Ok,first of all,you need to know that *I* do NOT promote or support this future. I am just calling them the way I see them,and hopefully,opening a few eyes so that some people can try to prepare themselves to deal with it.
I would LIKE to think I can "shout this warning" and enough people will take notice to alter it sufficiently to make it less brutal,but make no mistake about it,voluntarily or involuntarily,these things WILL be happening.
To start off with you need to understand how current and future technical advances will create conditions that make all the conditions exist that will demand the changes. Technology is neither moral or immoral,and it can't be stopped because the key characteristic that caused mankind to evolve and dominate the planet is that it is in our DNA to ask ourselves "WHY?",and "What can I do about it?" when facing problems. You can no more turn that off than you can stop the sun from rising.
You also need to understand that the other prime reason mankind came to dominate the world is our sex drive,and our desire to have children. Many,many children in more primitive times when birth control was non-existent and many of the children that did get born died of diseases,accidents,and lack of life-saving medical care long before they could become adults themselves and be counted on to feed,clothe,and house their parents who were by then too old to work and provide for themselves.
Modern times have changed this "given" to a certain extent. MOST educated people of today understand it costs a lot of money to raise and educate a child,and choose to have much smaller families. I am betting the vast majority of what are middle-class families these days are composed of a husband,wife,and 2 children.
On the other hand,we have the perpetually poor,who are comprised of a majority of the worlds population who don't seem to give a damn,who pump out baby after baby despite KNOWING they can't afford to feed,clothe,and give them medical attention. Because of this attitude,the 3rd world outnumbers the 1st world.
This has gone on since the dawn of mankind,and the results have always been pretty damn brutal from the POV of the typical humanitarian 1st World resident. For example,the cave man tribes that discovered fire and could be bothered to gather and store firewood in dry places so they could survive the winter flourished,and the tribes that didn't either froze to death,starved to death,or were killed off by the cavemen who had fire to keep from freezing and to cook meat so they wouldn't starve to death.
There is a term that is going to seriously piss off the religious faithful that comes into play,and regardless of how you feel about it,it IS the engine that drives our future and always has been. That word is "Evolution". Mankind adapts and survives. Any "tribe" of people who refuse to adapt to changing times and conditions soon becomes bones to be studied by future generations of archeologists.
Think of Evolution as a tiny snowball that starts rolling down a mountainside,getting larger and larger with each roll (generation) until it becomes an enormous ball of snow and ice that flattens anything that gets in it's way,and you won't be far off the mark.
Fire was obviously the first major force for human change. It just flat changed everything. Suddenly,people had the ability to socialize with each other after it became dark. The fire kept beasts of prey away,and it gave them light so they could draw animals and learn to communicate with other other in a different way. They suddenly had "leisure hours". Time that was NOT devoted entirely on surviving another day. This lit the spark of creativity,and led to things like drawing maps and hunting plans in the mud of the cave so they could plan the next day's hunt. Which in turn eventually led to alphabets and writing.
I guess without looking it up that steam power was the next great leap forward for mankind. Suddenly they could create massive machines that could do more work and produce more goods each day than hundreds of men laboring could produce. it even provided transportation so the goods produced could be delivered to the buyers quickly on trains.
Which was followed by electricity,or course.
Which in turn led to computing using vacuum tubes and enormous machines that filled whole buildings that were less capable than the computer I am using to post this article today. If you had this computer and software 50 years ago,you could have ruled the world.
Yet there are still people who are faced with the choice of either allowing their small children to starve to death or die of an easily cured disease,or die themselves. Somewhere along the evolutionary climb to the 21st Century,these people decided to take a nap or three. Nobody is going to like this,but these people are still stuck on the level of mankind of 500 years or more ago,and they have no actual interest in learning anything new.
So,being the comfortable and safe humans that those of us in most 1st world countries are,we try to help these people,totally ignoring the FACT that you can't help someone that doesn't want to be helped.
Part of that "help" involved importing them to 1st World countries,or allowing them to come to the 1st world countries "for the easy living". For the most part,these people have zero interest in learning or earning anything,and every interest in taking everything they can get and demanding more because that is how their culture has taught them to think.
All this leads us to a huge "technology snow ball" that is rolling down the mountainside to crush US financially and radically alter our culture even if the 3rd world had remained at home. That snowball is named "Robots",and it is going to literally be the kiss of death to the working class families in the west. Factories that have been hiring hundreds of workers to create their products will be down to just a handful of technicians to keep the software and hardware updated,and to supervise the machines.
The biggest change,and one that is unprecedented in all of history is there are not going to be any new jobs come forward as a result of this technological advance to replace the lost jobs. Even IF there were "new tech" jobs created,probably 75 percent or more of the working class would have the mental ability to learn the technology to manipulate them.
Inevitably this will lead to "over population" in the sense we will have far too high a percentage of our populations employed or otherwise kept busy. Even if the planet can absorb the population,there will be no where for them to work or live and no money for them to pay for food,clothing,shelter,or medical care. And THESE are your friends,relatives,and neighbors I am talking about here,not someone from a remote jungle Stone Age tribe somewhere.
Which is obviously going to lead to population conflicts. We like to think of ourselves as civilized people,but you ain't seen mean until you have seen people "3 days hungry and looking for food to feed their families". The thin coat of civilization we all wear will come off,and there will be bodies stacked up in the streets.
The obvious question is "Can we prepare ourselves for this,or even better,come up with a solution to prevent it from happening?"
You ain't going to like the answer,which is "Maybe to a LIMITED extent,but you can't stop the advance of civilization/technology. Once an idea has sprung forward into the light of day and started to spread,there ain't no way to "unthink it".
Here is the way *I* see things.
1: First of all,we MUST stop allowing foreigners into our country from ANYWHERE unless they can start contributing the very day they step foot on American soil. I don't care if it is your Aunt Edna's son from London. If he can't contribute something special,he doesn't get in because EVERY FOREIGNER THAT COMES IN RESULTS IN ONE AMERICAN LOSING THAT JOB.
It should go without saying that damn few 3rd world people should be allowed for ANY reason,and that the ones already here need to be herded about boats and sent back to where they came from.
2: Two words that strike fear into the hearts of everyone,everywhere,population control. We can start out with encouraging people to limit the size of their families to 1 or 2 children,but make no mistake about it,eventually we will be making birth control or even sterilization mandatory for anyone that fathered or gave birth to 2 children.
The ugly truth NONE of us want to face is that eventually people with IQ's below a certain level or who have emotional/mental problems that can't be cured will be facing mandatory sterilizations.
There are no alternatives to population control in a future world where all the physical work is going to be done by robots. Organized religion is going to blow gaskets because they will see their political power,as well as the size of their weekly contributions shrink rapidly,but they are just going to have to get mad.
Yeah,the new "robot world" will be able to increase production of everything including non-meat food,but even then there is a limit. There is no question we in the west will be able to create enough food and shelter to provide for a relatively high number of "non-contributors". The question boils down to "How many,and who gets to choose?"
Until and unless we start populating colonies on other planets,I don't see any other options. It's going to be the haves against the have nots,and it's going to be brutal both physically and emotionally. I don't care who you are or where you are from or what you state is your philosophy of life,NOBODY wants to make sacrifices to provide for their own families,and then see other families making no sacrifices and getting a equal cut of the pie. You can change many things,but you can't change human nature.
PLEASE feel free to offer comments proving me wrong.
