(cont'd)

There is a huge literature on this among archaeologists and economic historians, such as Steven LeBlanc, Lawrence Keeley, Azar Gat. Gregory Clarke, and Peter Turchin, who has an article explaining some of his ideas in Aeon.

http://aeon.co/magazine/society/peter-turchin-wealth-poverty/

There are many more references in Steven Pinker's "Better Angels of our Nature". In Steven LeBlanc's "Constant Battles", he explains how he was disillusioned early in his career by excavations in the American Southwest. Far from peaceful, noble Indians living in harmony with their environment and with each other, he found fortified towns, widespread environmental damage, whole villages massacred and the bodies left unburied, and male death rates in battle of at least 25%. This was well before the arrival of any Europeans. It was like that all over the world, regardless of race, religion, culture, etc.

Allowing your country to be used as a sink for the population overflow of Malthusian trap societies is obviously not a sustainable solution. While we could take more refugees without blowing out our population, it simply isn't credible that numbers wouldn't explode if we were seen to have the welcome mat out. Change can only come from within.

While the refugee claims are coming from the trouble spots (and they would be given short shrift otherwise), they are not all necessarily genuine.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/08/22/1029114162991.html

Don't talk rot Poirot, with this "I have a huge problem knowing that Australia runs what amount to concentration camps on Manus an Nauru"

Talk about emotive rubbish, it makes you sound very dark green.

Those detainees can leave any time they like, just at the request of the majority of real Ozzies, they can't come here. They will be overwhelmed with help to get their gear packed, the moment they ask for repatriation. That's a pretty strange way to run a concentration camp isn't it?

Yes, Hasbeen...for example it, must warm the cockles of a Syrian asylum seeker's heart to know that at the drop of a hat they could pop back home for a bit of barrel bomb therapy.

It's akin to saying: "Here you go mate - you can either jump straight off the cliff or go over the waterfall."

I suppose you also think that people make perilous journeys in boats because they want to see the world.

(At least you held back from your one time remedy posted on this forum - of locking asylum seekers in rooms with knives)

You're a great representative of the ebbing humanitarian integrity of collective Australia - and the fearful insular attitudes which accompany it.

Divergence, thanks for a great summation of the problem. As you say, change can only come from within, but the impetus for that change and support for it can come from outside. The great revolutions in France and the US as well as the breakdown of the feudal social organisation in other parts of Europe were all to some extent supported/fostered by external forces.

The biggest impetus was provided by the example of others, especially the US. People, like goats, horses, sheep or any other group species are much easier to pull than to push.

The problem for people who want to lead other people is that doing the pulling requires being in front...

Poirot, much as I don't want them here, there is not a Muslim on earth I am frightened of.

No it is people like you that scare the tripe out of me. People who vote in our elections, obviously do have a brain, but refuse, like a stubborn mule to use it.

Hasbeen,

"Poirot, much as I don't want them here, there is not a Muslim on earth I am frightened of.

No it is people like you that scare the tripe out of me."

Yeah, mate....like all swaggering blowhards, you don't so much scare me, as leave me mildly amused.