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Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 1:21:56 AM   
DelilahDeb


Posts: 429
Joined: 1/27/2008
Status: offline 		Wow. Just left a conversation with a virtual Candide, who is convinced that just because he lives in a comfortable niche in a comfortable state in a conspicuous consumption country, that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. <shaking head sadly> The population of the world has doubled since he was a kid, and he doesn't find that a matter for concern? He thinks that the great god technology is going to keep fixing things? <sigh> And he still can believe in the divine in all of us?

It's a pity I have a conscience; Dr. Panglossia would be a role easy to take.

For anyone who cares, there exists a non-profit called Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org) which has thirty-plus years of looking critically at the realities of life on our spaceship Earth.

Population:
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/3943
Food:
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/73
Water:
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/69
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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 1:34:59 AM   
seeksfemslave


Posts: 4011
Joined: 6/16/2006
Status: offline 		The odd fact about all the suffering and deprivation that exists in today's world is that those who are suffering most seem intent on making their suffering worse.
examples:
spiralling birth rates among the 3rd world poor
corrupt governace in the same places.

Delilah, does your touchy feely conscience negate your critical faculties ?
Only arskin'

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 1:43:18 AM   
SugarMyChurro


Posts: 1912
Joined: 4/26/2007
Status: offline 		Your post will be met with economic, anti-scientific and religious resistance. There are those who will claim a kind of economic manifest destiny for their reprehensible practices - effectively that they have the right to profit by any means at their disposal. There are those who will reject the scientific consensus and claim some other kind of authority. And then there are those who will claim the things they do are done in the name of some higher purpose ordained by god.

Larger still be the leviathan opposition to your ideas based on the fact that on a site like this one people are generally more interested in how they are going to get off rather than any concerns they may have for tomorrow's world.

Tomorrow is someone else's problem, right?


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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 2:21:35 AM   
Rule


Posts: 10479
Joined: 12/5/2005
Status: offline 		I do think that it would be wise to reduce the world population to two hundred million by some policy of birth control. (As wars and disease and starvation do not reduce the population, but instead stimulate population growth.)

< Message edited by Rule -- 4/11/2008 2:22:04 AM >

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 2:53:01 AM   
seeksfemslave


Posts: 4011
Joined: 6/16/2006
Status: offline 		200 million ?
Thats not many.

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 3:19:00 AM   
Rule


Posts: 10479
Joined: 12/5/2005
Status: offline 		Two hundred million is sufficient to support a civilization with interstellar capability. Such low numbers also are less prone to a catastrophical change of state due to an economic or natural disaster.
 
Also it will be easier for me to conquer and rule two hundred million people than twenty billion, whether in my contemporary incarnation or a subsequent one.

< Message edited by Rule -- 4/11/2008 3:20:28 AM >

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 5:18:09 AM   
seeksfemslave


Posts: 4011
Joined: 6/16/2006
Status: offline 		I should have known that ws the reason.

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 5:26:34 AM   
MichiganHeadmast


Posts: 726
Joined: 8/13/2006
Status: offline 		Free market capitalism produces the most goods in the most efficient manner, and the resulting wealth has a dampening effect on population growth (you don't need to have 12 kids to insure 4 survive - you can just have 4).

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 5:27:10 AM   
LadyEllen


Posts: 10931
Joined: 6/30/2006
From: Stourport-England
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: seeksfemslave

The odd fact about all the suffering and deprivation that exists in today's world is that those who are suffering most seem intent on making their suffering worse.
examples:
spiralling birth rates among the 3rd world poor
corrupt governace in the same places.


But its all connected Seeks.
- Poverty
- Lack of healthcare
- High infant mortality
- Corruption from the highest to the lowest level

It isnt that different from 19th century England all in all, where families had a dozen kids, sent them all off to work, lived in squalor amidst every disease going and were preyed on by factory owners, landlords and anyone else who could.

The difference between here and there today is because everyday "scum" like my family risked their lives and welfare in former times to protest their situation, when those who were treating them as scum for gain lived in luxury off the profits of their evil.

Perhaps then, we should take common cause with those suffering in the third world - theyre not much different to our ancestors after all? Solidarity brother! 

Except that our governments prefer to keep them as they are, pay off their "leaders" and supply equipment for repressing the people, backed by export credits that will never be met - so we get to pay for their repression and torture and their continuing poverty et al, and to point out how awful those damned natives are at running a place and to send charity donations on top of the "aid" and "loans" (which are stolen and sold by the "leaders"). Great isnt it?

Unless we change their conditions, nothing will change. We did it for ourselves here. Maybe it could be said they should do it for themselves there? And maybe they could, were we not providing the backing, equipment and training to prevent that.

E

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 5:39:47 AM   
kittinSol


Posts: 16926
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quote:

ORIGINAL: MichiganHeadmast

(you don't need to have 12 kids to insure 4 survive - you can just have 4).



So much for restraint in reproduction rofl!!! FOUR kids?!!! Sheeeesssh.

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 5:40:59 AM   
pahunkboy


Posts: 33061
Joined: 2/26/2006
From: Central Pennsylvania
Status: offline 		we have buildt a wonderful world.  for the most part we enjoy a quality of life that no other generation has.  if you are online, chances are you have electricity, heat,food, shelter, relative comfort,

thinking back to when i needed medical care, a few surgeries,  bouts with pneumonia, etc, I would have been dead as an infant.  funny enough an intense fever as in infant- my parents could not locate a DR - then when they did- well- here I am.

i must be in a mello-cali mood....  I had been thinking how my sister and I held eachother sobbing in the graveyard.  [years after a family member death, which today would have been cureable]

modern  society is quirky in that the average man has trouble defining ones bread winning- in a fast changing planet.

prior to the teck wave- i admonished how exciting those who lived the industrial revolution.  i wished i was there.  so here we are. simmilliar to covered wagons heading west- you and I are pioneeering the teck frontier.  generations from now people will ponder- what it must be like to be YOU right here; right now.

enjoy your day in this glory.

< Message edited by pahunkboy -- 4/11/2008 5:42:09 AM >

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 5:51:21 AM   
TheGorenSociety


Posts: 116
Joined: 2/13/2005
Status: offline 		I think it is time to abandon ship, jump in a life boat and find greener pastures or create them.

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 5:53:20 AM   
kittinSol


Posts: 16926
Status: offline 		And leave the mess behind? Littering is bad, very bad. No, it's time for a massive spring cleanup, more like.

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 6:13:25 AM   
Aquilifer


Posts: 31
Joined: 4/19/2005
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: seeksfemslave

spiralling birth rates among the 3rd world poor


No social security built in?  The only security you have, then, is your kids.

So you make damned sure that you have some who live long enough to support you.

This is systemic, and it won't change until the economics gets healthy enough to support a middle class.

This a well-known bit of demography.  The nation-states of Western Europe started running into this fact a hundred years ago, and they promptly started worring about where the next generation of cannon fodder was going to come from.

The most efficient known way of bringing human pouplation numbers into check is to impement the following things
  1. Provide other and fairly certain means of support to people past thier working years, and
  2. Make kids expensive to raise.
A demographically dominant middle class living in a "social democracy" accomplishes both.

War?  Absent the use of nuclear weapons, it doesn't cut deeply enough into population numbers anymore.

quote:

corrupt governace in the same places.


As long as the pie isn' t  going to be big enough, the people at the top of the socioeconomic pyramid are going obsessively grab everything they can steal.

Again, the only way to fix this so it's going to stay  fixed is to make the pie bigger.


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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 6:20:01 AM   
kittinSol


Posts: 16926
Status: offline

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 6:41:25 AM   
seeksfemslave


Posts: 4011
Joined: 6/16/2006
Status: offline 		LadyE: I would have to say to you that you appear to believe that social reform actually comes from the lower reaches of society, when in fact I believe that  not to be true.

When the lower echelons get restive and nasty and finally realise that they have nothing to lose "compassionate" upper class types then give a few inches, in order to avoid revolution, and slowly over a few generations things gradually improve.That coupled with the technological inventivess that occured in the 19th century is what has brought us to where we are today. I would simply say that many 3rd worlders cant even maintain a sanitary water supply so I think basic technological advance will be a long time coming.

An example of upper class led reform is  the votes for women movement.
.
Increased populations in 3rd world  countries makes living conditions worse in those countries, whatever the theoretical explanation any poster may put forward as to the  cause of  that population increase.

What we need are facts not theories.

All together now in a rousing chorus of Jerusalem.
Oh no sorry its banned.

< Message edited by seeksfemslave -- 4/11/2008 7:02:11 AM >

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 6:45:27 AM   
kittinSol


Posts: 16926
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: seeksfemslave

(...) the lower reaches of society (...).

When the lower echelons get restive and nasty (...) "compassionate" upper class types (...).

An example of upper class led reform is  the votes for women movement.



Woah. They did a good job on you, Seeks.

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 6:51:32 AM   
seeksfemslave


Posts: 4011
Joined: 6/16/2006
Status: offline 		Kitten I thought I left you chewing on my Hot Dog.

Just to add some meat to the potatoes of my post above I give you
jeremy bentham a leading 19th century social reformer
Bentham was born in Spitalfields London  into a wealthy Tory  family
and
Richard Cobdon and John Bright both wealthy industrial types who were influential  in getting the Corn Laws repealed.
The Corn Laws made it difficult for the impoverished masses to get cheap basic staple food.

Of the four who instigated the Chartist movement one was the son of a sea captain, and two were publishers. See where I'm going with this ?
Chartism failed probably because the "authorities" were prepared to be brutal due to  the agitation/unrest that was going on in Europe at that time.

Later in the 19th century reform groups like the Fabian Society appeared led by upper middle class literary types. These groups ultimately evolved into the Labour Party. Tho' Keir Hardie and Ramsey McDonald were from poor beginnings, to achieve political reform they had to rise out of their background.
It is worth noting that the first Labour Prime Minister was an old Etonian.
Sorry for the potted history but I think it makes my case which is...

It is pyschologicaly and politically almost impossible for societies to reform from the bottom up.
The impetus for such reform may come from the desperate plight and potentially violent agitation of the working classes.

< Message edited by seeksfemslave -- 4/11/2008 7:48:34 AM >

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 6:56:21 AM   
kittinSol


Posts: 16926
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: seeksfemslave

Kitten I thought I left you chewing on my Hot Dog.



What a charming fantasy  .

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RE: Overpopulation, food, & water on Spaceship Earth - 4/11/2008 7:02:42 AM   
thompsonx


Posts: 23322
Joined: 10/1/2006
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: MichiganHeadmast

Free market capitalism produces the most goods in the most efficient manner, and the resulting wealth has a dampening effect on population growth (you don't need to have 12 kids to insure 4 survive - you can just have 4).

MichiganHeadmast:
Free market capitalism = slavery.
Most of our goods are produced in China.
thompson

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