The Structure of a Society

[shando] "... is there an upper limit on the number of souls available for the people on earth?"

You gotta be kidding.

I suppose we normally assume a one to one ratio on stuff like this. But why?

Religious dogma?

But a scientific appraisal of 'the soul' would suggest (NOTE - suggest) that each individual corporal being (human, cow, paramecium, fungus spore, dandelion plant, etc.) could/should/would have some sort of energy field associated with it.

A soul?

I don't know.

***

A limit would imply that souls have physical existence, rather than conceptual existence.

Pretty deep stuff.

???
LB

<b>LB:
Now visualize a 'typical' American suburban environment
<ul>Four bedroom house (2300 sq ft)
One seventh acre lot (6000 sq ft)
Half of the street in front is included
Half of the alley in back is included
</ul>
</b>

This totals roughly 10,000 sq ft, or about 1/4 acre, per family.

1 billion families will <b>occupy</b> about 250 million acres.

Size of Texas: 172,044,800 acres

However, this is just the <b>living space</b> required for the current population.

What about the space required to:
<ul>grow the food
produce potable water (don't forget the water, fit to drink)
product wash water
produce clothing
produce shelter
<b>provide energy</b>
safely dispose of the waste products </ul>
for the current population?

How big is that footprint?

Seems like the prime real estate is going to get used up pretty soon.

<b>LB: NONE of our problems come from too many people. So ... where do they come from?</b>

It seems to me the real problems are mainly relationship problems at their root. It isn't just space for living, but competition (ie: relationships) among people for - apparently limited - material and psychic resources that cause problems.

If the population were reduced to one person all the problems in society would disappear.

Of course, that would be a dictatorship.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Larry Burford</i>
<br />
Pretty deep stuff.

???
LB
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Indeed!

Since the lot is 6000 sq ft, and the house is on the lot, you neither add nor subtract. (Seven families per acre). But the difference is less than a factor of 2 so it doesn't matter a lot.

Use Texas and Oklahoma for extra nice, un-crowded living conditions. All those other functions could be set up in the rest of the USA. Need a bit more land? Probably not, but if so put the overflow into southern Canada and northern Mexico.

The rest of the planet is totally uninhabited.

<b>[shando] "It seems to me the real problems are mainly relationship problems at their root. It isn't just space for living, but competition (ie: relationships) among people for - apparently limited - material and psychic resources that cause problems."</b>

That's pretty much the way I see it too.

Jim said something earlier, about us needing to eliminate the need to earn a living. That seems to be more or less following the same line of thought.

It sort of looks like we might be on the trail of figuring something out. Until you realize that all of this stuff we're talking about is ... or comes from ... human nature.

Dang, I hate it when that happens.

LB, What you read was not what I was thinking. There is no need now for anyone to earn a living because there is more than enough to care for everyone on the planet thanks to our forefathers and nature's bounty. We still have a psychic need to work but, not a real need our fathers had. We need to get over that hump and quit worrying about our own needs being met and stop having to compete for crumbs the system gives us if we are good hard working people.