Is that the Final Fantasy X re-remaster?
It’s great news, we have way too many people. *
* I know the Earth can support a lot more people; I mean my opinion on the number.
Meanwhile, this animated graph is very easy to understand. You should have led with it rather than the ascii anatomy.
Edit: actually that looks a bit like an ascii colon.
Oh I recognize what that is from my too many years going to passion plays at Easter
Africa will basically be the only bastion of youth by 2050.
If you’re looking for a “The Big Short” style long term investment play, bet on Africa. I would.
An interesting analogy for the Baby Boomers…
Renew! Renew!
Every so often I find stories in history that slightly echo current day events. I recently came across a bit of local history that I’d like to share. The short version: At the turn of the century, Minneapolis, my fair city, was hopelessly corrupt. The mayor, A. A.“Doc” Ames, had recently been elected. Doc was famous in this town, and had a lot of goodwill built up from earlier days. But once he was seated in his position, he set out to line his pockets. He forced decent cops off the police force and set a close family member up as the chief of police. The revamped police department started taking a cut of criminal activity in the city. And if crime was bad before, it was really bad after they started recruiting avowed professional criminals into official governmental positions. No one could trust anyone and it didn’t look like it could get better.
Then it did get better. A disgusted but moral man happened to be put at the head of a grand jury. The way the law worked back then, it was the grand jury that had strong investigative powers – if the jury foreman had the will to use it. And the jury did. Over time and at great personal expense, they started investigating low-level criminals. The thieves themselves had been mistreated and robbed by the more legitimate crooks higher up, so eventually the code of “honor among thieves”/“snitches get stitches” frayed and broke down. Eventually, evidence was found that implicated the mayor himself in these terrible crimes. Eventually he (never being all that clever or evil, just greedy) fled, his system was broken, criminal police officers were replaced by moral police officers, and Minneapolis had a chance to recover.
Anyway, I recommend this article from a 1903 issue of “McClure’s”. It’s called “The Shame Of Minneapolis”. Or check out the Wiki entry on Doc Ames. OK, so they weren’t able to lock him up, but they got him out of power. That’s hope enough in dark times.
Recognizing there are nits to pick here, looking at you #7, the main point is that there are reasons to be optimistic should one choose to do so.
Number 7 is about expansion of democracy. In his book, Pinker is a bit more subtle than the article. He charts democracy as oscillating between periods of expansion and backsliding, but the expansions are a lot more powerful and extensive over long periods. Contra the article, I think that he puts us right now in a backsliding stage.
My hope is that somehow “the fever breaks” at least for enough people, and sliding a bit towards authoritarianism gives people a better appreciation for democracy.
I have hope because lots of old people will die in the next decade and stop voting for MAGA racist 50’s shit. Maybe by 2030 we’ll have actual majority representation in all three branches of government.
Blame the old people just because those under 30 won’t vote. :)
I blame under 30 for our current mess too, but the question was about hope. I don’t have a lot of hope for the under 30s for the next decade, but who knows, maybe they’ll stop texting at traffic lights and vote!
I think it has always been a case of the young talking about change and action and then assuming others would actually do the work.
The only thing that will give me hope is the dispossession of the oligarchs. When that happens, I’ll start to feel like we might be going to be okay.
I think the problem is that the young had little to no way to organize and few, if any, people running that actually represent them.
Also, combine that with incredibly high student loan debt, finding a job, finding a place to stay, finding a life partner or at least friends, there is a reason why the 20s are the most stressful part of people’s lives. They have too many things that need to be accomplished, unlike people in their 30s or later, where a large part of life has been figured out.
There are people qualified to make it happen. Getting them into positions of influence is the tough part, unless you like people like Scott Pruitt.
I read an article yesterday that described how when objects fall into a black hole, a holographic imperfect copy is made and continues to ‘live on’ as if nothing happened. We all talk about being on the ‘worst timeline’, but instead maybe we are simply one of those imperfect copies after the original Earth got sucked up. We just need to somehow push ourselves in the path of another black hole, and maybe the next copy will turn out better.
Kanye/Giuliani 2020!
(sorry, forgot this was the hope thread)