What is the World's Biggest Problem?
 

Seem's simple enough, but not really that easy.

Stealing?

Overpopulation will destroy us quicker than anything else.

Agree. Leads to our demise be it overwhelming of resources or via disease/plague.

Still waiting for Malthus are we?

Too many polls.

How? Seriously. I’ve always thought this is a red herring.

It's been so since 1798.

That's a long time.

The Democrats have finally gone too far by pointing the gun at themselves.

You think ultimately Ehrlich was right?

Certainly not a Democrat.

My biggest problem is while the world population isn't increasing exponentially, it is increasing on a very large scale.

And while we'd all like doctors, scientists, and serious contributors to human kind being the one's with the largest impact on that growth, that simply isn't the case. The near worst of our genes are reproducing at the expense of technology, medicine, diet, and healthcare. Cancers are evolving and more weird and wild diseases pop up almost annually for us to combat. In America we are obese, diabetic, and ravaged with heart disease and cancer. While 'healthy', we are as sick and old as ever passing on bad genes that continue to 'merge' with other bad genes.

Ultimately, I see a worldwide plague devastating the world population to the point of near elimination due to the weaknesses we've exposed over centuries of better and better healthcare and life expectancy.

We'll be our own worst enemy via reproduction and extended lifetimes more than any other reason IMO.

I'm more optimistic but maybe that's just me.

Fair enough.



So no vote at all? We haz no problem?

I'm voting, don't worry about it.

Nope. Natural selection ensures that overpopulation auto corrects.

Overshoot.

Reflected by massive explosion in population, gobbling up the easiest to access resources, especially the easily extractable and plentiful fossil fuels. The era of cheap energy is over. We'll have fossil fuels for quite a while yet, but our economy expanded and our wealth was accumulated mostly on sub $20/barrel oil. The economy of expansion and consumerism has been kept afloat the past 20 years or so via accounting fraud (ie, debt and printing), and that party is coming to an end as well.

The contraction ahead will result in mass infighting for the shrinking pie as standards of living drop, especially here in the United States, as our Empire has just about run its course, and is in steep decline. It won't necessarily crash in a week, but will grind down relentlessly, year over year, as the poor Boomers get stiffed on Social Security, the rich Boomers have their 401K accounts frozen by .gov, and the younger generations seek revenge. There will be the occasional crises along the way (war, oil embargo/rationing, famine, virus outbreak, etc.), but keep your eyes open and you'll also see the less obvious decline - infrastructure crumbling, bankruptcies, stagflation, utility outages, etc.

The demographics of the PA forum are heavily tilted to the older and wealthier class of Americans, many of whom haven't experienced the negative side of what's coming - yet. But if you connect the dots, the health and the trend of the sport we love is a canary in the coal mine of sorts....