Overpopulation of human beings on planet Earth

[El_Machinae]

Oh gosh, please no. Even with terraformed Mars at roughly 1 billion human inhabitants and Earth gradually declining to something in the 5 billion ballpark, you'd still have to cram 994 billion humans somewhere. That's just not realistic and definitely not desirable.

I find your lack of faith imagination disturbing.

Your system seems to put people on the outer surface of large quantities of materials. My system puts people within large quantities of material.

 

[Winner]

I find your lack of faith imagination disturbing.

Your system seems to put people on the outer surface of large quantities of materials. My system puts people within large quantities of material.

There's a misunderstanding here - I am asking *why* we should even find it desirable to put so many people anywhere. A future where our main concern is to overpopulate the Universe doesn't appeal to me on any level.

Why are you reposting something which you claimed you were not seriously discussing in the first place?

 

[El_Machinae]

I want a robust Sol so that interstellar travel is viable.

 

[tokala]

of course, historical epidemiology is in some respects an intellectually bankrupt field at the moment

Care to elaborate on that part? Sounds as if there were an interesting story behind that.

 

[Dachs]

Care to elaborate on that part? Sounds as if there were an interesting story behind that.

In short, there's simply too much guesswork being taken as fact and too many gaps in the evidence being bridged by assumption.

Case in point is the whole notion of the bubonic plague. The standard narrative is that there have been several outbreaks of this plague, with the most major ones occurring under the reigns of the Roman Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Ioustinianos, in the 1340s, and in China in the late nineteenth century. In many respects, the symptoms of these plagues as described by eyewitnesses match the fairly-well recorded Chinese outbreak. But, it must be emphasized, this does not apply for all aspects. In some cases, incubation periods are off; in some, skin color is different; and in others, the actual descriptions of the buboes, or pustules, or whatever (the naming conventions varied considerably over the centuries as you might guess) vary in themselves.

Usually, historical epidemiologists chalk this up to poor reportage and insist that the ancient or medieval chroniclers simply got it wrong in some ways. Apart from the fact that these are frequently very obvious things to get wrong or right, especially in the case of men who had the plagues in question (Prokopios of Kaisareia, for instance, contracted the plague of Ioustinianos and recorded its symptoms). And when you think about it, isn't it unlikely that the same exact plague would have continuously hit like that? Shouldn't there have been some sort of mutation at the very least - and possibly a whole other disease?

But if this disease was not the classic bubonic plague as described in Yunnan in the nineteenth century, then other assumptions that have been made about its mortality rates (relevant for historical demographers), spread, and even social impact may be anywhere from slightly off to catastrophically wrong. Even if it were just a mutation of some kind, all of those assumptions would have to be recalibered.

To emphasize the point, plague was found in an ice core dating to about the sixth century or so, and certain scientists were quick to point out similarities with modern stored plague. Many of the genetic differences went unremarked. The analysis is not, I believe, far along enough to be able to tell for certain about this plague, but it's looking more and more as though this plague was either the plague of Ioustinianos, but a different version than the 19th century plague, or it was neither of those and merely a contemporary specimen.

 

[Crezth]

Will you please stop posting outrageous lies about what I write? I invite everyone to read the links so that they can see for themselves that you've apparently totally lost it

I'm sorry, maybe you meant something else by posting in a thread about gypsy deportation to India about how great gypsy deportation to India would be and how the gypsies should, by all rights, be deported to India.

No, I am advocating increased birth control (not *population* control as you say) in countries where the problem of fast population growth is the most acute. Duh.

What is meant by acute?

Who shoulders the hard cost of the birth control and the opportunity cost of a smaller population?

It's your paranoid PC-obsessed mind that keeps twisting this into some sort of race-related issue. If it helps to put your mind at ease, I think the population growth in the US is also too high and more should be done to stabilize the US population.

Population stabilization measures that you exhort the third world take on ostensibly as a matter of their own self-interest are little more than the preservation of the property of first world countries. You'd have to be daft to assert that ten starving children in Ghana have a comparable impact on the environment as an obese family of four driving their Hummer to and from McDonald's every blessed hour. Yet measures against overconsumption are happily ignored in favor of "aggressive birth control," as you blithely point out that the world cannot support more first worlders than there are already. As I said before, how very convenient that is.

Now, in this thread, the hypothetical question was "If you were an extraterrestrial passing by, taking look at Earth, what would you think is the optimal number of people this planet can sustain?" I gave an answer to that question. Nowhere did I suggest my desire is to start some sort of mass genocide;

I should be so lucky if you were so forthcoming. No, you simply identified an optimal number of people to be the population of the first world. You confirmed this as your stance when you clarified that the world can support no more first-worlders than there already are. In other words: the first world has its sh*t together, and the rest of the world needs to get it together. Ideally by ceasing to be, or at least by ensuring there will be a future generation where they will have ceased to be. You have passed the buck on the actual problems of environmental impact to the people who have virtually no environmental impact at all.

If that is not a stinging indictment of the entire rest of the world for having the gall just to *be* here, then it isn't anything. The only reason I can imagine you'd do this is out of a perverted sense of first world privilege - so fat and comfortable in Prague, if it weren't for those damn starving Africans, there'd be no problems at all.

The racism is circumstantial as you are, in fact, a racist.

There's a misunderstanding here - I am asking *why* we should even find it desirable to put so many people anywhere. A future where our main concern is to overpopulate the Universe doesn't appeal to me on any level.

Someone should tell the coloreds to stop ruining the fun for the rest of us.

 

[tokala]

In short, there's simply too much guesswork being taken as fact and too many gaps in the evidence being bridged by assumption.

Ah, okay.
Sounds like the somehow familiar case of "If only fragmentary data are available, string together a nice sounding hypothesis from some of it, ignoring the data that do not fit in", and selling it as "fact" backed more by authority and rhetorics than by compelling scientific arguments.

After hearing the "morally bankrupt" part I suspected that the "try to support some ideological/political cause by said shaky/fraudulent science" step would also be involved.

 

[Borachio]

No, this is how it went:

You: I believe the Romans went on about the problems of overpopulation.
Me: No, they didn't.
You: [paraphrase] Short posts are bad unless I'm making them. Here, a few philosophers and theologians scattered throughout the centuries of the classical era from several different countries brought up overpopulation as a concern.
Me: [paraphrase] Apart from whether overpopulation was a reasonable concern for them to have had back then - and it wasn't, generally speaking - the whining of a few philosophers and theologians does not make overpopulation a salient issue about which large numbers of (e.g.) Romans were concerned, which is the sort of thing that is implied when one says "the Romans went on about the problems of overpopulation". Some Romans is not the same thing as "the Romans".

MagisterCultuum is a self-described minarchist, which is basically another one of those innumerable variations on a GUBMINT IS BAD theme that crop up among the more annoying leftists and rightists on the Internet.

Okey dokey. You win.

 

[Dachs]

Ah, okay.
Sounds like the somehow familiar case of "If only fragmentary data are available, string together a nice sounding hypothesis from some of it, ignoring the data that do not fit in", and selling it as "fact" backed more by authority and rhetorics than by compelling scientific arguments.

After hearing the "morally bankrupt" part I suspected that the "try to support some ideological/political cause by said shaky/fraudulent science" step would also be involved.

Intellectually bankrupt, actually. If there's anything morally bankrupt about history, it'd probably be the people trying to push their political causes with faulty historical interpretations, like the people who try to justify immigration controls because the "barbarians" supposedly destroyed the Roman Empire.

 

[tokala]

Intellectually bankrupt, actually.

Uups!

 

[Birdjaguar]

Moderator Action: Crezth & Park, please get back on the topic and stop focusing on Winner's posts elsewhere. Argue more of your case and less against his please. Thanks.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Nick Carpathia]

Notice how the people always complaining about overpopulation are from the first world. And naturally, the target populations they want to cull off (politely! They'd never be so crass to advocate simple genocide!) are from the third world.

Who cares I'm a god damned prophet I so called this on the first page.

 

[El_Machinae]

That's kinda cheating. Most posters are from the first world, and so most of the people complaining would then also be from the first world.

 

[Tee Kay]

ten starving children in Ghana

Now, now, Ghana is notable for generally lacking a malnourished population. And the average Ghanaian family only has four children and falling, less in the urban areas.

 

[El_Machinae]

I'd like to point out that there's not room on the planet (yet) for every couple to have 2 children. Some're having fewer, some are having more. But there's not room for '2 kids each'. The 2 children of your cousin are going to have a significantly larger footprint than two Ghanans. Their economic output will be larger, too, but I don't think their intellectual output will be significantly higher.

Most people aren't producers of intellectual progress, except as a side-effect of their consumption. A great deal of our consumption mainly depletes natural resources. Now, obviously, this can be expressed as a ratio. A ratio that can be modified.

 

[Winner]

Who cares I'm a god damned prophet I so called this on the first page.

It amuses me how many people ignore the simple fact that the first world has in the most part managed to stabilize its population.

Many third world countries have not. For example, Bangladesh today has the average population density twice that of the Netherlands, the most densely populated country in Europe. And it's still growing fast.

Many posters here are so obsessed with being seen as ultra-correct towards the non-1st worlders that they convinced themselves that the 3rd world has an inalienable right to overpopulate itself into oblivion. Well, perhaps it does, but don't blame other people from pointing out that it's foolish and extremely dangerous for the whole of mankind.

Of course I am going to be branded as a racist by the local PC-brigade for saying that. I don't mind, I have a good company:


Link to video.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

And those Bangladeshis work twice as hard and consume a fraction the resources as your fat worthless ass.

 

[Winner]

And those Bangladeshis work twice as hard and consume a fraction the resources as your fat worthless ass.

Even if that were true, Mr. I-know-you're-right-therefore-I'll-insult-you, it wouldn't matter since there's 16 times more Bangladeshis (the factor is rising fast) than Czechs, and their ambition is to consume just as much and work just as little.

Unless you of course plan to keep them impoverished forever. Which is what likely will happen if they continue to overpopulate themselves towards misery.

 

[Chiteng]

It amuses me how many people ignore the simple fact that the first world has in the most part managed to stabilize its population.

Many third world countries have not. For example, Bangladesh today has the average population density twice that of the Netherlands, the most densely populated country in Europe. And it's still growing fast.

Many posters here are so obsessed with being seen as ultra-correct towards the non-1st worlders that they convinced themselves that the 3rd world has an inalienable right to overpopulate itself into oblivion. Well, perhaps it does, but don't blame other people from pointing out that it's foolish and extremely dangerous for the whole of mankind.

Of course I am going to be branded as a racist by the local PC-brigade for saying that. I don't mind, I have a good company:


Link to video.

Not by me =) I know several Bangla nationals and they are VERY aware that the country in permanently screwed by overpopulation. That is why they emigrated to the USA

 

[Borachio]

It's strange. I find myself agreeing with both Winner and Chiteng - to some extent at any rate. Someone help me please! I begin to fear for my sanity.

I think denying birth control to the developing world is like denying them access to fresh water and education.