"Overpopulation is NOT the cause of social or economic problems."

[Cutlass]

I said, "or not far above that".

It doesn't require much above to have some population growth. But the risk is high. I also said, "you have to live one bad season above starvation." Maybe most people never faced that one bad season. Many of those that did didn't leave decedents.

If the modern human is vastly more intelligent and educated that the historical examples of agrarian society, it's because of a specialization that a larger society allows. For a village to be self sufficiency, that level of specialization isn't possible. You need many people to allow some the freedom to specialize. And once you have that many specialists, the most effective way for them to work is to congregate. Ie, cities.

Why did cities come together in the first place? So that people specializing in works other than food production can get together and accomplish bigger things. So they could be near other specialists that they rely on. So that transportation can be centralized. So that they can serve a wider market than just one village.

This concept of cities being some unnatural creation as a parasite on the farmers has no basis. Cities naturally evolve as the means of production, of what is being produced, and as the knowledge to produce, expands.

Your village cut off from the cities now, even with the knowledge base intact, would regress over time. Because they would lack the economies of scale to keep the skills, the tools, and the knowledge base intact. And as they regresses, their ability to survive hardship would decline. And their ability to prepare for the future would decline. A village isolated cannot even repair a refrigerator. Much less build one. How much additional labor is required for replacing just one of the items in every modern home that we take so completely for granted that many people would not know how to live without one?

Vast amounts of the work people need to do to be self sufficient are just dirt cheap under industrial conditions. But full time jobs under non-industrial conditions. And when working so many hours to replace what can easily be done through specialization, there's just a lot less time to produce a surplus of your own to live very far above subsistence.

 

[civ_king]

But that requires tools above and beyond what a village can create.

Not necessarily, corporate farming yields most money per acre, but small scale farmers can actually have a farm with more yields sustainably

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Well the biggest advantage of small farms is diversification of produce. The biggest advantage of corporate farming is economies of scale.

 

[Cutlass]

Not necessarily, corporate farming yields most money per acre, but small scale farmers can actually have a farm with more yields sustainably

But the point is that they cannot do that in isolation. The seeds, the tools, the tractors, the fuel for the tractors, the fertilizer, and on and on and on all come from elsewhere. And that elsewhere is all wrapped together with the cities.

 

[timtofly]

People are like atoms, the closer together they are, the more friction is caused. Separate them and less friction. I would say cities are the problem, not the population, especially during global warming. Once global cooling starts, then cities are back in again.

 

[Theige]

People are like atoms, the closer together they are, the more friction is caused. Separate them and less friction. I would say cities are the problem, not the population, especially during global warming. Once global cooling starts, then cities are back in again.

Such a broad statement is completely useless, and people are nothing "like atoms," at all.

Many actually think part of the solution is denser and therefore more populated cities; because they are more efficient.

 

[civ_king]

But the point is that they cannot do that in isolation. The seeds, the tools, the tractors, the fuel for the tractors, the fertilizer, and on and on and on all come from elsewhere. And that elsewhere is all wrapped together with the cities.

Actually, it can be done without tractors and (chemical) fertilizer.

 

[Cutlass]

People are like atoms, the closer together they are, the more friction is caused. Separate them and less friction. I would say cities are the problem, not the population, especially during global warming. Once global cooling starts, then cities are back in again.

Cities are far more "green" than the country.

Actually, it can be done without tractors and (chemical) fertilizer.

Sure it can. At a far lower standard of living.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Also, atoms don't work that way either.
Density and friction have nothing in common.

 

[Narz]

Ergo Sum, the trend of per-capita gains has kind of slipped in the past few years in case you didn't notice.

The whole demographic transition argument assumes with have 30-40 years to wait until population stablizes (at 9 billion or whatever) but research shows that we can't even maintain our current population with current resources (unless we all want to live at Bangladesh-like standard of living).

Cutlass, 100% self-sufficiency isn't really the goal but if communities could be even 70-80% self-sufficient they would be buffered against global ups & downs. Certainly past agrarian societies often lived a bad season away from famine (hunter-gatheres less so since they were nomadic & didn't deplete resources at the level of agrarians).

The main problem with the economic setup of today is that their isn't as much redundancy & thus resiliency as there used to be. To draw a parallel/parable, once upon a time their was a small town in Wyoming, this town has three bakeries. They all made fine breads from grain grown in various nearby counties. One day Walmart came & destroyed the three bakeries & replaced them with their own bakery department. They did hire a bunch of low wage workers though & increased traffic thru down so the economic number crunching revealed they were good for the town (though small businesses in town fell from 98 to 14 & suicides tripled but those are trivial matters). However, one day (a few decades after they moved in, lets say the year 2019), the unthinkable happened, Walmart went out of business. No men (or women) in town remembered how to bake really good bread since Walmart has made having such skills pointless. Thus the town had no good bread to eat & had to buy Wonderbread from 7-11 (who didn't go out of business 'till 2020) and everyone was sad (except gluten free mofos who didn't care much).

Like in our Wyoming hamlet the globalized economy doesn't care much about traditional skills or even a semblance of self-sufficiency. Even the eco-village I lived at for awhile didn't grow grains or beans because "they're so cheap to buy in bulk from elsewhere". This is all well & good I guess as long as the global economic empire of mankind holds together. It seems it might be prudent to encourage at least some self-sufficiency though. Because it allows people to fend at least a little bit for themselves if their distant cousins can no longer provide all their needs with such immediacy for such low cost.

Many actually think part of the solution is denser and therefore more populated cities; because they are more efficient.

If you don't like New York you could move to Dhaka.

Looks pretty efficient to me.

Many people think Glen Beck is a wise man, who cares what many think?

 

[Theige]

I love New York

It's actually quite hilarious that you mention Dhaka, as Bangladesh has the lowest energy use per capita in the world.

Generally, and when controlling for income level, the denser the country, the lower its energy use per person.

 

[civ_king]

Cities are far more "green" than the country.





Sure it can. At a far lower standard of living.

These people pull off 6,000 lb. of produce on 1/10 an acre
seems pretty efficient to me

 

[Masada]

The whole demographic transition argument assumes with have 30-40 years to wait until population stablizes (at 9 billion or whatever)

Masada: 1.

but research shows that we can't even maintain our current population with current resources (unless we all want to live at Bangladesh-like standard of living).

I'd be interested to see this research.

Like in our Wyoming hamlet the globalized economy doesn't care much about traditional skills or even a semblance of self-sufficiency.

I'll run with the food analogy and raise you the notion that most traditional food sucks. People don't want to eat things like this:

Take sage, parsley, hyssop and savoury, quinces and pears, garlic and grapes, and stuff the geese with them. Sew the hole so that no grease comes out, and roast them well, and keep the dripping that falls from them. Take galyntyne [sauce or jelly of meat juices] and grease and add to a posset; when the geese be roasted enough, take and smite [cut] them into pieces, and that which is within and add to a posset and put wine in it if it be too thick. Add powder of galingale, powder-douce and salt, and boil the sauce and dress the geese in dishes and put the sauce on them

Why the hell would I want to eat something literally dripping in grease, fat and cooked with spiced curdled freaking milk. Would you? Of course not. I wouldn't. Just think about what exactly we've lost. Some of it worth reviving, some of it is better dead and buried. Some of it should have died a long time ago - lol tripe lol.

These people pull off 6,000 lb. of produce on 1/10 an acre
seems pretty efficient to me

"We realize circumstances and situations have allowed us to take these steps. We do not intend to compare or endorse our progress as being possible for everyone."

 

[Cutlass]

These people pull off 6,000 lb. of produce on 1/10 an acre
seems pretty efficient to me

But only by taking advantage of what comes out of an industrial world. Not by being independent of it.

 

[Ergo Sum]

Narz, self-sufficiency is not necessarily a virtue. I'm going to repeat neoclassical mantras (which most of you have some amount of faith in) and say that the entire point of Wal-Mart is not to go out of business; it's there because it's more economically efficient to bring in these foodstuffs, clothings and computers from outside. If for some economic reason Wal-Mart goes out of business, either a) people will come in who have learned how to bake, knit, etc. and replace Wal-Mart because they recognize that there are profits to be made in nowhere, Wyoming, or b) the residents will move somewhere else that can supply them with their preferred lifestyle, i.e. one based on worldwide division of labor (unless they prefer to be nature-people and make a computer out of sticks). The entire point of the global economic empire is that there is no reason for it to collapse - because it's always collapsing and reforming in a more efficient way.

As for not being able to support our population at sustainable levels, it's your prerogative to supply research that affirms what you've said. My comments about population stabilization were in regards to those in this thread who have hyped themselves up on exponential-growth sensationalism.

 

[Cutlass]

The other point about a connected economy is that if you run out of something locally, it can always be imported from somewhere else. So you might not have a local baker, but you can certainly get bread.

 

[Narz]

Narz, self-sufficiency is not necessarily a virtue. I'm going to repeat neoclassical mantras (which most of you have some amount of faith in) and say that the entire point of Wal-Mart is not to go out of business; it's there because it's more economically efficient to bring in these foodstuffs, clothings and computers from outside.

Not necessarily more efficient, it can just out-buy everyone else & sell certain items below profit levels because it knows overall it will make money in quantity. It's not a fair playing field.

If for some economic reason Wal-Mart goes out of business, either a) people will come in who have learned how to bake, knit, etc. and replace Wal-Mart because they recognize that there are profits to be made in nowhere, Wyoming, or b) the residents will move somewhere else that can supply them with their preferred lifestyle, i.e. one based on worldwide division of labor (unless they prefer to be nature-people and make a computer out of sticks). The entire point of the global economic empire is that there is no reason for it to collapse - because it's always collapsing and reforming in a more efficient way.

Naive thinking. It's again, not about efficiency, it's about having advantages over the competition. Walmart can out-buy, under-sell, lose money for a couple of years while it drives out the competition, etc. True, people tend to lose interested in baking & knitting when baked & knited goods can be acquired so cheaply. People who still do bake & knit probably get satisfaction from it though. What people desire isn't necessarily for their best good though. People gravitate towards ease & comfort especially when that's what everyone else is doing. The fewer people who bicycle for instance the less enjoyable it is to bicycle.

As for not being able to support our population at sustainable levels, it's your prerogative to supply research that affirms what you've said. My comments about population stabilization were in regards to those in this thread who have hyped themselves up on exponential-growth sensationalism.

There's a lot of work being done regarding "eco-footprints" and whatnot.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/methodology/

The other point about a connected economy is that if you run out of something locally, it can always be imported from somewhere else. So you might not have a local baker, but you can certainly get bread.

That's the assumption that keeps people from questioning our system. The assumption that bread, fuel, clean water, heat, clothing, etc. can always be cheaply gotten from somewhere else, somehow. Of course for a large portion of the world even getting these basics is not so easy but 1st worlders assume such issues of scarcity can never happen to them.

 

[Ergo Sum]

Not necessarily more efficient, it can just out-buy everyone else & sell certain items below profit levels because it knows overall it will make money in quantity. It's not a fair playing field.

Certainly, I'm not denying that Wal-Mart can take up rent-seeking behavior. Nevertheless, you have no proof that they aren't just more economically efficient than these three mom-and-pop stores - considering the work that goes into standardizing and cost-cutting in Wal-Mart, I'd be surprised if local businesses are actually more cost-effective.

Naive thinking. It's again, not about efficiency, it's about having advantages over the competition. Walmart can out-buy, under-sell, lose money for a couple of years while it drives out the competition, etc. True, people tend to lose interested in baking & knitting when baked & knited goods can be acquired so cheaply. People who still do bake & knit probably get satisfaction from it though. What people desire isn't necessarily for their best good though. People gravitate towards ease & comfort especially when that's what everyone else is doing. The fewer people who bicycle for instance the less enjoyable it is to bicycle.

People are free to bake and to knit if they like, but the fact of the matter is that Wal-Mart offers these services for a cheaper price. That's efficiency. As for shaping consumer behavior, that's the government's choice, but getting rid of Wal-Mart won't magically make everything better.

That's the assumption that keeps people from questioning our system. The assumption that bread, fuel, clean water, heat, clothing, etc. can always be cheaply gotten from somewhere else, somehow. Of course for a large portion of the world even getting these basics is not so easy but 1st worlders assume such issues of scarcity can never happen to them.

That's not an unreasonable assumption. The entire system is geared towards delivering products and services in as cheap a way as possible, and while people in developing countries aren't connected as fully with the global economy, at least for the next few decades, we will have sources of all of these things. I'm not saying environmental sustainability is not a huge issue, but you need a hard argument and data for it, not just loose polemics and hypotheticals about small towns (which I have no special place in my heart for, as some do. Having to move goods from dense cities to the middle of nowhere is disgustingly inefficient).

 

[Gustave5436]

wrt the "packing people into cities like sardines and paying them no more than that needed for their daily bread is most efficient" point of view, consider a hypothetical commodity:

generic eco-commune offers $20/unit
Wal-Mart offers $15/unit

Commune pays $10 in labor and $10 in materials cost, returning no profit. Wal-Mart pays $8 in materials cost and $2 in labor (mostly due to underpaying for labor, rather than efficiency), returning $5 in profit. Most of that profit ultimately goes to enlarging the personal bank accounts of the executives and can be safely ignored; a smaller portion may one day contribute to a new industrial venture, but in this fashion it is comparable to the people of the commune using their personal savings to do the same, so it is canceled out for our purposes.

Looking just at these figures Wal-Mart comes out ahead: they offer the same product at substantially reduced operating costs. However, if we do this, we fail to consider the societal ramifications of the way these two entities do business. The eco-commune pays its workers far better than Wal-Mart does. As a result, these workers have a much higher standard of living, and/or do not incur additional expenses to the State for their social welfare.

If we only value the existence of human life, of course we will conclude that reducing people to miserable drones, barely eking out an existence while they churn out excessive quantities of goods at the lowest possible price, is preferred. However, if we take off the economist hat and look at people as people rather than commodities, we begin to value the quality, rather than merely the quantity, of their lives. In so doing, we are forced to question whether it is really ideal, from a quality of life perspective, to minimize operating costs and maximize productivity.

 

[Narz]

Nevertheless, you have no proof that they aren't just more economically efficient than these three mom-and-pop stores - considering the work that goes into standardizing and cost-cutting in Wal-Mart, I'd be surprised if local businesses are actually more cost-effective.

Well there's different kinds of efficiency. Price-efficiency isn't necessarily actually efficient. I read about a fish farm in Canada (don't have the source on this one sorry) that froze & shipped their fish to China to be cleaned & canned & then sent them back to Canada (and the US) to be sold. Economically efficient problem but not actually efficient. IMO, taxes should be levied on polluting behavior to make economic reality but in tune with physical reality.

People are free to bake and to knit if they like, but the fact of the matter is that Wal-Mart offers these services for a cheaper price. That's efficiency. As for shaping consumer behavior, that's the government's choice, but getting rid of Wal-Mart won't magically make everything better.

No it won't, I agree.

That's not an unreasonable assumption. The entire system is geared towards delivering products and services in as cheap a way as possible, and while people in developing countries aren't connected as fully with the global economy, at least for the next few decades, we will have sources of all of these things. I'm not saying environmental sustainability is not a huge issue, but you need a hard argument and data for it, not just loose polemics and hypotheticals about small towns (which I have no special place in my heart for, as some do. Having to move goods from dense cities to the middle of nowhere is disgustingly inefficient).

I don't deny my analogies are not always particular good. The problem with quantifying sustainability is you always have to use projections & make appeals to people regarding the future (if this behavior continues than by 2030... etc.) and A : these statements are impossible to prove even if based on scientific projections & B : people simply can't get all that motivated about the future, also C : if people are largely powerless as individuals to do anything about the future (for every animal you don't eat a newly middle class Chinaman will eat three) it's probably psychologically healthier not to worry about it.