Isn't population growing mainly due to latency?

Not quite.

In the developed world, population growth is negative absent immigration. Currently, this applies to China, the EU, and the USA. Last I bothered to check, the projections were for continued global population growth up to the 10-15 billion range, followed be a decline to a stable population in the 5-9 billion range.

Note that that "stable population" presupposes that the entire world is "developed" by that time.

If owning robot overlords can assure you all you ever need without working, it's obvious everybody will want these, but only the most fortunate will afford it, leaving the rest of us in misery.

If we don't have robots making our shit, then we'll still be making it the old-fashioned way, which sort of implies we'll be working for a living.

At least until we can set up robot factories of our own, of course.

Look at it this way - if the robots can make enough stuff for everyone to have everything they want, then everyone will be "rich". Of course, the real problem in that case is that we'll stop measuring "wealth" in "things we own"....

Also note that even if the (currently) wealthy types make just enough stuff for themselves and leave the rest of us to rot, there's nothing actually stopping the rest of us from building our own robots to make shit for us....

Yes, and now that the rentiers will make even more money for no labor, the displaced workers are doubly fucked.

And how, pray tell, will the rentiers make even more money if noone can afford to buy what they make because they're unemployed?

Oddly, we seem to have managed to get past the introduction of the assembly line without the sort of problems you're predicting - humanity is still here, its population is still growing, and technology is still advancing.

Quit wasting my fucking tax money on your hair-brained ideas.

Harebrained.

Brains don't have hairs, but hares have brains....

Wasn't that Senator Obama?!?!?!

Not in JAN 2014 it wasn't. Or did you think he was elected President late last year?

If they paid more taxes I would pay less

No, if they paid more taxes, the government would increase its spending to match the increased revenues.

So there's coastal cities and there's "flat as a pancake cities that are 1 meter above sea level"

And then there's New Orleans. Average height above Sea Level is MINUS 0.5 meters. Range is 6m above to 2m below.

I want Gigabit symmetrical with 1 TB of transfer for $50/mo.. This is absolutely 100% possible with current technology.

Then why don't you start a company that offers that service?

If you can do it profitably, you'll have investors falling all over themselves to give you money, since pretty much everyone will want your service....

No you don't. Your watch rotates on an 18 hour cycle, but the boats 'day' (and overall schedule) remains on the standard 24 hour cycle. On top of that, you make the swap from Lima (local time) to Zulu (GMT) once when you leave port and again when you enter port (days, weeks, or months apart)

Irrelevant. You roll out of your rack, go to your watchstation for six hours. Then you do PMS/training/whatever for six hours. Then you sleep for six hours. Repeat till you get back in port.

In other words, you live on an 18-hour day for the period of your patrol.

As I recall, it took two to five days to adjust at each end of the patrol.

Just curous - how did you do your first post? I don't have a "post" button, and can only "reply to this".

Though I suppose that could be intentional. Maybe you have to meet certain preconditions to be allowed to get "post" privileges.

What he means to say is what most of have known in our darkest heart of hearts since the first help ticket: The vast majority of users are technically illiterate idiots, and you can't fix stupid.

Note that there is a difference between "stupid" and "ignorant".

Note that being "technically illiterate" puts you into the "ignorant" category, but that claiming that "technically illiterate" is the same as "idiot" puts you well into the "stupid" category.

Now, arguably you can claim that the vast majority of users really don't care very much about the subject at hand, which might very well move them into the "stupid" group. But being technically illiterate, in and of itself, is not a sign of "stupid"....

SO, they're only investigating the funding sources of people who disagree with their position.

Well, that couldn't be biased at all, now could it?

This sounds like the LRF from Heinlein's Time for the Stars.

They were required to spend their money researching things whose payback was so far in the future that no-one else would touch it.

And they kept making embarrassing amounts of money as a result of the products of their research. wonder if this lot will do the same?