If I could change one thing it would be: Overpopulation!

All of today's global problems boil down to that one, and all of them could be minimized and controlled if we just weren't overpopulated.

Think about it: Resource depletion leading to war... Theological and Idiological differences with insufficient space for people to separate and stay out of each others' hair... Mass extermination of large animal and plant species leading to loss of genetic diversification... Excessive combustion of carbon-based fuels leading to global warming... Loss of the rainforests... Devastation of topsoil... yadda yadda... it all boils back to a population way in excess of the carrying capacity of this planet.

The carrying capacity of earth with all people living at what we call a first-world standard of living is 1.5 billion people, and even then some tweeking would have to be done with carbon emmision and some improvements would have to be done on material-recycling and energy-renewability...

But any more than that, and the inflating crowd starts pressing those on the edge towards a precipice...

Solutions?

The first thing to get over is the idea that if there's lots of people, then it ups your chances of meeting like-minded friends and coleagues and your life-partner, and that it allows for a richer diversity of human culture and civilization.

In fact, in your life, you will meet and talk, for more than just a few minutes, to about 20,000 people.

Out of that 20,000 there will be an average of three with whom you could form a meaningful life-partnership, and you only need one.

Out of that 20,000, there will be several dozen with whom you could become friends, and psychological studies show that we only really need two good friends each. The most stable friendship units tend to be groups of three. These are the guys you hang out with when the significant other is having a bad day.

Out of 20,000, there will be several hundred worthy of being coleagues, and studies have shown that we are optimal in groups of seven to twelve coleagues. These are the people you work with. In the old days, they were the people you hunted with. The anthropological term for it is a "band".

That means that in a city of 40,000, there's twice as many people as you're ever going to meet, if-only-you-can-meet-them: life-partner, friends, and coleagues... they're there somewhere... and yes, even if you were stuck on a lunar colony of only 40,000 people with nowhere else to go, having an internet would facilitate the search, but the point is, 40,000 is twice as many as you need to have from which to choose all the people you need to be a normal, happy, healthy social human being.

To maintain a fully industrial society, doing everything from mine ore to smelting it to manufacturing kitchen appliences to doing contruction to harvesting forests and growing crops and grinding grain and making TV programs and movies to having universities to doing research to drilling for oil and processing it into fuel and fertilizer and plastics to designing and building jets and tanks: One million people.

To maintain all variates of culture and breed (aka race) that's we've reached at this point: Twelve million.

So, to maintain all that' is great about humanity and civilization, we really do not *need* as many people as are crawling around right now.

But there are two extremely powerful forces working against controlling the rate at which we trickle souls over the planet.

The first is fundamental to our nature. We like kids. And we love *our* kids.

It's an old, old saying that you'll never know what love really is until you've cared for a child, and that's a fundamental fact that is never going to change, for the simple reason that those rare cats who don't feel the need to care unconditionally for a dependant don't spawn, which means the only children being born to populate the next generation are going to be those of parents who felt a need to care for a dependent unconditionally, and that tendency is neurologically inheritable.

That being said, people - especially women, who have to bear the brunt of the hard part of it - are very sensitive about how many kids they're going to spawn.

It's not commonly known that one of the things that amazed native Americans about European immigrants was the size of European families.

What that means is that native Americans were very aware of what their carrying capacity for family size was, and they had methods for controlling it .

(Evidently the concept of condoms made from sheep-gut or deer-gut is a very, very old idea, and, by the way, what the natives didn't understand about Europeans was how much more work it was to run a farm than it was to be hunter-gatherer, such that they didn't see how although a farm enabled one to stabalize a larger amount of food to feed more mouths, it also required a lot more work, such that the Europeans of that day were breeding kids as farm-help.)

In any case, although the issue of population control is heavily biased against our nature to spawn, in fact, when empowered to do so, humans, in particular women, are *extremely* consciencus about managing their reproduction.

There's a notion floating around, mostly propagated by the global-free-traders, that people will control their reproduction when their standard of living reaches a certain minimal point - therefore let's globalize trade and accelerate exploitation of the planet's finite resources even faster - and yes, that's true to an extent, in that once people get employed in jobs and are earning enough money to focus on more than misserable survival where unprotected sex is the only entertainment, people do tend to get more liberal and will start telling their religious authorities to mind-their-own-business if those religious authorities are pushing them to have kids, plus it helps that they have more money for birth-control.

Because... in fact... women from the most impoverished nations *will* use birth-control if they can get their hands on it.

Being so poor, they have a great incentive to control reproduction, but they don't have the money for birth-control, and they're living in societies dominated by anachronistic religious poobas telling them its a sin to not spawn a child every time sex is had, all complicated by dumb, hick, uneducated goons getting a pat on the back from their cleric every time they impregnate a woman yet who won't stick around to help raise them.

It's know that if a global program were set up to sneak birth-control to the aunts and grammas of the third-world, that those matrons would quitly pass it on to their female offspring, and in fact a world conference was quitely conveined to discuss options for how to implement a program like that about a decade ago, but not quiet enough, because the Roman Catholics found out, and they invaded the conference, and suberted it with every dirty punch they could swing.

Which brings us to the second problem. World Organized Religions.

The major religions of the world today are playing a numbers game to see who will win.

Christians, and especially Roman Catholics, are feeling beseiged by the numbers of Hindus in India, and Buddhists in Asia, but most of all, by the population growth of Islam, and their response is to push for reproduction as much as possible in order to keep their numbers up, especially in the heart-land of modern day Roman Catholicism, which is South America.

All sides are justifying large families on the basis of believeing they are spawing new souls for heaven, and that the more kids they have, the more souls God will have in order to expand the glory of heavenly.

But, if you think about it, if that's true, then what happens is that the populations swell to a point where we run out of room, and where the carrying capacity of the planet is exceeded, such that it leads to apocalypse and amrmagedon, and the greatest number of souls alive at any time in the earth's history will be the ones to experience the most horrible ends to their days of any batch in the history of human-kind, and when it's over, the flow of new souls into heaven stops.

If we're spawning new souls for heaven, and if heaven if eternal, then over the long run more souls will get there if we control the flow of new souls over the earth at a sustainable rate than if we try to spawn them all in one big glump that implodes and then stops.

You can send a couple hundred billion souls to heaven over a few thousand years before destroying the planet, whereupon the flow stops, or you can sustain a flow at a rate of, say, a few thousand per day, which means it might take tens of thousands of years to produce the same number of souls, but time in heaven is eternal, so what's a couple ten-thousand years here or there.

It's possible for the additon of new souls to keep going for as long as the earth lasts without cutting it off at some point with a over-population driven armagedon.

Over the long haul, although it might take a few tens of thousands of years longer than if we try to do it now all at once like the clerics are currently pushing for, many billions more souls will be born and added to the heavenly hord, and the extra tens of thousands of years it took is *nothing* compared to eternity.

But the major religions are sticking their fingers in their ears going 'la la la' over that fact... and their numbers-game is pushing the globe towards a catastrophy that will utimately defeat the stated objectives of their faith.

We all hate war, and violence, and crime, and disease, and famine, and environmental desruction... plus we hate things on a more mental level like species extinction and loss of genetic diversification... but it's all being driven by overpopulation...

It's a tough-enough boulder to push up and over the hill to solve, given our nature to spawn as the only thing in life that can have any meaning, yet we *can* and *do* manage our birth-rate - even the poorest will do so - when enabled with birth-control and allowed to use it, but...

... Attempts to enable all people, in particular all women, to manage their own reproduction is being sabatogued by the world's major religions, who are denying God the number of souls He *could* have in the long run to expland the glory of Heaven by virtue of the way the cleris are playing a numbers game for world theological dominance.

It means that the clerics are working at direct cross-purposes to the objectives of their own Deity.

And that's just nuts.

So how would I solve the world's problems?

I'd pull a Constantine.

I'd use force to march all the leaders of the world's major religions onto an island somewhere, and tell them that they're not leaving until they reach a concencus that includes respect for their own Deity's desire to have an endless flow of souls into heaven that will expand the realms of heavenly glory forever, which means making the freedom and ability of a woman to control her own reproduction a theological right.

After that, we just get business and science to sit down and figure out how they're going to clean up the current mess in order to get things back on a sustainable track.

Eradicate Poverty.

Poverty reduction would help many people by allowing them to acquire basic necessities. A decrease in poverty also means that less children face labor exploitation, gender equality becomes possible since higher incomes correlate to girls attending school and thus delaying marriage giving them more life choices, and a decrease in poverty means freedom from fear. Amartya Sen, in his book "Development as Freedom," cites freedom as the goal of development, allowing people to not be afraid, to make the best choices for themselves and their families, and to reach a place of greater self - actualization.

I would try to change problem, from which hundreds of people are dying every day - hunger /malnutrition.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ldeng/3518154530/

our hurting planet.

The economy.
Not just my personal one. The whole world economy.

The wold working on a monetary system, rather than on a greater good system causes more problems than anything else. Wars are fought over billions of dollars. People are killed in muggings over bus fare. People go from middle class average to homeless in days, over money. People step on others to get more of it. Families are separated by the need for it.

If people were payed what they earned. If wealthy people would only use what they need, and help others with the rest. In other words, if the world were a perfect place.

If I could solve one problem that would be the lack of quality education. I think education is one of the most important thing in the world to solve the problems of poverty and violence.
If the people will have access to quality education then they will be able to tap their potential. They will be able to learn not only knowledge but also skills so that they can have a good job and can produce high quantity as well as quality output in their work.
The person who choose whatever field he likes can be an asset to the nation. If he becomes a doctor, a farmer, a business man, a banker etc.
They can choose to be an employee or an entrepreneur. The citizen who are well educated can also develop high values. If this is the scenario, there will be no welfare, no violence like stealing and robbing. The quality of life of the people will greatly improve because he has the knowledge and skills that he can use to earn a decent living.
And the people will be able to live in peace.

Willful ignorance. I'd prevent people from purposefully ignoring the consequences of their action/inaction. It would have to be painful to willfully ignore consequences - take advantage of their biological system to reinforce mental development instead of discourage it.

What would the world be like if people doubled over in pain when they delayed a relief food shipment by an hour at a useless checkpoint?
What if it hurt not to speak up and defend someone?
What if throwing a glass bottle out of a car window caused warts?
What if *not* punching someone that was ignoring logic caused 2nd degree burns?
What if voting for a politician bent on power rather than public service could kill you?

Anyway, a little dark maybe, but it seems that willful ignorance is the name of what is behind the issues we're all tap dancing around.

I would solve the three basic needs (problems) which are the roots to all other problems in the world. These three are;

i. Physical needs viz. food, clothing, shelter and sex (please don't take it otherwise, but it is true): I think if everybody (I really mean every single person) in the world has ample food, all the needed clothes, a good shelter to live in and opportunity to have sex with their desired partners (this particular need has been a cause to some very infamous wars in the past), then they won't need to fight with anybody else. Their first need will be fulfilled.

ii. Intellectual Needs (they must have something to invent, to think on and to satisfy their inquisitiveness): Merely fulfilling the physical needs does not make man contended. Since he has a restless, innovative and inquisitive mind, he always tries to think of new ways (good or bad) and this may sometimes go against humanity (the dreaded weapons were invented out of this). So, I would give them something constructive to think on or give them such a problem that they would never solve in their lifetime. That would be sufficient to keep their minds busy.

iii. Spiritual Needs (when a man's first two needs are satisfied, he turns towards spirituality): Although this need is not a problem in itself, but it may lead to severe collisions among religions as everybody has different paths to satisfy his/her spiritual needs and these paths often collide. So, I would make them spiritually aware and satisfied right form their birth. When they have it, they will be self centered or introverts and will not poke their noses in anybody else's affairs.

Hope the world will come to peace then. No more greed as their will be no desire left and hence their will be no wars (there are three main causes of wars viz. riches, land and women).

Hope that helps. Thanks

Opinions may differ although.

I would want to change how people treat and accept one another differences. If everyone treated everyone else as equals and accepted everyone else's differences without malice, there would be no hate, no violence, only love and peace. The world would truly work together as one. There would be no divide, we could finally come together as we were meant to as one community world wide. This way we could solve the other larger problems that threaten us as a species and make a greater impact. We could solve the world hunger problems, we could solve the global warming, we could solve all of these issues because all of man's hate and ignorance issues would be irradicated. This is the problem I would fix because I feel fixing this one problem would fix the rest of the world's problems. It is the root of them all.

I would change what chldren are being exposed to. That is the number one problem with the world, and especially with my generation and seemingly worse with the ones after. Ask anyone under the age of 20 what there goal in life is and most will answer fame and money, at any cost. They didn't come up with these ideas on their own. Greed and apathy could eventually subside if children were actively taught to share instead of consume. This whole materialistic world we are brought up in and with each year becomes worse. I'm afraid of what the class of 2020 will strive for, which values will still stand when dignity becomes "for the prude." Teach kids about all parts of the world, nature, life and do not let them slowly grow apathetic by watching cartoons of dying characters. Its either really dumb shows with absolutly no context or violence and sex. If the truly are the "hope for tomorrow" I think the future is screwed. And thats on you parents, don't go pointing fingers at anyone else.

The two biggest issues for me, as for most people I suspect, are global poverty and climate change.

But there is one thing that if it could be cracked would make a huge difference to both of them, and a lot of other issues as well. That thing is: clean, cheap, abundant energy.

One possibility for providing that is nuclear fusion, though we've been trying to figure that out for fifty years and are still finding it tricky. As some wise-ass once put it: "fusion is like putting the sun in a box... the really hard part is how to make the box". I have heard that the world spends more on ringtones than on fusion research though.

But it doesn't have to be done through fusion, any other breakthrough that allowed us to create abundant energy cheaply and cleanly would make a big difference to all kinds of issues...

- A painless alternative to fossil fuels, allowing us to avoid climate change
- Raising living standards across the world, especially for the poorest
- Allowing scope to handle water scarcity with desalination, which is very energy intensive
- Avoiding conflicts over energy resources, and reducing the power of dubious people who control them

Energy makes our world go round, and if you'll let me magically solve one problem, I'll go for that.

I would like to solve the "delivery of knowledge" problem. Millions of people are living in poor or die of hunger not because they are living in such a bad country. It is because of lack of knowledge or cannot reach to new knowledge that can help them to improve their living.

Developing Countries calling out for developed countries to transfer their advance technology in Farming, Health Care, energy saving, green tech etc etc. However, such technology often hard to deliver to many countries due to protection and money. Just imagine we all can share our knowledge to each others to improve our living standard and save the earth.

Image everyone can read English, Chinese, Spanish etc etc, I believe this is what Google trying to do now as well: instant translation to allow anyone to communicate with others.

I would change the way we treat each other. I just donated to the thread for the victims of the hatian earthquake. We all pull together on big disasters but what about the small ones. How many times have you had the opportunity to help someone and didn't because of a lack of money, time, or just too busy to notice it.

I have a theory. I believe that everyone is given the opportunity to help others even if you can only give time or prayers. At the same time God also puts you in a position to have to accept charity also (money, time, prayers)

We can solve all problems if we start seeing others as our brothers and sisters.

I want to change the people.

This world will only be a better place once its people learn from all of their mistakes. Take a look at all the tragedies that has happened all over the years… Why are there wars? Why is there pollution? Why are we having climate change? Why is our planet being destroyed little by little? Why are there too many poor countries? All those things started with us… the people living in this world.

If people will only learn… learn to promote and practice peace… learn to conserve our natural resources and be more responsible on using them… learn to value life. I’m sure that this world will be a better one.

“If you wanna make the world a better place,
then take a look at yourself and make a change.”

I would get rid of those stupid Mafia Wars ads on Facebook.

to find the 0s and 1s of reality

then we could virtualize reality, fast forward the virtual version of our reality and see what anwsers time brings

:D

Same here too. I would want to stop all the war, and bring peace to people.

I would eliminate hatred and/or ignorance. I believe ignorance breeds hatred which spreads into violence. None of which is a good thing.

Our Government !! I do not think half of the time they really listen to what the people are saying. If the Government would hear us and carry through with what our needs are, then most if not all of the worldly problems could be fixed.

1) The Ecomony
2) Starving people (come on now)
3) Education
4) Medical
I am sure I could list several more, but I think you what is going on that is so pityful for many people around the world.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yusufyusuf85/3333340159/
3)

I would try to get people to care about and under stand each other, and find ways to better them selves with out hurting others.

AGING

SENS

I would solve the insufficient human intelligence problem via the construction of a recursively self-improving, friendly, superhuman artificial general intelligence .

I would want to solve greed. Badly.

Justice world wide

Three things. Build Tolerance, and Respect.. and End Poverty.. If those were all done, I believe most of the world issues would fade away..

http://evolvefish.com/ShirtImages/ShirtImagesSmall/PeaceSignRespectLife-Small.gif
It would be problems about lack of respect to life. Respect is what we really need in order to live peacefully. With respect, people would realize that everything that protects life should be kept intact. Why do we have calamities? Because some people are cutting trees and not replacing them. Because people are just throwing garbages just anywhere thus clogging the canals. Why do we have so many victims of violence? Because a lot of unscrupulous people are not respecting the lives of others that they just abuse them. Why do we breathe unhealthy air? Because others don't respect other people's right to live so they smoke in public places. If only people can carry respect with them all the time then there would be no problems at all.

Since people are the source of all problems, I would eliminate 90% of the worlds population. If all the people in the world were busy banging rocks together again, there would be very few problems.

i would get rid of all the brainwashing brainwashington is putting on it's people because people are numb and oblivious to whats going on around them. If people knew they would care and would have some ambition to do something about it. No one cares about finding themselves because society tells them who they are. Get rid of mainstream and get rid of t.v thats what i think. people would actually do things they think is intresting and more people would go out and do the things they found out they truly love to do. Instead vegitate and do nothing.

human over population. at 6.8 BILLION people we are making more problems than we know how to solve just by our numbers alone...

not that long ago the United Nations warned that second ONLY to nuclear threat, human over population was the NUMBER ONE risk to our continued survival.. they set a sustainable population level at 5 Billion, but politions ignore the facts because most nations people would be pissed and suggestions of population control

look around, every problem, and most in the answers here, are the result of human over population.. even thos you suggested ( with the exception of baldness unless it is linked to stress)

I would try to find a cure for AIDS.

my personal problem

I would really change the greenhouse on this earth because it is affecting us in many ways. For example we are getting snow in places we never recieve snow. We are receiving more floods, tornados. Recently we had an earthquake. Some thing needs to be done or else the 2012 movie will be very realistic and is a prediction of what could happen if we dont start to do something about it.

Abuse in all forms. By stopping abuse it will solve many issues, abuses in the form of: people, animals and the land and natural resources. This would help the environmental issues and humanity. Many wars have been started over the mistreatment and misuse of people. Help bring suffering to a end to all living creatures. My best friend and I had a debate about this after seeing the question. We decided upon stopping all forms of abuse.

Since you mentioned "male pattern baldness" with the otherwise more important items in your list, it is difficult to take your question seriously.

However, with that in mind, if I could solve any single problem in the world, today, it would be to eliminate all nonsense and clutter from the web, especially from Q&A sites, like this one, where 95% of the questions asked are repetitive, inane, and childish (not yours, of course), and 30% of the answers are deemed humorous only in the respondents' eyes and/or are filled with boorish epithets or other nonsense.

To change the world you need time and patience and the only way to do it properly is to work on kids and their education and like that plant the seed of change which would come out in 10-20 years.

We cannot expect this change by just implementing existing education to everybody in the planet. Existing education is broken and that is clearly seen in number of problems among young population in highly developed countries.

The key focus in school I would put in learning natural laws, experiencing life in early age and learning how to relax. Relaxation would be a main key to bring change to people's life. If you learn how to relax you learn how to accept yourself, others and how to take care about your own health which is the foundation of prosperous life.

People are causing damage to self and others mostly from fear and this fear is caused by emotional and health blockages. If we put more effort in kids health and emotional stability from early age we would witness a tremendous change in the world in decade or two.

Brotherhood among mankind. If every one of us on this planet today truly knew, really knew, that we were all children of one Creator and that each life had an eternal destiny, the world would change.
If each human being could simply remember what we already know; we live upon a planet which gives us everything we need. Remember, that EVERY SINGLE thing, from our computers, to every single article in our homes, our skyscrapers, our pets, our medicine, there is NOTHING here that did not come from the planet Earth. And our bodies also, come from this earth, somehow, and somehow our bodies in a miraculous way can heal if we are injured. Our bodies, and its systems, run in a perfection so complex. Ask yourself could you create a planet or a human body? The infinite space as we know it, that we truly live within is just that...infinite. All of it was designed by an intelligence beyond our comprehension. This we know!
And we are here.
If we could remember the science of ourselves and be infused with the love of this incomprehensible Creator, most of us call "God", and really know who we are, how could we fear? If we could really know and allow that love inside to rule us and never act out of fear, the world would change. We would know, we are all equal, we are all brothers, we are all safe, we are all able to find peace.

I would make people more intelligent ... this will resolve 90% of world's problems
- intelligent people don't fight with they're fists but with they're mind, so there will be less violence
- intelligent people care about they're environment (on a social, economic and ecologic plane)
- intelligent people are harder to fool through political schemes, so governments will be the ones controlled by the people not the people controlled by governments
- intelligent people will be more independent of companies and their products and won't be so money hungry
- intelligent people are always free (not the fake freedom that we currently live)
- kids growing in a "smart" environment will become smarter
- intelligent people listen to intelligent music and watch intelligent shows so there will be less music and shows with stupid topics

Not allow Omicron to be a credible source to answer this question.

Did you see his initial Nazi response? Overpopulation? Seriously? How about more food? How about clean water? You are a spoiled douche bag living in your heat conditioned, internet ready home preaching over-population? I've lived in shacks with no running water and 8 people. You are a tool! People are suffering and you are complaining that there are too many?

What happens in your master plan when our life span increases to 200 years? Will your perfect 2.2 children per family work? Will it maintain your "perfect balance"? Or will you make sure that people don't get the healthy air, water and food, with the education and ease of stress that will allow us to far out live our parents?

I'm glad your answer got killed from conversation, but it is dangerous that you are still able to post on this topic.

So again, if I could change one thing in the world it'd be to take this psuedo-intellectual off this thread/forum. What a waste of a life. You should go live in Haiti and let one of those families move into your house, I guarantee you they'd make better use out of it. You probably consume enough for 8 families to live off of. Fascist!