Peter Albert David Singer AC (born 6 July 1946)[2] is an Australian moral philosopher and the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics, approaching the subject from a secular, utilitarian perspective. He wrote the book Animal Liberation (1975), in which he argues for vegetarianism, and the essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", which favours donating to help the global poor. For most of his career, he was a preference utilitarian, but he revealed in The Point of View of the Universe (2014), coauthored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, that he had become a hedonistic utilitarian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer

In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals.[1][2] In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that ensure the greatest good for the greatest number... Utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism, which states that the consequences of any action are the only standard of right and wrong... Though the seeds of the theory can be found in the hedonists Aristippus and Epicurus, who viewed happiness as the only good, and in the work of the medieval Indian philosopher Śāntideva, the tradition of modern utilitarianism began with Jeremy Bentham, and continued with such philosophers as John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, R. M. Hare, and Peter Singer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873)[1] was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,[2] he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control (see esp On Liberty).[3] Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill

Uttara Sutradhar, Lauryn Spearing & Sybil Derrible: Depopulation and associated challenges for US cities by 2100. ...possibly leading to disruptions in basic services like transit, clean water, electricity and internet access. Simultaneously, increasing population trends in resource-intensive suburban and periurban cities will probably take away access to much needed resources in depopulating areas, further exacerbating their challenges. See also toots with screenshots of data. (more)

city in Ohio (more)

I mean in Population, not Area. (more)

John Michael Greer: A Neglected Factor in the Fall (Collapse) of Civilizations. Most of a decade ago I looked back over a decade of posts on peak oil and decided that I’d said pretty much all that could be said about that topic. Fortunately there are always new perspectives to the predicament of industrial society. (more)

From Clay Shirky: In April 2010, Kevin Kelly cited the phrase "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution", and called it the "Shirky Principle", as the phrasing reminded him of the clarity of the Peter Principle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky#Shirky_principle (more)

Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH FBA (/ˈtɔɪnbi/; 14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was an English historian, a philosopher of history, an author of numerous books and a research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and King's College London. From 1918 to 1950, Toynbee was considered a leading specialist on international affairs;[6] from 1924 to 1954 he was the Director of Studies at Chatham House, in which position he also produced 34 volumes of the Survey of International Affairs, a "bible" for international specialists in Britain.[7][8] He is best known for his 12-volume A Study of History (1934–1961). With his prodigious output of papers, articles, speeches and presentations, and numerous books translated into many languages, Toynbee was a widely read and discussed scholar in the 1940s and 1950s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_J._Toynbee

archdruid (more)

Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are climate change scenarios of projected socioeconomic global changes up to 2100 as defined in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report on climate change in 2021.[2] They are used to derive greenhouse gas emissions scenarios with different climate policies.[3][4][5] The SSPs provide narratives describing alternative socio-economic developments. These storylines are a qualitative description of logic relating elements of the narratives to each other.[3] In terms of quantitative elements, they provide data accompanying the scenarios on national population, urbanization and GDP (per capita).[6] The SSPs can be quantified with various Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) to explore possible future pathways both with regards to socioeconomic and climate pathways.[4][5][6] The five scenarios are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Socioeconomic_Pathways (more)

Welcome to the 15-minute neighborhood: Intensification key to city's official plan. Ottawa's revised official plan aims to create a community of "15-minute neighbourhoods" that will transform the capital into North America's most liveable mid-sized city while planning for a population that will eventually double or even triple. (15-minute city) (more)

Urban sprawl (also known as suburban sprawl or urban encroachment[1]) is defined as "the spreading of urban developments (such as houses, dense multi family apartments, offices buildings and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a more or less densely populated city". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_sprawl (cf population density)

Chicago Suburb schools? (more)

But the state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has collapsed. From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12%, the highest figure in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave. In a state made up of sprawling Suburbs the collapse of the housing bubble (Credit Crisis 2008) has impoverished millions and kicked tens of thousands of families out of their homes. Its political system is locked in paralysis and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen as a disaster - his approval ratings having sunk to levels that would make George W Bush blush. The crisis is so deep that Professor Kevin Starr, who has written an acclaimed history of the state, recently declared: "California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America."... Los Angeles now has a poverty rate of 20%. Other cities across the state, such as Fresno and Modesto, have jobless rates that rival Detroit's... The percentage of 19-year-olds at college in the state dropped from 43% to 30% between 1996 and 2004, one of the highest falls ever recorded for any developed world economy. California's Public Schools are ranked 47th out of 50 in the nation... "They came here, they educated their kids, they had a pool and a house. That was the opportunity for a pretty broad section of society," says Joel Kotkin, an urbanist at Chapman University, in Orange County. This was what attracted immigrants in their millions, flocking to industries - especially defence and aviation - that seemed to promise jobs for life. But the newcomers were mistaken... One in four American mortgages that are "under water", meaning they are worth more than the home itself, are in California. (more)

Something that will happen post-Collapse as people abandon areas of Sprawl. Something we could do on purpose even without a Collapse, given our low overall Population Density. (more)

from Alexander Patterns: (more)

Taylor Pearson: How to Create a Personal Vision Statement. In 2012, I was mainly suffering from a failure of imagination. While there are legitimate obstacles that hold people back, often times the biggest one is our own conception of what is possible. (Part of Effective Entrepreneur process.) (more)

Vitalik Buterin: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again. ...deeper vision underlying crypto: we are not here to just create isolated tools and games, but rather build holistically toward a more free and open society and economy, where the different parts - technological, social and economic - fit into each other. (more)

"The medium is the message" (more)