I have more than a little sympathy for that belief. After all, we live on a finite sphere and our population is on a tremendous, exponential growth rate. It is unsustainable, regardless of whatever technological advances emerge in the future.

But there are some signs of changes that may offer an alternative. I'm think especially of the drop in birth rate below what's necessary for maintenance among most industrialized countries. If that progession hold, then as industrialization spreads deeper into the third world countries perhaps the population growth in those countries will decline, too.

If that doesn't happen, then we are going to have an interesting planet in the next couple of generations. We got this global warming, population growth, nuclear weapons proliferation, resurgence of fanatical religious fundamentalism, increasing stratification in society -- especially in the third world, decreasing freshwater availability, decreasing oil reserves, and decreasing arable land.

Good luck, you twenty-somethings. You or your children are going to need it.

Botnst

Look out, Botnst....You don't want to catch Z's "the sky is always falling" disease, do you?.....



Mike

__________________
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1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
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1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
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1985 300TD
270,000 miles
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1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
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The difference in our (Z & B) approaches is that I believe, with a minimal gov influence, the marketplace will adjust to whatever stressors may come along. Mr. Z will probably call me naive and star-struck foolish. Oh well, he's probably right. Rather be that than a sourpuss cynic.

I think that a free market economy is sufficiently nimble that it can adjust much faster than biology to whatever may come along. It is a cushion and bulwark between us and a mean, hungry world. But sometimes a few prescient individuals can see something coming down the tube more clearly than a mass of people can. Under those circumstances political power can and should be considered as a tool to shorten the time lag.

In my estimation in the long term, individuals are often wrong about earlier beliefs they held but markets are rarely wrong for very long.

Botnst