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July 29, 2004 Let's face it --- the world is dangerous for peace-loving, constructive people like us, and getting worse. Americans are basically builders, not destroyers, but we have been very tough guys in the past, when we needed to be, like during World War II. If we look clearly at the way things are today (not through rose-colored glasses), we could easily become pessimists, and even a little bit mad-at-the-world. Let’s try to just be realistic, instead. What's the problem? Well, number one as I see it is overpopulation. In spite of their one-child policy in the big cities, which is not enforced much out in the vast hinterlands, China's population is increasing at a really scary rate. India's rate is even faster. The prosperity that has come from trade with America is only affecting the coastal areas of both countries, and people in the interior regions are still in extreme poverty. Closer to us is Mexico, with a smaller scale but very similar problem. Even Africa, with its terrible genocides, has a population that is growing fast, at least until AIDS catches up with it, and possibly even after that. How does that affect us? It puts a strong downward pressure on our salaries and wages. There are all those people who are willing to work in their own countries for extremely little pay, or sneak into our country and do it here. There is severe unemployment in many of the poor countries, especially where their governments are trying to get rid of inefficient socialist factories with do-nothing employees, and switch to our lean capitalist system. How bad is "severe?" Electronic Engineering Times says (Nov. 3, 2003, page 36) 200 million unemployed in China, more than the whole employed population of America. There's no way we can buy enough stuff from China to solve that problem. We're going to be getting used to less luxuries here, no matter what --- might as well face it. The Number Two problem, the way I see it, is not enough clean water in the world. We're running out of it where much of our food is grown, in the Southwestern U.S. The great aquifers there are shrinking, the Colorado river is getting split up, and droughts (and forest fires) are getting more intense every year. It's much worse in the rest of the world, because of growing overpopulation. Dams and other water management schemes eventually reach a limit, whether "global warming" turns out to be real or not. Also, there are likely to be some really catastrophic breaks in the huge new dams and levees, as they get desperately overextended. The Economist magazine reported (July 19, 2003, page 9) that China already had dam failures in 1975 that killed 230,00 people, although they managed to keep that quiet until recently. World-Watch Magazine claims (November 2003, page 32) that the new irrigation dam system in China is full of huge cracks and unlikely to survive, once it gets filled. If that floods out their farmland worse than ever before, will they beg us for help this time, or will they threaten to nuke us if we refuse to help? Maybe we don't want to hear the Number Three problem, after all that, but it's here: drug-resistant malaria and TB and SARS-type flu are suddenly beginning to spread widely in the overpopulated world. If we don't have too much sexual promiscuity here, maybe we don't need to worry about AIDS, but hepatitis (particularly the deadly and incurable "hep C") is the unsung villain that has been silently spreading in the U.S., although it's much worse on other continents. If you believe the New York Times (I don't want to believe what they reported on Aug. 20, 2001, now visible in their Web Edition!), 60% of the people in China have hepatitis. Even if that is overestimated, it's still mighty bad. International travel, immigration, and even imports of raw food like lettuce and fruit, are slowly introducing these things to America. Number Four at present, but possibly elevated to Number One any day now, is terrorism. Machine guns, cheap explosives, and the formulas for making poison gas seem to be available to anyone who wants them. They are being used more and more by a lot of extremist Muslims, and small religious cults in Japan, and even some crazies here. But one bad group can do a lot of damage, nowadays. I don't wish to think that my grandchildren (and my former students, many of whom I like very much) are going to be worse off than I have been in my own era. Therefore I hope that a lot of Americans, who really are the major power for good or evil in today's world, will learn to put forth a tougher face, even tougher than we show at present. This is a long-term war, and we are going to have to get used to casualties among our soldiers, and even among the rest of us. We can't let that hold us back from what we have to do. All the inspections and restrictions at airports, train stations, importing docks, etc., are going to be a real pain. Limitations on privacy will be unpleasant. The secret arrests and imprisonment of a few dangerous guerillas could get out of hand, and I hope it can be limited, but the crazy suicide bombers are not about to expose much evidence against themselves. We can no longer have our usual freedoms in all cases, since a few purposely "dirty" nuclear bombs when the wind is blowing right could really destroy us. There is no wall we can hide behind. We are going to need a few spies and tell a few cover- up lies --- I hope not too many. We might have to assassinate a few people like Bin Laden (let's try not to do that too much), but we can't just scold them and slap their hands, if we expect to survive in today's guerilla- warrior, radioactive-dust, and anthrax-powder world. Except for a few important imports like petroleum and nickel, etc., we have most of what we need right here. If we do somewhat-restrict imports and immigration, we will have a slightly-lower standard of living, just like we had during World War II. It was tough then (I was a teenager in that era), but we got along OK, and we survived. Possibly all these restrictions can just be moderate, but they very likely will be tougher than they are now. We will each have to be tougher as individuals, also. ------------ About the author: Dan Shanefield is a retired engineering prof, who worked at Bell Labs and then at Rutgers University. He wrote the book "Industrial Electronics for Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians". Visit his website or email Dan Shanefield: shanefield@ieee.org Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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