Like you post and hope mine which says much the same thing does not steal your thunder.

I feel like the site has broken into too many groups. When something like this gets too large, tribalism will take over. Their are way too many groups. They should have set a cap on the number of groups, and a new group can't be added till one goes away. I have become pretty bored with the of late. Way too many memes.

I agree about the duplicate groups, even two of each is too many. Now cliques are forming and tribes are separating, and fighting due to the power hungry and the drama within those groups. It's too bad, the Humanist values are being lost because it's more important for some just to think they are right, and in their right to create and rule over an echo chamber. This is why I have left groups recently and quit posting in others. This is my view of the groups that are emerging and I don't want to be involved in it.

@jorj interesting....

Excellent point, especially growth for growths sake....

Growth is also the need to sustain a capitalistic society. Here is the situation described by a case:

You have a arm with 10 people working in it. The income is enough to keep people alive and you as owner doing a bit better. At this time a local company invents a harvesting machine and a storage device. When you look at it the cost of the two is less than two employees and has a higher productivity. From an economical perspective you should either fir the two employees and buy the new machines or tell the employees that the salary will be reduced so it evens out for you.

What would you do? What if the new salary means that your employees can't make ends meet?

At the same time your neighboring farmers have decided to purchase the new machines. This mean that the machine manufacturing company can invest in the next generation machines that will become even more productive. So you're looking at the trend of ever increasing productivity of the machines and asking your employees to lower their cost of labor ongoing.

The best solution for capitalism is that there is growth of work so your employees can move into jobs where the salary will go up and not down and you can invest in the machines to lower your costs.

But what are you going to do?

@Stig You just like to argue, correct? Well, I would argue that we should reduce world population to less than 500 Million and that everyone would be incredibly wealthy if we did so. All low level workers should (many have been already and more will soon) be replaced with robots and computer systems. The best solution for the Earth right now is a good plague. 7.6 Billion humans is unsustainable. We now know we only have 12 years left to create massive change or the tipping point will be past and humans are heading for a mass die off. That can't happen soon enough, in my opinion.

@SkotlandSkye No that is not correct. I attend dinner parties where people discuss why growth is needed in a capitalistic society and I mostly end up explaining that because of productivity gains as I described in the case above growth is needed to maintain incomes for those who are made redundant by it. It's a feature is capitalism - actually of any economy unless there is an income distribution system.

Eternal growth of population and the economy is not possible on this earth and we don't have a set of equal plants close by to expand into so be should all worry that mans current path is not long term sustainable.

Your point about having a population size of 5000 million is sound but our problem is who decides who gets to have kids and who don't.China had a one child policy for a long time which ad very difficult consequences like a preference of male children. If the answer is the plague then we'd have a massive collapse if the world economy and unfortunately not everyone will be rich.

In your scenario of a reduction of the population to 1/15th of the current size I suppose you're assuming that robots and computer will take over the workload that the 7.1 billion would have had - is that correct? That might not be so easy. If it made economic sense then companies would be doing so already. There are lots of jobs that can't be done without humans - at least at this time - like flying an airplane, performing medical operations, cooking food, driving trucks and cars.

We also have to remember that the 7.1 billion people produce a massive demand so basically every industry should be expected to shrink to 1/15th of what they are today. There may be some effects of reduction in the price of basic materials because the demand drops so dramatically - so oil and metal prices would drop substantially.

@jorj my zip code is 63117. There doesnt seem to be too many of us here.

@maturin1919 ..... It didn't take long to get validation to my comment. The answer to your political issue is to win elections. That applies to everyone.

@maturin1919 There are many things that can/could be done to steer things towards certain direction. I don't think hate and calling names helps at all.

Wow yeah your point is totally validated. Day 1 here hoping to get away from stupid religious arguments but that doesn't extend to politics here. Wonder if AgnosticsThatDontCareAboutPolitics.com is available.

@maturin1919 Oh well, there is only so much one can do....... Best of luck

@maturin1919 I think stooping to Trump's level is a very bad idea for many reasons. One minor example; Cruz and Rubio tried it and it didn't work. I think the reason Trump won is because he seemed like the most likely of the shitty alternatives to refresh the tree of Liberty ( and I think refreshing has been very much needed for decades) . BTW, I hate politics and I'm disappointed that I let myself get drawn into this conversation. I often struggle to avoid and ignore politics to support my mental health, but I agree it is important.

@FluffyBunny That's a very interesting observation. When someone says don't care about religion, that's pretty much it. On the other hand, the trend now a days seems to be "don't care about politics" only for as long as one does not disagree with certain ideology. Amazingly, politics gets more emotional than anything else, it seems to me anyway.

@IamNobody I think the two parties have done a spectacular job of making citizens believe the problem is anyone that doesn't agree with the party you have chosen. Liberals would fix things if conservatives would stop being the way they are and conservatives would fix things if liberals would stop being the way they are. Blah blah blah everyone should believe what I do. Either party could decide that mutants that live in volcanoes are ruining this world and their followers would march along like sheep declaring those mutants the enemy.

@FluffyBunny Agree and that's fine. What I think is just sucking the fun out if this site is the extreme of name calling and things of that nature. We should be capable to discuss, analyze and even propose ways to cope with our differences. It's clear to me we are not going to solve those differences here but as a minimum we all should seek to understand why we have those differences to beging with. Once those varibles are dealt with, we may even discover that anything is negotiable or that we are not that different after all.

Welcome newbee! Hope you stay and really enjoy yourself here!

@jorj They pose "interesting " questions that require you to ASSume the existence of a gawd in order to proceed with any answer...somewhat subtle, sometimes, but easy to spot once you start to see it. I show them No mercy, as positing a gawd is not worth my time.

hmmm, maybe I better start thinking of moving to Austin......

Thanks. I didn't know Jesus was on Facebook.

I don't come here to argue about religion. I don't think about it at all. I came here to meet someone nonreligious and compatible, and to have intelligent conversations with people about nonreligious subjects without fear of being attacked by a religious wing nut..

If you just want to argue with theists, there shouldn't be that many here. If I do see any religious people, I immediately block them.

@birdingnut I'm not HERE to argue about religion either. This place is good for illuminating conversations with people who know more than myself on a variety of subjects. I just hope to find some knowledge I can apply elsewhere in the process.