How Should We Decide Who Lives & Who Dies ??

Rand it, obviously.

Can you explain what that means ?

You use a random number generator and if your number comes up you die and that's that.

It's the most fair way.

How about age as a consideration ? Let's say you have seniors who had the benefit of many years of life already and are no longer adding anything productive to society vs children ?

How about skill as a consideration ? The ability to add value to whatever society emerges in the future and contribute to future survival ?

You went from arguing that every citizen will be provided with basic food shelter and water, to not allowing them their own vehicle to just asking questions about exterminating the old and the weak?

I think its best to ponder the question from the perspective of someone who would have to live with responsibility for the decision and be responsible to lead whatever society that follows.

If I had to make the choice, I would explore the answer from a perspective of resources.

If resources are scarce, then the value of a person should be considered in terms of the resources they consume vs the resource they offer. A person in a permanent coma on life support would be someone who didn't make the cut. People who are in robust physical health would have an advantage over those who are very ill.

At the current moment, the people who are entrusted with these decisions are the super wealthy who consume the most resources. They are selecting themselves as the group which will survive which is completely incongruent with a logical approach that is best for the species longevity as a whole.

In my world, the wealthy would be given the option to renounce personal wealth which arises from behavior that depletes the common good.

I don't know if you're a history buff or not, but this reminds me of someone else's idea.

Who counts as the "super wealthy"? Because I don't think the people you have in mind are "consuming" as much as, say, the moderately wealthy. The "Super Wealthy" are wealthy in investments, their wealth isn't liquid and they're not consuming.

And if the wealthy don't go along with that? Because all of human history shows it's not likely to happen.

Cool thread idea anyway. Better than "Trump bad" vs "Nuh-uh!"

I'm not saying that my suggestion isn't a dystopian nightmare but it definitely sounds better than working to game some system so that you aren't culled.

Just keep it simple and use the rng and perhaps people will accept it better.

I think super wealthy people fly on private jets and own 100 ft+ yachts. Live in homes over 10,000 sf. Have net worth over $100M.

But we can't maintain even the moderately wealthy lifestyle. We are living beyond the sustainable capacity of the planet and each day that passes without adjustment means we are creating a bigger involuntary population reduction event.

I think history shows an ebb and flow. There is a natural tendency for wealth to concentrate in the hands of fewer and fewer people until the foundation of society crumbles and new definitions of fitness emerge. You're correct that the ruling class will try to stifle any revolutionary energy ...... but people are not going to simply roll over and die. The Russian and French Revolutions speak to examples of the order being overturned.

Why not just guillotine these people first? Those people are a lot more resource heavy and you're getting much more bang for your buck than your examples of killing those with less skills or the elderly.

From a standpoint of justice, that idea has some appeal.

From standpoint of pragmatism, that would have the disadvantage of eliminating a lot of people with useful leadership and organizational skills. It would be better to absorb those skills and simply aim them at different outcomes.

I think in order to satisfy the legitimate anger of the proletariat, some examples of people who had prominently participated in the efforts to delay the transition to a survivable world would need to be made an example of.

In the future world, those who would might be tempted to advocate for policies which are environmentally destructive should live with appropriate fear of repercussion for advancing those ideas.

I'm not trying to be difficult here, but can anyone confirm that we are currently advancing unhealthily toward an unsustainable capacity, or what the sustainable capacity is? I think as long as more global societies become modernized and 'wealthy', birth rates will decrease on their own and we can remain "sustainable" without global thermonuclear war.

This whole discussion brings back memories from college. Remember having a class that focused on the GAIA hypothesis, James Lovelock and all that jazz.

Luigi Mangione says hi.

I won't pretend that anyone can "confirm" anything. Science only goes so far.

We can see from the collapsing property insurance market and record increase in homelessness that the current economic paradigm is failing.

We can from paleo climate reconstruction what a doubling of greenhouse forcing would do. We see coral reefs failing. We see biodiversity failing. We see democracy failing. We see academic performance falling. We can measure the buildup of plastic in our brains and bodies and concurrent decline of sex hormones and fertility.

We have abdicated all of our institutions including the mass media to the forces of wealth and unfettered capitalism. There is no place in the media to even have the conversation we are having here.

Our politicians no longer have to be responsive to the concerns and questions of the common people. Everything is staged with millionaire "news" anchors asking all of the questions.

I think the answer for confirmation is more along the lines of ..... "does anything beside collapse even make sense"? And I think the answer to that is no.

I don't want to demonize people who are super wealthy. They simply played the game that was present at the time they were alive.

It's the resource consumption which needs to end that is coupled with wealth that needs to end. So long as they are willing to adapt to the new game, they should be welcome to stay and contribute.

From a practical standpoint, it's a less bloody transition if they have an incentive to cooperate.

I confess that my only objective is survival ..... notions of justice are secondary.

I'll push back against the 1st bolded statement. There's no place in the mainstream media for this conversation, but I'm sure there are plenty of internet media places this could happen.... and only one of the 2 forms of media is slowly dying.

2nd bolded statement I agree with. I assume we have very different timelines on when the collapse takes place, based on your notes. I think human ingenuity will delay the collapse of our society vis-a-vis climate change. The death of democracy.... if we make it to 2028 and there's another US election, I feel ok. The ravages of plastic in our bodies, well I don't know what to say to that. It's depressing that's for sure.

"Human ingenuity"

It's an interesting phrase.

A species so intelligent that it could figure out ways to make itself go extinct. That's certainly uncommon in the animal kingdom.

Dinosaurs needed a massive meteor impact. Something external to themselves. We're the only species with the intelligence necessary to destroy ourselves.

Surviving the end of this era in human existence and transitioning to something sustainable will truly be a manifestation of human ingenuity. There is so much inertia carrying us toward our demise. I'm open minded to that occurring. I'm not predicting it one way or the other .... I hope we make it.

Luigi appears to have done something heroic.

I like Bill Burr's idea. Just randomly sink cruise ships.

If two go down that will end the industry. No one else will get on them.

I think the destiny decides.

If we go beyond the capacity of the planet, we do not really have to decide who lives and dies. Nature will do that just fine.

Other than that, "should" is the wrong modal verb for this scenario. This is all about "would".

And we don't need to hypothesize to much. We just need to look at disasters that create critical resource scarcity inside a region. Survival hinges on what resources you have to work with, how resourceful you are, your willingness to act and the luck of the draw.

I mean, as a thought experiment to justify eating the rich your scenario might give someone that warm and fuzzy feeling. The reality is that in large scale disasters, the poor and resource-less (whether you were poor before or made poor during) will die in droves. Maybe they'll make a footnote in the history books, but don't bet on it.