There are now 7.5 BILLION people who inhabit Earth.

[TurtleWA]

Originally Posted by GoldMutant

The scary thing is we'll be at nearly 10 billion citizens on the planet by 2050. According to un.org, "The current world population of 7.3 billion is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100". Why we need more people is beyond me.

Unless it helps with jobs and production can go well, it's dangerous. It may seem cool now, but my God.

The article BTW is here: http://www.un.org/en/development/des...15-report.html

It's difficult not to picture a dystopian future. What will housing, food supply, and basic medical care all look like? What new social political issues will emerge? Will Robots struggle to gain rights in the workforce? What about the environmental impacts? Will there be a new world government that enacts laws surrounding global reproductive rights?

[IndigoErth]

It's a shame that we're pretty much a plague species and for the most part don't even realize it. At least not until we are our own downfall.

[CyberCubed]

We will likely have colonies on the moon or on Mars by the next 50-100 years, so a lot of people may not even live on Earth anymore.

[IndigoErth]

I dunno... even the "flying cars" haven't exactly come to fruition yet. (Unless you count small airplanes.) They're only just now starting to parallel park themselves for us. Colonizing the Moon or Mars feels a bit further away then 50 or 100 years.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

Even if there will be colonization of other planets in the future, I doubt it will even come close to solving poverty as most of the people leaving will be those in developed countries who can afford it.

[CyberCubed]

Originally Posted by IndigoErth

I dunno... even the "flying cars" haven't exactly come to fruition yet. (Unless you count small airplanes.) They're only just now starting to parallel park themselves for us. Colonizing the Moon or Mars feels a bit further away then 50 or 100 years.

Think of how much technology and the world changed from 1950 to now. 50 years nowadays is a huge jump in technology, inventions and scientific breakthroughs.

[TurtleWA]

Originally Posted by IndigoErth

I dunno... even the "flying cars" haven't exactly come to fruition yet. (Unless you count small airplanes.) They're only just now starting to parallel park themselves for us. Colonizing the Moon or Mars feels a bit further away then 50 or 100 years.

Flying cars might need to be small helicopters unless the wings are retractable somehow. How would parking work? More people in the sky would be very helpful nowadays with how bad traffic gets. Almost 2 out of every 100 people in Alaska have a pilot license. I think more flying commuters is a near future possibility. It would take one of the big auto companies deciding to get behind it. Just has to be affordable.

[Splinter the boss]

Good thing I'll be long gone when people will have to practice cannibalism to survive.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Originally Posted by IndigoErth

I dunno... even the "flying cars" haven't exactly come to fruition yet. (Unless you count small airplanes.) They're only just now starting to parallel park themselves for us. Colonizing the Moon or Mars feels a bit further away then 50 or 100 years.

Actually.....

http://news.wyotech.edu/post/2012/06.../#.WV_wmoEo7fo

Originally Posted by TurtleWA

Flying cars might need to be small helicopters unless the wings are retractable somehow. How would parking work? More people in the sky would be very helpful nowadays with how bad traffic gets. Almost 2 out of every 100 people in Alaska have a pilot license. I think more flying commuters is a near future possibility. It would take one of the big auto companies deciding to get behind it. Just has to be affordable.

I believe THIS is in order....




Well here is the link since it didn't seem to work. This is why I hate trying to embed stuff...

https://youtu.be/1dq17-kXWYA

[Candy Kappa]

When people talk about flying cars, it's heavily implied it's commercialized flying cars that you can buy at a retailer, not wacky prototypes or needing a runway to take-off like a plane.

The Airbus' Drone Plane CarPod looks kinda nifty, but. Flying Cars is a nice idea on paper, but most people are already incompetent on the road, now we're gonna have them in their air. No thanks

[MsMarvelDuckie]

According to several articles I found there are at least a couple of car companies interested in marketing one.

[ProphetofGanja]

Flying cars are one of those things that people in the past thought would be a good idea in the future but now here in the present we realize that it's dumb as ****. Personal vehicles based on fossil fuels are like the most inefficient form of transit ever devised. If AI keeps improving we could have a fleet of self-driven cars that communicate with each other and traffic jams would become virtually nonexistant and traffic fatalities would go way, way down. But it's still an inefficient system; something way better could be put in place if we choose to be forward-thinking. Like a hyperloop or a really big version of the vacuum tube that sends the canister back and forth between the bank and your car when you go through the drive-thru.

[ProactiveMan]

Why not just make quad-copters with little handles underneath?

[Papenbrook]

There are now 7.6 BILLION people on Earth!

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

[Sumac]

The horror. The horror!!

[Refractive Reflections]

The high birth rate in the developing world today, is similar to how developed nations were in the past before they were developed (i.e. rapid industrialization).

In the U.S. and Western nations (just 4-5 generations ago), it wasn't uncommon for families to have 5+ children in maintaining the family farm or children working in the factories to help support the family income. Though as a nation becomes more developed and healthcare is improved, typically the cost of upbringing a child becomes more expensive as the educational standards of the nation increase, making it less and less of an incentive for parents to have children as they are seen as making a larger and larger financial investment.

Or to simplify as one Quora response says (and you can find other responses):

There are an extremely wide range of reasons, but consider this the 'simple' answer: In a nation without guarantees on health, safety, and opportunity, children are the best form of social security available.

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-birth-r...oped-countries

[Andrew NDB]

Too many people.

[CyberCubed]

The ironic thing is most young people today are purposely choosing not to have children. Most of the child boom is happening in the poorer countries where they're now able to raise kids without them dying of disease or starvation or whatever.

South America, Africa and most of Europe/Asia is where most of the world is, not the U.S.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

The ironic thing is most young people today are purposely choosing not to have children. Most of the child boom is happening in the poorer countries where they're now able to raise kids without them dying of disease or starvation or whatever.

South America, Africa and most of Europe/Asia is where most of the world is, not the U.S.

Which is one reason why a lot of developed countries such as Germany and America are letting a lot of immigrants in, because their own native population is declining and a continuing trend of population decrease would eventually lead to a country's collapse.

[sdp]

Earth is overpopulated and needs some population control, however that's easier said than done as there are many layers of complication.

The problem is with more education the less children people want to have so more developed countries don't want more children, we have extreme examples like Japan but every 1st world nation is getting there.

The problem with these economies that use capitalism cannot actually sustain themselves without a growing population. So yes, most of these "hot" topics like immigration and outsourcing are a necessity if they want to continue their way of life. All of these are difficult topics with no easy answer and discussions get nowhere though, especially since the "right" thing to do is unpopular for most people regardless of ideology as it involves sacrifice.

Barely anyone likes to have to live worse than they were off just to help the long term of the planet that they won't even get to see.