Ah, so we're back to the 'noble savage' paradigm . . .

Post #193,355 by Andrew Grygus 2/7/05 3:36:54 AM Reply	Ah, so we're back to the 'noble savage' paradigm . . . [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #193,719 by marlowe 2/8/05 8:28:20 PM Reply	Savage, no. Noble, yes. Civilization began with agriculture. Towns came second, and then came cities. The farmer made it all possible. In the Western world, the only remaining savages are most commonly found in the city, where the prey is more plentiful. Too great a local population density is a bad idea, for a great many reasons. Especially these days. On 9/11, two flying bombs took out almost three thousand souls who ahppened to be in close physical proximity to one another. A third crashed in rural Pennsylvania, killing far fewer. Decentralization is the wave of the future. It's just a matter of getting that last mile problem completely licked. We'll still need port cities, but no one will have to live in them anymore. We'll just have waldoes for dockworkers. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Well, pardon us for winning the election. Memo to Democrats and to the Left: hatred is not a substitute for vision. "All the news you wish would go away" [link\|http://marlowe-essays.blogspot.com/2005/01/what-we-need-prescription-for-our.html\|http://marlowe-essay...tion-for-our.html] - What We Need - a prescription for our times [link\|http://marlowe-essays.blogspot.com/2005/01/where-i-stand-proverbs-and-axioms-for.html\|http://marlowe-essay...d-axioms-for.html] - Where I Stand - Proverbs and axioms for the real world
Post #193,733 by Another Scott 2/8/05 9:48:54 PM Reply	You're less coherent than usual in this post. IMO. As Todd points out below, rural areas have the same kinds of people that urban areas do. With the same problems. Your third paragraph is a true-ism. Yes, if you want to kill a lot of people quickly, well you need a lot of people in a relatively small place. Decentralization is the wave of the future. It's just a matter of getting that last mile problem completely licked. We'll still need port cities, but no one will have to live in them anymore. We'll just have waldoes for dockworkers. You need to elaborate on that a bit. It sounds rather Pol Pot-ish to me. What time frame are you talking about? I think that for the forseeable future (say the next 20 years) cities will continue to grow, especially outside the US. In the vast majority of the world, the best way to increase one's income is to move from a rural area to a city. It's been that way for a long time, and I don't see it changing. And who's going to build all the roads and airports and drive all the trucks to have the cities emptied? Who's going to build the power plants, put up the power lines, dig the sewer lines, etc., for this? Or do you imagine the population of cities simply disappearing? I hope you're not imagining some [link\|http://www.agclassroom.org/teacher/history/1820.htm\|1820s agrarian utopia] or something. A time when 300 hours of labor was required to produce 100 bushels of wheat, when the US population was < 13 M... Cheers, Scott.
Post #194,041 by marlowe 2/10/05 6:42:55 PM Reply	Same people as build the roads and drive the trucks now. Just in a different place. What's your objection, exactly? If there's anything history teaches us, it's that things change. And we're due for a change. The trend in society these days is decentralization. All sorts of things - computing power, news reportage, publishing - that used to be in hands of natural monopolies or oligarchies are now becoming more democratic, thanks to the Internet. Big government and big business will continue to resist, but they can't hold out forever. That last mile is the catch. There's simply more bandwidth some places than others, because to the more shortsighted decision makers, that makes too much seeming economic sense. Broadband upload speed is the chief bottleneck. I figure in 20 years, if some assholes ever nuke all our major metropoli, they'll kill a few dozen repairmen and destroy an awful lot of server farms. Mirrored servers in smaller cities will take over, but things will bog down on the `Net for a while. (And the companies that didn't have mirrored servers out yonder will be out of business.) And then they'll finally lay down some OC-192 fiber in Hootin Holler. Expense is relative. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Well, pardon us for winning the election. Memo to Democrats and to the Left: hatred is not a substitute for vision. "All the news you wish would go away" [link\|http://marlowe-essays.blogspot.com/2005/01/what-we-need-prescription-for-our.html\|http://marlowe-essay...tion-for-our.html] - What We Need - a prescription for our times [link\|http://marlowe-essays.blogspot.com/2005/01/where-i-stand-proverbs-and-axioms-for.html\|http://marlowe-essay...d-axioms-for.html] - Where I Stand - Proverbs and axioms for the real world
Post #194,042 by ChrisR 2/10/05 6:49:49 PM Reply	Government builds the roads. Teamsters drive the trucks.
Post #194,213 by inthane-chan 2/11/05 2:16:06 PM Reply	Won't happen. Bosses like one thing: Asses in seats that they can walk over to and bust. Decentralization will not happen until we can get around that cultural barrier. "Here at Ortillery Command we have at our disposal hundred megawatt laser beams, mach 20 titanium rods and guided thermonuclear bombs. Some people say we think that we're God. We're not God. We just borrowed his 'SMITE' button for our fire control system."

Welcome to IWETHEY!