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Human Population control

AWPrime said:
Sadly if everyone had the same amount of money, none would be rich.
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And who would clean the toilets? :)

It isn't about being rich, it's about being comfortable and (believeing you are) secure in your future.
 
AWPrime said:
Sadly if everyone had the same amount of money, none would be rich.
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Don't worry. There's always going to be poverty. Ten years ago, poor people in the US had kerosene heaters and black-and-white televisions. Now they have color televisions.
 
Pick a country in Africa, any country. Any country that is in serious trouble and having trouble feeding itself. Now, take 90% of that population and move them elsewhere. Do you think the remaining 10% are suddenly going to be wealthy and have access to plenty of food?

Wealth is created by people. It doesn't grow on trees or bubble up from the ground. The infantile idea that more people means less stuff for each of us is absurd. Productivity is what matters. Wealth is created by PEOPLE. (oops, sorry for the caps).

Why is Africa in trouble? Political and econonomic instability. People (including you and me) are not going to save, or invest in a house or, hell, even in next year's crops, if there is a likelihood that they are not going to be able to take advantage of the fruits of their labor or lose their savings or investment.
 
Libertarian said:
Wealth is created by PEOPLE.
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Actually wealth is created by converting resources. And there must be a balance for optimum result.

Too little people - not much wealth
Too much people - not enough resources
 
Libertarian said:
Wealth is created by people. It doesn't grow on trees or bubble up from the ground. The infantile idea that more people means less stuff for each of us is absurd. Productivity is what matters.
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Wealth is created by people acting on capital. Productivity depends on the capital available - physical and human (education, etc.). If population expands beyond the capital available the excess is unproductive. If there are no jobs available and no land to farm they cannot convert their labour to wealth, or even subsistence. Their subsistence becomes a drain on the wealth that is being created. So, above a certain point, more people does mean less all round.
 
epepke said:
The best way is wealth. People in wealthy areas don't even reproduce at replacement levels. If everyone were wealthy, the environmental degradation from the extra wealth and industrialization would be completely swamped by the limits on population.
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That doesn't seem so obvious to me but you may be right. I would be curious to know how total pollution figures for say India and the US compare. Or consider China: it seems difficult to imagine that environmental problems would be eased by having a largely rich affluent population (having a comparable standard of living to that of the US) instead of the largely poor population of today.
 
Or consider China: it seems difficult to imagine that environmental problems would be eased by having a largely rich affluent population (having a comparable standard of living to that of the US) instead of the largely poor population of today.
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Too grossly oversimplify, poor people are concerned about finding enough food for their children. Rich people are concerned with ensuring the safest environment for their children.

Worries about environment are insignificant if you are worried about starvation or malaria. They are minor compared to education. It is only when people are healthy, wealthy and educated that they start to care about polution that costs a few years of life.

CBL
 
CBL4 said:
Too grossly oversimplify, poor people are concerned about finding enough food for their children. Rich people are concerned with ensuring the safest environment for their children.

Worries about environment are insignificant if you are worried about starvation or malaria. They are minor compared to education. It is only when people are healthy, wealthy and educated that they start to care about polution that costs a few years of life.

CBL
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CBL is exactly right. The leftist notion that wealth causes depletion and degradation of resources is a fairy tale. Just look at the globe: the poorest countries are where the environment is being degraded. When you need to feed your kids, you'll cut down the last tree on the island.
 
AWPrime said:
Objective reasoning
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:rolleyes:

How would you know, you can't seem to even quote something relevant from it. If you can't do that then I'm rather skeptical of the above claim. So...in the spirit of JREF, prove it.
 
RandFan said:

How would you know, you can't seem to even quote something relevant from it. If you can't do that then I'm rather skeptical of the above claim. So...in the spirit of JREF, prove it.
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They basicly all deal with overpopulation.


From 'tragedy of the commons':
Tho optimum population is, then less than the maximum. The difficulty of defining the optimum is enormous; so far as I know, no one has seriously tackled this problem
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From 'Cultural Carrying Capacity'

So far as it is within our power we surely would like to manage human populations under the ideal used for animals, namely, to minimize suffering and maximize happiness over many generations. This means that, for human populations as for others, the prime commandment must be Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity.

Most of the principles worked out for populations of nonhuman animals apply with little change to human populations. Carrying capacity must take account of seasonal variations -- hence Aesop's story "The Ant and the Grasshopper." Long cycle secular variations may also be important (though man, the inveterate optimist, seldom takes really adequate account of future threats). And variations in expert opinion are even greater when we deal with the human situation.

For nonhuman animals it seems reasonable to measure carrying capacity in terms of resources available for survival. In evaluating the human situation, however, we are not satisfied with so simple a metric. We hold that "Man does not live by bread alone." We go beyond the spiritual meaning of the Biblical quotation in distinguishing between mere existence and the good life. This distinction, like so many population-related ideas, was well understood by Malthus, who held that the density of population should be such that people could enjoy meat and a glass of wine with their dinners. Implicitly, Malthus's concept of carrying capacity included cultural factors.
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From: Lifeboat Ethics

Adrift in a Moral Sea
So here we sit, say 50 people in our lifeboat. To be generous, let us assume it has room for 10 more, making a total capacity of 60. Suppose the 50 of us in the lifeboat see 100 others swimming in the water outside, begging for admission to our boat or for handouts. We have several options: we may be tempted to try to live by the Christian ideal of being "our brother's keeper," or by the Marxist ideal of "to each according to his needs." Since the needs of all in the water are the same, and since they can all be seen as "our brothers," we could take them all into our boat, making a total of 150 in a boat designed for 60. The boat swamps, everyone drowns. Complete justice, complete catastrophe.

Since the boat has an unused excess capacity of 10 more passengers, we could admit just 10 more to it. But which 10 do we let in? How do we choose? Do we pick the best 10, "first come, first served"? And what do we say to the 90 we exclude? If we do let an extra 10 into our lifeboat, we will have lost our "safety factor," an engineering principle of critical importance. For example, if we don't leave room for excess capacity as a safety factor in our country's agriculture, a new plant disease or a bad change in the weather could have disastrous consequences.

Suppose we decide to preserve our small safety factor and admit no more to the lifeboat. Our survival is then possible although we shall have to be constantly on guard against boarding parties.

While this last solution clearly offers the only means of our survival, it is morally abhorrent to many people. Some say they feel guilty about their good luck. My reply is simple: "Get out and yield your place to others." This may solve the problem of the guilt-ridden person's conscience, but it does not change the ethics of the lifeboat. The needy person to whom the guilt-ridden person yields his place will not himself feel guilty about his good luck. If he did, he would not climb aboard. The net result of conscience-stricken people giving up their unjustly held seats is the elimination of that sort of conscience from the lifeboat.

This is the basic metaphor within which we must work out our solutions. Let us now enrich the image, step by step, with substantive additions from the real world, a world that must solve real and pressing problems of overpopulation and hunger.
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Another one from 'Lifeboat ethics"

What happens if some organizations or countries budget for accidents and others do not? If each country is solely responsible for its own well-being, poorly managed ones will suffer. But they can learn from experience. They may mend their ways, and learn to budget for infrequent but certain emergencies. For example, the weather varies from year to year, and periodic crop failures are certain. A wise and competent government saves out of the production of the good years in anticipation of bad years to come. Joseph taught this policy to Pharaoh in Egypt more than 2,000 years ago. Yet the great majority of the governments in the world today do not follow such a policy. They lack either the wisdom or the competence, or both. Should those nations that do manage to put something aside be forced to come to the rescue each time an emergency occurs among the poor nations?

"But it isn't their fault!" Some kind-hearted liberals argue. "How can we blame the poor people who are caught in an emergency? Why must they suffer for the sins of their governments?" The concept of blame is simply not relevant here. The real question is, what are the operational consequences of establishing a world food bank? If it is open to every country every time a need develops, slovenly rulers will not be motivated to take Joseph's advice. Someone will always come to their aid. Some countries will deposit food in the world food bank, and others will withdraw it. There will be almost no overlap. As a result of such solutions to food shortage emergencies, the poor countries will not learn to mend their ways, and will suffer progressively greater emergencies as their populations grow.
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"But it isn't their fault!" Some kind-hearted liberals argue. "How can we blame the poor people who are caught in an emergency? Why must they suffer for the sins of their governments?" The concept of blame is simply not relevant here.
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Are you going to be the one to ring up Bob Geldof and tell him that?
 
The "Lifeboat Ethics" analogy is seriously flawed, because it assumes that all lifeboats have the same carrying capacity and are all equally loaded with people.

In a better analogy, the lifeboat "Bangladesh" is a very small rowing boat carrying 100 people, has very few emergency rations. It is only kept afloat by the tremendous effort of all those people, but sometimes people fall out of it and risk drowning.

On the other hand, the "Australia" is some 100 times larger than the "Bangladesh" and carries only 2 people and more food than they can ever eat in their lives. But they refuse to let anyone from the poor people's boats into theirs and refuse to share their food with anyone.

There are many lifeboats, all completely different in size and population. In some, often the ones that are already heavily loaded with people, people are more willing than others to take people into their boats. In others, often the ones that have carrying capacity to spare, people like to keep what they have to themselves.

Only a few are in the water and they could likely all be aboard a lifeboat if the people were more evenly divided over the total available carrying capacity. But in reality, some boats are near their carrying capacity and can't take in more passengers, and in other boats people don't want to take in more passengers even though they could.

The difference in reproductive rate is not relevant if all people would be able to freely move from boat to boat (country to country). The reproductive rate would then average out over the total carrying capacity of all lifeboats. The article assumes however that all people are fixed to their place of birth: if one country's population grows it will eventually reach its carrying capacity without being able to move its "surplus of people" to a country that has not reached its carrying capacity or has a shrinking population. If we assume a free movement of people the problem of countries reaching their carrying capacity disappears and only thing that is relevant is the total carrying capacity of the entire Earth. Something that is not likely to be reached.
 
I always wonder...what exactly is wrong with controlling population while there are still some pristine areas left? Would that really be so bad?
 
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