~ SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEBSITE ~

Edition 2 ~ October 2008 (Updated July, 2011)

Prior Editions: Ed.1 May 2008 //

This website focuses on issues that significantly affect all our lives today, and that can be expected to continue in this role for some decades. Some 28 documents divided among four main categories of issues define this website. Neglecting health care, the three remaining categories of issues taken up here are global in scope. They deal mainly with three broad topics that turn out to be tightly interwoven. These three categories are:

All three categories have links to the extreme bipolarity that characterizes human civilizations from a global perspective (e.g. standards of living that differ by a factor of ten). Limiting our focus to any two of these three categories is likely to be less productive. Thus this website. The increasing mobilities of virtually every component of economic activity and human culture insure that the problems and characteristics of the developing world are bound to affect the problems and traits of the developed world to ever-increasing degrees as mobilities increase. Essentially all of the problems associated with globalization are a result of bipolarity and the tendency for ever-increasing mobilities to reduce bipolarity - something that many in the developed world regard with horror, and with good reason. The degradation, loss and low levels of output sustainability of the Earth's key land-based- and marine-based life-support systems of developing nations are certain to affect the end point of any convergence process - in economic, social, political and cultural terms. Thus the horror.

Population-related issues are dealt with here from the often-disputed viewpoint that most of the developing world's economic, social and political problems are a result of high human populations and/or population growth. Reducing population growth (if not also population sizes) is argued throughout this website to be the easiest and cheapest way, if not the only way, to reduce the developing world's other problems.

None of these issues can be dealt with definitively without an understanding of the cause of the bipolarity. This is why you will see, throughout this website, terms like "environmental determinism theory" and "bad government theory." Both of these two conflicting theories claim to explain the origin of the bipolarity of the global economy. You will find the most detailed analysis of this debate in "The Controversy over U.S. Support for International Family Planning: An Analysis." This author comes down on the side of the environmental determinism theory of the origin of human cultures. That theory says that the evolution of human cultures reflects, primarily, an adaptation to changing forms and degrees of environmental stress. For most developing nations, that translates into large population growth rates in a world of typically low fertility tropical soils. For other developing nations it translates into high population growth rates in regions once occupied by ancient civilizations where centuries of abuse (erosion, deforestation, overgrazing, salinization, etc.) have reduced carrying capacities of the region to numbers far less than the current population. It also translates into huge demands on financial capital that get absorbed by the need to expand the infrastructure in response to growing populations. An extreme scarcity of financial capital turns out to be the primary characteristic of developing world economies. That scarcity can easily explain the bulk of the ills of the developing world.

The "bad leadership" theory was apparently put forth around 1981 when the Reagan Administration declared the scale of natural systems to be vastly larger that the scale of human activity. This implies that environmental determinism theory is not applicable. To explain the ills of the developing world the "bad leadership" theory had to be put forth. That theory remains one of the bedrock theories of the US Republican party to this day, and largely explains its foreign policies, population policies, environmental policies and even some of its military policies. The Vatican also vigorously opposes any use of environmental determinism theory, possibly because of the difficulties it creates in defending its position on contraception and abortion. Virtually all other governments now appear to favor environmental determinism theory. (See the above-mentioned document on international family planning.)

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~ Some Noteworthy By-Products of this Website ~

One unexpected product of this website was some apparently simple solutions to some of the world's most serious and vexing problems. Perhaps this might have been expected of any examination of some of the fundamental issues that define the constantly changing limits that the land imposes on Man, and that define evolution of human cultures. Somewhere on the pages of this website you will find the following:

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