World's biggest problem: Overpopulation? (Just something to think about)

[Q Classic]

actually, disease may well become an issue again in the 21st century, if the current trend towards resistant microbes continue and no new antibiotics are developed.

the currently new ones, such as vancomycin, have already created some new strains resistant to it; this is why vancomycin is now currently restricted ONLY to those infections that cannot be fought with others.

this is sad;

of all the ways to go, i'd rather be vaporized in an instant by a cleansing nuclear blast than a long, slow, painful infection death.

now, as for population control. there is no real way to make everyone happy by restricting growth; it's just a fact.

this is why i think the governments are being woefully short-sighted with this "space explo-ration bidness". granted, right now, it seems to be on the whole, rather useless... but there will be utility, if and when colonization becomes viable...

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by Transcend


Measuring intelligence is exactly the problem. Who qualifies as stupid? And how much stupidity is too much? Humans are often specialists, meaning smart at doing one thing, but stupid at doing another thing. How do you resolve that?

Finally, you don't have the AUTHORITY to judge over other people's life and death, and no other humans do.

To be honest I dont think we (in the western world) need to resort to draconian measures to encourage intelligent people to have more children and less able people to have less. Incentives to have more children or incentives for sterilization would be enough. That way everything would be voluntary. Its not really just about stupidity, its about success. If you are able to survive in this world for long enough to have children it should be because of your own ability, not because you are on a government benefit.

Nobody is judging over life and death here.

[Transcend]

Five years of welfare is not much. However, Europeans with their socialist attitudes will sooner or later decline, just like the Roman Empire back then. Roman rulers made the same mistake by offering 'Bread and Circus' to their citizens, while leaving the work to slaves and foreigners. Does anyone see a parallel happening here?

[DanS]

Originally posted by Bugs ****ing Bunny
Or is it just brown people whose numbers must be reduced?

Why yes, I believe we've touched on the root of the matter.

The only problem with people in third-world and developing countries is that they aren't productive enough. But they are becoming more productive all of the time. You can turn these things around easier than what is taken for granted in this thread.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Re: thats crap bugs

Originally posted by drake


What the hell do you need a vasectomy for? I got all the proof I need in the fact that I ain't got no kids! If someone can't figure out that storks don't make babies, they probably shouldn't have kids of their own! Black, white, yellow whatever.

Theres no reason one cant regulate to a reasonable level, how many babies one has. (except in cases of twins +)

That "whoosh" sound you may have heard was the sound of my post going straight over drake's head. Let me try to explain...

Are you planning to never have sex? If not, what makes you think that you aren't going to add to the "world's greatest problem"? No contraceptive is 100% effective.

Or are you planning to keep your options open? Is it just other people's brats who are the problem?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Caligastia


Why do you accept that there are bad stocks for plants and animals, but not for humans? All we are is glorified apes after all.

I never brought race into this, you did. All races have good stocks and bad stocks.

Transcend - I dont think it is difficult to decide what traits are desirable. Intelligence and a minimum of genetic disease would be a good start.

Jesus....

I don't recall Cal's picture in any of the photo-threads, but was he in a Hitler Youth uniform?

So it's the feeble-minded and those bearing the traits of genetic illness that should be stamped out is it? Well that's both of us ****ed then. Me because Parkinson's Disease runs in my family and you because you could be outwitted by a mango.

Why does having lower intelligence mean you shouldn't reproduce? Do you think that people with lower IQ's are incapable of being good parents? I can give you any number of examples of geniuses who were evil little ****s, by the way.

[drake]

No no whoosh at all.

One can prevent pregnancy without sterilization very easily. If one tries hard enough that is. I obviously don't need to lecture anyone on what I mean.

I plan to keep my "options open", but I KNOW (know) that I will not have more than 2 children in my lifetime.

Now had I had 2 kids, I would definetly consider a little snip. Why not? Its certainly not a big deal.

[Roman]

Originally posted by Transcend
Five years of welfare is not much.

I guess that's subjective, but IMO five years of welfare is a lot .

However, Europeans with their socialist attitudes will sooner or later decline, just like the Roman Empire back then. Roman rulers made the same mistake by offering 'Bread and Circus' to their citizens, while leaving the work to slaves and foreigners. Does anyone see a parallel happening here?

I fear you might be right. Unfortunately Europe is repeating the mistakes of the Romans. Instead of slaves, we have extremely cheap labour from immigrants... I am usually pro-immigration, but your post made me wonder. Perhaps Europe should encourage harder work among her own people and give them incentives to have more children. Otherwise, European civilization as we know it might come to an end replaced by something culturally new and nobody knows what. Mind you, the US is doing that to a degree too, but there is lesser danger of societal collapse there, because US is built on recent immigration anyway and naturalizes the immigrants, unlike Europe.

Hmm, reading my post above, I hope I am not turning xenophobic!?! But then again, I guess it is not wrong to hope to preserve the cultural identity of your country/region/whatever. I guess another solution would be to naturalize the immigrants better, like you do in the US.

[Richard Bruns]

Re: Sheesh =)

Originally posted by drake
The whole idea richard is that less people need less natural (not scientific!) resources. Natural resources are not in-definite. I don't care what science people come up with, you dig from a mine long enough and the bounty will run out.

So we use different resources. Remember the whale oil analogy? 150 years ago we didn't use petroleum; 150 years from now we probably won't need to. The ancient world depended on bronze, that was mostly replaced with steel. And even now steel is beginning to be replaced with polymers and composites. Humans have shown a capacity to grow beyond the need of certain resources, and we will continue to do so. Science may not be able to refill that mine, but it can make the contents of the mine obsolete by replacing them with something else.

I'm not at all saying we should exterminate a few billion people to level the playing field or anything of the sort. But what is wrong with desiring a bit more moderation in population growth? Why must people breed like rabbits?

Desiring it isn't the big problem. Forcing it on other people is the problem.

Nobody had to implement a one child policy with forced sterilizations and abortions in the USA, Europe, or Japan. All these areas were once as poor as thirld world countries today, and there was a time in the 1800's when we all "bred like rabbits." We did okay without government or UN intervention. Why can't other countries be allowed to do the same?

Saying we should keep the worlds population in check isn't cruel Richard, promoting irresponsible reproduction is!

"Irresponsible reproduction" What does that mean exactly? Is it irresponsible when rich westerners reproduce, or is it only irresponsible for "other" people to reproduce? If you are concerned about resource depletion, you should concentrate population control efforts in rich countries, since people there consume more.

Where does it stop then Richard? 10 billion? 20 billion? 50 billion? By then we'd all be living in cities, packed in like sardines. Now if thats what you think the world needs, you're entitled to it. But it sounds pretty sick to me.

Not necessarily. With the population density of New York City, all 6 billion of the world's people could fit in Yugoslavia. Sure the place has slums, but it's not generally considered a horrible place to live. The world has a lot of space, and with science we can
make more and more of that space useful.

For a more reasonable example, consider that, with the population density of Japan, about 2.5 billion people could live in the continental United States. Japan comes close to feeding itself despite the fact that about most of the place is mountainous and only 11% is cultivated.

There's plenty of land to go around.

Say what you want Richard, but people, the masses, whatever you call them, are hurting the world more than helping it.

Would you have said the same thing in 1900? With 1.6 billion people, the world was groaning under the weight of an absolutely enormous population, and it was obvious to anyone who considered the matter that there were far too many humans for the natural resources to support.

The idea of the earth supporting 6 billion people was as unthinkable in 1900 as the idea of it supporting 50 billion people is today.

If we as a people don't do something about it, I guarantee nature will take it's course and do it for us.

Malthus said that back when the human population was about 900 million. Ehrlich said it when we had about 3 billion people. Believe the prophets of doom you want, but history has other things to say about their predictions.

The world is made up of have and have nots. And eventually the have nots are going to have nothing (except a patch of sand and rocks that couldn't grow a weed, like in Afghanistan).

Funny how the average standard of living all over the world has increased even as population has mushroomed. Indians and Chinese today are fat better off than they were in 1900, despite the fact that there are a lot more of them in the same area.

When resources become un-available, there will be wars, great wars to obtain them. (There already have been a few of those in the ME). And nature will take its course.

Maybe. Or maybe people will decide that replacing a resource is cheaper and easier than fighting for it. The Nazis manufactured their oil in chemical plants in WW2 when they couldn't get sufficient supplies elsewhere. The process cost a lot, but they had enough oil until the Allied bombers hit the chemical plants.

The only reason we don't use the process today is that it is about five times as expendive as drilling oil out of the ground. Even if the world exhausted every drop of it's oil reserves, we'd still be able to make enough of it to function. The price of gas would just go up to about 6 dollars a gallon.

I don't think the worlds current population is un-sustainable. Hell, its still got some room. But the expansion has to stop somewhere. Sometime.

Yes, I agree that it has to stop somewhere. Technology does have its limits. So, just for fun, I'll calculate the carrying capacity of an arbutrarily advanced civilization.

This civilization would recycle all material products, as per the law of conservation of mass. So a human life needs the following inputs:
2000 calories a day in food.
About 20 cubic meters of space
5000 liters of oxygen per day

With an oxygen consumption of about , a healthy human can work at a rate of 100 watts.

The Earth recieves about

Humans havent been around that long on this planet and look what we've already done to it.

We have used it to support billions of people in a level of comfort and health that far surpasses any other time in history.

Another few thousand years with the technology we have? I cringe to think of what this world could look like in the next century or two.

I don't. Nothing prevents the world from looking like Japan, even if there are 25 billion people or so. Overpopulation is not the world's biggest problem. The problem is bad government, lack of education, ineffeciancy, and squandered resources. We should focus on these problems instead of trying to reduce populations.

If we manage things well and respect individual initiative and freedom, we would have no problem supporting any number of people.

[Transcend]

Richard, you should go to China or India to FEEL the pressure of population. By living comfortably in your North Carolina suburb, you don't know the pain of overcrowding.

You should try to get to a Chinese bus during the rush hour, or you should experience the water being rationed in Northern China, or you should observe the sand storm in Bei Jing because the desertification caused by people using unsuitable land for agriculture.

I have to remind you that both Europe and Japan depend on foreign grain supplies, the former on American wheat and the latter on Asian rice. Suppose Japan is fighting another war in Asia and loses its grain supply, you will see a famine happening unpredent in human history.

[WhiteElephants]

Re: Re: Sheesh =)

Originally posted by Richard Bruns

So we use different resources. Remember the whale oil analogy? 150 years ago we didn't use petroleum; 150 years from now we probably won't need to. The ancient world depended on bronze, that was mostly replaced with steel. And even now steel is beginning to be replaced with polymers and composites. Humans have shown a capacity to grow beyond the need of certain resources, and we will continue to do so. Science may not be able to refill that mine, but it can make the contents of the mine obsolete by replacing them with something else.

I think this statement really hit the nail on the head. You can make all kinds of possible predictions about the future, but the fact remains that these predictions are based on the way of life as it is today and we all know that we don't live in a vacuum.

Wasn't there some guy who said 50 years ago we'd be out of oil in 50 years, and here we are today with the same sort of predictions going around that we'll be out of oil in another fifty years. Crying wolf again are we?

I think the gloom and doomers tend to see the world and its resources as finite where as I believe the possiblity of resources are infinite. Gravity always existed, but it took us a few millions years to figure it out, no?

Thanks Richard, it's nice to hear a voice of reason amongst the prophets of gloom and doom.

[Sandman]

Europe only imports grain for economic reasons. It actually greatly overproduces food. So much so that the EU pays farmers to diversify into other areas.

As for resources, well unless you shoot metal into space or into a particle accelerator it can't be destroyed, so all we have to do is recycle. Nature recycles materials endlessly, in order to survive we must do the same.

[Thue]

Originally posted by Sandman
So much so that the EU pays farmers to diversify into other areas.

No need for the americans to criticize this. We know perfectly well the EU farming policy suck.

[faded glory]

Originally posted by Transcend
Five years of welfare is not much. However, Europeans with their socialist attitudes will sooner or later decline, just like the Roman Empire back then. Roman rulers made the same mistake by offering 'Bread and Circus' to their citizens, while leaving the work to slaves and foreigners. Does anyone see a parallel happening here?

True, but this did not bring about the fall of the Roman empire. Civil wars and Greedy generals were more to blame. The Roman empire could of lasted another 1000 years had they changed there policy of "Pledge allegiance to General".

Later after years of Civil War.....the Barbarians finished off Rome.


Ya but that Welfare crap turns wealthy nations into empty shells. Its just a political game...that ends to economic and national ruin.

(But thats not the discussion at the hand)


Back to Overpopulation. I dont put much faith in technology. I think there is a limit to what we humans can devolop. I think 50 years from now we will hit that limit...

[MORON]

I don't. Nothing prevents the world from looking like Japan, even if there are 25 billion people or so. Overpopulation is not the world's biggest problem. The problem is bad government, lack of education, ineffeciancy, and squandered resources.

No Oil ....... no trees...... no meat...... super high rice price..... (in Japan, Rice costs 3+ time more due to protectionism) pollution as bad as Japan? I'll pass....

(Note: Japanese population is declining thanks to low birth rates....)

Japan imports huge amounts of nature resources for its uses. Wonder why Japan decided to fight the US in WWII, well an oil embargo is one of them.

However, I'd agree that without the inefficiency and waste of both human and natural resources, much more people can be support. However, it is not infinite.

well unless you shoot metal into space or into a particle accelerator it can't be destroyed, so all we have to do is recycle.

Do you want to wait 20,000 years for trees you plant today to become oil?

The current consumption outstrip nature's recycling ability. However, the change in technology have saved us by giving replacements faster than the resources running out.

I think the gloom and doomers tend to see the world and its resources as finite where as I believe the possiblity of resources are infinite.

Assuming people can use infinite variety of resources.... yeah right.... or not

I'll just go drill that borehole....