more or less income per capita.  Even more it is
> *anticipated change* in income per capita, with the worse situation
> being a downturn after a long run up.

Europe's history has been nearly constant war. The peace of the latter
half of the 20th was an externally imposed stalemate, an anomaly, which
quickly devolved into multiple revolutions all over eastern europe and
multiple civil wars in Yugoslavia as soon as that stalemate was ended
by one party. Before that stalemate, Europe was constitutionally unable
to avoid having a ware every 10-20 years as a matter of course. In the
20th, you had WWI (1914-1918), Russian Civil War (1918-1921), the
Polish-Soviet War (1919-1920), the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), The
Winter War (1939-1940), WWII (1939-1945), the Greek Civil War
(1946-1949), plus you had four wars with non-european nations that
european nations were prime players in: The Russo-Japanese War
(1904-1905), The Abyssinian Conquest (Italy's invasion of
Ethiopia)(1935-1939), The French Indochinese War (1945-1954), the
French Algerian War (1954-1962).

Europe had no less than 24 wars in the 19th century, and european
nations were involved in at least 11 other wars with nations outside
europe in the same period. Europe had 43 wars in the 18th century, plus
another five with nations outside europe. In the 17th century, europe
had 72 wars, plus at least another 12 with nations overseas.

Now that the european constitution has been rejected, and Russia
continues to fight the Chechnyans, and muslims continue to invade from
Africa, I predict a major religious war in europe within 5-10 years as
fundamentalist muslims attempt to violently impose sharia on the
secular european populations.

> 
> >and lack of individual liberty. Having enough space for
> >everyone to be truly free on their own land, free of force and
> >manipulation by outside groups, is a key requirement for peace and
> >justice.
> 
> Something that is just not going to happen if the population is
> rising faster than the resources to support that population.

Which isn't happening except in places where there is artificially
created shortages (through sabotage, protectionism, or taxation).

> 
> >When enough people feel they are oppressed, either by their
> >own government, or by a foreign government or population, they will
> >rise up to make their demands heard.
> 
> I think the *mechanism* behind wars and related social disruptions is
> the circulation of xenophobic memes.

That is a symptom. Xenophobic memes become popular only when the
population is already under stress for other reasons.

China, for example, with its one-child policy, now has a generation
that is heavily dominated by a high percentage of males. The effect of
this on chinese society will create stresses that are similar to the
artificially created wife shortage in the muslim world that is created
by the tribal control of resources and the quranic allowance of four
wives for those who can afford them. In both cases, the 'cause' is
being blamed, by those who have the wives, on the United States as the
boogeyman, in order to deflect the rage of unmarried males upon us
rather than those with the wives, or their own governments.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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