Population Debate Thread

[goodsamaritan]

Population Debate Thread was created so as not to disturb the women thread.

Debate population issues here.

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One big purpose of feminism is depopulation.
Seems to have worked pretty well.

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what depopulation are you talking about? what worked well?
i think we are rapidly approaching 7B.

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You haven't come across the true statistics of the world?
That fertility rates are all down down down for decades.
That population growth rates are down down down for decades.
That the math and statistics show the inevitable that eventually when the population growth rate is zero... what's next is negative.
And that with the population pyramids, it takes some time for absolute population numbers to follow.

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everything you say does not make sense.  the world population is growing at the fastest pace ever.  heard of india or china?

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Ever heard of india and china with their 2 child and one child policy?

did you know that women in china who get PREGNANT without a marriage license can be forced to have an abortion by the "authorities"?

[klowcarb]

We need to go back to a smaller, paleo and robust population, rather than a larger population of weak, deformed grain eaters. I would be quite in despair if the fate  of the human species were really a concern of mine.

[Projectile Vomit]

There's nothing wrong with a shrinking global population. It means more food per person, and more higher quality food per person, and more space per person. I'd be quite comfortable with a global population of perhaps 10-20 million, distributed relatively evenly over the habitable land. Of course, getting there is another issue...

[goodsamaritan]

I fancy colonizing other planets.
Humans should not get stuck on earth.
If we play our cards right with technology, we can reach for the stars.

[wodgina]

I fancy colonizing other planets.
Humans should not get stuck on earth.
If we play our cards right with technology, we can reach for the stars.

Have you been sniffing herbal sprays? joking.

[goodsamaritan]

Have you been sniffing herbal sprays? joking.

Watched too much star wars!

[TylerDurden]

I fancy colonizing other planets.
Humans should not get stuck on earth.
If we play our cards right with technology, we can reach for the stars.

  The only hope we have re space-travel, is that we manage to create fully conscious, fully self-aware artificial intelligences which are more intelligent than we are and capable of self-improvement. Trouble is that when we do manage that, the resulting AIs will go to the stars and leave us behind, as we will be nothing more than irrelevant apes to them. You overestimate the sheer level of complexity required for organic lifeforms to invent(and use) an FTL drive, let alone the need to survive in hostile environments in space, given the need of humans for Earth-like environments re air-pressure/gravity/oxygen/temperature, the dangers of sterilising cosmic rays and so on. AIs would not be so restricted. Plus, I once read a transhumanist article which suggested that humans could not improve beyond another 200 percent of what we have now, even if we used every possible futuristic means of eugenics and genetic engineering - again, AIs are not so restricted.

[raw-al]

One big purpose of feminism is depopulation.
Seems to have worked pretty well.

Feminism... IMHO was a reaction that young girls had at the time to a perception that they were being shunted aside while men went out and did something important. It was a jealousy thing going on. There was a lot of children at the time (Baby boomers)

There was silliness of unbelievable proportions. Some girls were jealous that grown up boys were doing things that young boys were doing like having mens clubs, so they forced the issues by wasting court time by having these clubs allow women in. Men back then as they are now, just want some quality time away from women. Just like women want the same time away from men. To everything there is a season http://www.fleurdelis.com/toeverythingthereisaseason.htm (and no I am not a Christian) Girls (One of my daughters included) hated the knitting and making doilies in Girl Scouts.

Women saw men go to work and figured there must be some magic going on there. (jealousy)

Then of course when they got the job they realized it was not all that great. (surprise)

Basically it was angry women who had a chip on their shoulder maybe from an older brother/father/boyfriend who dismissed them or pi**ed them off. These women are all grown up now and have realized that you cannot change a tigers stripes.

The fact of the matter is that women are not men, you can make laws, but you cannot change people's inner instincts.

I doubt any women actually did any deep thinking about what they were doing/saying or what the short term or long term results would be. At the time they were getting mad because fishermen or garbagemen were labelled as men. They had to be fisher people or garbage people... LOL It was definitely media driven. Dumb girls making ridiculous statements about men conspiracies sells newspapers. Then they got a special arm of government to back them. They still do it at their websites. I recently listened to one of these idiots with her conspiracy theories.

The movement to have less children may have come from the women seeing their grandmothers have 20 or more children as the Catholic church at that time wanted. This was simple economics in some cases especially in agrarian areas where infant mortality was high and children equalled farm helpers.

BTW these statements are generalizations an do do not apply to all women or men and may even be classified as a pointless rant.

[wodgina]

Feminism... IMHO was a reaction that young girls had at the time to a perception that they were being shunted aside while men went out and did something important. It was a jealousy thing going on. There was a lot of children at the time (Baby boomers)

There was silliness of unbelievable proportions. Some girls were jealous that grown up boys were doing things that young boys were doing like having mens clubs, so they forced the issues by wasting court time by having these clubs allow women in. Men back then as they are now, just want some quality time away from women. Just like women want the same time away from men. To everything there is a season http://www.fleurdelis.com/toeverythingthereisaseason.htm (and no I am not a Christian) Girls (One of my daughters included) hated the knitting and making doilies in Girl Scouts.

Women saw men go to work and figured there must be some magic going on there. (jealousy)

Then of course when they got the job they realized it was not all that great. (surprise)

Basically it was angry women who had a chip on their shoulder maybe from an older brother/father/boyfriend who dismissed them or pi**ed them off. These women are all grown up now and have realized that you cannot change a tigers stripes.

The fact of the matter is that women are not men, you can make laws, but you cannot change people's inner instincts.

I doubt any women actually did any deep thinking about what they were doing/saying or what the short term or long term results would be. At the time they were getting mad because fishermen or garbagemen were labelled as men. They had to be fisher people or garbage people... LOL It was definitely media driven. Dumb girls making ridiculous statements about men conspiracies sells newspapers. Then they got a special arm of government to back them. They still do it at their websites. I recently listened to one of these idiots with her conspiracy theories.

The movement to have less children may have come from the women seeing their grandmothers have 20 or more children as the Catholic church at that time wanted. This was simple economics in some cases especially in agrarian areas where infant mortality was high and children equalled farm helpers.

BTW these statements are generalizations an do do not apply to all women or men and may even be classified as a pointless rant.

I disagree with most of that. I wish I could give my real opinion but would be kicked off this site.

[TylerDurden]

The 1 child policy in China isn't working since only the urban Chinese are obeying orders. The rural Chinese all avoid when they can, especially if they are far from centres of authority. Plus, there are some unscrupulous Chinese who claim to US immigration authorities that they are political refugees fleeing the Chinese 1 child policy.

Sometimes,  I think the only solution is to nuke all countries with a population-birth-rate of 2.1 or more, perhaps even in  Western Europe which has almost no wild areas left. But then I'm a cynical animal-rights activist who prefers wild, untamed areas to the usual hideous urban sprawl.

[TylerDurden]

I disagree with most of that. I wish I could give my real opinion but would be kicked off this site.

  Aww, be like me and don't give a damn!

[raw-al]

I disagree with most of that. I wish I could give my real opinion but would be kicked off this site.

"Go ahead make my day..."

Dirty Harry
Clint Eastwood.

tee hee.
Couldn't be worse than my rant LOL

[miles]

I disagree with most of that. I wish I could give my real opinion but would be kicked off this site.

I would tie myself to the ip address in your defence, whether I agreed or not.

[magnetic]

There's nothing wrong with a shrinking global population. It means more food per person, and more higher quality food per person, and more space per person. I'd be quite comfortable with a global population of perhaps 10-20 million, distributed relatively evenly over the habitable land. Of course, getting there is another issue...

This isn't true. Food is produced, not some fixed amount. With less people there would be less food.

[TylerDurden]

This isn't true. Food is produced, not some fixed amount. With less people there would be less food.

I disagree. As technology keeps on improving, more food will be produced, not necessarily only low-quality foods.

[goodsamaritan]

I disagree with most of that. I wish I could give my real opinion but would be kicked off this site.

Duh, just go and blast away... it's just us cavemen sitting by a fire telling stories.

[Projectile Vomit]

This isn't true. Food is produced, not some fixed amount. With less people there would be less food.

I've read that in the United States (don't know if this figure holds for the world as a whole) only 3% of the population is directly involved in growing or raising the food Americans eat. If we increased that to 5%, or 10%, then obviously we'd be producing more food (assuming we don't give up current technologies). If global population were to fall from current levels of ~7 billion down to 10-20 million, it seems to me like it would be easy to increase the percentage of the population who is actively producing food and thus have more food per capita and higher quality food. Again, assuming we don't give up technologies that contribute to producing high quality food.

[magnetic]

I disagree. As technology keeps on improving, more food will be produced, not necessarily only low-quality foods.

Technology is not responsible for food production, individuals are responsible. Yes, we can produce food quite efficiently, but only the current capital structure makes it profitable for businesses engaged in food production to do what they are doing, and continue doing so. There are lots of inputs, from machines, to fertilizers, to warehouses and breeding programs. It is a complex, interconnected system. And there is always a lot of new technology "on the shelf." You can have the greatest technology in the world, but without the necessary capital (i.e. savings), nothing will be done with it.

If the world's population begins to fall, the market for food will shrink (assuming the population drop occurs evenly across all occupations). The market response is to produce less food, both because demand will have dropped and because there is less labor to support the labor inputs across the economy.

Also, why should technology "keep on improving"? That is an historic fallacy. Just because technology has improved from year X to year Y, does not mean the trend will continue, as if past developments had any bearing on future developments. And again, without a robust capital structure, technology is useless. Politicians are destroying the capital structure with their monetary inflation.

[magnetic]

I've read that in the United States (don't know if this figure holds for the world as a whole) only 3% of the population is directly involved in growing or raising the food Americans eat. If we increased that to 5%, or 10%, then obviously we'd be producing more food (assuming we don't give up current technologies). If global population were to fall from current levels of ~7 billion down to 10-20 million, it seems to me like it would be easy to increase the percentage of the population who is actively producing food and thus have more food per capita and higher quality food. Again, assuming we don't give up technologies that contribute to producing high quality food.

First, the important part of what you said is "directly involved." And you are talking about the labor of individuals, who are backed by a large amount of capital in the form of cleared and improved land, agricultural implements, etc. You can't just increase it to 5 or 10 percent, as if by decree. First off, you need to increase not only manpower (and it would be unskilled and know nothing about farming), but arable land, agricultural implement, and so on. Resources would also need to be reallocated from other parts of the economy, which would need to shrink. Not to mention there is no "method of farming", but a multitude of methods pursued by many individual businessmen involved in the farming business to varying degrees of separation, in the pursuit of profit. Such a socialist program would fail because you would have no way of knowing how to best allocate resources, what land to use, what farming methods to adopt, and so on. Only a free market can allocate resources to where they are most demanded by individual consumers.

[eveheart]

I have just one word to say: Distribution!

Increasing food production is easy. Distributing all that food in the right amounts and in a fresh condition to the population is complicated and costly. The infrastructure for food distribution and sales is huge.

When I read goodsamaritan's entries about the wet markets in his country, it sounds so good and simple. I would love to shop like that. But it's not to be... I'm here in metropolitan west coast USA, (with some 4 million immigrants from that wet market country and elsewhere), at the mercy of the groaning food distribution network.

[wodgina]

Duh, just go and blast away... it's just us cavemen sitting by a fire telling stories.

Pretty sure a girl either googled the hell out of me and read my posts. Most of the time I don't care

I left my phone in her car too so...

[klowcarb]

Women saw men go to work and figured there must be some magic going on there. (jealousy)

Then of course when they got the job they realized it was not all that great. (surprise)

I like my job.

[goodsamaritan]

... you may find this video AMUSING! Click to play now

"Mentos presents National Night, a fresh new way to "celebrate" your love of Singapore on National Day.

This August 9th Mentos calls on you* to celebrate not just National Day, but National Night too..." 

http://bit.ly/OXGO0w

Mentos National Night

[CitrusHigh]

“May we live long and die out”

http://www.vhemt.org/

"Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense."

[goodsamaritan]

Some of us will voluntarily strive to live and thrive as caretakers of this planet when those who have volunteered to die out have died out.

What we can say is... "Thank you!"