The Global Food Crisis and the Need for Population Control

[vern_humphrey]

Just because I think Zubrin is an idiot, doesn’t mean I hate him in any way, shape, or fashion. I don’t even know where to begin to debunk that article----there’s just too march to argue with that I could write a book on the subject…

I don’t understand why so many Catholics on this site like that libertarian claptrap… Jesus seems more like a socialist, and that he would have objected quite strongly to capitalism. From each according to his ability and to each according to his need—sharing all things in common as brothers and sisters in the Lord-----that is the Christian philosophy of economics. Capitalism doesn’t fit into that—profits because of the “free market” (there is no free market, there are workers and consumers who add to the profits of an owning class who gets the raw materials for his laborers from raping and pillaging the natural world beyond the needs of basic human sustenance).

When you say things like this:

I’m sick of right-wing libertarian idiots saying things about the market-----more impressed by knowledge of ecology, which is now the fundamental issue behind ethanol, that and the hundreds of millions dying of starvation right now…

That’s hatred. There is no logic, no facts in that statement – just pure bile and spite.

When you say things like this:

Capitalism doesn’t fit into that—profits because of the “free market” (there is no free market, there are workers and consumers who add to the profits of an owning class who gets the raw materials for his laborers from raping and pillaging the natural world beyond the needs of basic human sustenance).

That’s hatred. There is no logic, no facts in that statement – just pure bile and spite.

 

[estesbob]

Who Decides? So that means we don’t do anything about humans reproducing far faster than the carrying capacity of the Earth to support them? We do a few things that the Church doesn’t support, but they make a lot of sense and are very popular with women in the developing world. We educate them and their children so that they aren’t beholden to patriarchal traditional authorities, we offer them no-interest Graemen-style microloans so that women can start their own businesses and get some property in their own names, we offer women comprehensive health care including access to birth control, and we ensure access to cleaner water and a healthier natural environment through planned development…

We would not be controllling the population in this case by eliminating any people; but, we would greatly hasten the demographic transition that would stabilize population growth such that the people in a given region don’t overuse the resources in their environment.

Furthermore, birth control is hardly something anathema to tribal peoples who have lived off the land for hundreds of thousands of years… Herbal birth control to prevent conception or ensure miscarriages in times when food and water are scarce has long been vital to the survival of human cultural groups, and for the species as a whole. I frankly also don’t see in the Church’s own history much of a reverence for the “Culture of Life” or whatever----we still have blowhards like Harry Crocker immortalizing the viciousness and greed of the Crusades as some manifestation of God’s Divine Will. This idea that humans had souls from the time of conception was not even believed by the Church’s most important thinker----St. Thomas Aquinas. It has long been thought that a human wasn’t fully human until the point of “quickening.” Perhaps a developmental view of human ensoulment fits with the HISTORICAL understanding of the Church’s understanding about human life. This fetishization of the abortion issues is really something the Church has done that contradicts, more or less, centuries of tradition with Christianity…

I’ll post more on this subject when I get more time…

Lets see if I can summarize what you said:

We must limit the number of poor yellow, black and brown children in this world. To do so we must reject what the Church says and teach their parents how to use contraception and if that doesnt work we must teach them how to kill their children before itthey start consuming resources.

One woners how these people survived before the enlightened came along to teach them how they should live.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Lets see if I can summarize what you said:

We must limit the number of poor yellow, black and brown children in this world. To do so we must reject what the Church says and teach their parents how to use contraception and if that doesnt work we must teach them how to kill their children before itthey start consuming resources.

One woners how these people survived before the enlightened came along to teach them how they should live.

They probably used facts and logic to arrive at conclusions and didn’t rely on bile and spite.

 

[estesbob]

They probably used facts and logic to arrive at conclusions and didn’t rely on bile and spite.

Of course the problem in most third world countires is not overpopulation-its corrupt govenrments who destroy the infrastrucutre of the country , seize any property that produces, and sit idly by while their people starve. People were not starving to death in Rhodesia in 1960.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Of course the problem in most third world countires is not overpopulation-its corrupt govenrments who destroy the infrastrucutre of the country , seize any property that produces, and sit idly by while their people starve. People were not starving to death in Rhodesia in 1960.

Absolutely!

It appears, however, that Mugabwe has instituted his own “population reduction program” by murdering everyone who opposes him.

I expect to see the population control crowd applauding and praising him in the next few posts.

 

[po18guy]

Stop studying under those who believe in everything except faith, are negative by nature, and who are successfully leading you away from your faith. Isn’t God in charge???

 

[mmyers]

Just because I think Zubrin is an idiot, doesn’t mean I hate him in any way, shape, or fashion. I don’t even know where to begin to debunk that article----there’s just too march to argue with that I could write a book on the subject…

I don’t understand why so many Catholics on this site like that libertarian claptrap… Jesus seems more like a socialist, and that he would have objected quite strongly to capitalism. From each according to his ability and to each according to his need—sharing all things in common as brothers and sisters in the Lord-----that is the Christian philosophy of economics. Capitalism doesn’t fit into that—profits because of the “free market” (there is no free market, there are workers and consumers who add to the profits of an owning class who gets the raw materials for his laborers from raping and pillaging the natural world beyond the needs of basic human sustenance).

I am still waiting for your “10 part refutation of my first comment”. You say people are idiots and that is the end of your argument. Ironic, really… You should read some of the encyclicals involving markets and capitalism…Jesus wasn’t an idiot.

 

[vern_humphrey]

I am still waiting for your “10 part refutation of my first comment”. You say people are idiots and that is the end of your argument. Ironic, really… You should read some of the encyclicals involving markets and capitalism…Jesus wasn’t an idiot.

Jesus and Joseph were carpenters. They owned their own tools, and sold what they made in competition with other carpenters.

Holy Gilhooley!! Jesus and Joseph owed the means of production and operated for profit in a competitive environment. They were capitalists!!

 

[Al_Masetti]

Jesus and Joseph were carpenters. They owned their own tools, and sold what they made in competition with other carpenters.

Holy Gilhooley!! Jesus and Joseph owed the means of production and operated for profit in a competitive environment. They were capitalists!!

They probably also built houses.

They were construction entrepreneurs!

 

[vern_humphrey]

They probably also built houses.

They were construction entrepreneurs!

It’s worse! They also made wooden farm implements, plows, forks and rakes. They “enabled” other people to become capitalists!

 

[Al_Masetti]

Did someone change the title of this thread?

From

The Global Food Crisis and the Need for Population Control

To:

Re: Calling someone an idiot is not hatred

 

[vern_humphrey]

Did someone change the title of this thread?

From

The Global Food Crisis and the Need for Population Control

To:

Re: Calling someone an idiot is not hatred

It isn’t if you are right. And if you are holier than everyone else, you are always right.

 

[RWMorris]

Did someone change the title of this thread?

From

The Global Food Crisis and the Need for Population Control

To:

Re: Calling someone an idiot is not hatred

You’re right, the title does keep changing. I wonder if the rules keep changing, too.

 

[RWMorris]

Did someone change the title of this thread?

From

The Global Food Crisis and the Need for Population Control

To:

Re: Calling someone an idiot is not hatred

To: Re: Who Decides?

To: Re: New Atlantis

To: Re: Fitting all of the world’s people in Texas

To: Re: Warming and food production in Britain

To: US Grain Reserve Status

Who’s driving this train!!

 

[Al_Masetti]

OOOHHHHHH!!!

I’m getting dizzy.

I knew I shouldn’t have finished that liter of beer.

[who knew]

 

[RWMorris]

OOOHHHHHH!!!

I’m getting dizzy.

I knew I shouldn’t have finished that liter of beer.

[who knew]

OOOHHHHHHH!!!

Where’s the little plastic bags?!?!?

AAAHHHH!!!

UH OH, TOO LATE!!!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Here in Arkansas, rice farmers (which is to say, agri-business) get literally hundreds of million dollars in subsidies. I had a big rice farmer say, rather aggresively to me, “Do you know what it costs me to raise an acre of rice?”

And I said, “If it costs more than you can sell the rice for on the open market, why to you raise it?”

Why, because the government subsidizes it, of course!!

If we’re going to subsidize something, let’s subsidize a crop that we really need, and is worth more – not less – than it costs to grow.

And let’s put a mechanism into the law that slows and then stops the subsidy when the market is mature.

I have never understood the subsidies paid for rice or cotton in Missouri, since this the northernmost part of their range and they often are wiped out by weather. Crop insurance, of course, pays for that. Nor do I understand tobacco subsidies anywhere. But they’re paid too.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Ran across something interesting. India has double the population of all of Africa, and 1/12 of the arable land. Yet India is self-sufficient in food and Africa is not.

Lots of reasons for it; inefficient agricultural practices, horrible agricultural schools, terrible governments, reductions in effective workforce by AIDS, economic underdevelopment, aid programs that don’t work. But obviously, overpopulation is not one of the reasons.

 

[RWMorris]

Ran across something interesting. India has double the population of all of Africa, and 1/12 of the arable land. Yet India is self-sufficient in food and Africa is not.

Lots of reasons for it; inefficient agricultural practices, horrible agricultural schools, terrible governments, reductions in effective workforce by AIDS, economic underdevelopment, aid programs that don’t work. But obviously, overpopulation is not one of the reasons.

I have one word that explains the seeming contradiction. It’s an evil one, to be sure. Some people pucker up like they’ve just ingested a box of alum. Some people degenerate into writhing lumps of rosie odonnell. It causes some to regurgitate last night’s tofu Soufflé. So be careful with it. I’ll whisper it:

Capitalism

 

[Al_Masetti]

Ran across something interesting. India has double the population of all of Africa, and 1/12 of the arable land. Yet India is self-sufficient in food and Africa is not.

Lots of reasons for it; inefficient agricultural practices, horrible agricultural schools, terrible governments, reductions in effective workforce by AIDS, economic underdevelopment, aid programs that don’t work. But obviously, overpopulation is not one of the reasons.

India chose Socialism after independence from Britain in the 1940’s.

But after decades of suffering and success stories of their folks who emigrated to the United States and all of the stories about Bill Gates (who started out in a garage or was that Steve Jobs) … anyway, after decades of privation and lack of food, India began adopting free market economics.

Ever since then, India has actually generated food surpluses. It has become an economic powerhouse.