© Alex Harter

10 /12 /1999

[Too Doomsaying For A Possibly Positive Future - Do Not Publish]

Halving The Quality of Life

Now:    Humans between 1980-1995 achieved a pop. of 5 billion.

I argue that our averaged quality of life at that time was (per person):

    A shack = 1 /2 able to last for 50 years at most,

        1 /2 right now falling down.

    6’ high, 5’ by 6’ interior, one bowl of food stored for the occupant for lean times.

    No job = except “employment” with a “living wage” which lets the person support their excess quality of life - the shack, the bowl of extra food, and transportation.  Also religious offerings, bribes, taxes, and something necessary which only charity can supply (or luck) - Western-style clothing.

    Other than that, basic lifesaving medical technology is available - but for one’s life to be saved they must lose half a year being treated, and the average person must give up their “excess quality of life”, and either room with relatives or become a rural hermit.  The average person’s other, less desirable choices, are from least worst to worst: immigrate to another country with higher pay, stay in one’s country and lie one’s way into a better job, or take more than is “needed” when it is available from anyone else - making the victim destitute and vengeful as well.

    Corporations control half of the average country; corrupt, complacent government controls the other half, so the average worker lives in a local time capsule of the Industrial Revolution, without as much pay, and in more dangerous conditions.  Every culture is being destroyed but that of “the poor worker” - a univeral sufferer from replacement by younger, more stressed, lower-paid workers.  Governments, “seeking development”, destroy indigenous cultures (“indigenous” = “individually typed” people) only slightly slower than they cause the majority of extinctions, in non-human life, using the same methods.

    There are ongoing pollution scares in certain areas, even affecting those not even employed in the corporations concerned.

    Obviously, the average person has to combine their goods with a large social network to purchase more power.

    Effectively, the average person lives in an overpopulated country, a country with a desperate need to turn sand into water into food.

The population growth rate should not be merely reduced to population stability, but the equivalent building value of a large multistoried warehouse, or the ecological value of a few good acres of land, whichever is greater.  I doubt 5 billion people can do that and have it last for the long-term.  The average person must have 0.75 children (1.5 for couple) until this quality of life is reduced.

“Later:”    Having the Quality of Life: 10 billion people in 2050.

    A shack = right now all of it is falling down’ 6’ high, 2 1 /2’ by 6 feet interior, food buried in the dirt floor.

    “Employment” pays enough food to live on, no more.  Transportation is half as far.  Tiny religious offereings are taken from some of bribes, while taxes are decreasing as the government passively begins to collapse.  Western-style clothing is G.I. {gov. issue}

    Euthanasia of all ages is the only alternative to unsanitary minor medicine - which technically costs the average person their “extras”, but which may not physically be enforceable.  Relatives try to give the average person emotional support, and there are no hermits (they starve away from the markets).

    Borders are almost universally closed, even in countries which have long had lower pay, there are too many sources of information to support lies for advancement, and life is a constant life-or-death struggle for possessions.

    Corporations control 100% of the average country; rebels are poor, but independent laborers avoiding debt; information and transportation are the only two types of technology available that reach past the U.S. 1920’s in maximum technological sophistication.  These two semi-elite regions of employment pay 150% compared to the average pay, and are dangerous jobs except for dangerous people.  Other regions of employment are dangerous because of the job, rather than the cowrkers.  All cultures that are not short-term-profit-based do not exist, and “the poor worker” culture is heavily biased against most younger people.  Indigenous cultures other than competitive capitalism have been eliminated by dangerous workers, enforcing the government’s will before that option even became “legal.”  Pests and unguarded unowned-by-people life forms are eaten as food.

    Pollution gives a wedge for disease, so physical isolation is common, causing craziness through stress and sensory deprivation, before death.

    Organized crime, always taking the more obvious-positive-outcome bribes, is now a cross between the rebels and the government: obviously, they don’t want to pay taxes, but besides that, they can’t decide at any given time between the status quo all-out competition within and between their groups for short-term profit, or whether they should adopt the bribe-taking wheels-within-wheel government corruption approach of insinuating themself into institutions?

    Life is hell, without the health benefits, in y.10B.