[silliest] Building Loads on PressuShells

> Pop growth in the west is indeed diminishing, but in the most populated
> area of the world is not.

Indeed, it *is*. The rate of population growth in the developing countries has
been dropping steadily the past decades. See for instance the first graph in
the third page of the presentation
http://www.reprohealth.org/reprohealthDB/doc/demo.pdf

The demographic difference between developing and developed countries is not
in the fall of the birth rates, but rather that in the developing countries
the population growth rate is *still* high enough to prevent population
stagnation or decline (like in many European countries).

Finally, I think that your habit of dividing the world in "west" and
"non-west" is misleading when it comes to demographics. There *are*
non-Western countries that have low population growth (e.g., Japan).

> The sad truth is that is going to grow as much as
> it can, that is until it becomes a BIG problem, and only then we are going
> to do something about it.

I can't agree on that - at least for the next century, based on available
demographic data and in my personal experience - I have seen a lot of
estimations for future population being revised for lower numbers and a lot
of estimations that are not fullfilled - with a population being estimated in
X at year Y actually reaching just 0.9X at year Y.

However, I'm talking about the general tendency for the following decades
based on the tendency of the past decades. In the very long run (centuries,
millennia), I tend to agree with you: explosive population growth will
probably come back, because cultural groups that favor larger families will
be selected - they will grow and multiply, while cultural groups that favor
small families will become extinct.

> Probably some big war as usually.

I would bet on some new world epidemics.

> As for people in Brazil being able to afford meat everyday, looking at the
> millions living in the slums around Rio and the other big cities there it
> doesn't look like it to me,

Ah, but I didn't say that every Brazilian is able to afford meat everyday; I
said that the Brazilian meat consumption per capita is similar to that of the
United Kingdom. But consumption per capita is calculated by dividing total
consumption by the population; that does not tell anything about the
*distribution* of consumption among the population. In Brazil, according to
the article
http://www.embrapa.br:8080/aplic/rumos.nsf/0/d2a63b479fd1e45d8325690400523d93?OpenDocument,
the middle and high classes consume A LOT of meat - I would say that more
than Americans, for instance -, while most of the population consumes very
little meat. (I'm talking about cow meat; however, other animal protein
sources like chicken and eggs are cheaper here.) So, in average you have a
consumption in English levels.

Conclusion: Brazil suffers the same problem of the world as a whole - there is
not an scarceness of resources, there is an uneven distribution of resources.

Finally, a curiosity: oddly enough, Brazilian slums are blobs of urban
poverty, but they are not exactly blobs of subnutrition. According to a study
done as part of the government program Fome Zero (Hunger Zero), the worst
hunger blobs in Brazil are in underdeveloped rural areas mainly in the
Northeast of the country. But that is almost invisible to the international
media because it is thousands of kilometers far from Rio. :-)

> Sorry for all the Gundam aficionados on the list... ;)

Unfortunately, I have never seen Gundam, though I have heard of it. The only
set of unconvincingly idyllic space settlement renderings that I have ever
seen are the ones at the "High Frontier". :-)

> I guess the truth is that a free and fulfilling life is probably boring
> like hell anyway... :)

I would say that a perfect world would be incredibly boring and many people
would prefer suicide. (And now it occurs to me that there *is* a high suicide
rate in some highly developed European countries...) But I also say that we
always think that the world where we live should be a bit less imperfect than
it is...

> Cheers,

Cheers,

> Claudio

Lucio