Op-Ed OverPopulation: No Problem: Malthus Debunked

[bankside]

"Suitable for three people" is awash with your cultural assumptions based on your country of origin, what the population density is like in the place where you grew up, etc.

What's "suitable" for three people in rural Australia vs. what is "suitable" for a family of 3 in Japan will be two radically different things. You'd probably call the latter "unsuitable" but that's just an arbitrary subjective opinion from you because you are used to something different.

It isn't arbitrary. It is a function of the power to make economic choices. In conditions where people have economic clout, they opt to consume more.

 

[xbuzzerx]

It isn't arbitrary. It is a function of the power to make economic choices. In conditions where people have economic clout, they opt to consume more.

That is both true and relevant everywhere, but it's relative.

A rich house in Tokyo and a rich house in Austin Texas are very likely of substantially different sizes. That doesn't inherently make the former "unsuitable."

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Did i say that? ..... ah assumptions assumptions

Respond to the point or don't; don't do dances in and out of your own points.

 

[Telstra]

That is both true and relevant everywhere, but it's relative.

A rich house in Tokyo and a rich house in Austin Texas are very likely of substantially different sizes. That doesn't inherently make the former "unsuitable."

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Respond to the point or don't; don't do dances in and out of your own points.

Well, i like to live in a high density area but not in the slump.

 

[xbuzzerx]

Well, i like to live in a high density area but not in the slump.

Slums are a result of the economic system and economic inequality. It is not a direct result of population size. The 1800's which had substantially less population than today was infamous for its slums thorughout the western world.

 

[JayHawk]

^ Wow by Tell's logic NYC is at once the slummiest and the richest population area on earth... lol.



Back to the OP, I think an important point being glazed over by the assumption that 'technology' can save a humongous population is the entire lack of research done to show what new diseases have been created by our techno food. This is completely anecdotal on my part BUT a few decades ago you never heard of a special diet, peanut allergies, gluten free, lactose intolerant and so many other things. I realize that such conditions existed but not to such a degree.

A little more than seventy years ago we converted our nitrate munitions factories into nitrogen-ated fertilizer plants. The result is the massively increased yields of corn these days. Add to that genetic modification to food and no one can properly say what that does to our system. We adapt quite well but permanent changes take time. the quick changes tech has wrought upon people is going to continue to culminate in new weird diseases.

 

[Kulindahr]

Oh. I'm not sure you should compost dog poop if it will wind up in either a vegetable garden, or a lawn where people frolic in bare feet for example. In fact I'm sure you should not, unless you are willing to invest in a compost thermometer and fuss around monitoring the temperature to ensure that it consistently reaches the appropriate temperature for killing pathogens. I can't be bothered to be quite that fussy.

LOL

The trick is to get the mass of the compost high enough; then the temperature is guaranteed. Oh, yes -- and the balance between nitrogenous material such as the poop and "brown" material (dried leaves, shredded newspaper, cardboard) has to be in the right zone. I'd be composting Bammer's poop right now if I had a sufficient flow of "brown" material... and a big enough set of bins.

 

[Kulindahr]

A question for people who support more population growth.

Is it better to live in a nice house with 3 people in it or 20+ people in it ?

Heh. Except if we built our cities sensibly, we could put twice our current population in half the surface area.

 

[Kulindahr]

There are tremendous benefits to increased population growth, if it can be done ethically.

Imagine the access to human capital if we had 50 billion people living comfortably without insecurities of any kind. We could do incredible things and live better than we do already. We should work towards securing the necessary infrastructure and technology to handle the coming generations; they will become larger than we could ever have imagined.



Well are you talking about a mansion or a cottage?

Where the frak do you plan to put fifty billion people? And how would you feed them?

We're at the limit of arable land already, and sending species to extinction like clockwork to do it. We're sending others to extinction just to provide room to live in. The only solution would be arcologies, but we don't have the resources to build enough for all those billions. Mining the asteroids could do the trick -- but if we're going to go out mining the asteroids, we might as well put our population off the planet.

Besides, human capital is going to have a whole different value starting not too far in the future: the number of manufacturing jobs isn't just decreasing in the US, but across the world, as robots begin to take over. And they're not just replacing manufacturing jobs, but health care and a lot of others.

 

[Overthere]

Back to the OP, I think an important point being glazed over by the assumption that 'technology' can save a humongous population is the entire lack of research done to show what new diseases have been created by our techno food. This is completely anecdotal on my part BUT a few decades ago you never heard of a special diet, peanut allergies, gluten free, lactose intolerant and so many other things. I realize that such conditions existed but not to such a degree.

A little more than seventy years ago we converted our nitrate munitions factories into nitrogen-ated fertilizer plants. The result is the massively increased yields of corn these days. Add to that genetic modification to food and no one can properly say what that does to our system. We adapt quite well but permanent changes take time. the quick changes tech has wrought upon people is going to continue to culminate in new weird diseases.

Not to split hairs or anything, but I'd like to point that most everything you've ever eaten, baring certain potential circumstances, has been genetically modified at one point or the other. The process of domesticating the various crops, wherein you intentionally select and breed for certain traits, has been going on since the dawn of agriculture. Maybe not quite the genetic engineering you're probably thinking of..but still.

 

[Alnitak]

Where the frak do you plan to put fifty billion people? And how would you feed them?

They're coming whether you like it or not.

We're at the limit of arable land already, and sending species to extinction like clockwork to do it. We're sending others to extinction just to provide room to live in. The only solution would be arcologies, but we don't have the resources to build enough for all those billions. Mining the asteroids could do the trick -- but if we're going to go out mining the asteroids, we might as well put our population off the planet.

In two centuries, I pray we will have figured it out. Remember we are also inefficient with food, and in American society we consume way more than nutritionally necessary. Future farming methods will consider today's methods inefficient; technology will increase yields and arable land.

Besides, human capital is going to have a whole different value starting not too far in the future: the number of manufacturing jobs isn't just decreasing in the US, but across the world, as robots begin to take over. And they're not just replacing manufacturing jobs, but health care and a lot of others.

That's right. In the not too distant future, the entire human workforce will be devoted to the tertiary economy and leisure.

 

[Overthere]

I know I've seen some plans out there that involved building skyscrapers to use as giant aerial farms. It's too expensive to do now, but once we really start feeling the squeeze for usable farmland..I guess we'll just start building our own?

 

[JayHawk]

Not to split hairs or anything, but I'd like to point that most everything you've ever eaten, baring certain potential circumstances, has been genetically modified at one point or the other. The process of domesticating the various crops, wherein you intentionally select and breed for certain traits, has been going on since the dawn of agriculture. Maybe not quite the genetic engineering you're probably thinking of..but still.

True but natural modifications that were introduced via farming in the early stages happened in the normal painstaking process that life evolve on earth. Not the shake of a beaker.

I know I've seen some plans out there that involved building skyscrapers to use as giant aerial farms. It's too expensive to do now, but once we really start feeling the squeeze for usable farmland..I guess we'll just start building our own?

Well if over 1/3 of the world starving isn't enough of a squeeze then what will be? Also seeing as how fresh water will be the next oil, how will they afford to water or maintain the hydroponics?


Personally, I prefer the natural method of feeding myself that follows the Paleo concept. In essence, we have been fucking up since the day we processed food parts into other items like bread and pasta or cheese. To be clear I enjoy some of those thing and risk my health to eat them occasionally, however I have never felt better than when I eliminated all those processed items. Just eating fruits, veggies and meats is a awesome way to go but massively inadequate for the entire population.

 

[xbuzzerx]

True but natural modifications that were introduced via farming in the early stages happened in the normal painstaking process that life evolve on earth. Not the shake of a beaker.

In fairness, millenia of repeatedly taking only the most productive seeds from the most productive plants that grew the largest produce and planting only those, and doing your best to eradicate all the others from reproduction, is still a very accelerated process of forced evolution than would have happened naturally. Crops have been replaced, interbred and manipulated so much that we don't even eat bread made from the same species of wheat as the Egyptians or Romans did, we eat bread made from a strain that iirc didn't even exist yet then. Natural evolution that drastic doesn't happen in centuries, it happens in tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

 

[Kulindahr]

They're coming whether you like it or not.

Not according to any studies I've been able to find. All the serious estimates show the human race never reaching double-digit billions.

 

[Kulindahr]

I know I've seen some plans out there that involved building skyscrapers to use as giant aerial farms. It's too expensive to do now, but once we really start feeling the squeeze for usable farmland..I guess we'll just start building our own?

Terraform Mars, grow wheat....

 

[Kulindahr]

Well if over 1/3 of the world starving isn't enough of a squeeze then what will be? Also seeing as how fresh water will be the next oil, how will they afford to water or maintain the hydroponics?

Closed-system arcologies have been proposed.

In fact open-system arcologies would help the food situation, because more people would live in less land area even while having more available space per person for living. We've built so many cities on what was once rich agricultural land; now it's time to reverse the process.

 

[Alnitak]

Not according to any studies I've been able to find. All the serious estimates show the human race never reaching double-digit billions.

Because the technology has not yet been developed to accommodate it.

Though I concede that is a belief that we are not technologically mature; they were wrong in the 1880s when physicists thought they had it all figured out.

 

[kallipolis]

This opinion challenges popular beliefs fashionable on this forum...worth reading:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/22/no-population-explosion-too-few-owning-too-much

Let's get one thing straight from the start. There is no population explosion. The rate of population growth has been slowing since the 1960s, and has fallen below replacement levels half the world over. But what about the other half? That's where population is exploding, right? Well, actually, no. The UN Population Division's world fertility patterns show that, worldwide, fertility per woman has fallen from 4.7 babies in 1970–75 to 2.6 in 2005-10. As Peoplequake author Fred Pearce puts it: "Today's women have half as many babies as their mothers … That is not just in the rich world. It is the global average today."

 

[bankside]

This opinion challenges popular beliefs fashionable on this forum...

…with nonsensical beliefs fashionable among socialists of the sort who live in their parents' spare rooms whilst avoiding any demeaning capitalist charades like "paying their own bills" and so forth.

Apart from the tawdry swipe at intellectuals (good to see the left catching up to the right in its embrace of populist jingoism), the biggest clue to the empty thinking in the article was the endorsement of Robert Mugabe's "land reform" programme. But then, thinking is for those nasty intellectuals after all.

I still haven't figured out what stake the left has in it, but the Guardian's hysterical language about the inhumanity of family planning was a treat, and nearly made me reconsider the article as satire.

 

[kallipolis]

…with nonsensical beliefs fashionable among socialists of the sort who live in their parents' spare rooms whilst avoiding any demeaning capitalist charades like "paying their own bills" and so forth.

Apart from the tawdry swipe at intellectuals (good to see the left catching up to the right in its embrace of populist jingoism), the biggest clue to the empty thinking in the article was the endorsement of Robert Mugabe's "land reform" programme. But then, thinking is for those nasty intellectuals after all.

I still haven't figured out what stake the left has in it, but the Guardian's hysterical language about the inhumanity of family planning was a treat, and nearly made me reconsider the article as satire.

You will have noted that I have not added my imprimatur merely referred to an opinion....published in The Guardian...that apart from your easy willingness to demonise the article's author, I felt comfortable knowing that my earlier reference to the decline in indigenous populations in Italy, and Germany has prompted an interested observer to recognise that over population might well speak more to perception than reality.....hysterical language not being the preserve of those offering opposing opinions.