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The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain

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Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain

#71

Post by bena »

rickydroll wrote: post #48
bena wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily in this case. You have those who pay in, but die before they fully collect. Then the collectors do die off, they aren’t expected to get returns in perpetuity or crazy large returns. Then you have a constant supply of new payees into the system. Only a devastating collapse of the population would cause it to go tits up

And in your comment lies a possible solution. Support people into their mid-70s, and then the only medical care they get is palliative, so they don't suffer from whatever takes them out. Half of their estate is allocated to the social welfare fund. Another solution is to increase the sources of funding. For example, in the United States, your Social Security contributions are capped once your income exceeds approxima…

No doubt we can probably do things better, my main thrust was to show how if you can force participation, you can kind of get away with it.

Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain

#72

Post by dsign »

danaris wrote: post #53
dsign wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of Scandinavia is recently emerged and you can use your hands and a wooden stick to remove the vegetable soil and uncover the silt that was at the bottom of the ocean a few hundred years ago. And before that, that silt was dirt mixed in the ice. So, there is not a lot of organic anything there. However, I think that soil is good enough. With the huge caveat that I'm not an expert by any means, I do believe that…

..."a few hundred years ago"? It was covered in ice a few tens of thousands of years ago. As far as I'm aware, the last time it was the bottom of the sea was some significant number of millions of years ago. Scandinavia has been free of ice for roughly as long as, say, Canada and the northern US. I don't know much about its soil quality, but if your claim is that it's got only a couple of inches of good soil because…

Hm? You could do a search, but here is an article: https://www.discoversormland.com/blog/?postglacial-rebound . Another fun exercise is to simply look at Google maps. If you squint just right, you’ll see extremely flat valleys (ocean bottom) punctuated by old islands.

I live 300 meters from the present coastline and have toured the area a bit. There are telltale signs everywhere, including towers and docks that were built at the waterline sometime AC and that now stand a fair bit inland.

Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain

#73

Post by octo888 »

nradov wrote: post #66
octo888 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We obviously have a very different definition of food insecurity. I don't agree with your definition. I think you're talking about import dependence. The World Food Programme define it as "Food security exists when people have access to enough safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development, and an active and healthy life". They also link to the IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification), which ha…

You're missing the point. Those definitions you cite are only relevant to individuals or groups of people, not entire nation states. No one is claiming that imports are "bad" or proposing to do away with all food imports, but countries should be able to produce enough staple foodstuffs to meet the basic caloric and nutritional needs of their population. Otherwise they continue to exist only on the sufferance of other…

You're just trolling. I'm done

Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain

#74

Post by danaris »

dsign wrote: post #72
danaris wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..."a few hundred years ago"? It was covered in ice a few tens of thousands of years ago. As far as I'm aware, the last time it was the bottom of the sea was some significant number of millions of years ago. Scandinavia has been free of ice for roughly as long as, say, Canada and the northern US. I don't know much about its soil quality, but if your claim is that it's got only a couple of inches of good soil because…

Hm? You could do a search, but here is an article: https://www.discoversormland.com/blog/?postglacial-rebound . Another fun exercise is to simply look at Google maps. If you squint just right, you’ll see extremely flat valleys (ocean bottom) punctuated by old islands. I live 300 meters from the present coastline and have toured the area a bit. There are telltale signs everywhere, including towers and docks that were…

I'm aware of postglacial rebound. It doesn't account for what you described, which is that "most of Scandinavia is recently emerged".

I did, in fact, do some quick searching myself before writing my previous reply, just to make sure I wasn't missing something stupidly obvious, and the Wikipedia article on Scandinavian prehistory[0] confirmed that people have been living there for at least several thousand years. They've even been farming there since roughly 4000 BC.

So no: "most of Scandinavia" wasn't under the ocean "a few hundred years ago".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_prehistory

Re: The Coming Storm: How Mediterranean Water Collapse Could Reshape Britain

#75

Post by pmg101 »

pmg101 wrote: post #15
KaiserPro wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why they have allowed sustained high immigration rates for decades recently its because we need skilled and cheap labour to fill the holes in our health and buisness system. Housing shortages is not a direct immigration issue[1], its a policy issue. People of a certain type do not want high rise buildings near them. people of another different type are really happy because they can now build less and sell for more.…

Isn't it a pyramid scheme where we import younger people to pay for older people's pensions and benefits... unlikely to end well, like all pyramid schemes.

The replies to this made me think harder about pyramid schemes vs population pyramids.

I concluded it is in fact OK to bring in young working people from elsewhere to fund the retirement and social services of those already here and ageing. I was thinking there would be a problem as those immigrants in turn aged and switched from net contributors to net claimants, but I hadn't taken into account that they like all of us die off as they age: indeed, what makes the pyramid a pyramid.

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