Arguing overpopulation?

[ValPal]

Here is the definition that I saw Bob use

You might want to consider picking out more than one line. For example,

Whenever someone is arguing for overpopulation, that indicates that there are surplus people, who should be eliminated to reduce “overpopulation”

That’s a more extreme position. He’s stating that “overpopulationists” believe people should be eliminated. That is a far more radical position, and is a tiny subset of the colloquial understanding of what an overpopulationist is. He’s using this extreme position to also trap people that fit the colloquial definition of overpopulationist. It’s very disingenuous, but necessary because he doesn’t understand the issues and cannot argue the points.

 

[Brendan]

That’s a more extreme position. He’s stating that “overpopulationists” believe people should be eliminated. That is a far more radical position, and is a tiny subset of the colloquial understanding of what an overpopulationist is. He’s using this extreme position to also trap people that fit the colloquial definition of overpopulationist. It’s very disingenuous, but necessary because he doesn’t understand the issues and cannot argue the points.

I viewed it as a follow on question. An overpopulationist believes there are surplus people. Who then should be removed?

Now a corporation could view itself as having a surplus of employees. It look at terminations or it could look at a reduction in hiriing and reduce by normal attrition.

In the case of a presumed population surplus, a person could demand terminations ( which would be extreme) or advocate a ‘reduction in hiriing’ in the form of contraception or abortion. In one case, the reductions are accomodate by specific targeting of individuals (which would actually include abortions) or by contraception and natural death rates.

Unfortunately, the push for specific targeting in the form of legalized and widely available abortion is hardly considered to be an extreme position amongst ‘overpopulationists’

 

[ValPal]

I viewed it as a follow on question. An overpopulationist believes there are surplus people. Who then should be removed?

As always, nature will decide. It’s usually a combination of death by starvation and war due to fighting over resources.

Unfortunately, the push for specific targeting in the form of legalized and widely available abortion is hardly considered to be an extreme position amongst ‘overpopulationists’

I don’t believe in abortion to “solve” the problem, nor do my peers. So what is the term that you use for such people so that that we can be clear on the matter?

 

[BobCatholic]

That was not his goal. He killed some political enemies. The 20,000,000 number has to do with failed social programs, where he did not intend to kill people,

I find that hard to believe.

He is quoted as saying “you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs” - and that tells me his goals were so important, that killing people was OK. He dehumanized others and saw them as things to be sacrificed for his selfishness.

So I don’t believe you when you claim he did not intend to kill people. He put himself first and that’s typical of people of his type.

any more than Henry Ford intended to kill people by inventing the automobile and causing auto accidents. Don’t mix the the two up.

Last time I recall, I don’t remember having Henry Ford being in charge of the drivers of the cars. Mao was in charge of the failed social programs. You are comparing apples and roast beef here.

You’re misrepresenting the facts (probably unintentionally, since you clearly do not understand the history regarding this matter).

The history is simple. He dehumanized others by seeing them as sacrificial pawns in his political games.

Got it…so he’s a dummy.

Do you have anything to offer besides off the cuff comments?

I see, so the guy in charge of the IT department is a credible source but the COO and CEO are not.

“Peak Oil” is something put out in order for Big Oil and Big Green to sleep in the same bed, and to make sure oil and gas prices are high for maximum profit to both groups. It is crony capitalism and politics at its worst.

Follow the money and figure out where Big Green gets their money and power from. You will be very surprised.

 

[BobCatholic]

As always, nature will decide. It’s usually a combination of death by starvation and war due to fighting over resources.

Darwinism. And with all the negative connotations involved - might makes right, dehumanization.

I don’t believe in abortion to “solve” the problem, nor do my peers. So what is the term that you use for such people so that that we can be clear on the matter?

So you reject eugenics?

 

[BobCatholic]

That’s a more extreme position. He’s stating that “overpopulationists” believe people should be eliminated. That is a far more radical position, and is a tiny subset of the colloquial understanding of what an overpopulationist is. He’s using this extreme position to also trap people that fit the colloquial definition of overpopulationist. It’s very disingenuous, but necessary because he doesn’t understand the issues and cannot argue the points.

I think Brendan explained my position better than I did

If there are a surplus of people (“too many people”) what are to be done with the surplus? They can’t be allowed to continue to exist. If they do, the “overpoulation” status continues and that causes problems,and the problems continue. Since the problems must be solved, the solution is obvious: The ultimate goal = elimination of the “surplus population” - DEATH. HOW that is to be implemented is what is debated among overpopulationists.

Another thing is “WHO” is considered part of the surplus population? Overpopulationists never think they are. It is always “someone else”

Overpopulationism is part of the culture of death.

You seem to think that darwinism will take care of this problems, and that will require death of the “surplus population” - you even admitted it yourself.

And what if that doesn’t solve the problem fast enough? Your fellow overpopulationists will go for more “extreme” measures. The problems must be solved. And fast. The ends justify the means.

But you’ve already opened the door wide open, by accepting the faulty premise. You’re permitting the serial killer (culture of death) to not only enter the house where humanity lives, you’re opening the door and saying “come right in”

The faulty premise is that “overpopulation” is to be blamed for the problems, instead of the lack of resources.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again, because I think you’re missing it.

How you define the issue is how the solution will be defined.

If you blame people’s existence (“too many people”) then the only way to fix the problems that result because “too many people exist” is to get rid of their existence. No other way will fix those problems because that’s how the issue is defined.

I blame resource shortages, and the solution is to find ways of obtaining resources without resorting to dehumanizing people and supporting the culture of death. This is the crux of where we disagree on.

So, how do you see people?

My position: Human beings with an inalienable right to life, and inherent dignity.

Overopulationists: There’s too many of them. Thus they have no value.

 

[TEPO]

nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mini-RF/multimedia/feature_ice_like_deposits.html

nytimes.com/2011/05/27/science/space/27moon.html

"The outermost layer of the Moon is called the crust, which extends down to a depth of 50 km. This is the layer of the Moon that scientists have gathered the most information about. The crust of the Moon is composed mostly of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium, and aluminum. There are also trace elements like titanium, uranium, thorium, potassium and hydrogen."

Read more: universetoday.com/20583/what-is-the-moon-made-of/#ixzz2CyS19632

…with water, minerals, and the means to transport life, the moon is a real possibility for extending humanity beyond its birth place… Mall style cities could be built from lunar materials, and uranium deposits could provide electrical generation. Oxygen deposits could be filtered from the surface and recycled using plant life.

 

[ValPal]

I find that hard to believe.

Of course. Most people look at other cultures through biased eyes, forming their opinions solely on the third-hand opinion of biased sources. I’m dealing with second-hand sources, that being speaking to Chinese people in China that actually lived through it. And the China of today isn’t the China of 40 or more years ago; the Chinese are more then happy to tell you the good along with the bad.

So I don’t believe you when you claim he did not intend to kill people.

He intended to kill political enemies, not the innocent civilians. In fact, if you had any understanding of how Mao came to power, why the Chinese government is scared of aggravating the populace, and why they are scared of large assemblies you would understand why you are simply flat out wrong. This is as basic a principle as there is in understanding this culture, and if you don’t understand it, you really don’t have any right spreading misinformation.

I see, so the guy in charge of the IT department is a credible source but the COO and CEO are not.

I see…the person that hired because he understands the technology and the science should be ignored in favor of the person responsible for making money for the stockholders in any way he can. That certainly explains a lot of the opinions in this thread; ignore and/or don’t discuss the relevant, and praise the irrelevant.

“Peak Oil” is something put out in order for Big Oil and Big Green to sleep in the same bed, and to make sure oil and gas prices are high for maximum profit to both groups. It is crony capitalism and politics at its worst.

Problem is, Peak Oil theory is predicting exactly what is occurring. You realize that the oil obtaining from, say, fracking requires much more energy than the traditional high EROEI sources in the Middle East.

Follow the money and figure out where Big Green gets their money and power from. You will be very surprised.

I know where Big Green gets their money from. You also realize there is a reason they have to get their money from somewhere, which is also readily explained by Peak Oil Theory. Many of those sources have an EROEI of less than 1.0, meaning that they create no net energy or negative energy, thus are not profitable. It’s like spending $2 to get $1 back. That $1 has to come from somewhere.

 

[ValPal]

nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mini-RF/multimedia/feature_ice_like_deposits.html

nytimes.com/2011/05/27/science/space/27moon.html

"The outermost layer of the Moon is called the crust, which extends down to a depth of 50 km. This is the layer of the Moon that scientists have gathered the most information about. The crust of the Moon is composed mostly of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium, and aluminum. There are also trace elements like titanium, uranium, thorium, potassium and hydrogen."

Read more: universetoday.com/20583/what-is-the-moon-made-of/#ixzz2CyS19632

…with water, minerals, and the means to transport life, the moon is a real possibility for extending humanity beyond its birth place… Mall style cities could be built from lunar materials, and uranium deposits could provide electrical generation. Oxygen deposits could be filtered from the surface and recycled using plant life.

It sounds good to talk about it, but in practice it is unbelievably difficult and resource intensive. We can’t even run a Biosphere project here in a friendly environment on Earth. What makes you think it will work in an unbelievably hostile environment on the moon?

 

[RobbyS]

Maybe in our society, but believe it or not we’re not the only people that live on this earth.

Furthermore, there is a big difference between contraception and abortion. Thee are many people that use contraception but do not believe in abortion. Stats also bear this our out in western society, and its obviously more dramatic in the Muslim world.

But the policy-makers in our society make little distinction between contraception and abortion. They believe in smaller populations. Hillary Clinton even showed almost no outrage at the one-child policy of China. And of course, the solution to the aging of the population and its drain on resources is euthanasia. It can be argued, of course, that a declining population drains the vigor of a society. From the civil wars of the last century B.C. to the third Century B.C. the population of the Empire dwindled. It may have been the cause of the end of its “Golden Age,” when during the time of Marcus Aurelius, the Germans began to press hard on the German borders and the Parsees on its east, and the legions became less and less Italian. We don’t know what caused the economic collapse of the Third Century, but it did happen, and when the Empire was reformed under Diocletian and then under Constantine, it was different. Gibbon attributes the decline and fall to the Barbarians and “Superstition.” by which he means the growth in the number of Jews and Christians , two “nations” that believed in having children. Constantine considered making each relgion into the state religion and but chose the Christians, I suppose because they were less exotic.

 

[RobbyS]

It sounds good to talk about it, but in practice it is unbelievably difficult and resource intensive. We can’t even run a Biosphere project here in a friendly environment on Earth. What makes you think it will work in an unbelievably hostile environment on the moon?

A moon colony would be something like the space station. It would require constant resupply.

 

[ValPal]

A moon colony would be something like the space station. It would require constant resupply.

Sure it would…that’s why it’s a major problem. I’m not sure what your point is, though. Resupply from Earth would be a waste of resources, since they would be better to use here on Earth. Resupply from the moon is a major problem since the can’t even get such a project to work here on Earth.

 

[TEPO]

Sure it would…that’s why it’s a major problem. I’m not sure what your point is, though. Resupply from Earth would be a waste of resources, since they would be better to use here on Earth. Resupply from the moon is a major problem since the can’t even get such a project to work here on Earth.

From what I’ve read and from the links I provided, the moon seems to have all the resources needed to sustain life. There’s water, oxygen, energy sources, etc… It seems like all that’s needed is human intelligence and engineering to make it happen…

Only problem is getting used to not having gravity -but thats not impossible.

 

[RobbyS]

Sure it would…that’s why it’s a major problem. I’m not sure what your point is, though. Resupply from Earth would be a waste of resources, since they would be better to use here on Earth. Resupply from the moon is a major problem since the can’t even get such a project to work here on Earth.

Whether it would be a waste of resources woulddepend , would it not, on the pay off. Right now now, I can’t think of one. That doesn’t mean there might not be one in future.

 

[Sarcelle]

I think Brendan explained my position better than I did

If there are a surplus of people (“too many people”) what are to be done with the surplus? They can’t be allowed to continue to exist. If they do, the “overpoulation” status continues and that causes problems,and the problems continue. Since the problems must be solved, the solution is obvious: The ultimate goal = elimination of the “surplus population” - DEATH. HOW that is to be implemented is what is debated among overpopulationists.

Another thing is “WHO” is considered part of the surplus population? Overpopulationists never think they are. It is always “someone else”

This. I’ve also noticed this. Usually the “someone else” they have in mind lives in the developing nations.

 

[edwest2]

From the publication First Things, 2008.

"In fact, so discredited has the overpopulation science become that this year Columbia University historian Matthew Connelly could publish Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population and garner a starred review in Publishers Weekly—all in service of what is probably the single best demolition of the population arguments that some hoped would undermine church teaching. This is all the more satisfying a ratification because Connelly is so conscientious in establishing his own personal antagonism toward the Catholic Church (at one point asserting without even a footnote that natural family planning “still fails most couples who try it”).

"Fatal Misconception is decisive proof that the spectacle of overpopulation, which was used to browbeat the Vatican in the name of science, was a grotesque error all along. First, Connelly argues, the population-control movement was wrong as a matter of fact: “The two strongest claims population controllers make for their long-term historical contribution” are “that they raised Asia out of poverty and helped keep our planet habitable.” Both of these, he demonstrates, are false.

"Even more devastating is Connelly’s demolition of the claim to moral high ground that the overpopulation alarmists made. For population science was not only failing to help people, Connelly argues, but also actively harming some of them—and in a way that summoned some of the baser episodes of recent historical memory:

"The great tragedy of population control, the fatal misconception, was to think that one could know other people’s interests better than they knew it themselves. . . . The essence of population control, whether it targeted migrants, the “unfit,” or families that seemed either too big or too small, was to make rules for other people without having to answer to them. It appealed to people with power because, with the spread of emancipatory movements, it began to appear easier and more profitable to control populations than to control territory. That is why opponents were essentially correct in viewing it as another chapter in the unfinished business of imperialism."

“The forty years since Humanae Vitae appeared have also vindicated the encyclical’s fear that governments would use the new contraceptive technology coercively. The outstanding example, of course, is the Chinese government’s long-running “one-child policy,” replete with forced abortions, public trackings of menstrual cycles, family flight, increased female infanticide, sterilization, and other assaults too numerous even to begin cataloguing here—in fact, so numerous that they are now widely, if often grudgingly, acknowledged as wrongs even by international human-rights bureaucracies. Lesser-known examples include the Indian government’s foray into coercive use of contraception in the “emergency” of 1976 and 1977, and the Indonesian government’s practice in the 1970s and 1980s of the bullying implantation of IUDs and Norplant.”

Full article here: firstthings.com/article/2008/07/002-the-vindication-of-ihumanae-vitaei-28

Peace,
Ed

 

[ValPal]

“The forty years since Humanae Vitae appeared have also vindicated the encyclical’s fear that governments would use the new contraceptive technology coercively. The outstanding example, of course, is the Chinese government’s long-running “one-child policy,” replete with forced abortions, public trackings of menstrual cycles, family flight, increased female infanticide, sterilization, and other assaults too numerous even to begin cataloguing here—in fact, so numerous that they are now widely, if often grudgingly, acknowledged as wrongs even by international human-rights bureaucracies. Lesser-known examples include the Indian government’s foray into coercive use of contraception in the “emergency” of 1976 and 1977, and the Indonesian government’s practice in the 1970s and 1980s of the bullying implantation of IUDs and Norplant.”

The discussion is always void of what happened prior to China’s limiting population growth, which was ramping it up as much as possible. While people like to talk in platitudes, they miss certain very important points. For example, research China’s available water sources on a per person basis. Also interesting is China’s running around the world attempting to gobble up resources. Very interesting for a country that has historically been very isolationist.

 

[Ridgerunner]

He intended to kill political enemies, not the innocent civilians. In fact, if you had any understanding of how Mao came to power, why the Chinese government is scared of aggravating the populace, and why they are scared of large assemblies you would understand why you are simply flat out wrong. This is as basic a principle as there is in understanding this culture, and if you don’t understand it, you really don’t have any right spreading misinformation.

Don’t you think this is bit of an overstatement as to Mao’s benignity?

Mao had a very narrow view of who was “innocent” and a wide view of who was an “enemy”. To Mao, a peasant with two rooms in his house instead of just one, or with wheat bread to eat instead of millet cakes might be condemned as a member of the “exploiting class”. Some benefitted from this, without question. Many died because of it, and those who benefitted know how they did.

There will probably never be real certainty as to the number of people who died during Mao’s reign from execution or starvation, but most of the estimates are greatly in excess of 20 million.

Mao’s takeover strategy was fundamentally rural, which aided greatly in his success because China was then overwhelmingly rural. Much of China’s population is still rural, but it is far more urbanized now than it was in Mao’s day.

 

[Ridgerunner]

But the policy-makers in our society make little distinction between contraception and abortion. They believe in smaller populations. Hillary Clinton even showed almost no outrage at the one-child policy of China. And of course, the solution to the aging of the population and its drain on resources is euthanasia. It can be argued, of course, that a declining population drains the vigor of a society. From the civil wars of the last century B.C. to the third Century B.C. the population of the Empire dwindled. It may have been the cause of the end of its “Golden Age,” when during the time of Marcus Aurelius, the Germans began to press hard on the German borders and the Parsees on its east, and the legions became less and less Italian. We don’t know what caused the economic collapse of the Third Century, but it did happen, and when the Empire was reformed under Diocletian and then under Constantine, it was different. Gibbon attributes the decline and fall to the Barbarians and “Superstition.” by which he means the growth in the number of Jews and Christians , two “nations” that believed in having children. Constantine considered making each relgion into the state religion and but chose the Christians, I suppose because they were less exotic.

Gibbon is to be respected as a historian, but his assertion about Christianity’s “weakening influence” on the Romans has to be taken with skepticism. The Eastern Empire went on for a thousand years after the West “fell”, and was Christian the whole time.

One of the interesting things about Rome, at least as near as I can tell, is that it really didn’t have a history of ethnic exclusivity. It readily absorbed the Latin tribes that really weren’t “Roman”, then the Etruscans, the Cisalpine Gauls, the Illyrians and Pannonians, later the transalpine Gauls and even a lot of Germans. It wasn’t “immigration averse”, and tended to Romanize diverse peoples. Some of the emperors weren’t “Romans”. Its armies included a lot of diverse people almost from the beginning.

The Empire was always a struggle, and it missed destruction by near misses a number of times. But there is no question the population declined relative to that of the peoples beyond the Rhine and Danube. Some blame birth control and abortion for that, resulting from increasing penury among the citizenry. Some blame malaria. Some blame infertility due to the pervasive use of lead piping for water. Some blame the move to the East. Probably all are correct to one degree or another.

 

[lynnvinc]

Not sure about overpopulation as much as over-gluttonization. Some people are consuming 50, even 100 times what others are consuming, and causing a lot of pollution in the process all along the materials economy (from the extraction of resources, shipping, processing, manufacturing, wholesaling, retailing, shopping, consuming, disposing). Here’s a good overview of that – The Story of Stuff: youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM

Part of our over-gluttonization is our extreme pleasure-seeking, and that’s what leads to “over-bearing” and/or lots of abortions. Of course part of the problem is all the hormones and hormone-mimicking chemicals in our foods and other products (which also increases our cancers and birth-defects, miscarriages, etc). And then there is Hollywood. And our pleasure-seeking culture. But at some level we have to take responsbility for our own actions and lack of control.

I think asceticism and sexual abstinence are very good spiritual practices and need to be employed a lot more than they are. Whatever happened to the “rhythm method” and abstinence during lent, and vocations to a life of celibacy?

If we lived the right way – less gluttony and less sexual pleasure-seeking – the issue of
“overpopulation” wouldn’t even come up.