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We have been above the environmental carrying capacity due to technology since the first guy in Mesopotamia realized if he dug a ditch to grab some of the water

We have been above the environmental carrying capacity due to technology since the first guy in Mesopotamia realized if he dug a ditch to grab some of the water from the Euphrates he could get water to repeatedly water his crops. Thats the whole history of humanity has been figuring out a way to make a locality more hospitable to human beings using technology. What you say on the surface sounds reasonable but really is just a veneer of neo-ludtisim over a malthusian mindset. Humanity has changed the environment, we will do so again and again to improve the quality of life we experience.

mistrial9 4y ago
> veneer of neo-ludtisim over a malthusian mindset sure, I will take that veneer and counter -- there is such a thing as balance in dynamic systems. Tragedies of excess are being played out now, seventy years after a "boom times for all" expansion by any means necessary. Before 1970, outrageously excessive pollutors in many areas of the USA were given slap on the wrist oversight, calling the outraged greens things like "neo-luddites" ..
mc32 4y ago
You can't expect things to output 100% 100% of the time. Things will fail and if you make plans on 100% always being there, you will then have catastrophic failures. That is if your plan is to rely on your ducks always being in a row, you will fail because systems being systems will have ducks that stray resulting in failure. So yeah maybe we can sustain 100MM people in the west if all things work perfectly, but when they fail, then there will be pain and suffering because there is no surplus to play with.
- buscoquadnary 4y ago
  “spend all the wages they earn and enjoy themselves while they can appears to be evident from the number of families that, upon the failure of any great manufactory, immediately fall upon the parish,” - Sir Thomas Malthus Who predicted that we'd all be dead and the collapse would come hundreds of years ago, and said letting the Irish potato famine kill them off was natural, requisite and just. Yet, here we are still defying the Malthusian imperative, just like when everyone said the world was going to end when the Gulf states controlled all the oil, then we figured out how to make shale oil work, or before that when we invented the iron plow, or a dozen other things that have shown Malthus wrong time and time again. Meanwhile the people protesting scarcity and the need to reduce the consumption of resources have consistently been behind the greatest man made famines in history. We figured out things before we will figure it out again, I have faith in the ability of humanity to innovate, to adapt and to overcome.
- 8note 4y ago
  This is why we have so much food waste - things are running way above 100% all the time, and failures bring us closer to 100%

mistrial9 4y ago

> veneer of neo-ludtisim over a malthusian mindset sure, I will take that veneer and counter -- there is such a thing as balance in dynamic systems. Tragedies of excess are being played out now, seventy years after a "boom times for all" expansion by any means necessary. Before 1970, outrageously excessive pollutors in many areas of the USA were given slap on the wrist oversight, calling the outraged greens things like "neo-luddites" ..

mc32 4y ago

You can't expect things to output 100% 100% of the time. Things will fail and if you make plans on 100% always being there, you will then have catastrophic failures. That is if your plan is to rely on your ducks always being in a row, you will fail because systems being systems will have ducks that stray resulting in failure. So yeah maybe we can sustain 100MM people in the west if all things work perfectly, but when they fail, then there will be pain and suffering because there is no surplus to play with.

buscoquadnary 4y ago
“spend all the wages they earn and enjoy themselves while they can appears to be evident from the number of families that, upon the failure of any great manufactory, immediately fall upon the parish,” - Sir Thomas Malthus Who predicted that we'd all be dead and the collapse would come hundreds of years ago, and said letting the Irish potato famine kill them off was natural, requisite and just. Yet, here we are still defying the Malthusian imperative, just like when everyone said the world was going to end when the Gulf states controlled all the oil, then we figured out how to make shale oil work, or before that when we invented the iron plow, or a dozen other things that have shown Malthus wrong time and time again. Meanwhile the people protesting scarcity and the need to reduce the consumption of resources have consistently been behind the greatest man made famines in history. We figured out things before we will figure it out again, I have faith in the ability of humanity to innovate, to adapt and to overcome.
8note 4y ago
This is why we have so much food waste - things are running way above 100% all the time, and failures bring us closer to 100%