crash
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StubHead said:In the good old days, it was enough to just set grandpa on a passing iceberg, or out for the wolves to snack on... unless grandpa made a concerted effort to educate himself up to the standard of tribal elder. Or, you could just keep killing the young male upstarts until there were no young male upstarts any mo'. These processes were greatly eased by the facts that people just did not live very long; King Tut died at 18 of a broken leg, Alexander died of some flu or something at 33.
Math -> when 44 is the average age of death and you kill ONE 22-year old in warfare, either one more old guy makes it to 66 or two make it to 55. (The idea that old guys kept starting wars to kept more fresh young women available, hmmm. Kill off some young guys, then forge a truce that leaves you exactly where you were before, hmmm.). And all that lovely Biblical, Greco-Roman, and Eoropean history where brothers keep killing each other, sons slaughtered fathers and fathers slaughtered sons etc. - fo real!
And our wonderful pension plans have conspired with our wonderful advances in medicine to create a system whereby Junior has to work three full-time minimum-wage jobs, just so grandpa & grandma can play golf and go on cruises till they're 99 years old - at which point Junior may in his 40's!
We can only hope that Americans get so fat that they end up dying before they retire. No more twinkies doesn't help that though.