I've got beef with none of this. With luck and hard work, we can cure the religious part. That anti-capitalist bit has to go, though. Even Bono knows that's a crock.
Population control
- Thread starter UncleRogi
- Start date
Good talk.
Overpopulation problems? Outsource pedantic fascism to the private sector:
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I think Stargate had an episode or two where aliens befriended Earth and proceeded to reduce the earth fertility rate greatly by giving medical treatments under the guise of curing cancer and other diseases.
^Which is similar to the suggestion on the previous page of the novel "Inferno"
In the book, the final twist (come on it's Dan Brown, youv'e either read it or don't care by now) is that the villain already won, his virus released a week before the end of the book and has now spread to all corners of the Earth infecting the vast majority of the human race.
It's a highly genetically modified retrovirus that randomly steralised 2/3 of humanity, a trait that will now pass along to all subsequent generations making only 1/3 of the planets population at any time fertile. It has no other negative effects, it doesn't hurt or kill anyone currently alive. They all get to live out their lives, but the population will drop significantly over the next century.
The catch is that the virus can be reversed, but the process of developing a cure without his original work will take nearly all of that time or slightly more, by which time it'll likely be 2120 with a worldwide population of only about 3-4 billion people. So they have the choice of curing it (just going back up to 7-8 billion), modifying it to increase the amount of fertile people to a managable amount (closer to 5-6 billion), or leaving it alone and creating a new societal reproductive attitude that keeps the population steady at 4 billion.
In the book, the final twist (come on it's Dan Brown, youv'e either read it or don't care by now) is that the villain already won, his virus released a week before the end of the book and has now spread to all corners of the Earth infecting the vast majority of the human race.
It's a highly genetically modified retrovirus that randomly steralised 2/3 of humanity, a trait that will now pass along to all subsequent generations making only 1/3 of the planets population at any time fertile. It has no other negative effects, it doesn't hurt or kill anyone currently alive. They all get to live out their lives, but the population will drop significantly over the next century.
The catch is that the virus can be reversed, but the process of developing a cure without his original work will take nearly all of that time or slightly more, by which time it'll likely be 2120 with a worldwide population of only about 3-4 billion people. So they have the choice of curing it (just going back up to 7-8 billion), modifying it to increase the amount of fertile people to a managable amount (closer to 5-6 billion), or leaving it alone and creating a new societal reproductive attitude that keeps the population steady at 4 billion.
Yeah a system where 1% of the population owns the majority of the wealth of the planet is working so perfectly. For the 1%.
That's not what capitalism is. That's Oligarchism.
Capitalism is what the developed and developing world have successfully combined with socialism to lift over a billion people out of abject poverty in the last 20 years.
Don't go all Bobby Kennedy Jr. on me. ("I'm so anti-corporate that because corporations develop vaccines, vaccines must be bad!")
Pure capitalism and pure socialism have both been abject failures everywhere either has been tried without the other.
Have I thought about this? Due to my personality type and general mentality (take that any way you want) I think about this sort of thing far too frequently.
In my opinion the global population, along with some other ingrained traits of humanity, coupled with the recent technological burst, is what is causing the downward spiral that we appear to be stuck in.
A solution on a global scale may require us to fight human nature to an extent (both regarding procreation and greed) , so a solution would seem to be far off in the distance (past our lifetimes anyway). Unless people stop thinking in terms of borders/countries and start thinking of people as individuals on a global scale we may as well give up the quest... it's going to take a far, FAR-reaching effort from the majority of humans to divert the trend and when I put forth so much effort to live a sustainable life only to turn and see 10 people behind me throw recycling into the trash, spend beyond their means, waste food and other material objects, and argue with each other over insignificant trivial matters, then it kind of makes me give up hope for survival of the species...
@Doom Shepherd 's post outlined the only real "solutions."
Demographic transition--that is, moving from high birth rates and low death rates to low birth rates and low death rates--will ultimately get population growth under control. While we don't know exactly what happens after that--could be decline, could be plateau, could be stable but steady growth--it would be better than the current global situation.
But the main problem is not how many people there are. Rather, it is the standard of living--or consumption, if you prefer. Americans are horrifically wasteful, but even Western Europeans, who are much more conscientious about renewable resources and recycling, have living standards too high to feasibly support 7 billion-plus people.
This is not a problem that any organized solution can really contend with, though. Overpopulation may be a global problem in scope, but high population growth is a geographically specific phenomenon--i.e. some countries have very high growth, others have low or even negative growth. There is certainly no feasible (much less ethically justifiable) option for drastically limiting or reversing growth.
No, it doesn't. People aren't dying in wars (or from violence in general) at anywhere near the rate necessary to matter. About the only thing that would do it is nuclear war, which would be bad for everybody.
Really, who is even straight anymore in 2017?? Anyone???
Neat.
Wow, I knew Dan Brown books were dumb, but that is really something.
As a final note: everybody can relax. Climate change is likely to kill shit tons of people over the next couple centuries. That, combined with the ensuing social and political upheavals, disruption of basic supply/manufacturing chains, resource scarcity (especially fresh water), and other turmoil will likely see a massive rollback of what we consider (post-)industrialized civilization. Capitalism brought prosperity to much of the globe, at the cost of the planet's long-term habitability for large numbers of humans. A good bargain if you are set to die before the bill comes due, I suppose.
Honestly, I think there needs to be more discussion from the scientific and environmental community about the benefits to the environment in not having kids at all or having fewer kids. My girlfriend actually shared an article with me recently on this subject. I think it's important, but it's such a personal issue that people seem uncomfortable addressing it. But I think it will become more of a talking point as climate change continues to get worse. Basically I think there just needs to be a cultural shift in how/when/why people decide to have kids. Obviously a pro-choice, contraceptive, and family planning social/political environment is essential to that.
To clarify, I'm not saying anyone in particular shouldn't have kids. Just that people should change how they approach that question, given the dire environmental situation we have created for ourselves.
To clarify, I'm not saying anyone in particular shouldn't have kids. Just that people should change how they approach that question, given the dire environmental situation we have created for ourselves.
The ONE spectrum I'm definitely at the extreme endpoint of, and it has to be that one...
Who is Bobby Kennedy Jr. ?
Anyway my original post criticised rampant capitalism, you know the neo-liberal kind that is peddled and worshipped today. The kind that makes people believe a man like Donald Trump really cares about the other 99% ROFLOL
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Robert_Kennedy,_Jr.
When you mean rampant capitalism, it's okay to use the adjective. When I say "socialism," I don't mean "axe-crazy communism." and vice-versa. This ain't Yahoo! Comments, where you have to keep it simple for the prehistoric dum-dums.
First deal with tribalism and poverty then you can deal with overpopulation. Tribalism is the cause of most if not all civil wars, especially on the African continent. Once nations get over their 'Norman v Anglo Saxons' attitudes (like the British islanders) and see themselves as one kingdom, you solve one issue, consider how much the British achieved once the nation was more or less united (like it or not) the next issue is to then get over the nationalism. OK the Brits are still working on that one, Brexit Ireland etc
Yup, the movie changed it so much it's ridiculous. In the novel he passionately cared about saving humanity from itself, so much so he lost perspective and developed the virus out of a desparate need to solve the problem in his lifetime before he was unable to do anything about it. The novel ends on a sombre note with them too late to stop it happening and wondering where to go from there. "Origin" is being written and will touch on the global impact of the virus briefly before going on into the next adventure.
The movie reduces him to a madman that wants to just *kill* half the human race with no intention of spreading out the suffering, and just having the densest part of Europe be groud zero for a horrific killer virus.
There's little or no commonality between the two characters, it's a movie only half based on the book, but taking out the better half? it makes no sense.
I mean, "not having kids" helps (says the guy with 3...) but the overall problem is so large that individual decisionmaking can't have much of an effect unless it is leveraged into a pervasive and global trend.
We see how much pushback there has been to the scientific consensus on climate change--mainly from big businesses that have much to lose should they be forced to change their ways. Now imagine you're dealing with something as personal as family planning--how do you convince people not to have kids??
The answer: feminism! This is not a joke. Women's liberation gives women more options than "get married and become baby factories." And what do you know, over time more and more women choose something else. So accelerating feminist ideas throughout the world would greatly curb population growth. But like all the other non-nuclear solutions, it will take so long to work that we still won't really "solve the problem."
It's funny that neoliberal capitalism is being dinged as the rampant, runaway problem when it's actually the compromise against truly laissez-faire capitalism. But hey, neoliberalism sucks so no sympathy here.
"One problem at a time" is a myth. People can address multiple problems at once. That's even your only choice when problems happen to be interdependent.
Also, thanks to the past 50-ish years of resource consumption, we have likely destroyed any hope of eliminating poverty in the next few centuries (if ever, and barring some kind of magical Star Trek-like solution to scarcity and climate change).
But hey, all this is why I'm an anarcho-posadist now. We must nuke ourselves and hope the space comrades will take pity on us. And it is a political ideology too insane to argue against.
Don't @ me, peace out.
You couldn't come close to a reasoned discussion of this at Yahoo! Comments without being flamed
from all sides in the name of God, feminism, and the virtue of unmitigated greed. All with the
grammar of a third grader!
This has turned out a wonderful discussion, IMHO.
Its true the real secret to population control is free education for females, free access to birth control for females and increase in living standards. E.g Germany, although one can argue they have gone too far the other way, they have negative population growth hence Mrs Angela Merkal's open door policy to immigrants from different cultures.
The irony is in the West, the people who can least afford them have lots of children, the people who can afford them tend to stick to two, unless its a wealthy male with serial divorce and remarriage tendencies lol
The irony is in the West, the people who can least afford them have lots of children, the people who can afford them tend to stick to two, unless its a wealthy male with serial divorce and remarriage tendencies lol
My decision not to have children (to my parents' GREAT disappointment) was not based on economics, but made for entirely selfish and self-centered reasons.
First, I fell in love with a woman who couldn't have children.
But more than that... I am a selfish jerk and I WILL NOT SHARE MY TOYS.
O hey, has anyone else read Saturn's Race by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes? Mentioning RFK Jr. triggered my memory... the wealthy white world leaders create a "vaccine" and distribute it - free of cost - to the third world. The vaccine prevents illness. It also causes sterility. This is of course discovered and excrement meets spinning blades.
First, I fell in love with a woman who couldn't have children.
But more than that... I am a selfish jerk and I WILL NOT SHARE MY TOYS.
O hey, has anyone else read Saturn's Race by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes? Mentioning RFK Jr. triggered my memory... the wealthy white world leaders create a "vaccine" and distribute it - free of cost - to the third world. The vaccine prevents illness. It also causes sterility. This is of course discovered and excrement meets spinning blades.
