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Come back in 15 years and I think today will be ‘precedented’

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>But in a future where tech has taken away most jobs, tech will also be able to mass produce housing, food and transportation for pennies on today's dollar. Another counter to inflation.

tech wont take most jobs. that is a pipe dream. who do you think builds and services the tech that build the houses? and creates the parts to build the tech? and digs up the ore to build the parts? and surveys the land to find the ore to build the parts? and generates the energy to be able to do all of this?

people will rule the world until their is a machine that can be powered by plant life and protein. until then tech will play second fiddle to man. the energy alone to create the future in your head is unobtainium, unless every man, woman, and child is working.

tech is only good at specific tasks. the sooner people realize that the sooner they will understand the role tech will play in the future. which is about the same as the one it plays right now.

>By this kind of logic, everyone having a job or being on social security should be responsible for MASSIVE inflation.

what!? lol. no.

the reason UBI would cause inflation is because it would essentially set a floor for wages and also allow non productive citizens to continue to purchase. this is a recipe for hyperinflation.

so if the UBI minimum wage was set at $15 everyone making under $15 would quit their jobs and simply stay at home. However they would still have the purchasing power they did when they were working.

When all these people quit it would create shortages in the labor market, thus creating shortages in supply, thus causing inflation. this alone would cause inflation, but in order to "fix" the problem companies would have to start paying $30 per hour to incentivize people to work. this would in turn drive the price you pay up, and on top of all that, all the excess money in the system due to people that are now staying home but making money, would shortly lead to hyperinflation.

UBI wont work

So fisheries from Europe are not a problem? Stop buying fish.

I like the new plastics usage regulations in Europe. However, it has been established that Asia is the source of this issue. Wake the f up, please. Where are your NGOs that receive significant state funding addressing this?

It's an exceedingly difficult subject to find good conversation on. Unless you're a doomer, and then you can find plenty of validation. HN has a lot of reflexive contrarians and intuitive conservatives who default to a new (to them) idea being dumb until it is proven otherwise. A recent discussion on agrivoltaics did not impress me. Many defaulted to "solar roadways!" and other versions of it being an obviously dumb idea.

There are plenty of talks and lectures on Youtube on futurology. Tony Seba, Andrew McAfee, Ramez Naam, Isaac Arthur (more about the long term), etc. But for discussion, the signal to noise ratio is drowned out by doomerism, advocacy for "radical population reduction," degrowth, etc. Any discussion of tech solutions usually veers into lectures that "we can't technology our way out of this..." and similar. Many here would rather see the world burn than for technology to address problems but there still be capitalism.

I'm not saying those people don't get to exist, or have their opinions, or express themselves. Just that I haven't found a lot of discussion spaces I find valuable, mainly due to that s/n ratio. Plus it does effect me to see such frequent advocacy on this sub for killing millions of people.

Why are people not having kids to populate a dead rock.

Humanity - self inflicted damage

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Imagine what's going to be like in say... 10 years? A big sewer?

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We can’t even look after our own people

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The Olympics is gonna have problems. You just know China is probably gonna be the first country to field genetically modified athletes.

Meh... Super Soldiers are overrated. The battlefields of the future will be dominated by machines. Human Soldiers super or otherwise have very little hope against swarms of hunter killer drones. That's the future.

The following submission statement was provided by /u/thebelsnickle1991:

Scientists have called for a legally binding treaty to ensure Earth's orbit isn't irreparably harmed by the future expansion of the global space industry.

The number of satellites in orbit is expected to increase from the current 9,000 to more than 60,000 by 2030, with estimates suggesting there are already more than 100 trillion untracked pieces of old satellites circling the planet.

While such technology is used to provide a huge range of social and environmental benefits, there are fears the predicted growth of the industry could make large parts of Earth's orbit unusable, wrote an international collaboration of experts in fields, including satellite technology and ocean plastic pollution, the journal Science.

This demonstrates the urgent need for global consensus on how best to govern Earth's orbit, said researchers, including from the Universities of Plymouth, Arribada Initiative, The University of Texas at Austin, California Institute of Technology, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Spaceport Cornwall and ZSL (Zoological Society of London).

The experts acknowledged that a number of industries and countries are starting to focus on satellite sustainability, but this should be enforced to include any nation with plans to use Earth's orbit.

Any agreement, they added, should include measures to implement producer and user responsibility for satellites and debris, from the time they launch onwards. Commercial costs should also be considered when looking at ways to incentivise accountability.

"Minimising the pollution of the lower Earth orbit will allow continued space exploration, satellite continuity and the growth of life-changing space technology," said co-author Kimberley Miner, scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11oootr/scientists_call_for_global_action_to_clean_up/jbtlge1/

The following submission statement was provided by /u/ethereal3xp:

>Plastic pollution in oceans has reached 'unprecedented' levels in 15 years

Plastic pollution in the world's oceans has reached "unprecedented levels" over the past 15 years, a new study has found, calling for a legally binding international treaty to stop the harmful waste.

Ocean plastic pollution is a persistent problem around the globe -- animals may become entangled in larger pieces of plastic like fishing nets, or ingest microplastics that eventually enter the food chain to be consumed by humans. 

Research published on Wednesday found that there are an estimated 170 trillion pieces of plastic, mainly microplastics, on the surface of the world's oceans today, much of it discarded since 2005. 

"Plastic pollution in the world's oceans during the past 15 years has reached unprecedented levels," said the study, published in open-access journal PLOS One.

Researchers took plastic samples from over 11,000 stations around the world focusing on a 40-year period between 1979 and 2019. 

They found no trends until 1990, then a fluctuation in trends between 1990 and 2005. After that, the samples skyrocket. 

"We see a really rapid increase since 2005 because there is a rapid increase in production and also a limited number of policies that are controlling the release of plastic into the ocean," contributing author Lisa Erdle told AFP. 

The sources of plastic pollution in the ocean are numerous. Fishing gear like nets and buoys often end up in the middle of the ocean, dumped or dropped by accident, while things like clothing, car tyres and single-use plastics often pollute nearer to the coast.

They eventually break down into microplastics, which Erdle said can look like "confetti on the surface of the ocean".

>'Flood of toxic products'

On current trends, plastic use will nearly double from 2019 across G20 countries by 2050, reaching 451 million tonnes each year, according to the report, jointly produced by Economist Impact and The Nippon Foundation. 

In 1950, only two million tonnes of plastic were produced worldwide. 

Recycling, even in countries with advanced waste management systems, has done little to help the pollution problem since just a small percentage of plastics are properly recycled and much often ending up in landfills instead. If landfills are not properly managed, plastic waste can leech into the environment, eventually making its way to oceans. 

"We really we see a lack of recycling, a flood of toxic products and packaging," Erdle said. 

The rates of plastic waste were seen to recede at some points between 1990 and 2005, in part because there were some effective policies in place to control pollution. That includes the 1988 MARPOL treaty, a legally binding agreement among 154 countries to end the discharge of plastics from naval, fishing and shipping fleets. 

But with so much more plastic being produced today, the study's authors said a new, wide-ranging treaty is needed to not only reduce plastic production and use but also better manage its disposal. 

"Environmental recovery of plastic has limited merit, so solution strategies must address those systems that restrict emissions of plastic pollution in the first place," the study said. 

Last year, 175 nations agreed to end plastic pollution under a legally binding United Nations agreement that could be finalised as soon as next year. 

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11oodad/plastic_pollution_in_oceans_has_reached/jbtjhcx/

What a depressing thought, can't even look after our own planet

I have been to Australia three times and I’m quite familiar with it and it’s immigration rules. I had friends from London who thought they could emigrate Australia, since it is part of the commonwealth, it was too difficult even for them so they had to settle on coming to America instead. The only way somebody from America will be able to do it is either to marry a native or to have a lot of money in liquid assets that you bring with you. For certain jobs, where they need people, the grant work visas, but that doesn’t make you a citizen.

Yo we can't even clean up Earth junk... how's this going to actually happen

What happens to those who refuse to live under the dictatorship of the proletariat or give up their property and assets? We know what every single ML regime did to those it labeled as counter-revolutionaries.

Since you seem uneducated about democide, here's a primer

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/democide

And, considering that it didn't stop this year, it'll get that much worse 15 years from now.

What will your children say?

Some will. I think most would just pursue their dreams and focus on what makes them happy. It really is amazing the misery we will put up with in order to ensure our dependents and a roof and food.