
Singapore 2.0: Lee Seeks Smart City Revamp as Old Model Ebbs - walterbell
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-02/singapore-at-50-seeks-smart-city-makeover-as-old-industries-fade
======
abalashov
All talk of futuristic "smart cities" requires us to implicitly acknowledge
that the present cities are indeed quite "dumb".

------
wahsd
Far too many people seem to simply not be capable of internalizing and
comprehending that the primary source of the issues mentioned in this piece in
addition to climate change are due to unfettered population growth and growth
in general. I get that many disagree, but reality is that not only is nothing
we do about climate change totally meaningless without reducing or at least
controlling the population, but improving the human condition for people will
only produce even more polluting people.

What is the concept from the startup community? ... the fallacy of
scaling/growth out of marginal losses?

~~~
jp555
We have reduced the amount of resources required for every $ of GDP produced
by ~80% in the past century. Why do you think this will stop in the next
century?

It takes time for tech to propagate, which is why American farmers get 5x more
food per acre than Indian farmers, but that's going to begin equalize (and
double again) very quickly now.

~~~
wahsd
And then what, more and more people and we chase more and more solutions to
more and more problems we create through unrestrained population growth for no
reason whatsoever. You don't seem to realize we are exiting the industrial age
where people were a convenient input to production the wealthy and powerful
fostered. It simply makes no sense to keep growing and then chasing the
consequences of unfettered growth with the chance that solutions may be
developed to solve unnecessary problems.

You totally ignored the fact that the greatest contributor to global warming
is people, western ones and residents of developed countries, especially the
USA more so than any others. You can rationalize and fantasize justifications
all you want, but the fact of the matter is that there are hard limits to
growth before the rest of the system can't maintain and the wheels come off.
And it's all unnecessary at that. There is nothing inherently better in more
people, because if you are not worth at the very least ~$3M, you are
definitely not net gaining from population growth, exponentially so if you are
not American.

~~~
jp555
I think you misunderstand growth. It is not simple growth like a balloon grows
as you inflate it. The economy is the act of economizing - the process of
learning to do more with less. Growth is learning, to suggest we will stop
learning or are capable of forcing ourselves to end learning is either
ridiculous or horrific.

