Billionaire 'Good Club' Talks Overpopulation

[barracuda]

...this post of yours is just plain daft in its entirety. (Maybe you were joking?)

Not really. But if you'd care to e-x-p-a-n-d on your objections, perhaps I could try to clarify.

[MacCruiskeen]

Well...

barracuda wrote:
smiths wrote:
1,000 billion? what a miserable ball of shit it would be then ...


Well, smiths, you have to like people. Humans are the only species that despise themselves, which I find ridiculous, and the bottom of much grief. If you don't like people, then no wonder depopulation seems like a good idea. I happen to like people, myself. Lots of them might be a lot of fun

Yeah sure, more than 140 times more than than there are now. (Every sperm is sacred, or what?)

- if they all liked each other.

Why not "if they all loved each other" or "if they all adored each other" or "if they all sexually desired each other" or indeed "if they all worshipped each other". The conditional tense is an adventure playground, open to all, whatever their age.

If everyone loved each other and overcrowding didn't matter, then overcrowded prisons would be not just the best prisons in the world but the best places in the world.

But in fact I think you'll find that human beings, like chickens or chimpanzees, tend to like their companions considerably less when they're forced to live shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

Your dystopian vision of communist worker hive housing, though, is not the only straight line future approximation possible. The surface area of the earth is about 127,500,000,000 acres, not counting peaks and valleys, so it's not as if we're out of room.

"Not counting peaks and valleys" but including deserts such as the Mojave and the Gobi, not to mention the Sahara. Am I right?

In any case, I personally think it would mean a loss of life-quality if the non-desrt wild places were to be densely populated by humans. (This is why people take time out to visit Yellowstone National Park, whereas few would be inclined to visit Yellowstone High-Intensity Human-Population Reserve.) So call me eccentric.

Quote:
it would be horrible, who wants t end up with a globe that looks like a giant prison colony,

You speak as if there is no such thing as beautiful architecture, or organic methods of integrating humans within their environment.

No, he doesn't. Clearly not.

Quote:
and as for schemes like flooding the deserts to creat more food hasnt anybody learnt yet, all these kinds of schemes come with massive negative unforseen consequences,
huge numbers of people currently starve all the time, and that is set to get worse,
the low hanging fruit gains we made in the seventies in agriculture are done,

food production will be reduced over the next twenty years, not increased,
cheap available energy is running out and has unleashed major problems,
the forests and the oceans that are left are under immense pressure

the only way forward is a pull back from humans and a limiting of modes of life,
and the record shows that people dont volunteer for that shit

I think even you'd agree that is not the only way forward. There are many directions to consider.

That's not a reply.

Sounder wrote:
We seem to treat reality as one big collection of objects. Having this static view of the world is to declare that there is essentially no benefit in using ones imagination.

Exactly. I would say that imagination is the correct way forward.

Anyone can imagine anything, including The Rapture. In any case, there is a difference between imagination and fantasy.

[exojuridik]

There is a perfect market solution to the problem of overpopulation.
This would involves a yearly "life-fee" for the privilege of remaining corporeal on the planet. This tax would off-set the damage an indulgent lifestyle would cause the biosphere. Moreover, this fee would be set so say only 500 million individuals could afford the luxury of realworld (TM) life. The rest of the population could be digitized into a humongus server where they would pass eternity competing in tourneys against one other in mario-world style milieus. These games would serve as the market-economy for the Real Ones(TM) to wager on the performances of the best-players. When someone losses enough on the game to be unable to pay their life-fee, they are digitized and the top players in the game can now redeem their points for the realworld vacancy.

Sure scoff now - I know the tech isn't there yet but come talk to me 'round 2050 or abouts.

[barracuda]

Well...

barracuda wrote:
smiths wrote:
1,000 billion? what a miserable ball of shit it would be then ...


Well, smiths, you have to like people. Humans are the only species that despise themselves, which I find ridiculous, and the bottom of much grief. If you don't like people, then no wonder depopulation seems like a good idea. I happen to like people, myself. Lots of them might be a lot of fun

Yeah sure, more than 140 times more than than there are now. (Every sperm is sacred, or what?)

I use that figure as an example, not necessarily the optimal. But it is my contention for the purposes of this discussion that, yes, we should aim for the accomodation of as many individuals as we can, with the codicil that this aim must be tempered with the utmost consideration for the life of the planet and the fellow creatures on it. And seeing that population projections for the next forty years show a mere increase ofless than thirty percent to just over nine billion, I would say the target value of a trillion is some ways off. However - if we begin planning for a world in which the population is 100 time present statistics, our design assumptions may change in useful ways.



As it stands, population numbers are indeed projected to continue to climb. Ignore the reality of that at your own peril, and the peril of others. I find it pointless to fantasize about a contemporary or future world in which there are fewer individuals than today - the figures just don't support that premise, barring some horrific future event. If you forsee theater-wide thermonuclear war, or catastrophic climate change, or an alien invasion which brings about the deaths of billions, then I don't see much point in brooding about population problems. None of these events are rooted in "too many people" issues. They are simply "people" issues. And mostly, "rich people" issues.

- if they all liked each other.

Why not "if they all loved each other" or "if they all adored each other" or "if they all sexually desired each other" or indeed "if they all worshipped each other". The conditional tense is an adventure playground, open to all, whatever their age.

Remember, Mac, the position I'm arguing against is de-population: the fantasy that literally billions of individuals need to be somehow removed from existence and kept removed in order for the earth to be a viable place for the remaining group. I think my daydream is perhaps equally absurd, but a lot more pleasant.

As well, I think really, there may be (conditional tense again) whole ranges of human emotions which haven't fully evolved that would be centered upon precisely this issue, and the one you raise below of how folks like their companions. And, yes, I think humans should love and desire and worship each other, but it would be nice if they could come to terms with simply liking other humans rather than wishing them dead as a baseline proposition. Seems reasonable, if prosaic.

If everyone loved each other and overcrowding didn't matter, then overcrowded prisons would be not just the best prisons in the world but the best places in the world.

If everyone loved each other, of course there would be no prisons.

[But in fact I think you'll find that human beings, like chickens or chimpanzees, tend to like their companions considerably less when they're forced to live shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

Any design for the future which envisions shoulder-to-shoulder lifestyles for the entire human race is clearly a flawed one. I don't think this is desireable or neccessary by any means. As I said, there's lots of room in the velt.

I don't find the world to be overcrowded though, and I don't think it need be overcrowded even with the addition of several hundreds of billions more folks, which as I said above, is a long, long way out on the timeline as any kind of possibility.

Your dystopian vision of communist worker hive housing, though, is not the only straight line future approximation possible. The surface area of the earth is about 127,500,000,000 acres, not counting peaks and valleys, so it's not as if we're out of room.

"Not counting peaks and valleys" but including deserts such as the Mojave and the Gobi, not to mention the Sahara. Am I right?

In any case, I personally think it would mean a loss of life-quality if the non-desrt wild places were to be densely populated by humans. (This is why people take time out to visit Yellowstone National Park, whereas few would be inclined to visit Yellowstone High-Intensity Human-Population Reserve.) So call me eccentric.

My utopian vision of the future here doesn't and cannot preclude the wilderness. That is another obvious mandatory for the future to function as a place where people want to be. There are other solutions. Living below. Living high above. Living beneath the sea. Living carefully, in awe and appreciation of the world, god forbid.

Quote:
it would be horrible, who wants t end up with a globe that looks like a giant prison colony,

You speak as if there is no such thing as beautiful architecture, or organic methods of integrating humans within their environment.

No, he doesn't. Clearly not.

Why is it necessary to project a vision of the future, then, based upon the monstrous failures of today? I want a future world that looks like a Gaudi Cathedral organically grown from a coral island, not a grey prison colony in a São Paulo slum. Since we're just talking, you know.

Quote:
and as for schemes like flooding the deserts to creat more food hasnt anybody learnt yet, all these kinds of schemes come with massive negative unforseen consequences,
huge numbers of people currently starve all the time, and that is set to get worse,
the low hanging fruit gains we made in the seventies in agriculture are done,

food production will be reduced over the next twenty years, not increased,
cheap available energy is running out and has unleashed major problems,
the forests and the oceans that are left are under immense pressure

the only way forward is a pull back from humans and a limiting of modes of life,
and the record shows that people dont volunteer for that shit

I think even you'd agree that is not the only way forward. There are many directions to consider.

That's not a reply.

I don't have a comprehensive plan for the rehabilitation of the planet, admittedly. But even my drunkenest cocktail napkin plan doesn't involve the removal of several billion souls from the face of the earth, so it has at least that advantage over smiths "harsh realism". On the contrary, I find my view more realistic. World populations will continue to increase barring catastrophes having more to do with heedless industrialism and militarism than with any excesses of peoples.

Sounder wrote:
We seem to treat reality as one big collection of objects. Having this static view of the world is to declare that there is essentially no benefit in using ones imagination.

Exactly. I would say that imagination is the correct way forward.

Anyone can imagine anything, including The Rapture. In any case, there is a difference between imagination and fantasy.

And what would that be?

[barracuda]

And I know, I know... while I'm sitting here in privilege dreaming of a better world, children are starving all over the world. So we'd best come up with a way to kill them before more die in the meantime. Or a way to stop people from reproducing so everyone can have a better life, and a hybrid SUV.

[Hairball]

Damn, I'd written a long reply, but that was just beautiful barracuda. It'll be about 450 years at current population growth before we get to 1,000 billion. That's plenty of time to come up with elegant solutions if we stop spending resources on killing each other with artillery shells made out of low grade nuclear waste.

[Nordic]

Remember, Mac, the position I'm arguing against is de-population: the fantasy that literally billions of individuals need to be somehow removed from existence and kept removed in order for the earth to be a viable place for the remaining group. I think my daydream is perhaps equally absurd, but a lot more pleasant.

But, see, that's the whole problem with your point of view, it's based upon a strawman premise that those who think there should be less people on the planet are somehow advocating slaughtering billions of them and playing god.

That is most certainly not the case. I am one of those people who think we're already beyond a long term sustainable carrying capacity of the planet, in fact, I don't "think" it, there is insurmountable evidence that this is the case, i.e. in massive destruction of habitat, biodiversity, the mass extinction that we're experiencing now, and the ruination of the very parts of the planet that sustain us as living beings.

That doesn't mean I think we should don our second hand SS uniforms and start selectively killing off large chunks of humanity.

It means we need to start acting responsible, as the dominant species on the planet, and just using some fucking COMMON SENSE, because right now we are running a massive environmental Ponzi Scheme upon ourSELVES and we are going to go down, in a big ugly way, and take a huge amount of the biodiversity of the world along with it.

Talk about a fantasy, my God, you're talking about a fantasy where 950 billion people can somehow live in harmony together. People in prisons riot and start hacking each other to pieces. Even rats and mice start becoming cannibals when subjected to the same positions (c'mon, you're smarter than to state that humans are the <i>only</i> animals who don't like "themselves". Many animals are territorial and have an extremely wide territory which they viciously defend).

I can't believe I'm even having this conversation.

[barracuda]

I was reacting to smiths "if a third of the population disappeared today" statement, Nordic. But, of course, killing them is one obvious way to go about it. Another would be forced contraception, or eugenics. Take your pick. That's why the OP is so distateful.

We aren't mice or rats or even prisoners here. We're suppose to be the most intelligent creatures in the universe, to anyone's actual knowledge. If we can't thrive and THINK our way out of this situation, then we deserve our fate.

And I'll say it again - extinction is as natural as death. Every animal dies. Every species suffers extinction.

99% of all species that have lived on this planet are extinct.

It's a part of life.

[MacCruiskeen]

And I'll say it again - extinction is as natural as death. Every animal dies. Every species suffers extinction.

99% of all species that have lived on this planet are extinct.

It's a part of life.

So...

First of all, you advise us to embrace the idea of 140x as many people on the planet as there are already (!!!!! - no apologies, that's worth at least five exclamation marks), while suggesting that anyone who doesn't fancy that bizarre option (or consider it even remotely possible) is either 1) a genocidal misanthropist or 2) a dismally unimaginative clod.

Then you turn round and say, in effect (and almost verbatim): "What the hell, people, get over it already! Every species goes extinct eventually!"

Are such arguments imaginative? (As opposed to grotesquely indifferent to reality.) Are they philanthropic? (As opposed to casually cruel and brutally irrelevant.)

These are rhetorical questions. What you're saying here is just daft, barracuda. Just plain daft. It's all the stranger that you're the one saying it.

In other news: If the Queen had balls, she'd be the King. (Watch our panel discussion.)

[Nordic]

I was reacting to smiths "if a third of the population disappeared today" statement, Nordic. But, of course, killing them is one obvious way to go about it. Another would be forced contraception, or eugenics.

Ah, but right now you seem to be promoting the status quo, which is, quite literally, a forced LACK of contraception in much of the world.

It's been proven time and time again that if you give WOMEN the power of contraception, birth rates drop DRAMATICALLY.

Give women, the ones whose wombs give birth to the new people, the POWER to decide whether or not they want any more babies living in their bellies, and suddenly everything changes.

But right now we have states deliberately NOT providing contraception to females, and we have the Catholic Fucking Church consciously and deliberately with holding contraception to women all around the planet.

Men are men, they're always gonna want to fuck, no matter what the potential consequences, hell, you're a man, right? Not a lot of long-term thinking when one is horny, or drunk, or both.

Women have to think about it and should have the power of contraception, seeing as how they often can't often successfully fend off sex, for a variety of reasons.

Give women contraception. Pretty simple.

[Hairball]

Fuck the Catholic Church and every other church for that matter.

Give women, the ones whose wombs give birth to the new people, the POWER to decide whether or not they want any more babies living in their bellies, and suddenly everything changes.

I don't get it. What changes? Do women not want to have children?

[barracuda]

@ Mac:
Yes. Firstly, come to terms with the idea that human populations will continue to increase, barring either:

1.) Some heinous catastrophe, of which there are many to choose from, or...

2.) Human intervention, which means sterilization, enforced contraception, or
outright elimination of a huge group of now living individuals.

Are you with me so far? Anything daft there? Okay.

Now take a deep breath, because extinction events are part of the life cycle of the planet. Full stop. Some of these past events have likely taken out over 75% of all species on the planet in a relatively short space of time. We are, by many estimates, way overdue for one.

Any daftness detected in that statement?

Why, then, if the two facts are set side by side do they add up to daft? I drew no real conclusions from any A + B there, even if they both do have relevance to the discussion.

You're attempt at conflating these two facts into a single line of thought is somewhat misguided. My statement of the fact of extinction was directed at Nordic's premise that human overpopulation is responsible for species extinction, which is not really the case. Loss of habitat by overpopulation is much less a factor for species extinction then is simple predation by humans of certain species, and industrial pollution caused by carelessness and thoughtlessness in the name of profits. Good examples would be:

wolves which in the U.S. must be relentlessly hunted for their cattle predation when they virtually never actually attack cattle in the U.S., and

Whales, whose extirpation is based upon absurd traditions of industrial concerns having nothing to do with overpopulation, and

The rainforest, which is not being deforested due to too many people, rather it is being cut down to make easy profits for the logging industry which has no interest in legitimate stewardship.

The links between deforestation and overpopulation have been disputed widely, and a variety of causes are at issue - see this chart. Deforestation linked to overpopulationmay contribute as little as 8% overall.I believe the link between the two breaks down right about where the need for corporate profits enters, overiding all other concerns for the sake of a few wealthy individuals.

Why shouldn't our goal as a species be to proliferate as much as possible if this can be done in an organic, non-destructive way? The only answer I can imagine to that question is: Because it just can't!!

If you don't think humans can or should continue to proliferate as a species, then feel free to make suggestions as to solutions. Oh wait, Nordic DID come up witrh a plan:

Give women contraception. Pretty simple.

That's a great plan, because we all know that women don't want to have children anyway. And it absolves men of any need to worry about stupid things like pregnancies, or responsibility, or the world they live in.

Really, dude - that's you're idea of an idea here?

Can you demonstrate that handing out condoms would stop the growth of population? FWIW, here is a study on the decline in fertility as tied to contraceptive presence in sub-saharan Africa, which is indeed a real function. Nonetheless, Africa's rate of population growth is still the highest in the world.

But since our problem here is not that the rate of population growth is too great, but that there are simply too many people NOW, how does this solution achieve negative population growth?

This is a complex subject, but without a plan for negative growth, those of you who say the world is overpopulated are just throwing up your hands. Human population will increase. We need to plan accordingly.

[Sounder]

...and suddenly everything changes.

I know I should be crying, but i'm laughing anyway. Wow, yeah, condoms and pot. That will cure everything, thats the ticket, well fuck me, why didn't I think of that.

Thanks man, were saving the world, I never realized it could be so easy.

[barracuda]

Billionaire club in bid to curb drunken horniness. Open your heart and your mind.

[Fixx]

Fuck the Catholic Church and every other church for that matter.

Give women, the ones whose wombs give birth to the new people, the POWER to decide whether or not they want any more babies living in their bellies, and suddenly everything changes.

I don't get it. What changes? Do women not want to have children?

Not all the time I don't think...sometimes they may just like to make whoopee without the presence of a baby in the equation.