Is Not Over-population Our Greatest Problem?
This is split from one of the "Systemic Racism" threads. Below is my post and the passage from @StreetlightX it responds to, and then a further response from @StreetlightX.
"No one expected these protests, the kinds of conversations they opened, the political atmosphere they birthed, the scale of what they are bringing about (perhaps never to be substantiated)". — StreetlightX
Me: It's the focus point of the much broader, deeper anger of the frustrated "consumer". To be consumers is to be cattle being fattened up for the slaughter. Discussion about sexism, racism, classism and so on is just "rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic". The frustration is on account of the apparent impossibility of coordinated action. We affluent ones are all beneficiaries of the enslavement of others; it's just mostly geographically far away enough for us to remain comfortable.
We are all being screwed (to varying degrees) by the financial elites, in a system in which we are all hopelessly complicit. We expect our politicians to do something, but our politicians are too cowardly, or stupid, or "in the pockets of the plutocrats" or just plain impotent to do anything, other than make vague promises, about doing "something".
The angry outrage is the outcry of systemic impotence; it's all noise in a deadly vacuum. Predictably, once some degree of the customary comfort is restored, we will settle back into, as much as resources allow, "business as usual", and we'll do that until resources no longer allow. That is what is coming; whether next year, or in five, ten, twenty or fifty years.
The greatest problems we collectively face are resource depletion, destruction of habitat, species extinctions, destruction of soils by the industrial agricultural machine that is needed to feed our absurdly over-bloated numbers. But these much more dire (than mere "racism") problems scarcely get a serious mention by our, themselves mostly ridiculously comfortable, public intellectuals. (I'm not excluding myself; I'm ridiculously comfortable too).
I know this could be thought to be off-topic; but the bigger picture is more sorely needed now than ever before. What are we prepared to sacrifice to address the primary problem of overpopulation? Is there any measure which could be acceptable? Are we even able to talk about it?
Split this off into another thread if you like: I'd love to hear what the brightest minds have to say about our greatest problems and the one greatest problem that is behind them all; overpopulation.
"No one expected these protests, the kinds of conversations they opened, the political atmosphere they birthed, the scale of what they are bringing about (perhaps never to be substantiated)". — StreetlightX
Me: It's the focus point of the much broader, deeper anger of the frustrated "consumer". To be consumers is to be cattle being fattened up for the slaughter. Discussion about sexism, racism, classism and so on is just "rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic". The frustration is on account of the apparent impossibility of coordinated action. We affluent ones are all beneficiaries of the enslavement of others; it's just mostly geographically far away enough for us to remain comfortable.
We are all being screwed (to varying degrees) by the financial elites, in a system in which we are all hopelessly complicit. We expect our politicians to do something, but our politicians are too cowardly, or stupid, or "in the pockets of the plutocrats" or just plain impotent to do anything, other than make vague promises, about doing "something".
The angry outrage is the outcry of systemic impotence; it's all noise in a deadly vacuum. Predictably, once some degree of the customary comfort is restored, we will settle back into, as much as resources allow, "business as usual", and we'll do that until resources no longer allow. That is what is coming; whether next year, or in five, ten, twenty or fifty years.
The greatest problems we collectively face are resource depletion, destruction of habitat, species extinctions, destruction of soils by the industrial agricultural machine that is needed to feed our absurdly over-bloated numbers. But these much more dire (than mere "racism") problems scarcely get a serious mention by our, themselves mostly ridiculously comfortable, public intellectuals. (I'm not excluding myself; I'm ridiculously comfortable too).
I know this could be thought to be off-topic; but the bigger picture is more sorely needed now than ever before. What are we prepared to sacrifice to address the primary problem of overpopulation? Is there any measure which could be acceptable? Are we even able to talk about it?
Split this off into another thread if you like: I'd love to hear what the brightest minds have to say about our greatest problems and the one greatest problem that is behind them all; overpopulation.
Comments (174)
Besides, women are squeezed out of their rightful contraception, away from possible emergency abortion and to give births against their will only to fuel the flames of evil, tragedies guaranteed!
That is, combatting Overpopulation is important but fighting crime, evil needs to take priority in order for the necessary rationality to pave the way for all other problems to fall.
Does this include ideas like high density living? High density living, as practised in our big cities is a lifestyle. Is that detrimental to cities like huge populations are to nations. Even in countries like India people migrate from rural areas to cities for work compounding existing problems and creating new ones. Over population might be relative to countries. So how many people should particular countries have and how should they be dispersed?
As I understand it industrial farming practices, most notably the use of chemical fertilizers, which destroy soils and ecosystems are essential to feed the current population of around 8 billion. One estimate I read (can't locate the source) is that the planet could sustainably (i.e. employing organic farming practices) feed around 200 million, one fortieth of the current population. If this is accurate, this is the primary problem we face.
Quoting Janus
So is your point of view coming from the idea that we can’t feed the world population, that that’s the primary problem?
It’s true that there’s still a lot of capacity, but the cost of the capacity or resource extraction will get increasingly higher as time goes on. All the easy to access cheap energy (fossil fuel) and minerals have been taken. It’s also costly to deal with the effects of climate change and to purify water. Capitalistic economic growth simply isn’t possible when the future is ever more expensive, at least not with the current global financial system.
Sustainability will require more than depopulation but could have unexpected rewards, if it’s at all possible.
Quoting Janus
If we care about other countries besides ourselves and our alliances?
Quoting praxis
How would that help India’s population problem for example? They had an imbalance without the modern consumer lifestyle.
“Capitalistic economic growth simply isn’t possible when the future is ever more expensive ... “
Edit: what choice does India have to deal with caring for its population?
The point is that we cannot feed the world population sustainably.
:up:
Quoting praxis
I agree that it will require (much) more than depopulation; but it will certainly (if the kinds of estimates of how many people can be fed by organic farming practices are more or less correct) require depopulation. The conundrum is how to bring that about, or even discuss it in ways that people can come to accept.
It's a problem even if we just care about our own for the long term.
Quoting Janus
I think there’s a difference between managing the resources and population in a country like Australia and Africa or India. Australia could manage it, but India, that’s a different problem.
Quoting Janus
So you don’t think that, in theory, redistribution could change things?
Redistribution of what?
What I’m trying to say is that if we could feed all these people without damaging the environment, if that was possible, would you still regard population as a problem?
Same story with China and other countries, I understand. Don’t know.
I wouldn’t have guessed the number was that low.
Quoting Janus
So what is the primary problem of over population? And whose problem is it?
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
This is how I see it. Is people starving the problem or the damage it would take to feed them the problem?
*World average being about 5t.
Quoting Brett
It seems obvious they're both problems. The overarching problem seems to be how to decide what to sacrifice. If we favor saving people now over saving other species and the environment, the long term effect will likely be much worse for all future humanity.
Bringing the "poor brown nations" up to our level of lifestyle will obviously greatly exacerbate the problem, though. Are we prepared to come down to their level of lifestyle? And even if we could, how will all the people be fed once we have given up industrial farming practices?
Quoting Janus
So the answer is in ethics?
Again, it seems obvious that it is (potentially at least) everyone's problem.
Quoting Brett
I don't know about the answer "being in ethics", but the problem is certainly an ethical one. Can you think of any answer?
Quoting Janus
First of all I see that as a moral position.
Quoting Janus
If the problem is ethical then the answer is ethical. Feed everyone now and sacrifice the future. Save the future and let millions die.
"Instead of resolving environmental problems, promoting family planning to save the planet often has deleterious effects on reproductive health and rights. For one, it upholds family planning as a tool to achieve national and international goals like economic growth, environmental sustainability, and national security. At the same time, it points to women’s bodies as appropriate targets for intervention in the name of a greater good.
The abuses of population control show what can happen when women’s health is second to other, more powerful, agendas. China’s one-child policy, while somewhat relaxed, still strictly regulates and restricts fertility, particularly in cities. In some states in India, two-child norms keep people with more than two kids from sitting on local governing boards or from receiving government benefits. Romani women in Central Europe, and women living with HIV in parts of Africa and Latin America, undergo forced and coerced sterilizations. A 2014 audit of California women’s prisons found that tubal ligations were performed for the purposes of sterilization, sometimes without the consent of the inmate. In this context, endorsing population reduction as an environmental prerogative is abhorrent."
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/01/family-planning-environment-capitalism/
Who says we can't address the problem of overpopulation without making huge sacrifices?
There are studies that show that female empowerment results in the decision to have less kids.
Regardless of the country, more empowered women desire significantly fewer children compared with their less empowered counterparts. https://bmcwomenshealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12905-019-0747-9
OK, fair enough, I guess it is a kind of moral position to impute something as a problem to those who may not care about it. It is a problem, though, to anyone who cares about the future of humanity, or even just about the future of their own children or other youngsters they may care about.
Quoting Brett
Right, of course any answer has an ethical (or unethical) dimension. But what if the problem is ethically intractable and requires a pragmatic (and, it might be though, unethical) solution whichever way we might go?
Honestly, I'm much more optimistic in this approach than trying to get the filthy rich to tone down their lifestyle.
Maybe you're right about that, but what can we actually do to eliminate the seemingly inevitable human error and indifference involved in such wastage. And how would we coordinate and cooperate globally such as to be able to redistribute food all around the globe in sufficient quantities to feed everyone without massively ramping up fossil fuel usage?
And how are we going to produce even enough food to feed everyone without continuing the disastrous farming practices that have already brought much of the world's lands to the brink of biotic impoverishment?
It's all very well to say that something could be done "if only...". But if there is to be a practical solution to work towards, even if you could convince everyone to cooperate in working towards it, it would first need to be a plausibly realisable solution, otherwise no one will take it seriously in the first place, and it could never even begin to get off the ground. I think we first need to face up to the real scope and complexity of the problem and leave politics and ideology out of it at least initially.
This is not only, but also, because politics and ideology are always already polarizing, divisive forces, and in regard to this seemingly intractable problem we would need cooperation and coordination first and foremost to have any hope at all of finding and implementing a solution.
*Many of them.
You're living in a dream world, typical fairly land philosopher who has no understanding of the scientific, political, economic or practical side to their argument. You don't make streetlightx look reasonable but you come awfully close. Your interpretations are overdramatic, unreasonable and really just argue factually incorrect nonsense.
Please stick to areas of philosophy where just describing your feelings is sufficient and your absurd interpretations can be forgiven... like morality about saving the whales or something.
You don't name names, you don't give figures, you don't show data, if you really can make a better argument then go ahead but please give your sad poetry a rest.
I would say plastic is:
Of course someone with less than you would want to 'force' it from you. We're reverting back to pure cavemanism. What country are you from? Is a smaller enclave who used to own what you do now entitled to it? Hey as long as we're non biased. And as long as you vote accordingly. Other than that you probably shouldn't let greed and petty inability to be content and grateful devalue any and all future human effort and shoot even the concept of value itself. Might not work out so great.
If yes, then perhaps @schopenhauer1 can help you.
If you want a private conversation with @StreetlightX, perhaps you can PM him.
Target something specific I have said or explain just what scientific, economic, political or practical facts you think I "have no understanding of"?
You seem to be suggesting that this thread is "unphilosophical". What exactly is that supposed to mean, and why do you think so? It seems like some sensitive spots are being touched here.
Not sure what point you're attempting to put across here; can you explain further?
It should, ideally, and I understand it does not with infallibility, work where you work hard, you get ahead. Sometimes incredibly far. Mansions and boats. You slack, you may fall behind. Again sometimes incredibly so. Homelessness and exposure.
Managing global "overpopulation" and reproductive attitudes is in no way more practical, plausibly realisable or less ideological than managing waste, productive and consumerist attitudes.
I know I'm overreacting a bit.
:up:
Even if this were generally accepted, do you think people are capable of caring sufficiently beyond their immediate friends and family and their current lifestyles to make the necessary sacrifices, even if there was a realizable plan in place that could identify just what needed to be done?
If what most plausibly needed to be done turned out to be ethically unacceptable, but the projected outcomes from not doing what is needed were also unacceptable, what then?
Also, "managing global "overpopulation" and reproductive attitudes" is probably going to be seen as more ethically fraught than "managing waste, productive and consumerist attitudes.", but I don't see how the latter will be sufficient or that either would be sufficient without the other.
In all serious, I agree with this sentiment. We must do all we can to avoid as much human (and animal) suffering as possible.
I see the yelling and bitching has already started. Just ignore it.
Quoting Janus
I was following a train of thought on this. Let’s say it’s not ethical, let’s say we address it pragmatically, which is politically. Assume the money and the will is there to address hunger and poverty, to educate people. After addressing the issue of food we would need to address housing, then maybe health and then maybe education. Then comes jobs for the educated, then comes better health, then comes more children surviving childbirth or childhood diseases. That seems to suggest an increase in population. So what then?: we’re back to ethics I think.
Agreed. Putting it another way: Politicians* and isolated intellectuals can talk and point fingers all they want, but it's all up to scientists and the rest of society to do anything about it.
*Some politicians.
Maybe global coordination really is an impossible situation to bring about, in which case this thread will probably peter out pretty quickly; since it seems people generally don't wish to contemplate the reality that we are faced with intractable problems.
In this case it is rational to be optimistic.
Quoting Janus
I wouldn't bet on that. :joke:
Quoting Wheatley
Well, of course I hope you're right. But hope is one thing, and expectation another.
In this case, it is rational to be pessimistic.
@Janus Did you expect this thread will last for a while? I'm just curious.
Edit: I don't want this to be all personal. Peace!
Optimistic and pessimistic about the same thing at the same time?
Quoting Wheatley
I don't confidently expect anything. I think it is a topic worthy of discussion, if only for the sake of honesty, but I won't be surprised if others, for whatever reasons, think otherwise. I'm happy to wait and see. :smile:
Quoting Wheatley
Don't worry, I'm well past taking anything on here personally! Take it easy.
The reverse can be argued: Imagine if it came to be universally understood that the C A P I T A L I S T mode of production (and the cultural attitudes it gives rise to) is digging our graves as we speak. What you say is that the real problem is overpopulation cause it is utopian to think that we can address the real real problem, which is capitalism. But that doesn't work cause it's just masks the real problem and as I pointed out, addressing overpopulation globally is no less tricky than addressing capitalism itself. In fact, you can't decrease the population or it's rate of growth without significantly affecting capitalism itself. Capitalists relations (and thus capitalist profit) rest on the existence of a reserve army of unemployed workers. That's the capitalist's main argument to keep payments low, that's why capitalists moved their production plants to places where there is "overpopulation".
Quoting Janus
No, I don't believe that, cause the capitalist ideology wants everyone to care just for their immediate needs, however stupid these are. In any case though, it's still easier for people to regulate their attitudes towards production and consumption than to regulate their reproductive attitudes. I too believe there's an overpopulation problem, but it's not the one you espouse. There's an overpopulation problem simply because most parents are shitty parents and they should have not procreated in the first place. For example, lots or romani people are like that. Lots of christians, muslims etc as well, regardless of their colour. Many libertine fools and nationalists too. That's the global overpopulation problem I recognise and that can only be solved by making people less dumb and selfish, that is to say, by addressing the pervasive capitalist ideology and practice. Any organised and state sponsored attempt to keep these people from procreating, can only look like fascism and if we're talking globally, it can only end in global bloodbath.
I to am concerned about the problems of mankind. But from a slightly different angle than the usual. My concern is how humanity will secure its long term future. For many thousands of years there has been the rise and fall of civilisations. Each time the survivors have to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and start all over again. Apart from it all being an incredible waste of time (and suffering) before the next great natural cataclysm (such as meteor strike, or a great flood). Each time it risks the possibility of humanity becoming extinct.
Surely it is about time we grew up and looked to secure our long term future and this will inevitably require managing the population, the ecosystem and human relations. We really do need to get on with it now as we are over the hill in terms of our growth curve (the equivalent of the bacterial growth curve). We are risking the pollution of the planet, the destruction of the ecosystem, or the extinction of humanity.
This will require the populous to throw out the incompetent leaders, learn to cooperate with other countries and focus on sustainability, rather than personal greed and power games.
Fingers crossed.
Quoting sucking lollipops
I also agree with this and would never advocate any enforced "top-down" solution. If there is to be a solution, some real positive change, it seems to me it must come from the bottom up; which means that people must come to understand and care about the real situation. I'm not proposing actual solutions, but trying to encourage discussion about the scope of the problem, and maybe the kinds of things we might expect any practicable solution to involve.
So basically we're f'd :lol:
I mean. Why did you become a philosopher. Because the majority thoughtstream "did it" for you? Eh. Have faith. Use your talents and intellect to get in a decent position. Probably your best bet
Quoting sucking lollipops
I don’t know if I’d agree with that, nor do I think that Capitalism rests on the existence of a reserve army of unemployed. The whole Capitalism thing seems like an easy blame game in terms of over population.
There might be a lot of reasons in poorer countries for people having children or having what might be regarded as too many and adding to problems. Women might get pregnant against their will, adults might have children to help with what’s needed to survive. There was a time when men preferred to have boys because they were of more use to them in terms of working the land or whatever else was needed. So there may be all sorts of reasons for having children that we can’t comprehend.
I don’t think Capitalism is behind that. The so called reserve army of unemployed would consist of a lot of people with no skills at all, people who can’t even read and write. The profits you might be referring to come from a cheap labour force. In fact a population of healthy, educated people is the real benefit to Capitalists.
Quoting sucking lollipops
That’s not very reasonable either. You have to be clear about who you’re referring to. Most parents are good at what they do under many different and trying conditions.
Quoting Janus
Yes, because they don’t want to be in the situation they’re in and they want their children to have a chance. That’s one thing you can assume Capitalism doesn’t want to take part in, they’d prefer the government to take that on. But that means it’s really coming from top down, only governments can address these issues, only they have the resources.
I suspect if the poor across the world were given real access to housing, health, education and work then the population levels might decline, but certainly not increase. But then there has to be work available so therefore Capitalism has to be a partner.
Not much of this has anything to do with over population.
Quoting StreetlightX
Again nothing to do with population numbers.
Quoting Outlander
It’s not very clear who you’re talking about here. Population numbers seem to be most dire in countries where people struggle to get through the day. There is no safety net, there’s very few prospects and very few choices.
But they’re not framed in terms of overpopulation, you just chose to do it that way.
Stopping the spread of HIV is about health. You can lump it in with population control if you want but that’s stretching it.
You had said that the population control measures in China were putting womens’ health second to population control, but I don’t see how having only one child is a threat to womens’ health.
That's not what he's talking about by sterilization. :rofl:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization#:~:text=Compulsory%20sterilization%2C%20also%20known%20as,in%20the%20early%2020th%20century.
Quoting StreetlightX
This is the problem. Just what do we mean when we talk about the overpopulation problem?
Then you really ought to educate yourself. Seriously, google it, it won't take you a moment, and you'll have learned something from doing it.
. Quoting Wheatley
Yes, your right.
Edit: but it is about limiting the spread of HIV. The effects on population are not the intention.
You made the statement about health, you come up with the evidence of having one child being a threat to womens’ health.
You want me to look for evidence to prove myself wrong. Really.
As opposed to having two or three.
Quoting StreetlightX
Nor you, even to prove yourself right.
Forced sterilization is used for population control. Look up eugenics.
I did look it up. You do have a point about the health problems cause by the necessity of having an abortion because of the one child policy.
Quoting Wheatley
None of those examples are for the sake of population control.
(Critical thinking)
It makes all the difference in this OP.
Quoting Wheatley
Can you clarify exactly what you mean here?
Global coordination has to be executed by leaders. Leaders who seek environmental reforms tend to get democratically replaced by leaders to wish to reverse them. Ultimately the problem is in convincing a stable majority that the good of their great grandchildren is their concern. Unfortunately you can't convince a stable majority of Americans that access to life-saving medical care for their immediate family is a good thing. How on Earth do you convince them to care more about relatives they'll likely never meet?
Quoting Janus
Not the brightest here anyway, but here's my five cents.
Firstly, Let's first look at how the amount of people dying of famine has gone:
Just like with absolute povetry, there has been a huge transformation in the World in our time that we, typically in the West, don't notice as our economic growth has been crappy.
Yes, there are areas like the Sahel that indeed are facing problems, but the large scale povetry of the 20th Century and the widespread famine experienced in the last century is basically diminishing.
Secondly, human populations sustain their numbers and only grow if women have more than 2,1 children on the average (that's the fertility rate). And as especially Asia with China and India are having lower fertility rates, this has a huge impact on global population. See just how many countries are below the replacement rate here. This is how the situation is on the map:
India is the perfect example here in that it never made such drastic measures as China on child policy, yet the fertility rate has gone down thanks to economic growth and the country isn't facing a demographic problem like China:
So, you do understand that you might even see THE PEAK OF HUMAN POPULATION in your lifetime as it might be that in 2100 there are less people than at the height of this Century. Demographics can estimate quite well the next fifty years or so, you know.
Fertility rates fall if people come more prosperous. Rich people have fewer children. And more prosperous societies have the ability to take care more of their environment. Hence in truth if people want to tackle overpopulation, the real cure might at first sound totally absurd: take care that the economy improves, that people aren't so poor and have children as a retirement plan (someone that will look after them). More prosperous societies can institute dramatic change on agriculture and increase the efficiency of the production dramatically. Let's remember that THE NETHERLANDS is the second biggest exporter of agricultural products (in billions of dollars) in the World, so the possibility to get global agricultural production to the level where it's now in the Netherlands is a real answer here. Subsistence farming isn't the answer, it's the problem.
Is this the future:
Or this:
Simple naive solutions can backfire: Drastic cuts that just force the poorest countries int a huge depression and ending globalization can make the situation go back where it was last century, with more perilous consequences now and create a vicious circle. International cooperation, smart policies that ensure that poor countries prosper and have the ability to tackle their problems as richer countries have done is the answer.
:up:
So is overpopulation our biggest problem?
It is if people think it would take the destruction of the environment to feed them, or
You believe it’s the tool of Capitalism.
On the contrary, the whole "overpopulation" thing is the easy blame game in terms of capitalism.
Quoting Brett
No shit! And there might be a lot of reasons people in rich countries waste like there's no tomorrow, so obviously capitalism has nothing to do with it :100:
Quoting Brett
Yeah, I'm dead sure that capitalists think like that too. That's probably why capitalists lobby for workers' health, education and increased wages the world over.
Quoting Brett
Good like marrying kids against their will or having them to sustain themselves instead of uniting with their class to get what they deserve? That seems totally reasonable. I was clear where I was referring to, I gave 4-5 examples which you left out of the quote.
Quoting Janus
What's the real situation and who are the people that must come to understand it? You frame the "overpopulation problem" in terms of sustainability. How did Brett translated it? Where did he refer to when he was addressing excess population? To "the poor countries"; where women might get pregnant against their will. But we know that it is the rich countries that are the less sustainable, don't we? This twisting is the norm in discussions about the "overpopulation problem". So, if it's about sustainability, and if people have to understand what the real situation is, do we agree that it is primarily the rich people and nations that should care about the real situation cause they are the main problem? And if we agree on that do we agree that the problem is better framed as a class issue?
I'd say it really won't be, if we are smart.
I think that Amartya Sen, the Indian nobel-economist, has a point when he argues that basically famine is the result of the collapse of the market. Many times it's a war fighting strategy. These issues are more complex than the simple answer given sometimes to us.
Yet we can feed ourselves. With more efficient agriculture we could feed far more with it being more environmentally friendly and sustainable. As I said, the difference between a Western farmer and agriculture and a African subsistence farmer plowing his or her land is huge. Yet Africa could be the next bread basket of the World.
I'd say that climate change is a bigger issue. The nightmare scenario is of course that globalization and international cooperation just collapses. Like a conflict between China and the US (or Russia or both).
Err no, capitalism bad because uhh, capitalists and consumers being fattened up and slavery for our pleasure. Resources could run out in 5-10 years and talk about the bigger picture is needed now and we need to be mature and talk about resolutions? Please do not respond with evidence, are you siding with the capitalists?
In a nutshell, then, your solution to the overpopulation problem is to increase agricultural supply to meet the demands of an overpopulated world in the hope that population goes into recession afterwards.
Consumer capitalism does depend on having winners and losers. Profit always has to be at someone's detriment. The neat solution to this for increasing prosperity overall has been globalisation: exploiting the existing wealth disparities across nations to their mutual benefit. This possibility disappears when that disparity disappears.
The result of uniform prosperity is not to make the world as prosperous as the developed West, but to reduce the prosperity of the West down to some Goldilocks zone with everyone else, which in itself is fine. By your own logic, while this might decrease population expansion in developing nations, it would increase it in developed ones.
The optimum sustainable population under feasible conditions is likely not a number equal to or greater than the current world population, even taking into account scientific optimisation of resources. The world population is three times what would be currently sustainable if we were all middle-income Europeans. Science can reduce that ratio but it's not a magic wand. Focussing on meeting the demands of the current population and bringing everyone to prosperity does not strike me as an answer.
One could debate or quibble about the details, terminology, blame, solutions, and fine print but the broad outlines are there for all who have eyes to see. To continue as we are at an current ever-increasing rate is unsustainable for human life at anywhere near our conception of manageable living standards. (I won’t say that this is undeniable, because nearly anything no matter how accurate, helpful, or correct can be ignored or denied. Such is the power of the human ability of abstraction).
So we are talking about a continued HUMAN existence, hopefully above living in piles of smoldering radioactive waste. The planet Earth will be fine in a billion years, regardless of us.
So, as regards humans, we look to human activities, and their effects on the immediate environment, as well as the effect on the whole planet. Human activities are based on (or at the very least GUIDED BY) some kind of thinking. Thinking “rests on” or is “founded upon” what could be called “beliefs” or “givens”. (One could say that beliefs are thoughts in themselves. Perhaps. But they are the largely unconscious primal ideas we have about ourselves, the world, the gods (if any), human destiny, etc. In other words, our mythologies. Or our archetypal systems, as Jung might put it. Though, as an aside, if one were to claim that they had absolutely NO beliefs, unconscious archetypes, or mythology of any kind... that they had only pure conscious and logical rationality 100% of the time which dictated their every action... well, that is an impasse. And at that sticking point there probably isn’t much further I could respond.)
(So, VERY broadly and generally)...
Beliefs -> Thoughts-> Actions -> Effect
The point of all this is that our “problem” is most likely at the belief / mythology level.
Imagine if you will a tribe or small group of people act upon the belief (for example) that the earth is mostly dead matter along with some growing things that are near worthless unless they can be put to some specific human purpose. IE, THEIR SPECIFIC HUMAN PURPOSE OF THE MOMENT. (Whatever that may be). This tribe would probably tend to be quite wasteful, heedless, rapacious, and perhaps even unpleasant. Which is their choice, one could say. It is their right to live like a swarm of locusts... locusts with human size, intellect, and powers. They could consume and destroy a small area, and then move on somewhere else to repeat the process, ad infinitum and ad nauseum.
If this were a group in the hundreds of people, it would not have much of an effect on global systems. If this were a culture in the billions of humans, it almost undoubtedly would. In very general terms, this is where we now stand.
With the exception of minute quibbles, I would agree with this, as well as the rest of the OP. We can word the situation this way or that, propose various possible solutions, or even press on like it’s “morning in America” circa 1950, but the situation has become a brute fact.
In I recall correctly (?) from long ago, you had read many of Charles Eisenstein’s works. I have as well, and find his writings on these general subjects very rational and factual. I have yet to see any misinformation or hyperbole in his books. And simultaneously, his style is very deep or intuitive (or whatever very complimentary touchy-feeling terms one prefers, lol.) He seems to me to carry on from the tradition of (among others) Jared Diamond (in terms of a scientific or academic position). And in the vein of the late great Daniel Quinn (in an mythic anthropological way, so to speak.)
For those perhaps less familiar, Eisenstein has several books covering (and deftly tying together) topics like ecology, economics, education, food, beliefs, governance, etc. His initial tome is The Ascent of Humanity. It is available for purchase on the usual places. And also available (for optional donation, as are his other books), both English text to read online as well as an audio version, on his website.
https://charleseisenstein.org/books/ascent-of-humanity/
And this is the core error that has been and still is ever so popular on the leftist side. Note the word "always", which is the problem. Not that sometimes, but always. That improvement, that profits have to be taken from someone else. To profit one HAS TO BE stealing from others. Wealth cannot be created, but only taken away from someone else.
Hence if you Kenosha Kid lets say invent a battery for smart phones that uses 50% less raw materials giving 80% more power with half of the production cost, obviously you could sell it at half price compared to other battery makers and people likely would opt for the cheaper far better battery. So for who's detriment, from who would you rob your dirty profits? What diabolical evil would you do? That other battery producers would be forced to change to use your technology also? Or would the narrative simply be that you are simply using predatory pricing and hence forcing poor workers to be unemployed at other factories with your cheap batteries, so shame on you? Forget the "improvements" in your battery design, you make things worse as people buy more smart phones! So F*k you and your inventions! Who needs better battery technology?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Hence basically you are against the idea of more prosperity. You basically believe that poor countries today could not have it as good as we have it now.
It isn't about sustainable development, recycling, protecting the environment and tackling the problems we have etc. but truly an idea of REDUCING PROSPERITY. Let that just sink in for a moment. The actual inherent evil in this craving for a better more simple time and being against the materialism would be seen if this truly happened. It hasn't happened, but who cares. The discourse is disjointed from the real world to a narrative of ideals that simply don't bother with facts. And what is so bad in increasing prosperity and reducing povetry? As if increasing prosperity means rampant hedonistic materialism and being utterly uncritical of the present system. Or is the only morally correct way to decrease povetry through income transfers? Is it bad for poor or middle class people to be more affluent?
Because what on Earth would be that "Goldilocks zone" you would deem appropriate for us? The US of the 1980's? Western Europe of the 1990's? Even if we take the present as the goldilocks, is really the goldilocks zone a world where we still die from heart attacks and have corona viruses? What would be so wrong in a World where people on average live to be 100 years or over and have less disease than now and have at their home a fridge, electric oven and clean drinkable running water?
(Data from Canada obviously missing)
The basic problem is that people who think all of our problems are because capitalism simply don't make much effort to understand how the economy works and how much improvement there actually has happened in the last fifty years. Perhaps it's confusing to be both critical of the problems that capitalism has and do exist, yet acknowledge that many things have improved under our less than perfect capitalist system.
More prosperous societies can solve those problems that have emerged (and there are many) far better than poor societies.
The existence of China's never inhabited ghost cities may indicate that the promise of economic growth to lift populations out of extreme poverty may be somewhat overrated, or at least shortsighted.
It's definitely more complicated than that. China's Ghost cities are an indirect result of their significant gender imbalance.
Apparently not.
Quoting ssu
Would any of those meet the definition of the Goldilocks zone I gave of "uniform prosperity"?
Quoting ssu
It's not confusing at all. Your ideal vision was to make the world prosperous. If you understand that capitalism is "less than perfect", how consistent can it be with this perfect world you believe possible?
Quoting ssu
This is a dream, not a plan. The reality is that I put my competitors out of business by undercutting them, making them poorer and me richer. My next move would be to do a Shkreli and hike up the price of my battery. Because I am a capitalist. That is my job: to take money from the many and put it into my hands.
And presumably I'm not hand-making these personally, right? To undercut my competitors I'm probably going to rely on the economic disparity between my prosperous country and somewhere much less prosperous in East Asia somewhere. And if not, I'm certainly going to have to rely on wage labour.
Economic inequality is built into every capitalist venture from the start, and its ends are to maximise personal profits. It is not that people don't understand capitalism, it's that they know it far too well and don't believe in capitalist and right-wing fairy tales anymore.
Does central planning work so great all the time?
And is the following statistic inherently bad?
You should remember that the size of the Chinese economy was at the start of the 1990's equivalent to the size of the GDP of Netherlands. And now it's bigger. And povetry has been reduced. The fact is that it hasn't been overrated or short sighted what the Chinese have been able to do. The country has genuinely gotten more prosperous. Sub-Saharan Africa, not so.
I don't believe the World is perfect, but I can see when some things work better than others. History tells it. Starting from the most clear examples of when a countries have been divided into two with one part going with capitalism and the other with socialism. A better example could not be given.
And I don't believe in ideologies and idealists like anarcho-capitalists or marxists. The fact is that you need a so-called mixed approach when you look at countries that have truly prospered. You need free markets, but also you need labour laws, functioning labour unions, functioning and effective institutions that do prevent corruption, lawlessness and guarantees even the poor their rights to their property etc.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
You underestimate the competition. You think they would stand idle when they simply could copy your technology? You could bitch and moan about intellectual theft, of course. But no way you can buy a monopoly from all the power elites of the world.
(Kenosha Kids competition. In so-called "communist" China, of course)
Quoting Kenosha Kid
You know, the Byzantine court used the predatory pricing in silk production to bankrupt private competition and gain monopoly, but notice that monopolies aren't typical in our globalized World. If you would be successful, then you would be one of the ten or so battery makers in the World. And we seem to forget that in the history of capitalism trust-busting happened too: there's no Standard Oil today as there was earlier. We just now have forgotten that the US did something about the robber barons, as they were called in their day.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
So let's say you would be a genuine risk taker and go for the cheapest labour anywhere with in mind to shorten your manufacturing distances. So why wouldn't you take the bold move to produce the batteries right there where the raw materials are extracted in the DRC?
Yep, just look how low the salaries are in the DRC!
Fine. So why would it be bad if one of the most poor countries in the World suddenly get an advanced and extremely competitive tech industry that uses domestic resources giving a headache to Chinese battery manufacturers? I think the Congolese would be happy about it.
(Kenosha Kid, on the left, showing his new Congolese battery factory to the local DRC elite?)
Wasted infrastructure is the result of an overestimation. Endless economic growth is inherently short-sighted because it's unquestionably unsustainable. The economic growth of China and other countries will inevitably fall to the rates of developed economies and by that time global resources or in particular cheap energy, the backbone of economic growth, will be further diminished. Economic downturns will become more frequent and longer lasting, in fact this may already be happening.
A back of the envelope calculation suggests that a solution for overpopulation could come in the form of utilizing space efficiently, especially vertical space.
The world's tallest skyscraper is the Burj Khalifa at 828 meters. It has a total floor area of approximately 300,000 square meters distributed among 163 floors.
Each floor has an area of 1840 square meters. The average house has an area of 200 square meters and so each floor of the Burj Khalifa has an area of 9 average houses.
Each household consists of roughly 3 people. Ergo, each floor of the Burj Khalifa can hold 27 people, consisting of 9 average-sized families.
Therefore, Burj Khalifa has space for 163 * 27 = 4,401 people
There are about 8,000,000,000 people on the planet. To accommodate them all, we need 8,000,000,000 / 4,401 = approximately 2,000,000 (2 million) Burj Khalifas
These 2 million Burj Khalifas will occupy an area = 2,000,000 * 0.00148 square km = 2,960 square km, an area slightly larger than the Pacific island nation of Samoa:
Better to build homes, make the largest high speed rail system than spend the billions in stock buy backs.
Then there is the highway system, here compared with the US highway system (that was basically built during the Eisenhower/Kennedy/Johnson administrations).
Dividends have a point, but trillions of dollars buybacks when the income disappears in a stock market crash? Or right, we don't have those because the central banks support the markets (so long free markets). In the end, there are more stupid ways to use money than building infrastructure, even if part of those investments are stupid.
Quoting praxis
Drastic economic downturns have been with us for at least 250 years.
Quoting praxis
Yes. Nobody is forecasting a 20% growth in the US economy and why should it be so? If the poorer countries get more wealthy, sure, the growth rates will come down. And if the global population growth stops and starts to diminish, why would we need rapid economic growth?
And the scarcity problem?
What actually is different from the end of the 19th Century, because you could have made similar arguments then as, oh wait, I think Malthus already did it already in the end of the 18th Century? (So a hundred years earlier, sorry). And after him it was William Foster Lloyd with his essay "The Tragedy of Commons" from 1833. So anything here isn't really new. I'm not saying that either Malthus or Lloyd don't have a point or that they are utterly wrong, they do make good points, but putting their theories on a pedestal and treating them as some sacrosanct truths isn't useful. Doom & gloom is so trendy, it's so hip now and has been for ages. Any hint of optimism seems to some that the optimist is either naive or that he or she is totally uncritical of everything. Because we are surely fine to the living we have now than the situation we had prior to the industrial revolution.
You see that 300 000 square meters is the total of all floors combined. The area you calculated is if the similar amount of square meters in 800 000 Burj Khalifas would be built in single floor homes. Yes, that might be close to the area of Uganda. Yet the Burj Khalifa, the actual building, I think is takes far less than 10 000 square meters of the real estate land in Dubai where it stands.
So the one huge American style city built with suburbs for that much people would take the size of Uganda, with no 2-floor or higher buildings. (Then the traffic jams...)
I imagine that because of the money and big players involved it's difficult to know who's telling the truth about peak oil, climate change, and the like. Capital favors a rosy outlook, that much I'm sure of.
Read, learn and use more than one reference, that's all it takes. If you read enough you will notice that neither peak oil or climate change clearly are fake. For such complex issues there's no distinct "truth" or a yes or no answer. Peak conventional oil has already happened some years ago. We already have seen what happens with over 100 dollar prices (the global economy halts) and that we can be in a situation of negative oil prices in the US (because, hey, it's a casino). And climate change is similar, quite true thing.
Perhaps the answer is in being critical of the worst, most dire and most alarmist forecasts made about anything. This doesn't mean the same as totally opposing the thing. The worst/most alarmist forecasts about anything are usually made to "wake up" people, to get the media to pick the issue up, for us to notice it. It approaches more the rhetorical side. Simply there is an agenda to promote than an observation of the facts. This doesn't mean that all is fake. It may seem lame then to say "well, it's not going to be that bad", but usually that is the most realistic case. We humans adapt very well.
After all, we are now living during the worst pandemic in a century (and perhaps in the worst economic depression too) and the World hasn't collapsed around us. Likely will be there for 2021 too.
Not a Mad Max world yet.
I believe you are mistaken as to the usage of the word "contraception."
So really you're political ideology is: not socialism! Okay we can agree we're not likely to solve the problem with socialism. Although for your several reminders about increased Chinese prosperity, it is worth remembering that it wasn't that which lowered their population growth.
Quoting ssu
Is that how HIV medication came to cost hundreds of dollars a pop in the US? Healthy, if slightly criminal competition? This is wishful thinking, methinks.
Quoting ssu
You skipped over Madagascar! I'm a keen scuba diver, and I heard monkeys work for peanuts and lions can be trained.
Quoting ssu
It's not. But this already depends on massive economic disparity between the trader and the place if production. This is not the universal prosperity dream you're selling.
Interesting, a study that quantifies "desire" on the denominator that is a census.
Yes. However coming from a country that seems by many as a bastion of social democracy as our neighboring country in the West, I would actually promote a mixed economy. Libertarianism/liberalism and especially capitalism is hard in a country where one doesn't have strong institutions, which are necessary. My political ideology actually is this: extremist movements who want a totally new world are terrible for the World, especially those that think killing people will make the World a better place.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
And that's why I earlier noted India. It genuinely hadn't the stupid one child policy as China, which is a huge problem for them now. Another example is Singapore: earlier they were panicking that there would be too many Singaporeans and imposed strict rules and now they panic about Singapore women having too few babies. Demographics of nations simply aren't decided by politicians. Usually the politicians fail miserably with such policies. If we skip genocides and the like, that is.
Yet the demographic transition is a reality. It is more likely that your great grandparents were from larger families with more siblings than you have, if you live in the West. It might not be actually so, but more likely as the fertility rate has come down.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Does it?
Well, you just ask yourself how have countries that were poor and now are rich made it? If you separate the countries that were drawn around oil fields, and inspect countries that had an "economic miracle" of some sort, it's a good way to look at this question. My country was far poorer than Argentina in the start of the 1900s. South Korea was very poor especially after a bloody war and before it had been a colony. So what happened?
Economic history tells us a story what happened, but usually we don't want to hear it as we are obsessed about some righteous or ideological agenda.
Yes, that's pretty much the problem in a nutshell.
Quoting sucking lollipops
Of course it's the richer nations which are the main problem. The real situation is over-use of dwindling resources, destruction of natural habitat, impoverishment of soils, depletion of fisheries, pollution. These are all on account of the burgeoning industry and technology needed to keep our capital growth economic system going, and in particular the industrial farming practices and global transportation of food required to feed so many people.
It's the extent of the global population and its continuing growth that is the problem. The attempt to politicize the problem won't help, that will only polarize and divide people and make it even more impossible to act globally in a sensible and coordinated way. People need to stop having children everywhere as much as possible. Of course this almost certainly won't happen, so I am not really trying to propose a way to make what seems the impossible happen. Honest acknowledgement of the problem is the only sensible first step, as I see it. Population reduction will most likely be forced upon us in any case, simply because it seems to be the case that there are not the resources to keep this trajectory going for much longer.
I think we all need to prepare for what's coming. The more people who are prepared to honestly acknowledge it the better will be the outcomes.
Quoting ssu
We adapt very well when the resources are there to sustain our adaptation. problem is the resources are dwindling and the demand for them is growing. If you don't see this as a problem; then I would say you are being willfully ignorant; indulging in wishful thinking.
Thanks; I agree that Eisenstein is a relevant thinker on these issues. Another good source of insight is Nate Hagens. Not familiar with Daniel Quinn; I'll check it out.
Quoting ssu
I agree with you, but the point is that the reduction of deaths due to famine is in turn due to cheap energy and the industrial agricultural practices it has enabled to develop. But this has come at great cost to the environment, and cheap sources of energy and other resources are declining; the low-hanging, cheap to acquire fruit are always picked first.
Quoting ssu
[i]"Population in the world is currently (2020) growing at a rate of around 1.05% per year (down from 1.08% in 2019, 1.10% in 2018, and 1.12% in 2017). The current average population increase is estimated at 81 million people per year.
Annual growth rate reached its peak in the late 1960s, when it was at around 2%. The rate of increase has nearly halved since then, and will continue to decline in the coming years.
World population will therefore continue to grow in the 21st century, but at a much slower rate compared to the recent past. World population has doubled (100% increase) in 40 years from 1959 (3 billion) to 1999 (6 billion). It is now estimated that it will take another nearly 40 years to increase by another 50% to become 9 billion by 2037.
The latest world population projections indicate that world population will reach 10 billion persons in the year 2057."[/i]
From here
A couple of relevant articles for those who might be interested in pursuing the resources and global warming angles further:
https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/06/18/can-the-world-get-along-without-natural-resources/
https://www.patreon.com/posts/appallingly-bad-38048063
That captures it very succinctly. I'm in total agreement, and I think most people are -- both on this Forum and in the country. Polling reflects this, in fact.
Quoting Janus
I tend to agree with you: overpopulation is a problem and one of the causes of existential threats like climate change, but not a major one. In many ways, capitalism is more of a problem than overpopulation, in that respect. More urgent actions need to be taken for destroying or reforming capitalism, and of course on climate change, than anything about overpopulation.
There's also the problem, which barely gets mentioned anymore (since the early 90s), of nuclear weapons -- another existential threat.
Solutions to these problems lies in massive and collective action of world governments. The politicians that constitute the governments are indeed spineless and bought off by the true power of the world: the elites -- i.e., extreme wealth. (How did these extremely wealthy people come to power? That's a long history, but out of feudalism came the rise of big business -- so the merchants have essentially won out and taken over the world. The philosophy that develops with and underlies this rise is capitalism.)
In all this I think the analysis of Karl Marx is accurate and important, although even he couldn't have anticipated the 21st century. We have been living in the age of neoliberalism, the predominant economic philosophy of both major political parties in the world's greatest superpower for the last 40 years. The effects are seen all over the world.
All of this I'm sure you already know.
The solution to all this, as it has always been in any system, is not only to recognize and understand (I think most people do) but to organize. Unfortunately, that's like herding cats in this "individualist" culture, especially amongst more educated people. (They don't have an issue working for wages or taking orders from bosses in a privately owned tyranny, ironically.) They don't want to be robbed of their "individuality." And because of this fact, even though the collection of people that can solve these issues has the intelligence, education, resources, and numbers behind them, no action takes place and the system can afford to ignore them -- and has, repeatedly.
I don't know how to solve that problem, but there's glimmers of hope. I think the 2020s are going to see even more activism than the 2010s, rivaling the 1960s. Younger people are more engaged politically than in the past, and are organizing. People more and more are aware of income inequality and its effects; socialism is becoming less of a taboo, etc. etc.
The real question is: will we have enough time?
If the population must be decreased (say, owing to massive food shortages) then nature will reduce the population. If continued production of greenhouse gases makes it difficult for species to live, then nature will remove the species -- including us, possibly.
I prefer that we take the initiatives necessary to secure our survival, but if we don't, life won't go on for us.
I'm not at all confident that we will succeed on our own behalf. A surprise viral pandemic eclipsed global warming, and then racial outrage eclipsed the pandemic, for... we shall see for how long. We have to keep our eyes on the ball if we expect to succeed at survival.
Yeah, 'cause history is never written with any kind of agenda!
Yeah kinda. Companies don't outsource production because they want to spread the wealth. They do it because poorer countries have low production costs, especially human labour.
Quoting ssu
I agree, some people are so smitten with an ideology that they'll believe it is a cure-all despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary :p
Companies are surely driven by profit and not by charity. Yet their actions are just part of the whole.
But let's think of your argument about outsourcing.
So you think the World would be better when all manufacturing WOULD STAY in the rich Western countries? That is pure 19th Century Imperialism, when you on purpose DENY the possibility of ANY manufacturing, any competition to your own market, rising in other places (then colonies). Well, it's not the age of imperialism as it was a hundred years ago.
Because just ask yourself: what else have the poorest Third World countries have to compete with the richest countries other than cheap labour and natural resources? My country didn't have much else to offer in the 19th Century. Hence the really important question is, can a poor country transform itself when those clothing factories and sweat shops emerge to offer jobs for the otherwise rural people working the fields as subsistence farmers? Can the labour force then be trained? Can the better educated and skilled labour find work at home or does it migrate somewhere else? Can and do other industries emerge also? Does then this lead to higher wages? With higher wages you will start to have more demand for things like the service sector and the rise of the middle class. There's many ways that things can go wrong, and that's why I believe a mixed economy approach is the best as it isn't idealist and understands that there are many ways things can go wrong.
Is this bad? Because this statistic here is what drives manufacturing away from China to places like Africa:
Clothing industry is usually a kickstarter industry.
From the West...
via Asia...
to Africa. What's wrong with that?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
These people typically won't find anything good in the other sides arguments.
And I'd say that you are willfully ignorant about how a) markets work and b) that dwindling resources has been the new norm already for ages, and that you c) forget the role of technological innovation in the equation. You could have made that argument in the 1900s, the1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s and the 2010s. So would have been indulging myself in wishful thinking for the last 120 years?
Let's take the example of oil.
In the 1970's several forecasts estimated that Peak Oil would happen the year 2000. In the year 2000 or so forecasts estimated Peak Oil to happen this year or earlier. It can be argued that "Peak conventional oil", meaning production from traditional oil reserves has peaked in 2006, so I am genuinely not saying that the forecasts were wrong. Yet global production hasn't peaked.
Just now there's no scarcity of oil as we are in an economic depression, but we do know what happens when Peak Oil happens and you have diminishing production. So assume that a war breaks out in the Persian gulf and Saudi, Gulf state and Iranian production is destroyed and the World faces an oil shock. What happens?
The price of oil rises.
If it rises too high, the global economy puts on a handbrake, but with higher prices alternative oil production methods before financially unprofitable kick in. That simply means we change the definition of what "Oil production" means as oil shale and light crude are literally quite different. Also alternative energy resources gain even more ground. Transports can use alternative energy resources even now and the drive to transform the transportation fleet will increase. The only thing that oil basically has is it's very cheap price. Technological advances drive the cost of both alternative production methods and alternative energy resources to adapt to the situation. We have already seen this, so this isn't just optimistic speculation.
You've made this point a few times now and I addressed it already. I have never said this. What I stated was that it depends on economic inequality between nations which is contrary to your universal prosperity pipe dream. It's the global equivalent of the dependence on wage labour: someone in capitalism must be taking the lion's share of the profits. Universal prosperity would kill capitalism stone dead.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
What on Earth are you talking about? How has the universal increase in prosperity from the early 19th Century to early 21st Century killed capitalism stone dead? Why do you think that more prosperity would be so bad? It would be great if the average Chinese or Indian would be as prosperous as the average American.
And what is your argument for capitalism to need inequality between nations? On the contrary, if countries are more prosperous, there is more demand for stuff that capitalism pushes around. Capitalists would just love if all Asians and Africans would be more prosperous. Seems like you have no idea that markets are made of both supply sides and a demand side.
More prosperity means more consumers, which means more demand, bigger markets. For companies bigger markets mean more profits. Would Finland want as it's neighbour Sweden or the Dominican Republic? Sweden, of course (and Dominican Republic surely wouldn't want to leave the warmth of the Caribbean). Both have roughly the same amount of people, but the GDP of Dominican Republic is a mere 16% of the Swedish GDP. The Dominican Republic at our Western border would be a very lousy trading partner. Without Sweden next to it Finland would be economically worse. We really wouldn't be better of even if some Finnish textile maker could opt to establish a plant in our western neighbour rather than outsourcing the production to Asia.
I'm talking about the fact that you cannot have capitalism without some kind of wage labour, and you cannot have wage labour without economic inequality. You could move to a cooperative basis, where all workers have equal share in the company, as is being done successfully atm, but -- gulp! -- evil socialism!!!
Quoting ssu
Again, that's not what I said. Universal prosperity would kill capitalism stone dead, i.e. capitalism is incompatible with global economic equality. We do not have economic equality, so capitalism prospers. This is one of the foundational principles of capitalism: you must have some kind of wage labour.
So let's break this down.
1. Thanks to capitalism, there has been a trend toward universal prosperity in the last 100 years.
2. There has been a worldwide population boom over the last 100 years.
And your conclusion from this is that capitalism-driven universal prosperity reverses population growth. Ab initio, I guess :rofl:
You're right, nations are more prosperous overall. Inequality-driven globalisation plays a big part, as does the fossil fuel industry, neither of which are sustainable. Capitalism is ever finding new ways of separating people with their money. The debt economy is booming. 61% workers worldwide are in the gig economy, 51% in the agricultural industry that you believe will drive population recession. House ownership in my country has been almost completely replaced by the rent economy in the space of one generation.
When people find a way to both generate and profit from poverty, what's good for the GDP does not equate to economic equality. Like climate change, the expectation ought to be that this will continue toward catastrophe. That is another feature of capitalism: it reflects the shory-term wants of a safe minority, viz. the global economic crisis paid for, as usual, by the poorer masses to the benefit of a few wealthy organisations and the global GDP.
You say “the only thing” like is was a small thing, as though the economic growth the world has seen since the beginning of the industrial revolution weren’t entirely dependent on it.
Cooperatives have nothing to do with state socialism,btw. They haven't been formed by the state and given some monopoly decree. Cooperatives fit into a capitalist economy perfectly. We have large cooperatives that are run very well. I think the largest food store chain here is a cooperative, a retail cooperative, with (ghasp!) nearly 40 000 employees and hence being one of the largest firms in the 5,5 million country. Some large cooperatives that come to mind are Crédit Agricole, Co-op Kobe, Arla foods, S-group here are among millions of cooperatives around the World. But of course, large firms are evil.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Yes, because your now confused on what you are referring to. That population boom doesn't happen anymore in the rich industrialized countries. Check out the countries with the highest fertility rates and all of them are poor countries. It's called a Demographic Transition, how countries shift from high birth rates to low birth rates. Check the link and learn something new.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
What are you talking about? I have now no clue what you are saying.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
And this is your belief you have. To utter that lithurgy makes you better.
Wrong.
You forgot Trumps favorite energy source, coal. That was the primary energy source of the industrial revolution. John Young set up his small business of refining crude oil only in 1848 and the world's first oil refinery was built in 1856. Before the Petroleum Industry got going, oil was got then from whale oil and thanks to that, all whales were nearly killed to extinction in the 19th Century (remember Moby Dick). Result: nobody uses whale oil in the kerosene lights, if they have one today.
That's the way how non-sustainable energy sources disappear: they become oddities. You can already see it if you have a very old car. You don't get the gas the car was designed to use anymore from your local gas station.
Never forget that there are always alternative energy resources to oil. So if to produce a barrel oil would cost 10 000$ dollars, only some very rich car collectors would dare to run their combustion engines. But we still would have transports.
It was lazy of me to not get my facts right. Anyway, coal couldn't have fueled the economic growth that developed with cheap oil, yes?
Quoting ssu
The point is that increased efficiency and substitution can't ever match the cheapness of oil, and if we've reached peak oil then 'American will never be great again'. Reckless consumerism and the stupid American dream should be, thankfully, forgotten.
Interesting question, however we have to remember that electric cars are quite an old invention and without oil there would have been a huge scramble for other technologies.
Besides, coal powered ships and trains aren't a problem, perhaps only aircraft are the one transport type that has really needed gas engines.
Quoting praxis
Why do you think that?
Notice that there has happened huge leaps in renewable energy production, so it's not just science fiction like fusion energy still is for us. For example solar energy has really come down from the 1970's.
From the below you can see the energy production from 1830 to 2010. You can observe the transformations that have happened: first it was biomass (burning wood etc), then came coal, then oil and gas, then nuclear, then renewables.
I think what will happen is that simply the role of fossil fuels will steadily decrease in their share. Yet the transformation will take few decades. But then again, it's already two decades from the turn of the Millennium.
The problem with coal-powered ships and trains is the bulk and expense to transport and use, not to mention the environmental impact. And no air travel? Imagine the scale involved. I asked if coal could have fueled the economic growth that developed with oil and so far the answer appears to be no.
Quoting ssu
The renewables and nuclear are still a tiny portion. If the cost of oil increases (because of peak oil) to the point where renewable substitutes are cheaper, that will entail a general economic downturn. The graph of energy consumption pretty much underscores the point.
The estimates I've seen tell me that the alternative oil extraction methods are not only unacceptably detrimental to the environment and use unsustainable quantities of water, draining and polluting aquifers, streams and so on, but that just to break even they need oil prices to be $50-100 dollars a barrel. Those operations are arguably not even economically viable and are being subsidized by starry-eyed investors and governments.
Even putting all that aside, the impact of industrial agriculture on the Earth and its ecosystems is already way beyond acceptable, and its only going to get worse as long as the population continues to increase.
You mean the workers owning the means of production? Yeah, that's so Capitalism. Socialism WISHES it had thought of that.
Quoting ssu
Japan aside, the populations of the biggest economies are still growing. The growth rate is diminishing, true. That happens after population explosions in all species. Increased life expectancy is a big factor. Medicine and sanitation, especially overcoming the health crisis of the Industrial Revolution, have done wonders. Contraception helped too. And also knowing your children have less prospects than you did.
Quoting ssu
I'm saying that there are many ways of increasing GDP while keeping people poorer. The gig economy, as favoured by the agriculture industry among others, is one of the biggies. Increased GDP does not equate to increased universal prosperity. It just means the poor are giving more money to the rich.
Here, for instance, is the percentage of national wealth owned by the richest 10% of the population in the US between 1910 and 2010:
Same picture in the UK, Canada, Australia, etc. All tell the same story: when the shackles came off capitalism in the '80s, it drove a trend of income inequality. On paper, most my generation and after have never been poorer, having no savings, massive debts, no property, no job security. But they do have NetFlix.
Quoting ssu
It's more a lack of belief. I don't believe in myths of limitless growth or trickle-down economics. These are beliefs that, like any other erroneous belief, do not concur with evidence. I am well aware that I have lived through increasing prosperity. I also don't believe the myth that my lunch was free.
There's also the additional cost of accidents, such as the Deepwater Horizon spill, as drilling is forced to harder to access and risky sites.
Yes, I think it'll be nature that does it. I mean we don't, on the broad scale, seem to be able to discuss. or even acknowledge, the issue.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I agree; I think the racial outrage, while being well justified, is become a focal point of outlet for general feelings of insecurity, fear and anger. It's always attractive to distract ourselves from the dire situation we are faced with, by focusing on dreams of radical, positive and exciting social change.
Quoting praxis
Yes, and now we come in my view to a more interesting part of the debate: natural resources aren't going to finish, our societies aren't going to collapse, but the impact that we have for example to the environment is (and in some places has already been) dramatic. As I said earlier just as one example, we nearly finished all whales in World thanks to using whaling oil, and it was a miracle that they came back.
Same is for mineral resources and metals. The only resource precious enough to mine underwater is in a small scale gold. But otherwise, the oceans have like the same amount of copper, cobalt nickel and other resources. Now, it doesn't take a genius to understand that this would be a new way humans could damage the environment.
Now for the ocean floor:
And as I earlier William Forster Lloyd's Tragedy of the commons, there are real pitfalls in free market competition without institutional limits and oversight. Capitalism needs institutions and rules, that's all.
Also the analogy with whales is weak; whales can come back in a relatively short time; not so minerals and fossil fuels.
I'm not against Capitalism per se, I think it is the inevitable economic system once barter is no longer serviceable; and all the more so the more complex an economy becomes.
Think so? Let me ask you that after a decade, if we still would be here on this forum. Far more realistic than mining asteroids. (For those interested, here is a link about the subject done by Greenpeace.)
Quoting Janus
And my point is that they aren't ending soon, and the price mechanism and technology will mean that some are simply going to be replaced by others. Let's remember that Saudi Arabia hasn't gone to dig up shale oil. Yet, that is. But now is starting itself on the shale boom: Saudi Aramco launches largest shale gas development outside U.S.. For fracking they are using sea water.
There are only a couple of companies investigating the viability of deep ocean mining. No one has actually done it. These companies obviously would have a vested interest in hyping the potential to attract investors, so I'll believe it is practicable when it is actually being done. In any case as I said before it would obviously involve huge amounts of fossil energy, and that fact, coupled with the potential damage to the world's oceans, make it undesirable, even if practicable. And I mean undesirable not just for the environment and other species of flora and fauna, but for us over the long term, because we are actually part of that environment, and inextricably reliant upon its healthy functioning.
Quoting ssu
If fracking is not economically viable because the oil prices that would need to be in place to make it so are unsustainable, then it will only happen if subsidised. You haven't addressed this, or any of the issues of environmental impact. And even if it does continue it's all just more fossil fuel use; which will mean we will be affected more later by higher levels of global warming.
Anyway this thread's concern was predominately to do with the industrial agricultural practices which are destroying soils and claiming ever more forest, and which have to continue as long as the population even just remains where it is, and all the more the more it increases.
Your dream of human ingenuity and technology triumphing is, I believe nothing more than a fantasy; albeit a fantasy which has great purchase on us collectively due to the usual hype which appeals to the natural human desire we all have to continue our habitual lifestyles undisturbed. It comes very naturally to us to indulge in wishful thinking; you only have to look at the history of religions to see that. The modern gods are science and technology; and they will likely turn out to be far more destructive than any of the old gods.
And is this happening in the Netherlands? Does Netherlands have a huge environmental crisis because of it's agriculture? Is Finland destroying it's forests? If I recall correctly, the first legislation to prevent excessive and unrestricted forest cutting was issued in the 17th Century here.
Quoting Janus
Or simply mentioning that human ingenuity and technology exists seems to be too much here.
Quoting Janus
It comes very naturally to us to indulge in pessimism; you only have to look at the history of religions to see that.
(Just think how many Christians are waiting for Doomsday to come)
I don't know about those specific cases, but generally agricultural practices are leading to deforestation, destruction of habitat, species extinctions and soil degradation; that's the point.
Quoting ssu
I haven't denied that humans can be ingenious or that technology exists, so again, I'm not seeing your point.
Quoting ssu
There are pessimistic elements to some religions, to be sure. But generally the impulse seems to be an optimistic belief that illness, injustice and death will ultimately be overcome in a life to come.
The worst ecological catastrophes happen in the poorest countries. For example Jared Diamond has written extensively very readable books about this. Prosperous societies with effective institutions do take care far better of their environment than countries with weak or non-existent institutions. To prevent things like of soil degradation has been known for ages as simply having fields not being cultivated, but to stay on fallow for a season or two. And modern agriculture is changing from the 1960's type of thinking that degradation can be solved by simply fertilizers and crop rotation isn't necessary. Same is the understanding on how to prevent desertification. People surely understand what is needed to be done in general, but if you are poor and need to feed your family...
Example of a border between two countries. One is poorer than the other.
Quoting Janus
To state that humans can be ingenious and technology can advance isn't same as to say that every obstacle can be solved by human ingeniounity and technology, so no need to worry.
Yes, you can see the change in the attitudes in the use of chemical fertilizers from from the 1950's and 1960's as then what was overlooked was the impact the use has in the greater system, as fertilizers then would be transferred from the fields to small streams and rivers finally to the ocean, which would have huge impacts on maritime ecology. Basically I see one of the biggest problems was turning from crop rotation (and having fields in fallow) to single crop year-to-year agriculture and with heavy use of fertilizer. This kind of simplistic input-output thinking is one cause.
Yet at least in the wealthier countries these issues can be solved. The emergence of local and organic food markets and organic food in general show that the wants of the buyers do mold the supply and if the political establishment does something about the environmental issues, changes can happen.
But back to the subject, the main question is if we can feed a population of +10 billion without totally devastating the environment. Famines have gone down and become more rare, which is very promising, yet we have to remember just how rapid has this transformation been. My country suffered it's last great famine only 152 years ago, which killed many times more people than WW2 or the civil war and was one of the last major famines in Europe. 150 years is still a short time in human history.
(Food distribution during the great famine of 1866-1868 in Finland. Note that the people and the children have arrived to the event in their best sunday clothes. About 150 000, perhaps 200 000, died then which was roughly 10% of the population. Now the problem is obesity.)
See article: World's population likely to shrink after 50 years
So peak population? That surely will be a problem for perpetual growth.
The actual scientific Lancet article here: Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study
I foresee a drastic reduction of global population coming long before 2064, which will be driven by energy and resource shortages, water depletion and soil degradation, novel viral and bacterial infections, wars and global warming. I don't believe over-population is a problem we have either the collective will or resources to solve.
I have no faith that the resources are there to enable us to lift enough people out of poverty and educate them so they will have few enough children to allow the population to decline quickly enough to avoid the drastic reduction of human population which I think will be brought about by the forces I mentioned above.
If only we could be willing to give up "business as usual" and be happy to live much simpler lives! We cannot even muster the collective will to resist the elites who are screwing us all; the problem is that too many of us are too comfortable to care enough.
Remember that population growth is the natural reason for economic growth.
Just think about it: You start a family and you would get four children who themselves would start a family and get four children. That means thanks to you and your partner, there 20 people who work, who will buy a home who go and buy stuff daily.
This is also one of the reasons why demographic forecasts are actually quite accurate: for a couple of decades into the future the population who can have children already exists, hence the estimations for the next 50 years or so are quite accurate. After that, then they are just estimations as things can change.
That article shows where the real problem will be: Africa. If Nigeria will have nearly 800 million people, you surely want to get the Nigerian economy to mimick the growth of the Chinese or the Indian economy. Otherwise, things are going to be bad.
I think economic growth is also the driver for population growth. Back in the John Howard days here in Australia, there was a Government TV add campaign urging couples to have three children: one for mum, one for dad and one for the country, because they foresaw that if lifespans increase and reproduction decreased then there would not be enough workers to enable the economic activity needed to support the population.
Also bear in mind that credit is based on the assumption that the future will be bigger and better economically speaking than the present. As long as this illusion is maintained then then the mere existence of so much credit necessitates economic growth, or else there will be defaults.
Quoting ssu
Sure, they're quite accurate assuming business as usual, sufficient resources and so on.
Ah, the best example of these kind of policies was Ceaucescu's Romania. The Romanian dictator wanted a larger country by prohibiting abortions and contraception with Decree 770. It failed to reach it's goals, of course.
Fertility rate in Romania:
Quoting Janus
Partly,
Yet there's allways the way of inflation to pay credit away, but many do see a systemic collapse in the end of the fiat system based on ever larger amount of debt. But the fact is, if you can spend free money and it doesn't come to bite you back, you will keep spending that free money and increasing your debt.
This has even become an economic theory: that the amount of debt to the public sector doesn't matter, with Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
Of course that's true if you have enough resources to create things to spend the money on. And given resource depletion those things had better be useful, not junk that will shortly end up in landfill. But the thing is if you have plentiful resources then that creates the situation that makes genuine prosperity and growth possible. For a while humanity enjoyed this situation; where resources seemed limitless and hence limitless growth seemed possible.
But now resources are declining and demand is increasing. If you print more and more money in that situation the usual outcome would be inflation. Also given that currencies themselves are now traded on the money markets and that demand determines their value in relation to other currencies, if a sovereign government prints money willy-nilly, then traders may lose confidence in the currency leading to its losing value.
The way I look at it you have three main factors: human resources (labour, ingenuity creativity etc.), natural resources ( fertile soils, water, animal and plant foods, energy sources and minerals, timber etc.) and money. Money is what gets things done, but if you lack human and natural resources then you have nothing to get anything done with. Then it wouldn't matter how much money you printed.
But notice it isn't so clear cut: human population may peak in this century and then diminish, which means declining demand. And thanks to technology and the market mechanism, the decline in natural resources isn't so clear cut either as the used resources change too.
Quoting Janus
That's the old traditional way of thinking. But not with MMT!
Recycling so far hasn't, for the most part, proven to be possible or been considered to be economically worth doing as far as I can tell. New technologies may come along that make it worthwhile, but they may not come along, and we seem to be running out of time.
Quoting ssu
Can you explain just how MMT can get around declining natural resources and trader's loss of confidence in bloated currencies?
I do think it is inevitable that we will have UBI in many countries. It will be necessary in order to keep "business as usual" going in the short term. I don't know how sustainable it would be long-term though.
When it comes to feeding the most underprivileged, food distribution is indeed the problem, but then distribution requires fossil fuel use, so it's a Catch 22 situation. Sure we all need to consume way less, stop using cars, taking overseas trips and so on. But if we did all that we would collapse the economy, and the under-priveleged would receive even less aid than they have and do now, and the ranks of the under-priveleged classes would swell exponentially, leading to a drastic reduction of populations everywhere.
Humanity appears to be in a "no win" situation.
Of course. Neither matters if everyone still keeps trying to destroy each other. Might as well be contained here than be allowed to run amok elsewhere.
For me colonization of other planets is a fantastic, absurd pipe dream.
As was how we're communicating now. Precisely as the thought of what allows us to communicate now before it became reality.
Everything we call amazing today is because it was thought of as impossible at one point or otherwise embodies some sort of rarity. Otherwise it would have no value like a single blade of grass from your lawn or a drop of rain from the sky.
That video didn't really provide any arguments to not think that overpopulation is a problem. It was basically just saying that the population in developed countries is a bigger problem than the population growth in developing countries. Yes, it would be helpful if we reduced our consumption levels but it would also be helpful if we reduced our population. I think we need both.