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

[Narz]

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.

That's also a good analysis.

 

[civ_king]

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

They aren't exactly using that much industrial production,

 

[Cutlass]

They aren't exactly using that much industrial production,

As a share of the whole world's industrial production, no. As a share of what they themselves use on a daily basis, it is overwhelmingly industrial production that they could not have done themselves.

Developed world farmers are extremely productive because they have so much industrial infrastructure behind them that they draw on. They are not the least bit close to self sufficient.

There are only 8760 hours in a year. Of that, a third are spent sleeping. A couple hours a day preparing food and eating. Time for household chores, leisure, and transportation to work. So the average American worker is working some 1800 hours. What happens when many of those hours are spent not in doing your main job, but in making the tools needed to do your main job? The answer is simple: You don't get nearly as much of your main job done.

Go make a kitchen knife and keep track of how long it takes you to do it.

 

[civ_king]

As a share of the whole world's industrial production, no. As a share of what they themselves use on a daily basis, it is overwhelmingly industrial production that they could not have done themselves.

Developed world farmers are extremely productive because they have so much industrial infrastructure behind them that they draw on. They are not the least bit close to self sufficient.

There are only 8760 hours in a year. Of that, a third are spent sleeping. A couple hours a day preparing food and eating. Time for household chores, leisure, and transportation to work. So the average American worker is working some 1800 hours. What happens when many of those hours are spent not in doing your main job, but in making the tools needed to do your main job? The answer is simple: You don't get nearly as much of your main job done.

Go make a kitchen knife and keep track of how long it takes you to do it.

I was pointing out that they managed without tractors and chemical fertilizer not that cities are bad. Or you could buy it from the local machinist

 

[Cutlass]

But large scale modern farming cannot be done without tractors and fertilizers.

 

[Theige]

I was pointing out that they managed without tractors and chemical fertilizer not that cities are bad. Or you could buy it from the local machinist

Sure they may have "managed" but it took a much larger percentage of the population to produce far less food.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Urban areas are, or have the potential to be, more efficient in their use of infrastructure than suburban areas do, not rural areas. Just a bit of false dichotomization that needs to be pointed out.

 

[Theige]

Urban areas are, or have the potential to be, more efficient in their use of infrastructure than suburban areas do, not rural areas. Just a bit of false dichotomization that needs to be pointed out.

Does that hold true if you adjust for income disparity between rural and urban regions?

Not that it matters, because a majority of the population lives in cities, and that's not going to change any time soon.

 

[Narz]

Urban areas are, or have the potential to be, more efficient in their use of infrastructure than suburban areas do, not rural areas. Just a bit of false dichotomization that needs to be pointed out.

Suburbs just suck all around. Worst of both worlds.

 

[Theige]

Suburbs just suck all around. Worst of both worlds.

I grew up in the suburbs, and I felt as though I had the best of both worlds.

New York suburbs though, are much different than the south, west and even the mid-west. We have sidewalks and trains here

 

[Cutlass]

Urban areas are, or have the potential to be, more efficient in their use of infrastructure than suburban areas do, not rural areas. Just a bit of false dichotomization that needs to be pointed out.

Rural areas need more infrastructure per person. Or just does without. Transportation is one of the leading anti-green activities. And that is just far less efficient in the rural areas. Single family homes and stand alone businesses are less energy efficient than apartments and multi-business buildings.

 

[Narz]

I grew up in the suburbs, and I felt as though I had the best of both worlds.

New York suburbs though, are much different than the south, west and even the mid-west. We have sidewalks and trains here

I grew up in Westchester county.

I was born in NYC though & my folks had a country home on Shelter Island, Long Island (which I'm not sure would technically be considered rural but felt rural in the early 80's where I spent the summers there until 5 & a half (don't remember much, remember not many other kids around my folks place & a pizza shop shaped like some sort of animal I think, crickets at night).

Moving to Westchester was kind of depressing (though it didn't help that I didn't get along in school & "real" school is depressing compared to kindergarten).

In the city there's a lot of excitement, you can get whatever you want close by without driving. In a rural area you can breathe the air, usually people have more land for less money & it's less transient than the burbs. The suburbs are overpriced like the city, slightly less polluted but usually not pristine by any means, you have to drive everywhere & they are usually ugly & unless you're very rich you can't afford much land & if you're poor you usually don't have any (apartment living anyway but without the advantages of the city).

I suppose it's an opinion but I think it's a bit of universal meme that suburbs are depressing, alienating & an overall disappointment.

 

[Theige]

I grew up in Westchester county.

I grew up in Westchester county!

But I didn't have to drive anywhere, I could walk to almost anywhere I wanted to go, and Grand Central was only a 30 min train ride away.

 

[Narz]

What part? I lived on the border of Mamaroneck & Rye.

 

[Cutlass]

Rural areas need more infrastructure per person. Or just does without. Transportation is one of the leading anti-green activities. And that is just far less efficient in the rural areas. Single family homes and stand alone businesses are less energy efficient than apartments and multi-business buildings.

This morning on NPR I heard a few minutes with the author of this book: Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier make pretty much the same point I had made in my above post. High population densities use less fuel, and other resources, per person than low population densities. And so are greener.

 

[El_Machinae]

They're currently not sufficiently green, though. There's a global migration to cities, but as long as the ecological indicators continue to degrade (unsustainably), there's more to be done. But, if they also make us richer then the increased environmental stewardship becomes (relatively) less expensive.

 

[Cutlass]

Well sure, nothing is as green as it could be. I'm just reinforcing the point that if you don't need to live out in the country for some reason, and you want to be green, the city is a better choice than the country.

The close suburbs aren't quite as bad, because they still have a lot of apartments and mass transit, many businesses in walking distance of many living spaces, and the distances people travel on a routine basis aren't as great. The far suburban bedroom communities are pretty terrible. Long commutes to work, little to no mass transit, large houses, few apartments, no shopping within walking distances, the need to drive everywhere. And bad traffic as they get more populated. But the sticks are no by no means green, because the distances are just so great. Need to see your doctor, it's a 3 hour round trip. And probably in a truck instead of a car, because rural people often have those because they get used for multiple purposes.

There's room for improvement everywhere. But one of the first places to improve things is to understand that you don't get green by getting out of the city.

 

[Narz]

It really all depends. When I lived in the boonies in Utah there was no grocery store for 30 miles or so but I worked at a Bed & Breakfast there so ordered all my food wholesale to there. Besides a 3-hour business trip up to Salt Lake City to get used-cooking-oil (to make bio-diesel) and other supplies I pretty much stayed in the town all summer. It wasn't as bad as it sounded. I had more fun in that town of 200 than in Monterrey, California (population 27,000).

Of course the town I lived in was far from sustainable. It was heavily dependent on tourism & pretty much closed down in the Winter (and everyone either lived off of savings or moved away for the winter).

I'm rather skeptical of cities = healthier. Does he account for wealth? Cities also house a lot of rich people.

 

[Cutlass]

And a lot of poor people crowded in to too little living space. No place is perfect. But the question you should be asking is "how much impact does each person have on the environment?" A city has more impact than a small town, that's true. But a large city has 100s of 1000s to millions of people in it, and a small town could have only several 100s to a few 1000s. So it is the per-person impact you need to look at.