Do we need population reduction?

[MacCruiskeen]

JFK (died young): 3 kids.

David Lynch: 3 kids.

Steve Jobs: 4 kids.

Paul McCartney: 5 kids

Jack Nicholson: 5 kids.

Mick Jagger: 6 kids.

Etcetera.

None of these men was under any "economic pressure to reproduce"; on the contrary. It's rather the case that men who are truly free of economic pressure tend to father lots of children, precisely because they can.

I myself have one kid. Most of the people I know have either one child or none. But then, most of the people I know are struggling more or less successfully to survive under late capitalism. And I've lost count of the number of people who've said to me: "I'd love to have kids/more kids, but I just can't afford it right now." (I mean, it's not as if a host of offspring are going to be any help bringing in the harvest when a) you don't have a harvest to bring in; b) you live in an urban apartment; and c) you take motorised transport to your place of alienated labour. Is it?

Which brings us back to the lost commons.

[Dreams End]

I'm just going to charitably assume that you did not see my last post. It's COUNTRIES and per capita income....not individuals. So go check the wiki link and see which countries have the highest birthrates.

Do you really not understand that or are you just joking around? It's hard to tell sometimes.

[MacCruiskeen]

OK, DE, I've just taken a look at that Wiki population site("List_of_countries_by_birth_rate "). It didn't surprise me in the least.

Here are the conclusions I would draw:

1. People who are under terrible economic pressure (i.e., people who have nothing else but a scrap of farming land) tend to have lots of children, many of whom will die.

2. People who are under no economic pressure (i.e., people who have everything ) also tend to have lots of children, nearly all of whom will survive.

The third category is interesting: that comparatively small subset of the human population in which people tend to have either 1 child or no children at all. Why would they make such a 'choice'? Because, in an "advanced economy" with an increasingly brutal neoliberal agenda, children are a heavy economic burden on parents who have to work to survive. - i.e., most of the population of North America, Western Europe and Australia. (Which is about one-seventh of the total population of the earth.)

These unwealthy but non-starving drones in the 'developed' West now have no land, no access to the lost commons, no harvest to bring in, and no prospect of ever having millions in the bank. They are struggling to survive in advanced urban environments doing relatively ill-paid alienated labour under a neoliberal late-capitalist system. And the question is, how long that system is going to survive.

(Of course, there are also plenty of people in the West who really do choose not to have children, simply because they are enjoying their own relative freedom and prosperity, and because they just prefer shopping or skiing or socialising or travelling. But see the last line of my last paragraph.)

In short: small families are a peculiar historical anomaly, encountered only in about one-seventh of the world, and only in certain highly-complex societies, and only among certain social classes, and only in very recent decades. It will probably be very transient phenomenon, too.

[wintler2]

chiggerbit, all that you say is true, but NONE of those things are inevitable...and are a result of lack of management or complete disregard by developers, etc. We don't HAVE to all live in suburban sprawl...we don't have to let developers continue to buy and destroy land...these things are not a matter of NECESSITY but are deliberate choices made by those with the resources to do the exploiting.

Yes, choices that people have been making (in this context) for at least hundreds of years - and yet you believe they're all going to suddenly change their behaviour because.. because.. why? Your assumption that human nature is the easy and obvious thing to change is delusional - it very rarely happens, and never 'takes' as a cultural pattern (perhaps because it reduces reproductive fitness).

[MacCruiskeen]

I think you're right, wintler. When DE writes: "these things are not a matter of NECESSITY but are deliberate choices made by those with the resources to do the exploiting." - well, he is of course right. But the problem is that people want more than just the NECESSARY, and have always chosen to HAVE more than the necessary, whenever they could. Whenever 'luxury' and 'waste' have been available options, they have nearly always been taken (by those who were able to take them).

In any case: how, exactly, do we define "the necessary"? "I need my car." "I need my mobile phone." "I need to fly." Etc. In late-capitalist societies, all three of these statements may well actually be true. The objects and activities named might not be strictly necessary for bare survival, but very few people are content merely to survive.

There's a passage in Shakespeare that always stuck in my head. King Lear has come to stay with his daughters for a few days. They try to persuade him that he doesn't need his large entourage of fifty horses and men:

Goneril: Hear me, my lord.
What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five,
To follow in a house where twice so many
Have a command to tend you?

Regan: What need one?

Lear: O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is cheap as beast's.

[5E6A]

I've yet to see anything so far that even tries to prove that current and nearterm future problems are a result of "carrying capacity" and not a result of injustice in wealth/resource distribution. They are big on the former but the latter just never seems to get discussed.

You need to start susing how you are going to feed 6+ billion without fossil inputs. That is the real issue. Petroleum inputs are more than just what powers the tractor, transports the cultivation, or makes processing and preservation possible. The fact is that petroleum based fertilisers, herbicides, fungicides and pesticides are responsible for modern yeilds. Without them, the amount of food possible to produce by pre-industrial organic methods is not going to support who is here now let alone allow for growth...

[chiggerbit]

MacCruiskeen said:

None of these men was under any "economic pressure to reproduce"; on the contrary. It's rather the case that men who are truly free of economic pressure tend to father lots of children, precisely because they can.

Problem is that you left out the female "quotient". Were the offspring intentionally produced by the men... or by the women, women possibly seeking to secure their comfortable life? Or were the children just accidents resulting from a casual attitude?

[slimmouse]

In order to introduce myself to this debate, I would just ask a simple question

40 years ago, it seems we were capable of putting a man on the moon.

Apparently, this rock isnt capable of sustaining our population.

Do is not strike anyone on a "rigorous" forum, that we can't expand our existing space technology to either

a) colonise space ?

or

b) use existing technology to ensure plenty on this planet for all ?

Or

c) Im the fucking village idiot here

[chiggerbit]

5E6A said"

...fertilisers, herbicides, fungicides and pesticides are responsible for modern yeilds.

How true! Those products have totally killed the soil here in the Midwest, turning the soil into a hydroponic medium that would grow little but yellow, horribly stunted crops without those products.

[slimmouse]

5E6A said"

...fertilisers, herbicides, fungicides and pesticides are responsible for modern yeilds.

How true! Those products have totally killed the soil here in the Midwest, turning the soil into a hydroponic medium that would grow little but yellow, horribly stunted crops without those products.

And with the greatest respect to both of you, anyone who believes this to be some kind of accident , is simply fooling themselves.

Have a look at how Monsanto have suddenly taken over the Agriculture of Iraq for plain and simple proof.

[chlamor]

In order to introduce myself to this debate, I would just ask a simple question

40 years ago, it seems we were capable of putting a man on the moon.

Apparently, this rock isnt capable of sustaining our population.

Do is not strike anyone on a "rigorous" forum, that we can't expand our existing space technology to either

a) colonise space ?

or

b) use existing technology to ensure plenty on this planet for all ?

Or

c) Im the fucking village idiot here

Ever looked into the total energy costs of one "space ship?"

Never gonna happen. Physically impossible.

Give or take a few years all space flight will cease within the next few decades due to physical limitations on materials needed.

A few years beyond that most all flight will be severely curtailed and available to only the elites.

Be sure to examine all aspects of construction beginning with the mining for materials and the amount of energy that consumes. Go from there.

[Attack Ships on Fire]

In order to introduce myself to this debate, I would just ask a simple question

40 years ago, it seems we were capable of putting a man on the moon.

Apparently, this rock isnt capable of sustaining our population.

Do is not strike anyone on a "rigorous" forum, that we can't expand our existing space technology to either

a) colonise space ?

or

b) use existing technology to ensure plenty on this planet for all ?

Or

c) Im the fucking village idiot here

The problem isn't getting off the rock but finding a nearby rock that you can live on. As Elton John said so well, "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids, as a matter of fact it's cold as Hell."

You can't just haul your ass off-planet and park it on the moon because it doesn't have an atmosphere or biosphere. Same with Mars, same with Venus, same with any rocky planet or moon. We have to transport the air, the food and the resources we would need there -- and we would have to continue shipping these things to our new homes until we could begin to make them locally. Right now we probably could terraform Mars if we committed the entire ability of the west to doing it. I also imagine that it would cost more to do than what the world's nations make yer annum combined.

Unless someone pops up behind a black ops project and shows us a cheap and fast way of travelling interstellar distances, we ain't going anywhere anytime soon.

[5E6A]

40 years ago, it seems we were capable of putting a man on the moon...use existing technology to ensure plenty on this planet for all ?

Technology is not energy. The expanding use of denser forms of energy is what has fueled the expansion of technology and hence our population. Once that energy is no longer available in quantity, our ability to do many of the wonderous things that have come in the last half century will be seriously challenged...

[slimmouse]

In order to introduce myself to this debate, I would just ask a simple question

40 years ago, it seems we were capable of putting a man on the moon.

Apparently, this rock isnt capable of sustaining our population.

Do is not strike anyone on a "rigorous" forum, that we can't expand our existing space technology to either

a) colonise space ?

or

b) use existing technology to ensure plenty on this planet for all ?

Or

c) Im the fucking village idiot here

Ever looked into the total energy costs of one "space ship?"

Never gonna happen. Physically impossible.

Give or take a few years all space flight will cease within the next few decades due to physical limitations on materials needed.

A few years beyond that most all flight will be severely curtailed and available to only the elites.

Be sure to examine all aspects of construction beginning with the mining for materials and the amount of energy that consumes. Go from there.

So that which was achievable 40 yrs ago , has suddenly become financially inachievable ?

I guess its a true "miracle" then that

A) the average taxpayer can still fund the technology required to blow his fellow man to bits.

B) The cost of sending man to the moon back then is, relatively speaking, peanuts to that cost today.


Let me ask a simple question ;

Why is it that I can buy a PC today, with 20 times the processing power of 5 years ago, for approximately half the cost ?


Is this forum called Rigorous Intuition or what ?

[chlamor]

is to examine the social and economic systems that have brought us to this place.

The concept of population control and/or reduction has always been closely linked to white supremacy. That's not to say that 6 billion people is an okay number of human units on Earth but to say that population reduction is needed serves to disguise much deeper problems. Let's use a very crude example:

Over at Colony A we have 500 people who use 6 units per person/year in a locale we will call Earth. That means 3,000 units/year consumed by Colony A.

Earth was blessed with 30,000 units and can regenerate those units at 2,000/year. Now let's throw in the fact that the humans in colony A require 2,000 units/year to survive but for whatever reasons use 3,000 units/year.

How long will Colony A be able to keep it's 500 humans going? Let's say zero population growth. Do the math.

Now we go to Colony B that happens to have 1,000 human units with all else being the same EXCEPT that Colony B only needs 1,000 units/year to survive AND the members of Colony B only use 1,000 units/year.

How long will Colony B, living on the same Planet Earth, be able to sustain it's population? Do the Math.

The excesses of Western consumption and the prerequisites of capital growth far outstrip the problems of overpopulation.

It is also quite dangerous to point the finger at the impoverished nations as being "the problem" and can be construed by some as a form of exceptionalism.

Now remember here that approximately 12% of the people, from Western nations mostly, use approximately 85% of the world's resources.

Maybe if we eliminated that 12% we'd be okay? Who would that include?

You'd be shocked to find out.