America 2050- We talk about future elections...but what will the stances be?

[Person Man]

Will we have the same party names in 2050? Will there be issues traded around? Will new issues arise or be recycled? What do you see?

[Person Man]

Can someone actually discuss this thread...and Stark definately needs to stop being a dick.

[Person Man]

I mean, there has to be new social and economic issues that emerge. Perhaps old ones will be recycled if our nation moves to the right.

[Person Man]

Well, I am sure that there will be other, more assinine issues that the reactionaries will bring up after civil rights and biological rights become assured. Perhaps they will bring up letting free markets, rather than civil rights law, deal with those that have the mutation for genetic diseases. Perhaps Gattica will become the model of social conservatism by 2050.

[Person Man]

Iḿ going to have to say that the debt and the defecit will be fairly massive issues.

Those are ALWAYS issues...and they will continue to be....people will say that they will work on them, but something comes along and makes working on the deficit quite impossible.

[Person Man]

Human Cloning may be an issue.... Completely unethical today, but who knows in the future.

I don't know how much of The Boys From Brazil (a brilliant but evil mad scientist modeled after Joseph Mengele clones duplicates of Adolf Hitler, arranges to have them be adopted by politically-conservative and authoritarian 53-year-old men who have 'accidents' at age 66 that leave their adopted sons without a father -- as was the case for Hitler) can ring true... but that's not how it would work. I think that the system would clone obedient, undemanding workhorses of people who would be perfect slaves at work and pliable supporters of a dictatorial order.

Human individuality is a virtue, and if there is to be any genetic engineering, then at least let it be to reduce the occurrence of such genetically-connected horrors as Tay-Sachs disease, MS, congenital heart disease, cystic fibrosis, diabetes mellitus, and certain forms of inheritable feeble-mindedness. If there is any connection of genetics to the sociopathic personality, then let genetic engineering work to eliminate that built-in moral hazard of tigers in human bodies.   

Yes. That's basically what should happen. There needs to be good regulation...really good regulation, where Human Rights are perserved and are not arbitrarily set to benefit a private and partial interest like what has happened with Human Rights in the past (i.e. the Anti-Abortion movement, the Pro-Abortion Rights movement...both sides of the slavery and labor rights movement). See the thread where Don trolled me and you will see that I have some idea of what could work and what wouldn't. The entire idea of "designer babies" isn't inherently a bad idea, so long as it is not made to discriminate against certain discrete and insular minorities and is not used to cause intentional disabilities in children and is publically funded, so as to perserve and develop more social mobility.

[Person Man]

That's a good start, but I do not want to preclude the abilities for parents to make sure that children get the optimal genes that their parents can naturally offer....this is the true way for individualism and social mobility. Allow children to carry all their family's best traits into the future...and be a good representative of that family- but it will be entirely from that family.

[Person Man]

Then again, this would only seem to be a problem now....but by 2050, many lower skill jobs will probably be automated. We already have supercomputers that already operate at the calculating power of 10 human brains. By 2050, we will have long since automated customer service, maintainece and already...the check out line at the Safeway is now run by computers..

[Person Man]

...and yet probably unimaginably different. Truly, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I will probably be wrong, but here we go-

Social Issues-
I think we will slowly find a common ground on abortion and gays that about 60% of Americans can agree on. We will probably privatize "marriage" by 2025ish and would have found some sort of administrative mechanism to deal with abortion at the same time. It will probably be pretty similiar to what happens in Israel and the UK today. I think the stem cell thing will continue to peter down and eventually evolve into what treatments should be allowed or funded by Medicaid.

1Designer Babies/ some form of Gattica or Gattica-lite
2Genetic Discrimination Protection
3Artificial Intelligence (Already there are social conservatives getting ready for this fight to ban it on the grounds that it either debases the traditional community or that it is sort of tantamount to an abortion in the same way that cloning is)
4Life Extension- views will range from adding any form of this to "forbidden knowledge" to wanting to fund technology that will allow any one person to live as long as they would like. Most Americans will probably take something in between- probably only allowing insurance companies to fund a procedure so many times and not allowing government funding of such research after a certain point)
5 Immigration- surprise?
6 Gun Control

Very unlikely-
Bioethics for ETs (out of the 20 scenarios for the future I run in my head, maybe 1 or 2 involve us being contact with aliens, though another "half dozen" (a conservative estimate), has us knowing whether or not there is some form of Life on Mars or Life on a thousand other planets.

Foreign Policy-
We may or may not be going through a cold war with either China, Brazil, some form of European Federal Government or perhaps even Russia, Iran or India. In fact...this "Cold War" could simply be in a multi-polar war between several continent-states by mid-century. Some differences between the 20th and 21st century could simply be that proxy-wars will happen a lot closer to home and that the threat of a global nuclear war will be placed with continental nuclear wars. Basically, 21st Century American Foreign policy could be a mix of 19th century and 20th century foreign policy.




Economic Issues-
1The Deficit- more likely than not
2Taxes
3Minimal Equity Laws (as the majority of jobs become automated, there will be fewer and fewer people "working" for a living and relying on the equity in their investments instead)- the debate will be whether or not all citizens should have...perhaps $150,000 ($18,000 in 2000 dolars) in equity at all times that they are entitled to and cannot be taken away unless they incurred heinous debt.
4 Industrial Subsidies to "Green" Industries
5 Industrial Subsidies to space colonization and exploration
6 Land Use/Global Warming (see above, actually)
7 Issues arising out of the selling of the Social Security System, such as regulation and mandatory account liability.
8 Issues arising out of the publicizing of the Health Care System.

[Person Man]

Cloning could be a big issue. I believe this will be one of the few issues where the conservatives will win in the long term (full human cloning is totally illegal).

Major issues include:
- The deficit and national debt.

- Funding for the now established Mars and Moon bases (though they're very small, five or six astronauts at a time).

- Renewable energy as oil is starting to become less common.

- National parks will be a big deal as the left advocates for the protection of natural areas while the right says it hinders development.

- Overpopulation is an issue, though not too urgent in the US. People are encouraged to have no more than two children, though there are no laws specifically dealing with it.

- Debate occurs over whether the house should be larger due to the higher population.

- China the equivalent of Japan nowadays, perhaps a bit more powerful economically, high tech and modern, though pollution is still an issue.

- Outsourcing of grunt IT jobs to Africa is a big issue. Africa is equivalent to India today.

- Should college be nearly free for all citizens who want a bachelors degree? This is a big question as a college education is all but required for one to get most decent middle-class jobs.

- The globe does warm somewhat, but not enough to have any major environmental effects. Both sides claim they are right.

- Privacy is a big issue as newer technology gives government and businesses the ability to know much about your life. Both parties favor strict privacy regulations, and most businesses respect it as does the government.

- Healthcare has advanced so much that many deadly diseases nowadays are now curable. Cancer is rarely lethal, with only the rarest forms such as pancreatic cancer being threatening.



Issues that will have disappeared or already been dealt with:
- The middle-east is now fairly stable, radical Islamic extremists are basically non-existent. Iraq is a stable nation, and very economically successful, and not just because of oil. Saudi Arabia is experiencing a deep recession as oil is used less and less around the world. Iran is a full fledged democracy, but growth is slow, as is Afghanistan.

- Israel has become a state where both the Israelis and the Palestinians have political power.

- Social security is non-existent at this point save a small department that provides help to the poorest of seniors.

- Al Queda slowly fades as the less extreme generation comes of age. It eventually disappears.

- Racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination are all but non-existent. However, we have yet to have a female President despite a few candidates coming close.

- Newspapers are long gone. Issues from city hall to the capitol are now on the internet.

- Manufacturing jobs no longer exist due to advances in robotics.


Few other predictions:

- Computers have advanced significantly, though they still cannot compete with humans in a number of areas including inductive reasoning, creativity, and self communication. A computer simply cannot emulate anything close to human intelligence due to their inherent design.

- Space tourism is growing, though still mostly a rich persons industry. Space craft remain in space for a few hours then fly back to the ground.

- Economic powers include: USA, China, Japan, EU (though not as much as the others), and the urban parts of India.

- Potential rising economic powers are: Iraq, the Philippines, and a handful of African countries.

- Russia is in bad shape economically.

Eh...I'm pretty sure that computers will have gotten to functional AI by 2025 and full AI by 2050. It takes about 100000GFlops to get a functioning adroid (basically a Fembot) and about 10000000GLOPs to get a fully functioning human mind (think the little artificial boy on AI)...though you would need like 1000000000GLOPs (or more) to emulate every single microscopic function of the human brain. Right now, my laptop (which I got from the wages of my clerk job last summer) runs at about 25GFLOPs (enough to emulate an aligator or chicken).....and the best PC probably runs around 200GFLOPs (enough to emulate a rodent) and is about $3500. You could probably get a super computer for your labortory or business for $25000 that runs about 1000GFLOPs (about as good as a cat emulator).

I want you to take these things away-
1- You just really need one or two generations of computer development to get a surface-deep mammilian emulation
2- We probably will never be able to totally emulate the human mind
3- Its not going to be epic FAIL or epic WIN with "Strong AI". Screw what Searle has to say. He mostly approaches the issue from a non-practical method, anyways.

[Person Man]

...and I agree with that. We may NEVER or at least not this century have a machine (at least a manufacturing machine) that is able to totally able to mimic an animal, or even a person. What we can do is have a machine pretty soon that can emulate the behaviors and functions of a person or animal. A good example of this was in AI. All but one machine emulated the person, but do not come even close to completely mimicking one. I bet in the AI timeframe your probably had your weird prototype robots by 2020ish and your first man and woman emulators by 2030 or 2040. The movie probably took place in the year 2100 or 2150, when computers were given enough time to do full functioning humanity...and the little Pinocchio boy was probably the first one like it though androids have been used for a century beforehand. I base this logic on a pretty simple thing- its much easier to have a program emulator than the console or home computer that you need to run the program. I am guessing it is anywhere between 1000 time and 1 billion times easier emulate something than to totally recreate it.

[Person Man]

I agree somewhat with that as well. Some of these things are being done better and better by the day by even an average business or labortory mainframe, some of these issues will probably take another 200 years. Like I said, the AI timeline is probably the most accurate timeline to date. The most primitive androids claimed to be about 100 years old. It was about the year 2125, so that means the first "mechas" were around since like 2025....and the first full simulation in a machine happened that year.


What about health-care and the life extension issue? (I think as preventable death falls to its near zero, the LE would be around 85) At this point, I think that it is possible and beneficial to have a way to slow down the aging process by about 25 years, so as to allow people to have most of the hard work in forming a career behind them when they have children. This wouldn't mean they could retire to have kids, but it could mean that they could have children when their workhours are the lowest and their incomes are the highest....and that they could work another 20 years beyond what they do now...

So, you would still start your career around the same time, but be able to wait to marry and have kids until you are 40. By then, you could afford to put your kids into better schools and provide better programs and nutrition for them as well as affording to spend more time with them. After that, they could work another 40 years and build up a much larger pension and retire at 80 and live to be 100. (maybe by 2050 or 2070 the average LE would be in the mid-90s- which would actually be a pretty conservative jump).

This seems to be the most optimal way of extended life with our current cultural norms. This will probably double population growth, but I am hopeful that this will encourage more economic incentives for the government and entrapanuers to work harder until we achieve a breakthrough on environmental sustainability and space colonization...just as we have with atom bombs, robotics and the promise of extended life.

There also seems to be a problem of health-rationing that could come of this, but I don't think it would be an issue unless we can alter the fundamentals of cell death. At this time, it would appear reasonable that stem cell research can make sure the body still produces enough to tissue to be reproductive and able-bodied for about half-again as much time as it otherwise would (30 years of good health vs. 50 or 60 years of good health...with about the same amount of fair health to follow  (25 years now and 25 years then).

[Person Man]

40 years from now?

If you follow the theories of Howe and Strauss, times roughly 80 years apart (maybe 70 at times, maybe 90), have similar tempers. 2050 will probably be more like 1970 than like 2009. Expect young adults to challenge the political consensus, the religious norms, and the culture of people born from about 1980 to 2000. Today's clean-cut, conformist, pleasant kids will have become clean-cut, conformist adults with a largely-insipid culture with the equivalents of aging crooners like Bing Crosby and Andy Williams. The 2050-era equivalent of "Easy Listening" Music will be everywhere, and kids will hate it. Expect such musical performances as revivals of Hair, Tommy, and Jesus Christ Superstar to do astonishingly well.

Even if there is no equivalent of the Vietnam War, there will be cultural ferment. Expect to see young adults mock the corporate style of their fathers who got America through the dangerous era of 2005-2020 with long hair, worn jeans, tie-dyed linens, and the like. Beatniks will have given way to hippies.

 So, how will the teenagers 40 years from now rebel against the salad-eating, electric car driving, ice skating left-wing democrat homosexual corprate masters of today?

[Person Man]

To take a stab at what the major issues will be at this time, in no particular order...

1) Human Cloning
Probably
2) The rights of people in an ever more technological society
You mean the ACLU  complaining in 2050 that people's health insurance companies won't let them eat pizza?
3) Moral issues about how much science should do How exactly would any of this work? If trying to stop abortion or stem cell research hasn't been dicey when tried- you ain't seem anything yet!

4) What is a person (meaning that I think abortion will actually still be an issue, but also in terms of cloned humans, and perhaps even robots and animals by this point)
Probably all of the above
5) Fear over an emerging Japan and Turkey - can a socially backwards Turkey or Greying Japan be really that powerful in 40 years? Possibly. I can see Turkey becoming a center-left military junta that will be able to make Turkey into the "Disneyland with the Death Penality"...but also has millions of soldiers. Japan is already jumping on the AI wagon and will probably jump on the human cloning wagon as soon as someone finds a way to reliably do it. If people aren't going to have, let alone raise their kids, the Japanese government will.

6) Anti-immigration laws... after we have spent 2020-2040 in a rush to import labor, like the rest of the current first world I am guessing they will probably be from Africa and Russia, instead of a fully-modern and prosperous Latin America

7) America's aging infrastructure (this is an issue about every 40 years) We are always whining about that.

8 ) Potential admittance of at least some of Canada into the Union (this will likely take the shape of eastern Canada wanting to join the (now far weaker than today) European Union, while sections of Western Canada wish to go with the United States, Ontario and British Columbia will be the two provinces most happy with the status quo; assuming the idea of a Canadian Nation has any validity, the early 21st century will take it to the breaking point Perhaps the more developed parts of Mexico as well

9) Globally, the continued carnage of the Russian War of Dissolution will be on everyone's tv's, but while people in the West will pretend to care, they really won't; the West won't take the side of any of the some 10 states formed by the total break up of Russia in the 2030's, preferring to be a spectator and denounce the violence from afar, happy that its old nemesis has finally been done in. Will Eurasia be the new Africa?

10) The Weaponization of Space... more of a "should we have" by this point.

11) Still coping with some of the effects of climate change, though the total disaster that was predicted never took place.  Hmmm....I give the predicted collapse a 30% chance of happening and a 40% chance of it causing substantial long-term harm to the economy...and a 20% chance of it being a moderately important issue and only a 10% chance of everything being honky dorey.

12) International aid... the planet has the capacity to feed a population that is now 10 billion, but we can't get the food there... still. This time, it will be where they cannot grow food but for global warming.

Wildcards:

Africa - Will it finally find its footing in the modern world?

Atlantic Europe - Will it finally come to terms with its true irrelevance in the modern era, or will it still try to act as the world's guiding light?

China - Is the Chinese government going weaken its grasp on the coastal provinces in order to keep the economy humming, or will it attempt a crackdown and go into isolation as it has in the past?  Eitherway, the pressures created by the burgeoning wealth on the coasts and the continued lack of development in the interior, plus growing ethnic concerns, which by this point will be shrouded in economics, will cause the government to weaken.  This will likely take place by 2030, but will still be an issue in 2050. The most likely thing is that a progressive China emerges in China proper after shedding its Tibetans, Uyghurs and other more conservative minorities

India - Has it continued its benevolent growth as a friend of the United States?  There are three "what ifs" there. Oh. India is going to continue to grow....and it has a good chance of still being a relatively progressive place. However, will we have a cold war with them?

[Person Man]

BTW... the ethnic problems in China are not just in the extreme interior.  They are all over the place.

Hmmm...so I am guessing the "Han" thing is only for the parts of China that are on the Yellow River? Eitherway, if the Chinese Coast did become its own country, it would have about 1m sq mi and about 400 000 000. So yeah, I can see China as the new Japan. And Japan as the new America and China as the new Mexico.

I agree somewhat with that as well. Some of these things are being done better and better by the day by even an average business or labortory mainframe, some of these issues will probably take another 200 years. Like I said, the AI timeline is probably the most accurate timeline to date. The most primitive androids claimed to be about 100 years old. It was about the year 2125, so that means the first "mechas" were around since like 2025....and the first full simulation in a machine happened that year.

I still think that strong AI is nearly impossible, at least with the current design of computers.

As for your points about androids, I don't see those coming to pass to be honest. They're not that practical, especially when you can by many very cheap specialized robots. A good example is Roomba, you'd have one that mows the lawn, perhaps some automatic kitchen appliances, etc.

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The life expectancy will be high eighties, maybe low nineties in places like Japan.

All forms of cancer will probably have high surviveblility rates. All demographic groups will have low birthrates, but that's ok because people live much longer. The slowing of aging to advance a career is an interesting idea. Though the cultural may make the opposite occur.

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I doubt that would be an issue. Life will probably be extendable for the durations you noted.

See, I'm not sure population will be a problem. The trend in every country is to have fewer children. I wouldn't be surprised if the birthrate in the US was 1.3 or something.

I wonder if colonization of Antarctica will occur around that time. That could help slow the effects of overpopulation and such.

Overpopulation may not be an issue. After all, they were predicting in the 20s that we'd starve to death in the 80s due to overpopulation, it didn't happen.

I personally think the world won't change as much as some think. We'll live longer, family sizes may be a bit smaller, and while there will be some cool advances in technology, I doubt many will be practical.

I agree somewhat with that as well. Some of these things are being done better and better by the day by even an average business or labortory mainframe, some of these issues will probably take another 200 years. Like I said, the AI timeline is probably the most accurate timeline to date. The most primitive androids claimed to be about 100 years old. It was about the year 2125, so that means the first "mechas" were around since like 2025....and the first full simulation in a machine happened that year.

I still think that strong AI is nearly impossible, at least with the current design of computers.

As for your points about androids, I don't see those coming to pass to be honest. They're not that practical, especially when you can by many very cheap specialized robots. A good example is Roomba, you'd have one that mows the lawn, perhaps some automatic kitchen appliances, etc.

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The life expectancy will be high eighties, maybe low nineties in places like Japan.

All forms of cancer will probably have high surviveblility rates. All demographic groups will have low birthrates, but that's ok because people live much longer. The slowing of aging to advance a career is an interesting idea. Though the cultural may make the opposite occur.

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I doubt that would be an issue. Life will probably be extendable for the durations you noted.

See, I'm not sure population will be a problem. The trend in every country is to have fewer children. I wouldn't be surprised if the birthrate in the US was 1.3 or something.

I wonder if colonization of Antarctica will occur around that time. That could help slow the effects of overpopulation and such.

Overpopulation may not be an issue. After all, they were predicting in the 20s that we'd starve to death in the 80s due to overpopulation, it didn't happen.

I personally think the world won't change as much as some think. We'll live longer, family sizes may be a bit smaller, and while there will be some cool advances in technology, I doubt many will be practical.

In terms of the way you see science in all of this. By the beginning of mid-century (2025-2045)I think we can come to a common ground. We will probably have or be well on our way to doubling our time in "good health" (today it starts when you are 16 or 17 and goes until you are between 35 and 55), while only slightly increase our time of "fair health" (today its about 50 to 70). We will either have a HAL system or be close to that by then. We will probably have started to build space stations throughout the inner solar system and have regular scheduled flights into LEO...but "space towns" or "star ships".

Where do you think we will be in term of finding aliens, or at least an alien planet...not just some ice rock or giant ball of flaming gas.

[Person Man]

Sounds like Futurama to me. I bet the world would probably be like Futurama by like 2250, if we discover how to travel in relativistic dimensons and speeds. Then again, if we ever did get FTL, would it change the world that much?

[Person Man]

Yes....but how would all of this make it easier for me to get laid?

Then again, back to something for all of us-

Maybe we could force Barbara Bush to have an abortion.

...or perhaps we would able to protect the Crazys from being sodomized by aliens. Then again, is that neccesarily a bad thing?

[Person Man]

Sounds like Futurama to me. I bet the world would probably be like Futurama by like 2250, if we discover how to travel in relativistic dimensons and speeds. Then again, if we ever did get FTL, would it change the world that much?

Where's the suicide booths? We were supposed to have those last year!

Well, already a few states are not arresting their doctors for it.

[Person Man]

Hmmm...this is who I think will be the strongest countries in the world (in no particular order) in 2075-

Total Population 13 000 000 000  (growth of 110% of today) (G)GDP: 350 000 000 000 000  (growth of 700% of today)
United States of America- 700 000 000  Capital: Washington, D.C.
Federation of Mexico-   400 000 000   Capital: Mexico City, D.F.
European Union- 800 000 000         Capital: Brussels
Commonwealth of Turkey- 850 000 000  Capital: Moved to Istanbul
South African Confederation- 1 000 000 000  Capital: Johannasburg or Nairobi
The Federation of Japan- 1 000 000 000  Captial: Tokyo
Christian Republic of Poland- 600 000 000  Captial: Warsaw
Republic of India-  2 500 000 00  Capital: New Delhi
Empire of Persia- 500 000 000  Capital: Tehran
Brazil: 500 000 000 Captial: Brasilia

Second Rate Powers:
State of Israel (only surviving sovreign nation on the Eastern Mediterrian)- 10 000 000 Capital: Tel Aviv
Buddhist Republic of Tibet Capital: Lahsa- 400 000 000
Austrailia Capital: Sydney- 40 000 000
New Zeland: Wellington 7 000 000
Confederacy of the Tartars Capital: Tashkent 300 000 000

Disputed Territories: Siberia- U.S.A., Japan, Tartary
                                 Western Africa- African Confederacy, Commonwealth of Turkey
                                 Indonesia: India, Japan
                                 Sonoma/Ariza- U.S.A., Mexico
                                 Tunisa, Morocco- European Union, Commonwealth of Turkey
                                 Sarmatia- Poland, Turkey
                                 Croatia, Transylvania- Europe, Turkey and Poland

[Person Man]

Any other takers?

[Person Man]

Yeah I know all about Balkanization, seatown.  But I was talking about cannibalism.

Well the US owners are already cannibalizing the country... and that will stop once there is not sufficient energy(fossil fuels) to do so, and we will see some pretty spectacular fighting. As for literal cannibalism I don't see it happening, most people will die before they get hungry.

Though I am optimistic that there are progressively more fossil fuels as they find better ways to get to it. Though I think when capitalism finally separates itself from those who are not capitalists, it will be interesting to see what happens next.

[Person Man]

I don't know about 2050, but in the coming decades, I think there are some issues that are destined to develop.

Many major economic issues in the future will be those related to our aging populace.  

I expect Social Security to be a big flash point in the future.  Even now, you see the Millennial generation opposes Social Security because they think that they may never see the benefit from it.  As long as each generation is larger than the one that comes before it people can expect to get more out of the system than they put in, but once that reverses the system is hard to sustain.  The US will become much more friendly to immigrants, seeing them as a way to reduce the age ratio.  Immigration is an advantage that the US will have over any other western nation, and I expect the US to be very prosperous compared to the rest of today's first world nations.

My guess is that artificial intelligence and genetic engineering/human cloning will be major social issues in the future.

I think its almost given that in the future a computer will gain true sentience.  I can imagine that there will be mass paranoia about sentient computers and fear that they might become malicious.  Meanwhile, 'designer babies' will become a reality in the future, especially for the very rich, which will only increase the gap between classes as the children of rich people accrue more advantages.  

Other issues in the future will be space exploration and colonization and foreign policy as always (though I don't feel comfortable speculating on the particulars of it).  

There has already been born children that have been born from prescreen embryos and now they are trying to get approval for IVF with mitochondrial DNA donors.

[Person Man]

Yeah I know all about Balkanization, seatown.  But I was talking about cannibalism.

Well the US owners are already cannibalizing the country... and that will stop once there is not sufficient energy(fossil fuels) to do so, and we will see some pretty spectacular fighting. As for literal cannibalism I don't see it happening, most people will die before they get hungry.

Though I am optimistic that there are progressively more fossil fuels as they find better ways to get to it. Though I think when capitalism finally separates itself from those who are not capitalists, it will be interesting to see what happens next.

That's not optimistic... it'll be a different type of catastrophe, environmental degradation.

That's true but at least there might be a future that could come of it. Perhaps there will just be the collapse of our civilization, but it could be the start of a new one.

[Person Man]

I'd imagine that if someone did travel in time and change the past, we would never know it would happen. This is the second most plausible thing (something like Crono Trigger). The first most plausible thing is that time travel is impossible or that civilization goes extinct before it figures it out (sort of like a book called Evolution where within the lifetimes of most posters here, civilization gets destroyed by a mix of Global Warming, Terrorism and Genetic Engineering and in a thousand years civilization's survivors start to evolve back into animals). The distant third being that time travel just creates alternative realities (something like Stargate) and a forth being that Doctor Who is real.

[Person Man]

Though, I think I made this thread wondering what people really believed would happen with current and possible issues in 40 years and 4 have already come to pass.

My main things I was trying to poke out and get a natural, candid response about whether one of the two parties would "just give up" on abortion or gay rights just like conservatives had to do with overt racism in the 1960s or what liberals had to do with what is now known as Obamacare and its potential future expansions in the 80s and 90s. Of course, there will be new issues, too.