5 ms·

Population growth is a problem, not a competition. Even if you care about the people's rights and humanism, you should be concerned with how much other life eac

Population growth is a problem, not a competition. Even if you care about the people's rights and humanism, you should be concerned with how much other life each human displaces.

frosted-flakes 7y ago
The world's economies depend on steady population growth, either through births or immigration.
- A2017U1 7y ago
  There's no other possible way for an economy to grow except through that? Population growth is the lazy, unsustainable way to get gdp growth.
- chewz 7y ago
  No, they are not. It is not that economy requires growing population, it is the Ponzi scheme of taxing population and diverging govt funds to buying votes. And paying back past debts. This is a man made conundrum not a law of physics.
- devoply 7y ago
  We have enough people. We need to utilize them better. Capitalists depend on exploiting population growth to these ends, but it's not in any way necessary. In fact when the black plague killed a large amount of population in Europe the salaries of the poor rose at least 3 times and caused good times for 100 years. The only thing I am advocating is people having fewer children. To point to the empirical historical fact to forward this is not advocacy of anything inhumane.
  - ralusek 7y ago
    Easy there Thanos.
- Skunkleton 7y ago
  That's true, and it is a problem that needs to be fixed.
  - irrational 7y ago
    I hope I'm not around when the fix comes due, because it is most likely going to be horrific.
    - tjr225 7y ago
      Any more horrific than resource depletion?
  - sonnyblarney 7y ago
    It's definitely not entirely true. Western GDP depends on body count growth, but GDP per capita does not. Japan will lead the way in figuring out how fewer people can hopefully avoid deflationary debt-spirals. I think notion that growth is dependent on body count is very dangerous, and totally unsustainable, among other things. We need to look at growth, migration, and fertility as separate issues, each with a different set of consequences. Upping the fertility rate a little bit, normalization migration (by 'normal' I mean the kinds of migration that exist between equal countries, not mass migration), reconfiguring our dysfunctional social security systems (at least they are dysfunctional in terms of how they are paid for by future generations), changing what retirement means, addressing massive costs of later life healthcare, and changing some of our economic targets. This problem is as big as climate change in the sense that it affects everything and will require a re-think of some issues we haven't had to think about before. Japan has to face the issues head-on before the rest of us, thank god they are smart because I think we'll inevitably end up following their example on a bunch of these things. At least they'll be providing us the data points. The current globalist population redistribution policy, promoted by the UN, literally referred to as 'replacement migration' is going to be a staggeringly impossible thing to implement. [1] As for India: hopefully there's light at the end of the tunnel. As for Pakistan and Nigeria: it will get much worse before it gets better, they have serious problems. [1] https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/ageing/replacement-migration.asp https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publicatio...
Merrill 7y ago
Population growth depends on cheap food using cheap energy for tillage, fertilizers, irrigation, pesticides/herbicides, transportation, processing and so forth. If energy becomes expensive, as it most likely will, then population growth will stop. Some of the projections appear unrealistic. For example, Mali is projected to grow from about 20 million to 80 million by 2100. Given Mali's geography, this seems unlikely.
- philipkglass 7y ago
  The nations with the highest total fertility rates (Niger, Chad, Somalia, DRC...) all have far lower rates of energy consumption per capita than sub-replacement-fertility nations like South Korea, Italy, Japan, or Canada. Energy availability isn't a strong proxy for or constraint on fertility rates, at least in the next few decades.
  - danans 7y ago
    One of the most important needs to enable fertility is a temperature in which an infant can survive. In colder climates, that requires a lot more fuel input to heat homes, whereas in consistently warm climates, like the African countries to mentioned, they get their heat "for free", and therefore fertility is less constrained. The heat poses other problems that affect survival rates, like tropical diseases, but the energy cost of fighting those is far less than heating homes. The same observation applies to the agricultural sectors of those countries, which can be incredibly productive due to growing regions with consistently warm weather. It's how China and India can support such massive populations (both are largely food self sufficient). And it's also why Brazil can produce sugar cane based ethanol far more efficiently than the US can produce corn based ethanol. Once this major difference is accounted for, however, change in energy consumption over time is a reasonable proxy for change in standard of living. But absolute differences in per capita energy consumption fail to capture variations due to things like country size, transportation/energy infrastructure, and socioeconomic structure i.e Russia has a much higher per capita energy consumption than Germany, but a lower standard of living. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_...

Population growth is a problem, not a competition. Even if you care about the people's rights and humanism, you should be concerned with how much other life each human displaces.

frosted-flakes 7y ago

The world's economies depend on steady population growth, either through births or immigration.

A2017U1 7y ago
There's no other possible way for an economy to grow except through that? Population growth is the lazy, unsustainable way to get gdp growth.
chewz 7y ago
No, they are not. It is not that economy requires growing population, it is the Ponzi scheme of taxing population and diverging govt funds to buying votes. And paying back past debts. This is a man made conundrum not a law of physics.
devoply 7y ago
We have enough people. We need to utilize them better. Capitalists depend on exploiting population growth to these ends, but it's not in any way necessary. In fact when the black plague killed a large amount of population in Europe the salaries of the poor rose at least 3 times and caused good times for 100 years. The only thing I am advocating is people having fewer children. To point to the empirical historical fact to forward this is not advocacy of anything inhumane.
- ralusek 7y ago
  Easy there Thanos.
Skunkleton 7y ago
That's true, and it is a problem that needs to be fixed.
- irrational 7y ago
  I hope I'm not around when the fix comes due, because it is most likely going to be horrific.
  - tjr225 7y ago
    Any more horrific than resource depletion?
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  It's definitely not entirely true. Western GDP depends on body count growth, but GDP per capita does not. Japan will lead the way in figuring out how fewer people can hopefully avoid deflationary debt-spirals. I think notion that growth is dependent on body count is very dangerous, and totally unsustainable, among other things. We need to look at growth, migration, and fertility as separate issues, each with a different set of consequences. Upping the fertility rate a little bit, normalization migration (by 'normal' I mean the kinds of migration that exist between equal countries, not mass migration), reconfiguring our dysfunctional social security systems (at least they are dysfunctional in terms of how they are paid for by future generations), changing what retirement means, addressing massive costs of later life healthcare, and changing some of our economic targets. This problem is as big as climate change in the sense that it affects everything and will require a re-think of some issues we haven't had to think about before. Japan has to face the issues head-on before the rest of us, thank god they are smart because I think we'll inevitably end up following their example on a bunch of these things. At least they'll be providing us the data points. The current globalist population redistribution policy, promoted by the UN, literally referred to as 'replacement migration' is going to be a staggeringly impossible thing to implement. [1] As for India: hopefully there's light at the end of the tunnel. As for Pakistan and Nigeria: it will get much worse before it gets better, they have serious problems. [1] https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/ageing/replacement-migration.asp https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publicatio...

Merrill 7y ago

Population growth depends on cheap food using cheap energy for tillage, fertilizers, irrigation, pesticides/herbicides, transportation, processing and so forth. If energy becomes expensive, as it most likely will, then population growth will stop. Some of the projections appear unrealistic. For example, Mali is projected to grow from about 20 million to 80 million by 2100. Given Mali's geography, this seems unlikely.

philipkglass 7y ago
The nations with the highest total fertility rates (Niger, Chad, Somalia, DRC...) all have far lower rates of energy consumption per capita than sub-replacement-fertility nations like South Korea, Italy, Japan, or Canada. Energy availability isn't a strong proxy for or constraint on fertility rates, at least in the next few decades.
- danans 7y ago
  One of the most important needs to enable fertility is a temperature in which an infant can survive. In colder climates, that requires a lot more fuel input to heat homes, whereas in consistently warm climates, like the African countries to mentioned, they get their heat "for free", and therefore fertility is less constrained. The heat poses other problems that affect survival rates, like tropical diseases, but the energy cost of fighting those is far less than heating homes. The same observation applies to the agricultural sectors of those countries, which can be incredibly productive due to growing regions with consistently warm weather. It's how China and India can support such massive populations (both are largely food self sufficient). And it's also why Brazil can produce sugar cane based ethanol far more efficiently than the US can produce corn based ethanol. Once this major difference is accounted for, however, change in energy consumption over time is a reasonable proxy for change in standard of living. But absolute differences in per capita energy consumption fail to capture variations due to things like country size, transportation/energy infrastructure, and socioeconomic structure i.e Russia has a much higher per capita energy consumption than Germany, but a lower standard of living. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_...