On 12/28/2011 6:18 AM, Warp wrote:
>    Why does it feel like the near future is going to suck hard? Let's see:
>
> - The climate is going so bad that in 50 to 100 years we will most probably
> be totally screwed, if not even sooner. And humanity is doing little to help
> this, even though it's a very well known problem.

I see no *conclusive* evidence that the world's climate will behave any 
differently in the next fifty years than it has in the previous fifty. 
The doom-and-gloom predictors have oscillated between "global warming" 
and "impending ice age" at least three times in the past century alone.

> - There's little question anymore that the global economy is going to crash
> hard in the very near future. We are most probably facing an economic crisis
> which will rival or even surpass the big one in the 1920's. At least here in
> Finland there have already been prospects of Finland going back to the old
> currency (Finnish marks) if the euro plummets. And what's worse, rather than
> trying to do something about it, apparently the big money institutions are
> doing all this *on purpose*.

The odd thing is that the very people who predicted that this is exactly 
what would happen are still being denounced as cranks.

> - We are going to run out of oil in the near fugure.

In spite of having more identified reserves than at any point in history.

> - One of the most influential countries in the world (a country that
> heavily influences the economy and politics of the rest of the world),
> namely the United States, seems to be going down hard in politics,
> science and education. It's showing troubling signs of turning into a
> theocracy-like totalitarian state in the near future.

This is a false appearance created by heavily biased news institutions. 
  We are farther away from a theocracy than at any other time in our 
history.

> The very basics
> of constituational freedoms in the US have been eroded one by one during
> the last decade, and it seems to only be spiraling down. (Just as one
> example, seems like most of the presidential candidates are religious
> nutjobs who want to make it legal for states to outlaw same-sex
> relationships, abortions, the teaching of evolution, and so on.)

Actually, the totalitarian states of the century past were all creatures 
of socialism (whether of a nationalistic or Marxist flavor has made no 
real difference).  While the right has been guilty of eroding our 
Constitutional rights, the left has been historically worse.  The news 
does not report this because they are heavily left-leaning.

> - European countries have also been steadily going downwards in terms of
> freedom, democracy and the well being of its citizens, also mostly for
> religious reasons. However, in this case the religion is not Christianity
> but naive multiculturalism. A revolution (to either direction of the
> political spectrum) is inevitable in the near future.

With the odd exception that in most of Europe, one particular religous 
group has not been tasked with embracing multiculturism.  They have been 
allowed to stick to their old ways.

> - Large companies, especially those ones having intellectual properties,
> and especially the American ones, are slowly trying to take over the world.
> The SOPA is just one of the latest and most egregious attempts at controlling
> and even shutting down the internet. These companies have even gone so far
> as to demand a foreign country to extradit one of that country's citizens
> because he *linked* to copyrighted material. That's right: He didn't even
> *distribute* copyrighted material, he simply *linked* to it, and now the
> property owners are demanding a foreign country to extradit this person so
> that he can be put in jail in the United States. This is how bold and
> egregious these companies have become about copyright.
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O%27Dwyer)

Again, the element which argue against giving the government power to 
grant favors to corporations was shouted down, and is still dismissed as 
impractical cranks, even though what they predicted has come to pass.

Regards,
John

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