Overpopulation fears are a hoax

[Monte_RCMS]

Compare Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Both countries are on the same island.

Haiti is an international basket case.

Dominican Republic is relative prosperous.

At night the satellite photo shows Dominican Republic all lit up. Whereas Haiti is totally dark.

Compare Venezuela before Socialism and after Socialism. Prosperous versus starving. But they both have the exact same amount of oil.

 

[JimG]

From The Guardian:

Europe Needs Many More Babies to Avert a Population Disaster

 

[Regular_Atheist]

Previously posted (by Jim G) above: Hong Kong and Singapore have NO physical assets … NO LAND AREA … NO OIL … NO GOLD … NO CATTLE RANCHES … no assets except for the economic system that allows the people to keep what they earn.

Compare Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Compare Venezuela before Socialism and after Socialism. Prosperous versus starving. But they both have the exact same amount of oil.

I’m confused. What does any of this have to do with overpopulation?

Also I don’t understand your point about Hong Kong and Singapore. If arable land is indeed being destroyed on a global scale as frobert claims, then that is a problem. People can’t eat GDP or money. Still, I don’t believe that’s an issue of overpopulation.

 

[frobert]

Quoting again from Walter Williams:
“Any country faced with massive government interference can be brought to starvation. Blaming poverty on overpopulation not only lets governments off the hook but also encourages the enactment of harmful, inhumane policies.

Today’s poverty has little to do with overpopulation. The most commonly held characteristics of non-poor countries are greater personal liberty, private property rights, the rule of law, and an economic system closer to capitalism than to communism.
That’s the recipe for prosperity.”
Population density doesn’t cause prosperity by itself. It’s an indication that productive resources have been brought together in one place to enable production and prosperity—and the most important renewable resource of all is human beings. Human beings are renewable, adaptive, creative, and productive. Bringing them together to build a society is an asset. That’s why New York City, Singapore, Hong Kong, London, Taiwan, are thriving while small rural towns are not.

You are not taking global inequities into consideration.

Quote
“People must consume to survive, and the world’s poorest will need to increase their level of consumption if they are to lead lives of dignity and opportunity.”

While the consumer class thrives, great disparities remain. The 12 percent of the world’s population that lives in North America and Western Europe accounts for 60 percent of private consumption spending, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent.

Source…

Do you honestly believe that the earth has the carrying capacity to increase the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa from 3.2% to 50% of those that live in North America and Western Europe? How about 25%? Or 10%? Think of how your life would be if you had to live on 1/6 of what you consume today? I think for the vast majority of us in the Western countries would find it a disaster and the opium epidemic in the US would become a pandemic.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

I’m confused. What does any of this have to do with overpopulation?

Also I don’t understand your point about Hong Kong and Singapore. If arable land is indeed being destroyed on a global scale as frobert claims, then that is a problem. People can’t eat GDP or money. Still, I don’t believe that’s an issue of overpopulation.

There used to be islands in the Pacific Ocean. The islands used to be the size of five gallon jugs. But then, and without an environmental impact statement I might add, the Peoples Republic of China used dredges to expand the land area from one square meter to three kilometers long by one kilometer wide and paved a runway suitable for strategic bombers.

So, you can fit far more people on a area of three square kilometers than you can on an island of one square meter.

So, there ya go.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

There used to be islands in the Pacific Ocean. The islands used to be the size of five gallon jugs. But then, and without an environmental impact statement I might add, the Peoples Republic of China used dredges to expand the land area from one square meter to three kilometers long by one kilometer wide and paved a runway suitable for strategic bombers.

So, you can fit far more people on a area of three square kilometers than you can on an island of one square meter.

So, there ya go.

Well the problem with overpopulation according to those that believe in it is not that there is literally not enough physical space for the population of the Earth. Of course there is. The issue is with the Earth’s resources - can the Earth continue to support us in terms of producing everything we need to consume (food, fuel, etc.)? On top of that, as the population grows and we have more and more needs, can we continue to fulfill those needs in a way that doesn’t damage the environment too drastically?

Again, I’m not sure any of this is so much the product of overpopulation. In some ways I think overpopulation is a bit of a myth used to cover for the inability of capitalism to provide everyone with the necessities they need and to protect the environment. Sure, there is mass starvation in the world, but this is less due to an inability to produce the food and distribute it and more due to the fact that capitalism has no need to feed those people. In fact, it is quite beneficial for capital to exploit much of the developing world, depriving it of its natural resources and exploiting its labour. We certainly have the physical means to feed everyone in the world. The profit motive also means there is little incentive to try and protect the environment - less pollution typically means less profits, and there is little incentive to invest in renewable energy since it doesn’t produce a short-term profit of any kind.

 

[frobert]

There used to be islands in the Pacific Ocean. The islands used to be the size of five gallon jugs. But then, and without an environmental impact statement I might add, the Peoples Republic of China used dredges to expand the land area from one square meter to three kilometers long by one kilometer wide and paved a runway suitable for strategic bombers.

So, you can fit far more people on a area of three square kilometers than you can on an island of one square meter.

So, there ya go.

Do you know of anyone who has plans to do something similar for the 3 billion + that are malnourished or the 1.2 billion who are facing water scarcity?

While we are talking about China here is another interesting fact:

Quote
According to the China State Forestry Administration, the desert areas are still expanding by between 2460 and 10,400km2 per year. Up to 400 million people are at risk of desertification in China – the affected area could cover as much as 3.317 million km2 – 34.6 per cent of the total land area.

Source…

 

[St_Francis]

You are not taking global inequities into consideration.

Quote
“People must consume to survive, and the world’s poorest will need to increase their level of consumption if they are to lead lives of dignity and opportunity.”

While the consumer class thrives, great disparities remain. The 12 percent of the world’s population that lives in North America and Western Europe accounts for 60 percent of private consumption spending, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent.

Source…

Do you honestly believe that the earth has the carrying capacity to increase the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa from 3.2% to 50% of those that live in North America and Western Europe? How about 25%? Or 10%? Think of how your life would be if you had to live on 1/6 of what you consume today? I think for the vast majority of us in the Western countries would find it a disaster and the opium epidemic in the US would become a pandemic.

Ideas never come out quite right when people think in terms of agreggated numbers instead of actual human beings…

First, notice how over time the individual items require less to make; who would have thought that the original desktop computers would have morphed into something much stronger which would fit into one’s pocket? And it is [.

Guess what happens to the clothes you donate to the thrift shop which they can’t sell here? Shipped overseas for the poor.

Must run…KenyansBrazilians](6.1B Smartphone Users Globally By 2020, Overtaking Basic Fixed Phone Subscriptions – TechCrunch)

 

[SuperLuigi]

@jim

It is correct that overpopulation is an easy political tool used to justify anti family and misanthropic platforms, but low or high population density doesn’t really guarantee wealth or poverty. Russia and Canada will have low population density because they are big.

There will of course be a tendency towards wealth because there is more net intelligence for doing anything and everything, but not a guarantee if the mechanisms aren’t in place for people to grow and develop themselves, like in India (although that is getting better) If those mechanisms of justice towards the individual and family are in place, then ourselves and each other are of course our own benefactors.

Wealth is more correlated to incentive and development than available space of resources. Japan is a good example.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

Wealth is more correlated to incentive and development than available space of resources. Japan is a good example.

This is honestly nonsense. Many countries are poor because of their exploitation by other nations, not because they lack incentive or whatever. Nigeria has plenty of notable natural resources but is being ravaged by western companies.

Japan didn’t become wealthy just because of incentive. It was a product of the opening of new markets after the Second World War, leading to the post-war boom.

 

[ANV]

With overpopulation comes over consumption, we don’t live like organic carrots in agriculture tents.

 

[Memaw]

Excerpt from a short article by Walter Williams on ‘overpopulation.’

stream.org/overpopulation-fears-hoax-heres-higher-populations-actually-good-thing/

It’s been a hoax ever since Margaret Sanger!! God Bless, Memaw

 

[esieffe]

It is hard to win such an argument one way or the other, when much of Earth is under such poor or greedy governance. It becomes hard to factor in bad decisions from so many different sources. You might say well, we can just sample governments in areas under better leadership. This might help, but you still have other economic and social realities before you can definitively answer the over population /sustainability question.

You can have all the resources you can imagine at your fingertips, and if you can’t get at them, it is of little immediate help. This is in no way, a backdoor argument for birth control. Right now, I think it is just a question of management.

 

[frobert]

Ideas never come out quite right when people think in terms of agreggated numbers instead of actual human beings…

I do not understand the point you are trying to make, I thought the topic is overpopulation at 7.5 billions.

First, notice how over time the individual items require less to make; who would have thought that the original desktop computers would have morphed into something much stronger which would fit into one’s pocket? And it is forecast that 6.1 billion people will have a smartphone by 2020. .

Won’t the price of smartphones need to drop about 95-99% so the billions of people who live on 2-3 dollars a day will be able to afford one?

And when it becomes too costly to make them, some brilliant person will figure out how to make them last longer than a couple of years and the market will shift to accomdate 3-year-old smartphones

My LG9 phone is close to 5 years old, I only needed to replace the battery once.

Look at Ridgerunner’s posts about agriculture and the problems in that area. Much of our world’s ag production is lost not to GW or whatever, but to desertification as we consume our land rather than conserve it. We are learning what needs to be done to re-capture that land and we learn more each year. We can easily increase our food production if we stop doing stupid things.

Quote
Today, the majority of American farmland is dominated by industrial agriculture—the system of chemically intensive food production developed in the decades after World War II, featuring enormous single-crop farms and animal production facilities.

…Intensive monoculture depletes soil and leaves it vulnerable to erosion. Chemical fertilizer runoff and CAFO wastes add to global warming emissions and create oxygen-deprived “dead zones” at the mouths of major waterways. Herbicides and insecticides harm wildlife and can pose human health risks as well. Biodiversity in and near monoculture fields takes a hit, as populations of birds and beneficial insects decline.

Source…

Without fossil fuel (name removed by moderator)uts and the majority of US farmland becomes useless.

Additionally, people out there are learning how to grow food in tiny places, vertically, and in other innovative ways. As we get that information out to people in poverty-stricken areas, they will be able to supplement their diets with great food and they will be better off, as are Kenyans

and Brazilians.

Guess what happens to the clothes you donate to the thrift shop which they can’t sell here? Shipped overseas for the poor.

Must run…

Great, let’s help more people help themselves.

 

[frobert]

This is honestly nonsense. Many countries are poor because of their exploitation by other nations, not because they lack incentive or whatever. Nigeria has plenty of notable natural resources but is being ravaged by western companies.

Japan didn’t become wealthy just because of incentive. It was a product of the opening of new markets after the Second World War, leading to the post-war boom.

It’s called neoliberalism, not to be confused with liberals, and has been the policy of democrat and republican presidents since Carter.

 

[St_Francis]

I do not understand the point you are trying to make, I thought the topic is overpopulation at 7.5 billions.

You were talking about percentages of the world population and all that.

Won’t the price of smartphones need to drop about 95-99% so the billions of people who live on 2-3 dollars a day will be able to afford one?

How many billions are living on $2–3/day?

And how many are willing to sacrifice the money so that their children will have the chance to access some form of education which is otherwise unavailable to them?

My LG9 phone is close to 5 years old, I only needed to replace the battery once.

No, I meant sites. Like for about 3 months, I could not access news sites because they had jumped to the next level of software and my device had not. Now they have adjusted, pretty much, and I can at least read most paragraphs without their reloading

Quote
Today, the majority of American farmland is dominated by industrial agriculture—the system of chemically intensive food production developed in the decades after World War II, featuring enormous single-crop farms and animal production facilities.

…Intensive monoculture depletes soil and leaves it vulnerable to erosion. Chemical fertilizer runoff and CAFO wastes add to global warming emissions and create oxygen-deprived “dead zones” at the mouths of major waterways. Herbicides and insecticides harm wildlife and can pose human health risks as well. Biodiversity in and near monoculture fields takes a hit, as populations of birds and beneficial insects decline.

Source…

Without fossil fuel (name removed by moderator)uts and the majority of US farmland becomes useless.

We are talking about the whole world, right? There aren’t all that many people living on less than $2/day in the US.

Great, let’s help more people help themselves.

This is one of many areas of endeavor which are gathering steam. While Malthus predicted only an arithmetic growth in actual agriculture, in terms of the dessemination of knowledge and the knowledge itself, I think there is more of a geometric progression, which means, just in terms of agriculture, a possible lifting of Malthus’s limits to ag growth.

And of course, other areas will experience growth as well.

And to return to aggregate numbers, this is why looking at humanity just in terms of numbers eventually fails: this young man in Africa had to drop out of school for lack of money, but figured out how to build a generating windmill for his family.

 

[PseuTonym]

We certainly have the physical means to feed everyone in the world. The profit motive also means there is little incentive to …

Before some parcel of land becomes an actual functioning farm, it is necessary to apply resources and human effort to create a farm. When food is sold and some of the revenue is used to maintain the farm, we see a reinvestment of profit. Profit is return on investment. Without profit, there would be no way to maintain the farm.

You have already stated many times on CAF that you are opposed to exchange value, so you should be opposed to lifestyles that involve buying food rather than growing all of your own food. On the other hand, if everybody had always grown all of his or her own food, then it seems very unlikely that the world’s present-day population level could be as high as it is. Please explain how, without division of labor, it would be possible.

 

[ATraveller]

It’s highly unlikely the global human population will continue to grow exponentially
youtube.com/watch?v=ezVk1ahRF78&feature=youtu.be&t=10m18s

 

[Regular_Atheist]

Before some parcel of land becomes an actual functioning farm, it is necessary to apply resources and human effort to create a farm. When food is sold and some of the revenue is used to maintain the farm, we see a reinvestment of profit. Profit is return on investment. Without profit, there would be no way to maintain the farm.

Sure. What you’re describing here is the process of the valorization of capital - the way in which capital is maintained and expanded through reinvesting some of the surplus value produced by the workers back into it. Some of the money produced through selling the food is used to buy machinery, maintenance and labour power which is necessary to keep the farm productive. This is an essential feature of a society with exchange value. In a society without exchange value, the food would, essentially, be given away for free, while the necessary items for the maintenance of the farm would be provided to the farm from elsewhere without having to be paid for or any act of exchange taking place.

You have already stated many times on CAF that you are opposed to exchange value, so you should be opposed to lifestyles that involve buying food rather than growing all of your own food.

Nonsense. Firstly, commodity production cannot be resisted individually. The very consciousness of man is determined by capitalism. It can only be overcome collectively, when humanity breaks with the reproduction of the capital-labour relation totally.

Secondly, the opposite of producing for exchange is not growing your own food individually. A modern farm or factory with multiple people working on it can break with exchange, by distributing the goods it produces for free, rather than by exchanging them for other goods or money (which is only a representative of exchange value, the value of one commodity compared to another). What you describe would not break with exchange value, precisely because it would involve individual producers or groups of producers (those growing their own food) producing isolated from one another, so the only course of action they would have is to exchange their products with one another for the stuff they themselves do not produce. The point of communism is to “centralize” the means of production under the whole of society, so that everybody produces in direct relation to each other and not as individual producers isolated from one another.

Please explain how, without division of labor, it would be possible.

Labour would obviously still have many component parts - to produce one commodity would likely still require many individuals engaging in labour on a production line, for example. With the abolition of wage labour, the division of labour would break in that I would no longer be confined to one job at a time. I would have no employment of any kind. I could engage in whatever labour I want whenever I want, performing whatever needs to be performed whenever it needs doing.

 

[PseuTonym]

In a society without exchange value, the food would, essentially, be given away for free, while the necessary items for the maintenance of the farm would be provided to the farm from elsewhere without having to be paid for or any act of exchange taking place.

Giving away food for free isn’t difficult, but how would the farm ensure that “the maintenance of the farm would be provided to the farm from elsewhere without having to be paid for or any act of exchange taking place”?

Firstly, commodity production cannot be resisted individually. The very consciousness of man is determined by capitalism. It can only be overcome collectively, when humanity breaks with the reproduction of the capital-labour relation totally.

If capitalism cannot be resisted until after capitalism ceases to exist, then why do you think that you have the power to resist capitalism? It exists. Therefore, you cannot resist it. It determines your consciousness. Therefore, you are merely spouting capitalist propaganda.

What you describe would not break with exchange value, precisely because it would involve individual producers or groups of producers (those growing their own food) producing isolated from one another

I didn’t say that they would be isolated from one another. How did you reach a conclusion about isolation?

I could engage in whatever labour I want whenever I want, performing whatever needs to be performed whenever it needs doing.

How? Suppose you happen to have the strange desire to gather bananas from Iceland and fly them back to the tropical countries where they are grown. If that’s what you want to do, then who is going to help you, and what makes you think that “it needs doing”?