Our current population is 6.5 billion people. If life extension technologies create super extended life spans there will not be enough arable land to feed, cloth, house and give a lower middle class to working class lifestyle to all 6.5 billion of us.
I propose a radical solution to our problems. Mass extinctions. Remember the dinosaurs? As robots replace human labor, we will not need so many people on this planet. Wars are good. They kill people. My position is clear, we need a global scale war to kill as many people as we can so we can create the society that will be able to shepherd humanity into the post-singularity.
As radical as this idea may seem, wars are good for capitalism. Technology and and innovation advances faster in war than in peacetime. Soldiers killed on the battlefield, or in an office building like the 9-11 trade center bombings, create insurance payoffs, and can lead to massive job openings in a troubled economy.
If it is true that we are just as little as 50 years away from radically extended life spans. Most work that we consider worth human effort will be automated and the human element eliminated from the position. We can not have 5 billion people with nothing to do, no employment prospects or ability to create wealth. Hence, we will need an enviromentally friendly way to eliminate millions of people.
I propose we engineer a plague, or find some other way to reduce human population levels to about 1 million per continent. To create a world of only 6 million of us. Perhaps, such a plan is already in the works. There is an easy way to engineer a plague. Nuclear war is a possible solution, because governments around the world can blame the terrorists, and millions of lives lost will make way for new life.
the Robots with human level intelligence would eliminate millions of positions, Multi-core processors in a few years with the correct software could replace most white collar positions. Even if the new 100 core computers cost $25,000 or less, white collar work would be eliminated. The cost advantages of using a machine or robot to do intellectual or physical work will create a no-job society. Why pay a human when a robot or computer can do it better, cheaper, faster.
Who do we selectively eliminate? Anyone without a post graduate degree? Anyone with a criminal conviction, perhaps? If we selectively eliminate at a 1 to 1000 ratio, there would be room to grow. Gas chambers are politically incorrect. The goal is not to exterminate entire species of people, just to eliminate the masses without the population elimination be considered to be politically incorrect.
I give you this post as a point to ponder. As technology advances and the mass production of robotics elminates human labor, at some future point mass exitinctions would give humanity the potential to reengineer the planet for super-longevity.
Selective elimination will allow for us to enter the singularity with enough land and resources for greatly extended life spans. My thoughts are radical. Wars exist. People are killed. If we have a global pandemic that was engineered, or nuclear war, or a bio-engineered grey goo. Mass extinctions would clear the land and the planet for a post-singularity future where everyone lives in a garden of eden.*
(*Biblical reference to the garden of eden not intended. )