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Resource Crunch

Earth population hit 7 Billion recently. Give or take a few million. The question then is will every one of these resource hungry people have enough of the basic necessities to survive.

There will always be inequality of distribution of resources as long as capitalism thrives. That said it is crucial to ensure that every living being does get access to affordable air, water and food so that that individual has a chance to provide their fair share of Gross Output to the system that provides.

Again it is not a guarantee that the process will work but an attempt has to be made to be morally right. Now how does one go about solving for this?

First we need to understand how much of the aforementioned supplies we have and based on daily consumption levels by region predict our tipping point. Terminal velocity in some parlance where once we reach that level there is no escape. We will be doomed. We will consume faster than we will have the resource to sustain.

Air quality across the planet has deteriorated in many ways and there are already measurable impacts to lifestyle depending on which part of the planet one inhabits. There is already no escape in that case.

Same with water. 1 Billion people according to one estimate are already faced with drought like conditions for their daily life where clean drinking water is absent or marginal. That compares also very well with the poverty levels across the planet. Now while it does not pay to sound dramatic or emotional in matters of poverty it is required of the well endowed (governments and academics) to address the question of how this math can be changed such that the basic living condition can be improved across the planet. This has a familiar ring to it of ending world hunger but in fact is more basic where access to water is far critical than food source. After all food requires water to grow in the first place.

Humanity is startling in many ways where you have places like Las Vegas NV burning through huge amounts of energy and resources like water to satiate the thirst of certain individuals that want to live in the middle of a desert. Same with extended living in the alpine lodges where people enjoy skiing downhill etc...it takes a lot to provide livable ambiance in the extremes. Any of these lifestyles are certainly there for the choosing but should be taxed in a manner dictated by the variance to the norm. More like scaled pricing that you see on luxury cars compared to the Ford Focus. It reeks of the words luxury tax and is always debatable but truly if the resource is not contained we will get down from 7 billion to Zero in a jiffy and I certainly do not want to be the first to be wiped out.

One way to look at this is to encourage huge taxation on this lifestyle such that every soul that seeks an uncommonly expensive lifestyle should pony up the fair share of contribution to make that resource hungry service available. Fiji Water for example should never leave the island but should be enjoyed by the Fijians and fed to the visiting tourists by charging $10 for a glass. Welcome to Fiji!

Similar analogy that I propose (off topic as always) is to charge for every Emergency Rescue to extract lost and stuck retards that went into Alpine hiking knowing there was a snow storm brewing. Or any manner of extreme sport that the adrenaline junkie attempts and when failure hits relies on local services to bail their ass out. These people need to buy into a club that allows for this experiment and let the participant fully appreciate the effort.

The idea is that people will think twice before deciding on a course of action rather than simply live a life of excess because they can (subsidized by a lot of folks who cannot afford it themselves).

Hey perhaps obesity will vanish too?

Comments

  1. I read a book called "How much should a person Consume" by Ramchandra Guha recently, but could not make too much sense out of it. Bouncer of sorts...

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