Over population

[WTF]

Originally Posted by atlcomedy

A bunch of illegal immigrants

Let's hope they aren't all trained at I HOP

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by WTF

Do you and PJ really believe this? I mean yes....the smarter more prosperous countries have negative growth rates. What does that leave us with?...a world where the ignorant masses are breeding like rabbits.

But they are also dying like rabbits -- very high infant mortality rates and age adjusted death rates that are about 4-6 times the developed world.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

But they are also dying like rabbits -- very high infant mortality rates and age adjusted death rates that are about 4-6 times the developed world.

That is true but as with anything it must be taken in context. The context of this thread was that the worlds population is increasing.

Also the emerging countries such as China, India , Brazil are demanding resources. That is where the problems will stem from.

Who cares about some poor nation that has a population explosion....they are not using resources like these other countries.


My contention is .... well lets just say I agree with J Diamonds thesis.

[Wwanderer]

Originally Posted by WTF

Oh yes....the whole world will join hands and sing in perfect harmony for a Coke-Cola ad.

Do you and PJ really believe this? I mean yes....the smarter more prosperous countries have negative growth rates. What does that leave us with?...a world where the ignorant masses are breeding like rabbits.

Look what shape our declining population birth rates and aging population living longer trends are putting us a a competitive disadvantage. Yet you think an older , less productive population will correlate into higher living standards? Please tell me how this utopia can come about?

If you aren't Al Gore, I'm not Jimmy Carter or Pollyanna, and there is a lot of room between the sort of global apocalypse scenarios you and J Diamond are describing and idealistic utopias. I.e., you are setting up straw men with which to joust.

My main point is that I don't believe that anyone, not the pessimists and also not the optimists, can make anything remotely in the neighborhood of usefully reliable predictions about the future of humanity (or "the world") for more than a few years in advance. Mostly it is just extrapolation of current trends or postulation of imagined scenarios. Take a look at the history of these crystal balls and you will see that they are absurdly inaccurate.

For example, around 1900 it was widely and *seriously* believed that New York and other major cities would soon have to stop growing or suffer an ecological catastrophe (though they did not use that term) due to the insupportable populations of horses required to keep them going (disposing of the manure and bodies of deceased horses, feeding them etc). In the 1960s many American "futurists" predicted that automation/computers and the increasing number of women joining the work force would accelerate the already long term trend of an ever shorter "work week" to new extremes...and that a typical worker would be putting only 10-20 hours into their job per week and be enjoying 2 or 3 months of vacation time per year by the year 2000. (This is just about when the trend to shorter working hours began to reverse, btw.) Another popular idea was that traffic jams would soon be abolished by wide spread use of "flying cars" or "robot driven vehicles".

At the moment, technology is the most obvious wild card in the deck for those trying to read the world's fortune. For example, many molecular biologists believe that it will be possible to turn off human aging within less than a century...maybe much less. Nanotechnology and bio-engineering have the potential to allow us to manufacture all sorts of "raw materials", including food and what we now call petroleum products. Some foresee computer/net communication and virtual reality technologies removing the need for people to transport their bodies from place to place nearly as much as is now the case. Etc.

I've probably said as much in this discussion as makes sense in this forum, so as a concluding summary: It is not that I think that I know what the future holds, it is that I don't think anyone knows and don't believe that either simplistic slogans such as "people are like locust" or detailed analyses such as in Diamond's book suffice to make anyone a reliable prophet.

-Ww

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Wwanderer

If you aren't Al Gore, I'm not Jimmy Carter or Pollyanna, and there is a lot of room between the sort of global apocalypse scenarios you and J Diamond are describing and idealistic utopias. I.e., you are setting up straw men with which to joust.

My main point is that I don't believe that anyone, not the pessimists and also not the optimists, can make anything remotely in the neighborhood of usefully reliable predictions about the future of humanity (or "the world") for more than a few years in advance. Mostly it is just extrapolation of current trends or postulation of imagined scenarios. Take a look at the history of these crystal balls and you will see that they are absurdly inaccurate.

For example, around 1900 it was widely and *seriously* believed that New York and other major cities would soon have to stop growing or suffer an ecological catastrophe (though they did not use that term) due to the insupportable populations of horses required to keep them going (disposing of the manure and bodies of deceased horses, feeding them etc). In the 1960s many American "futurists" predicted that automation/computers and the increasing number of women joining the work force would accelerate the already long term trend of an ever shorter "work week" to new extremes...and that a typical worker would be putting only 10-20 hours into their job per week and be enjoying 2 or 3 months of vacation time per year by the year 2000. (This is just about when the trend to shorter working hours began to reverse, btw.) Another popular idea was that traffic jams would soon be abolished by wide spread use of "flying cars" or "robot driven vehicles".

At the moment, technology is the most obvious wild card in the deck for those trying to read the world's fortune. For example, many molecular biologists believe that it will be possible to turn off human aging within less than a century...maybe much less. Nanotechnology and bio-engineering have the potential to allow us to manufacture all sorts of "raw materials", including food and what we now call petroleum products. Some foresee computer/net communication and virtual reality technologies removing the need for people to transport their bodies from place to place nearly as much as is now the case. Etc.

I've probably said as much in this discussion as makes sense in this forum, so as a concluding summary: It is not that I think that I know what the future holds, it is that I don't think anyone knows and don't believe that either simplistic slogans such as "people are like locust" or detailed analyses such as in Diamond's book suffice to make anyone a reliable prophet.

-Ww

Horse manure in NYC....Yes I have also read Levitt and Dubners "SuperFreakonomics". The funny thing about that is that if not for the discovery of oil , horse manure in NYC might just have been its downfall. I hear what you are saying....there will be an invention (or NOT) that will change the way we view the world. I am betting (well I'm not actually betting anything) that at some point your reliance on a magic bullet will in fact hit you right between the eyes.

I do not believe one can predicate the exact future. But one can have informed discussions. Diamond makes no wild nor misleading predictions. . ....I see no magic altruistic pill (but you may ) in our future so I predicate that human nature will stay about the same. That is, self destruction in the end. I do predicate we will all die. Most definitely we all die, even after reading about the promising telomeres research I'll stick with that predication that we all die in the end.

[Marcus Aurelius]

God made nerve cells the way he did on purpose.


And for the wrest of the story, nature always finds a way. Too many people, and nature will bring out the scythe.


Simplistic with no links.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Marcus Aurelius

God made nerve cells the way he did on purpose.


And for the wrest of the story, nature always finds a way. Too many people, and nature will bring out the scythe.


Simplistic with no links.

Well God probably thinks links are overrated

[atlcomedy]

yes, I do

[discreetgent]

Originally Posted by atlcomedy

yes, I do

He said God not the Devil

[Guest050715-1]

Nature will cull when there aren’t enough resources so the population can be supported. Usable land for agriculture is declining. It’s either being turned into desert by climate pattern changes (Northern Africa), desert because of poor farming techniques or concrete by humans. People are starving all over the world. Add to that, corporate food is stripping the nutrition out of our foods and adding chemicals to our bodies and agri-waste to our water and soil. We need cheap food to feed the poor masses and produce corporate profits, and we need manually expanded food because resources are shrinking and demand is increasing.

I recently finished the “Cadillac Desert”. It postulates that the great cities of American West are / will be petri dishes for managing water, watching them decline or both. Even in America we aren’t immune to the laws of the jungle. If you don’t have enough water, you don’t have enough food. As the water shrinks, so does the population.

Localized epidemics and violence are rampant in areas where recourses are scares and / or the population is exploding. Take AIDS for example, it is decimating the African continent and China. Sooner or later, staph or some other super germ will start picking people off in the first and second worlds too. Where there are too many people and not enough wherewithal, Mother Nature will let us know. It’s sad, but it is true.
The resources are finite – even with agri-business, inventive water management and new ways of keeping ourselves sheltered and warm. Medicine and invention can only keep us healthy and happy until Nature cannot support the population anymore.

And MA, I'm glad that Satan has real tits. I'm sure if he were on this board, he'd shout it loud and proud.

[DFW5Traveler]

Did someone say eugenics? WHAT IF the baby boom was the reason the Vietnam War was started? If the average age of the American fighter was 19 during that incursion, count backwards from the years and you will see the era of the post-war baby boom.

IF everything is good in moderation what happens when you are fed a poison every day? What's the poison, fluoride? Does anyone know what Monsanto's cash cow was during the Vietnam War; the answer is Agent Orange, a defoliant, which is a cancer-causing agent. What is a current cash cow for Monsanto; the answer is GMO crops some of which are called Round-Up ready, or weed resistant crops. How about researching Bovine Growth Hormone, which became prevalent in the 70's and the correlation in the rising instances of breast cancer. Is it any wonder that a cow needs to be given antibiotics after receiving an injection of the hormone?

[pyramider]

Plagues and war are effective population control.

[Willen]

Yes they are, but does that mean they are the control means we should settle for? Beats me. On the one hand, history strongly suggests that any kind of detailed social engineering ought to be avoided--we aren't that smart and disciplined, and the variables are far too, well, variable. On the other hand, we can and do anticipate certain sorts of circumstances and can say with reasonable confidence that choice "A" is less likely than "B" to contribute to certain undesired outcomes. If I save nothing while I work, for example, my retirement years are not going to be especially pleasent.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Willen

. If I save nothing while I work, for example, my retirement years are not going to be especially pleasent.

Thats not entirely true....If you save nothing, you won't ever retire!

[pjorourke]

No need to overpopulate