Friday, October 14, 2016

Mega Cities As Threat Environments

The really depressing aspect of the linked article below for me is that, instead of seeing the problem in terms of how we alleviate the overcrowding, the poverty and lawlessness, the identification, and the prioritization that will inevitably follow, will be one oriented exclusively towards the needs and abilities of military action. As in more special operations forces, better urban fighting equipment, and the tactics to make it work.

Obviously, being able to respond effectively to real enemies, and the threats to our security they present, will be a quite necessary ongoing reality. As such keeping a military ready to do that an absolute requirement. Having said that, however, is not to also suggest there can't be other options to prepare us to face threat sources. After all, even the military recognizes that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure (an exchange rate always in flux where cure, in the military sense, can be problematic in the best of scenarios).

What really bothers me when you see this kind of foreshadowing of what is to come is that so little consideration is given to why things like overcrowded urban centers are there in the first place, and why fixing them remains so elusive.

So much of what is going on here, in my opinion, is simply another consequence of the contradictions of Capitalism; foremost of which is the inherent inability of a cost based operating system to address large systematic failures, not to mention the inability to create living wage jobs for everybody.

People continue to flock to urban centers because they know that's the only place where jobs have even a hint of a chance to be found. And they stay there because, even in the midst of such poverty and deprivation, that is where you find most of the cracks that money fueled corruption breeds, like a brick thrown at windshield. Cracks from which a great deal more can trickle down in the form of crumbs of various sorts (the more so the more dehumanized you can become) than can be expected in outlying areas; themselves either already far more polluted, resource raped, or marginalized by flood or drought.

If money weren't the prime consideration in addressing things, and simply actual effort was, where we could balance our own personal involvement with technology free of proprietary restraints; and where resources could be tapped more flexibly for the same reason, the situation could be a great deal different. Like applying truly integrated solutions then, like, say, the production of liquid hydrogen out at sea to also serve as the core functional component to build floating cities. And where utilization of that fuel might help make arid areas useable again. Perhaps then urban crowding could be attacked from a whole new direction.