I agree with this to an extent. We should, and could, all work less if wealth were distributed differently. It's also to do with not just how much but what work is done. If we worked as hard at producing sustainable energy, for instance, as we do at producing weaponry, we'd be consuming fewer resources and using those resources we do consume more efficiently. We may in fact need to work quite hard to make the Earth a good for a population of 9 billion humans to live without destroying the environment. It will need a change in mindset. In many ways we've come a lot closer to Huxley's vision of a society in which to consume is virtuous in the past few decades.
You're not really a scientist are you? You're all over the place with your arguments.
Link? I suspect this research may be flawed, and I'd like to see how other economic factors were separated out to show that there is a causation rather than merely a correlation – ie those with more money tend to have smaller families and the cause of higher educational attainment is in fact money.
To a first approximation, it is entirely wrong.
You have missed the issue I was pointing out. You are right about the dangers to crops with no genetic diversity. You are wrong to think that anybody could predict how a 'genetically engineered' virus could mutate once released into the environment. It's simply an extraordinarily dumb thing to do.
It.is.not.high.yield.enough.
This is a misunderstanding of economics, I'm afraid. Your pension isn't paid for by the money you've saved, but by the work others do from the moment you become a pensioner. The money you saved is simply a means of getting a promise – I'll work now for someone else and then someone else can work for me when I retire. If there's noone there to do the work, your savings become worthless.
Yes. It is. It's a ridiculous pretence which just causes misery to the few who are caught out not 'contributing' enough for whatever reason (and still penalises, for instance, women who take time out from work to bring up a family). It's an iniquitous system – and for that very reason, the state pension isn't where it is because of the level of NI. It's where it is because of government choice. Out of everywhere in Europe, the UK's pensioners as a whole see a greater drop in their earnings when they retire than everywhere except Cyprus, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. It's a disgrace and nowt to do with demographics.
It's an absurd notion.
The villagers in the stone age may have considered they were doing 'quite well' too. And given how much forest has been cut down since then in the UK to make room for us, they might have had a point.
