5/24/14

"The Math That Predicted The Revolutions Sweeping The Globe"

Think of the Earth as a living organism…being attacked by billions of bacteria,
whose numbers double every forty years.

Gore Vidal

"...one common thread between the disparate nations, cultures, and people in conflict, one element that has demonstrably proven to make these uprisings more likely: high global food prices.

...if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Sure enough, we're seeing them now.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency,
the second is war.

Ernest Hemingway

...the rise in the FAO food price index—a measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over time ... found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide.

It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse, and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest.

If resource consumption, food production, population, and fiat money creation,
all rose faster in the last 50 years than the preceding 5,000,
are we consuming more than replenishing?

...2013 saw the third-highest food prices on record, and that's when the seeds for the conflicts across the world were sewn.

..."210 on the FAO index is the boiling point and we have been hovering there for the past 18 months."

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/a-complex-systems-model-predicted-the-revolutions-sweeping-the-globe-right

There are certainly many other factors fueling mass protests, but hunger—or the desperation caused by its looming specter—is often the tipping point. Sometimes, it's clearly implicated: In Venezuela—where students have taken to the streets and protests have left citizens dead—food prices are at a staggering 18-year high.

...there is a contagion effect: given widespread social unrest that is promoted by high food prices, examples from one country drive unrest in others."

...countries ... cited as suffering from unrest related to the rise in the cost of eating:

South Africa
Haiti
Argentina
Egypt
Tunisia
Brazil
Turkey
Colombia
Libya
Sweden (yes, Sweden)
India
China
Bulgaria
Chile
Syria
Thailand
Bangladesh
Bahrain
Ukraine
Venezuela
Bosnia

...In Bosnia, which erupted into violent conflict last week, high unemployment and hunger are prime drivers of a discontent that's been simmering for months. On February 9, Chiara Milan wrote "Today, after more than one year of protests and hunger, eventually the world got to know about [the protesters'] grievances."

Food shortages caused by drought helped spur Syria's civil war.

High food prices helped precipitate the fare hike protests in Brazil.

The list goes on."

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/a-complex-systems-model-predicted-the-revolutions-sweeping-the-globe-right
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Are there correlations between currency, debt, natural resources, food, peace and war?

Did increasing supplies of money, fossil fuel and food
contribute to Earth’s human population rising
from 1.6 billion at the beginning of the 20th century,
to more than 6.8 billion in a little more than 100 years?

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.

Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio.

Thomas Robert Malthus
Suggested populations could increase faster than food supplies

If arable land, fresh water, irrigation, genetically modified seed
modern equipment, pesticides and fertilizers
convert fossil fuel into enough food to keep pace with population growth,
is the populace dependent on ever increasing supplies of finite resources?

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent,
but the one most responsive to change.

Charles Darwin

If ~10% of America’s, about 30% of China’s,
and more than 60% of sub-Saharan Africa’s income is spent on food,
where would social dis-harmonies begin when sustenance prices increase?

Did shortages of arable land and food
coincide with many Rwandan Hutus eliminating many Tutsis?

You're captives of a civilizational system
that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.

Daniel Quinn
Postulated correlations between population growth
and natural resource consumption

What could happen if many without food, water or energy
want the few who have to share?

What could happen if there’s enough food but many can’t afford it,
or some relatively unstable governments can’t provide it?

Only seven meals separate civilization from potential anarchy.

Josette Sheeran
UN World Food Program

If more money and energy equals more food, and more food equals more people,
will less fossil fuel lead to less food …?

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If mold continues to multiply after eating half a piece of cheese,
what happens when demand exceeds supply?

If we’re the mold and Earth is the cheese, how many need and/or want how much,
where is half way, who’s got what’s left, who gets cut off when,
who will compete with who for what’s left, and how is who most likely to win?

Can mold collectively prevent the procreation of a larger generation
that can’t be fed by the remaining cheese?

If technological civilization
advanced more in the last 10,000 years than the previous 1,000,000,
the last 1,000 than the preceding 10,000,
and the last 100 than the prior 1,000 and the last 10 compared to the last 100,
what could happen if many come to believe Earth’s population is unsustainable?

If need is sustenance and a temperate climate,
should you not do what you don’t want done to you unless you need to?

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