6 ms·

Before you decide whether "Limits to Growth" is credible, please read just the first chapter from Dr. Robert Zubrin's "Merchants of Despair." IMO, "Merchants o

Before you decide whether "Limits to Growth" is credible, please read just the first chapter from Dr. Robert Zubrin's "Merchants of Despair." IMO, "Merchants of Despair" is the most important book of the 21st Century so far. Dr. Zubrin points out that every person is given a mith to eat and a pair of hands to work and a brain to invent.

bmitc 3y ago
Deforestation, climate change, habitat loss, extinctions, toxification of the ocean, pollution, microplastics, etc. are not part of some radical environmentalism, are not pseudoscience, and not some tenets of some cult. They are quantifiable things that have happened, and all of them are due to this obsession with growth. The author wants to explore and terraform Mars. Just think about that for a second: denies the effects of humans on Earth and wants to terraform a dead, lifeless planet that is a harbinger of what Earth could look like and is physically incapable of hosting the life that it likely once did. Does that make sense as a strategy?
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  I will repeat this because people want to launch off-topic attacks: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong.
  - bmitc 3y ago
    What off-topic attacks? I was replying to your off-topic comment and attack on the credibility and myth of the posted book. I didn't make any attack. I simply pointed out a strange strategy that is a bit circular. If that author claims that there are no limits to growth, then why, exactly, do we need to terraform and mine an entire other planet? Do you not see the conflict there? > that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. It can scale, but at the expense of tons of other things, and history indeed shows us that that's the case. The so-called Third Agricultural Revolution has shown us that quite explicitly. And prove what wrong? I don't know what you're claiming or its relevance. If you're talking about per-capita GDP, I regret to inform you that wealth inequality and disparity is at an all-time high. So increasing the GDP has in fact correlated with a decrease in standard in living for the vast majority of people, relatively speaking. If we take a look at raw numbers, there are more people starving today than there were people alive approximately 200 hundred years ago. Maybe the percentage of total population has changed, in either direction, but the point is that that is an absolute increase in the amount of suffering not offset by the number of people not suffering. So like I said, you can bounce around these facts, and they are facts, all you want with a technocratic lens, but the data is quite clear that growth has led to a myriad of issues. Ignoring these issues and trends shows a huge misunderstanding of dynamic and complex systems. If there are issues with the methods in The Limits of Growth, that's fine, but at least they attempted to model these things. Pointing fingers at people trying to understand the direction we are heading is not productive. I invite you to look at even simple things, like carpet. Approximately 95% of all carpet made heads to the landfill. Think about that for a second. We literally use up materials, people, effort, time, money, etc. just to dump it all in a landfill. And that's "just" carpet. It's the very definition of pointless.
    - RecycledEle 3y ago
      > What off-topic attacks? The off-topic attacks are: Deforestation, climate change, habitat loss, extinctions, toxification of the ocean, pollution, microplastics, etc. I should have call these "red herrings." All the off-topic nonsense distracts from the obvious fact that as population density rises, per-capita GDP also rises. This has been true for 99% of all human history. Denying this by claiming that overpopulation is a problem is absurd. If a hypothesis is contradicted by almost all of recorded history, then only a crazy person believes that. > I was replying to your off-topic comment and attack on the credibility and myth of the posted book. I meant to say the book makes claims that are contradicted by all of human history (like food production not being able to scale to match the population, and a higher population leading to lower per-capita GDP.) That is an attack on an argument, not an ad hominem attack on a person. > If that author claims that there are no limits to growth, then why, exactly, do we need to terraform and mine an entire other planet? I would say there are no hard limits to growth; there are no limits we can not overcome. Part of how we achieve may be to terraform and mine many other planets. > Do you not see the conflict there? I do not see a conflict between saying we can grow and this is one way we can grow. This discussion reminds me of my once telling a student "You can achieve anything you want to achieve" and their replying "But that takes hard work, so how and I supposed to achieve it?" >> that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. > History shows us that that is not the case. Please show me a few times in history when an increasing population led to a decrease in per-capita GDP, or when a decreasing population led to an increase in per-capita GDP. I mean times we have records of, not things made up by people digging in the ground. We have written records going back thousands of years. They show that increasing population and increasing population density lead to increasing per-capita GDP and a decreasing percentage of each person's wealth being spent on food. > It can scale, but at the expense of tons of other things, and history indeed shows us that that's the case. Are you saying we can grow at the expense of other things? I believe everything comes at some price. That's called trade-offs. Please show me examples of whatever it is you are referring to. > The so-called Third Agricultural Revolution has shown us that quite explicitly. You are referring to the "Green Revolution." I'm no expert on that. I have relatives in the dairy farming industry who laugh at the dumb city people who pay them to do things in a "green" way. They take the money and mock the environmentalists. I'm not an expert in this field, but it reminds me of Reason TV's "Great Moments in Unintended Consequences" https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBuns9Evn1w9XhnH7vVh_7C65wJbaBECK https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBuns9Evn1w9XhnH7vVh_... > And prove what wrong? I don't know what you're claiming or its relevance. Please prove the following wrong: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong. > If you're talking about per-capita GDP, I regret to inform you that wealth inequality and disparity is at an all-time high. So increasing the GDP has in fact correlated with a decrease in standard in living for the vast majority of people, relatively speaking. Another red herring. I never discussed the distribution of wealth. I said: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong. > If we take a look at raw numbers, there are more people starving today than there were people alive approximately 200 hundred years ago. Maybe the percentage of total population has changed, in either direction, but the point is that that is an absolute increase in the amount of suffering not offset by the number of people not suffering. This argument makes no sense to me. We can easily feed the world's people given the amount of food we produce. We can easily increase the amount of food we produce if we wish to spend the money. As our population has grown, the percentage of hungry people has fallen: https://ourworldindata.org/famine-mortality-over-the-long-run https://ourworldindata.org/famine-mortality-over-the-long-ru... > So like I said, you can bounce around these facts, and they are facts, all you want with a technocratic lens, but the data is quite clear that growth has led to a myriad of issues. Let me repeat: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong. This is all I am arguing. You can throw up silly things about income inequality and some obscure type of pollution that I have never noticed, but anyone who denies the facts I listed above denies reality. > Ignoring these issues and trends shows a huge misunderstanding of dynamic and complex systems. The trends are that increasing population makes each person more wealthy. > If there are issues with the methods in The Limits of Growth, that's fine, but at least they attempted to model these things. Their models claimed we would all be starving by the year 2000. Their models failed. Their models were cited as the reason to deny over a billion people access to a modern lifestyle. That's called "genocide." > Pointing fingers at people trying to understand the direction we are heading is not productive. I agree. Chart population density vs. per-capital GDP and stop pointing fingers. > I invite you to look at even simple things, like carpet. Approximately 95% of all carpet made heads to the landfill. Think about that for a second. This is another red herring. I don't think you understand what those numbers mean. It is not true that 95% of carpet is manufactured, and then heads to a landfill without ever being used. Carpet must be a rugged thing to be used like it is, so it is hard to tear apart to recycle. The threads in carpet are small and very durable, so they are hard to recycle. This is why most carpet is laid down, used for decades, then eventually sent to a landfill. > We literally use up materials, people, effort, time, money, etc. just to dump it all in a landfill. And that's "just" carpet. It's the very definition of pointless. No, we do not. We use materials, people, effort, time, money, etc. to have nice floors that keep our feet warm so we do not spend as much heating our homes or suffering on cold tile. That's a reasonable thing to do in an industrial society. I'm happy to elaborate some more, but first, please, graph the written-down, recorded population in any area over a few centuries and then plot it against their per-capita GDP in that area.
moritzwarhier 3y ago
> Dr. Zubrin points out that every person is given a mith to eat and a pair of hands to work and a brain to invent. I haven't read that book, but if that's the content of the first chapter, I'm not sure how this relates to the very real environmental problems caused by economic growth? You are making this into the question of "who is credible", and honestly "Merchants of despair" sounds like a pretty baseless ad hominem attack. So if that book brought you new insights that make you consider it "the most important book of the 21st Century so far", what exactly are these insights? Maybe someone should write a book and call it "Merchants of false hope, deception and magical thinking - brought to you by exponential economic growth".
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  I will repeat this because people want to launch off-topic attacks: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong.
hotpotamus 3y ago
I’ve never seen so many trees die as I did this past summer. I live in South Texas where it used to be uncomfortably hot and has become more dangerous in the last decade; I never saw so many dead animals on the road as I did this last summer either. I didn’t need a merchant to sell me despair; just looking around and feeling the air is all that was needed.
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  I will repeat this because people want to launch off-topic attacks: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong.
timeon 3y ago
Robert Zubrin seems like merchant selling wishful thinking.
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  I will repeat this because people want to launch off-topic attacks: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong.
polotics 3y ago
Does Dr Zubrin actually have any model that can be peer reviewed? If yes, what are the model's predictions? How well have the predictions from the book (11 years ago) matched the changes that have been observed over the past 11 years? Curious mind wants to know. . . . Ok, I have not read that book, but according to reviews: ... On “global warming”: Contrary to environmentalists, Zubrin holds that global warming is far from calamitous. Although he thinks global warming is real, he considers it to be of negligible effect; to the extent that it exists, he says, it is beneficial. ... Does this track the past 11 years? Maybe someone should ask him what he thinks acount it now?
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  Yes, Dr. Zubrin's models can be peer reviewed. The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair. I see a lot of silly criticisms in this thread. I want to point out the one point Dr. Zubrin makes brilliantly: Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Prove Dr. Zubrin wrong. I will not address other silly straw-man arguments.

bmitc 3y ago

Deforestation, climate change, habitat loss, extinctions, toxification of the ocean, pollution, microplastics, etc. are not part of some radical environmentalism, are not pseudoscience, and not some tenets of some cult. They are quantifiable things that have happened, and all of them are due to this obsession with growth. The author wants to explore and terraform Mars. Just think about that for a second: denies the effects of humans on Earth and wants to terraform a dead, lifeless planet that is a harbinger of what Earth could look like and is physically incapable of hosting the life that it likely once did. Does that make sense as a strategy?

RecycledEle 3y ago
I will repeat this because people want to launch off-topic attacks: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong.
- bmitc 3y ago
  What off-topic attacks? I was replying to your off-topic comment and attack on the credibility and myth of the posted book. I didn't make any attack. I simply pointed out a strange strategy that is a bit circular. If that author claims that there are no limits to growth, then why, exactly, do we need to terraform and mine an entire other planet? Do you not see the conflict there? > that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. It can scale, but at the expense of tons of other things, and history indeed shows us that that's the case. The so-called Third Agricultural Revolution has shown us that quite explicitly. And prove what wrong? I don't know what you're claiming or its relevance. If you're talking about per-capita GDP, I regret to inform you that wealth inequality and disparity is at an all-time high. So increasing the GDP has in fact correlated with a decrease in standard in living for the vast majority of people, relatively speaking. If we take a look at raw numbers, there are more people starving today than there were people alive approximately 200 hundred years ago. Maybe the percentage of total population has changed, in either direction, but the point is that that is an absolute increase in the amount of suffering not offset by the number of people not suffering. So like I said, you can bounce around these facts, and they are facts, all you want with a technocratic lens, but the data is quite clear that growth has led to a myriad of issues. Ignoring these issues and trends shows a huge misunderstanding of dynamic and complex systems. If there are issues with the methods in The Limits of Growth, that's fine, but at least they attempted to model these things. Pointing fingers at people trying to understand the direction we are heading is not productive. I invite you to look at even simple things, like carpet. Approximately 95% of all carpet made heads to the landfill. Think about that for a second. We literally use up materials, people, effort, time, money, etc. just to dump it all in a landfill. And that's "just" carpet. It's the very definition of pointless.
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    > What off-topic attacks? The off-topic attacks are: Deforestation, climate change, habitat loss, extinctions, toxification of the ocean, pollution, microplastics, etc. I should have call these "red herrings." All the off-topic nonsense distracts from the obvious fact that as population density rises, per-capita GDP also rises. This has been true for 99% of all human history. Denying this by claiming that overpopulation is a problem is absurd. If a hypothesis is contradicted by almost all of recorded history, then only a crazy person believes that. > I was replying to your off-topic comment and attack on the credibility and myth of the posted book. I meant to say the book makes claims that are contradicted by all of human history (like food production not being able to scale to match the population, and a higher population leading to lower per-capita GDP.) That is an attack on an argument, not an ad hominem attack on a person. > If that author claims that there are no limits to growth, then why, exactly, do we need to terraform and mine an entire other planet? I would say there are no hard limits to growth; there are no limits we can not overcome. Part of how we achieve may be to terraform and mine many other planets. > Do you not see the conflict there? I do not see a conflict between saying we can grow and this is one way we can grow. This discussion reminds me of my once telling a student "You can achieve anything you want to achieve" and their replying "But that takes hard work, so how and I supposed to achieve it?" >> that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. > History shows us that that is not the case. Please show me a few times in history when an increasing population led to a decrease in per-capita GDP, or when a decreasing population led to an increase in per-capita GDP. I mean times we have records of, not things made up by people digging in the ground. We have written records going back thousands of years. They show that increasing population and increasing population density lead to increasing per-capita GDP and a decreasing percentage of each person's wealth being spent on food. > It can scale, but at the expense of tons of other things, and history indeed shows us that that's the case. Are you saying we can grow at the expense of other things? I believe everything comes at some price. That's called trade-offs. Please show me examples of whatever it is you are referring to. > The so-called Third Agricultural Revolution has shown us that quite explicitly. You are referring to the "Green Revolution." I'm no expert on that. I have relatives in the dairy farming industry who laugh at the dumb city people who pay them to do things in a "green" way. They take the money and mock the environmentalists. I'm not an expert in this field, but it reminds me of Reason TV's "Great Moments in Unintended Consequences" https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBuns9Evn1w9XhnH7vVh_7C65wJbaBECK https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBuns9Evn1w9XhnH7vVh_... > And prove what wrong? I don't know what you're claiming or its relevance. Please prove the following wrong: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong. > If you're talking about per-capita GDP, I regret to inform you that wealth inequality and disparity is at an all-time high. So increasing the GDP has in fact correlated with a decrease in standard in living for the vast majority of people, relatively speaking. Another red herring. I never discussed the distribution of wealth. I said: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong. > If we take a look at raw numbers, there are more people starving today than there were people alive approximately 200 hundred years ago. Maybe the percentage of total population has changed, in either direction, but the point is that that is an absolute increase in the amount of suffering not offset by the number of people not suffering. This argument makes no sense to me. We can easily feed the world's people given the amount of food we produce. We can easily increase the amount of food we produce if we wish to spend the money. As our population has grown, the percentage of hungry people has fallen: https://ourworldindata.org/famine-mortality-over-the-long-run https://ourworldindata.org/famine-mortality-over-the-long-ru... > So like I said, you can bounce around these facts, and they are facts, all you want with a technocratic lens, but the data is quite clear that growth has led to a myriad of issues. Let me repeat: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong. This is all I am arguing. You can throw up silly things about income inequality and some obscure type of pollution that I have never noticed, but anyone who denies the facts I listed above denies reality. > Ignoring these issues and trends shows a huge misunderstanding of dynamic and complex systems. The trends are that increasing population makes each person more wealthy. > If there are issues with the methods in The Limits of Growth, that's fine, but at least they attempted to model these things. Their models claimed we would all be starving by the year 2000. Their models failed. Their models were cited as the reason to deny over a billion people access to a modern lifestyle. That's called "genocide." > Pointing fingers at people trying to understand the direction we are heading is not productive. I agree. Chart population density vs. per-capital GDP and stop pointing fingers. > I invite you to look at even simple things, like carpet. Approximately 95% of all carpet made heads to the landfill. Think about that for a second. This is another red herring. I don't think you understand what those numbers mean. It is not true that 95% of carpet is manufactured, and then heads to a landfill without ever being used. Carpet must be a rugged thing to be used like it is, so it is hard to tear apart to recycle. The threads in carpet are small and very durable, so they are hard to recycle. This is why most carpet is laid down, used for decades, then eventually sent to a landfill. > We literally use up materials, people, effort, time, money, etc. just to dump it all in a landfill. And that's "just" carpet. It's the very definition of pointless. No, we do not. We use materials, people, effort, time, money, etc. to have nice floors that keep our feet warm so we do not spend as much heating our homes or suffering on cold tile. That's a reasonable thing to do in an industrial society. I'm happy to elaborate some more, but first, please, graph the written-down, recorded population in any area over a few centuries and then plot it against their per-capita GDP in that area.

moritzwarhier 3y ago

> Dr. Zubrin points out that every person is given a mith to eat and a pair of hands to work and a brain to invent. I haven't read that book, but if that's the content of the first chapter, I'm not sure how this relates to the very real environmental problems caused by economic growth? You are making this into the question of "who is credible", and honestly "Merchants of despair" sounds like a pretty baseless ad hominem attack. So if that book brought you new insights that make you consider it "the most important book of the 21st Century so far", what exactly are these insights? Maybe someone should write a book and call it "Merchants of false hope, deception and magical thinking - brought to you by exponential economic growth".

RecycledEle 3y ago
I will repeat this because people want to launch off-topic attacks: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong.

hotpotamus 3y ago

I’ve never seen so many trees die as I did this past summer. I live in South Texas where it used to be uncomfortably hot and has become more dangerous in the last decade; I never saw so many dead animals on the road as I did this last summer either. I didn’t need a merchant to sell me despair; just looking around and feeling the air is all that was needed.

RecycledEle 3y ago
I will repeat this because people want to launch off-topic attacks: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong.

timeon 3y ago

Robert Zubrin seems like merchant selling wishful thinking.

RecycledEle 3y ago
I will repeat this because people want to launch off-topic attacks: The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong.

polotics 3y ago

Does Dr Zubrin actually have any model that can be peer reviewed? If yes, what are the model's predictions? How well have the predictions from the book (11 years ago) matched the changes that have been observed over the past 11 years? Curious mind wants to know. . . . Ok, I have not read that book, but according to reviews: ... On “global warming”: Contrary to environmentalists, Zubrin holds that global warming is far from calamitous. Although he thinks global warming is real, he considers it to be of negligible effect; to the extent that it exists, he says, it is beneficial. ... Does this track the past 11 years? Maybe someone should ask him what he thinks acount it now?

RecycledEle 3y ago
Yes, Dr. Zubrin's models can be peer reviewed. The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP. The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair. I see a lot of silly criticisms in this thread. I want to point out the one point Dr. Zubrin makes brilliantly: Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased. Please, prove me wrong. Prove Dr. Zubrin wrong. I will not address other silly straw-man arguments.