Environmental issues these days seem to be framed mostly in relation to climate change or the extinction of this or that cute "boutique species." Occasionally a more sophisticated environmentalist will try to steer the latter into an understanding of the need for biodiversity.
All well and good, but it seems there is not much talk these days about the 10-billion-pound elephant in the room: overpopulation.
Sure, global population is supposed to peak at about 10 billion by 2100 and then "level off" or decline, but getting to 10 billion may cause irreparable damage to the biosphere, even if there is a decline later.
We can pack in 20 billion if we all want to live like factory-farmed chickens, but the true long-term carrying capacity of the globe is probably closer to 2-4 billion. Which means we have already overshot by almost double.
Capitalists want larger populations so they can drive down labor costs, push up GDP, and exploit labor more easily, while theoretically making more money from a larger (if more impoverished) pool of consumers. Meanwhile, on the "postmodern left," people are squeamish about the issue because it carries the whiff of colonialism and/or racism ("too many brown people…"). But it doesn't have to: it can be argued that developed nations need to reduce population as much or even more than impoverished countries, because the consumption per capita is so much higher in the first world.
In the old days, lower population was always seen as a desirable goal by Marxists and socialists, whether it be China's one-child policy or Soviet efforts at birth control and female education/labor. They understood the importance of "quality over quantity" and were more attentive to the grim potentials of resource shortages, with massive famines and industrial output struggle in living memory.
Well, Zig Forums, why aren't you pushing this issue harder?
Focusing on 'overpopulation' deflects attention away from actually addressing the source of environmental problems, which is an economic system which requires perpetual growth and consumption in order to function. Resource depletion and pollution can only be addressed by abandoning more superfluous, energy-intensive economic activities (i.e. bitcoin, global shipping of plastic crap, etc.) and adopting a no-growth or low-growth economic system. A combination of low- and high-tech strategies can then be used to lower CO2 levels and clean up pollution, while efficiency gains from advancing technology are converted into leisure time for workers, rather than being reinvested into the system to consume and pollute more.
That being said, the gradual reduction of humans towards a stable, sustainable population should be a parallel component to such an economic transition. I would like to believe that it could be done entirely non-coercively, via incentives for adoption and childlessness, birth control, female education, etc.
Aaron Torres
This.
Nathan Fisher
This. Any person's needs could be met with vastly fewer resources if we stopped using a consumption-based system like capitalism. Capitalism requires us to keep buying/selling the stuff we use so businesses can have perpetual growth. A production-for-use system (socialism) means that everything is built to last a lifetime or several and once it's made you just have to maintain it. Nothing about several billion people explicitly requires that all of our stuff be disposable.
Going by all evidence population tends to shrink when standard of living rises. The population boom we're seeing right now is a temporary effect of rising standards of living and social customs re: family lagging by a generation or more.
Ryan Price
But what happens to all the people who work on the automobile industry and related chains when nobody is buying cars anymore? do they all just go unemployed?
But what happens when nobody is consuming anything else new anymore because they already have the thing and the thing lasts forever?
That's just too utopic and will never fly with humans. Everybody knows that you need to work in order to be worth the bread you eat.
Christian Allen
No, the value of the cars goes up because they'll last longer (assuming there even are cars in socialism lel). That's a bourgeois response. The whole point of reducing labor time is so people can do whatever they want with the time they no longer have to work to make society function. That's only a problem in a consumption based economy. The whole point is to not be that any more. People already don't need to work anywhere near how much we do now in order for our society to function. We have to create bullshit jobs in order to pay people money to buy things in order to be able to sell enough things. That's just baseless assertions.
John Bennett
...
Benjamin Reyes
Pragmatic solutions to contextual problems are not the same thing as universal human truths.
Grayson Butler
All right them, so there's no jobs in socialism/communism and that won't be a problem. Yeah, I can totally see society working like that.
Asher Nelson
That's not what anybody was arguing. "We don't need to consume as many resources as we do" isn't the same as "no work has to be done at all."
Brayden Morris
Marx talks about this in his Critique of the Gotha Program. In what he calls the lower phase of socialism (what we can associate with the sort of "state socialism" that the USSR wanted to first establish), because this is a kind of transitional period, it is still in a sense bound to capitalism. In this period, he does describe an individual as receiving value equal to the amount of labor they put in. And of course, this is where Lenin is pulling from. But the point is that this is not supposed to be the end. This is meant to lead into the higher phase of socialism (communism), where we have the famous "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Like says, Lenin was working in his historical context, trying to establish and push through the lower phase of socialism. Criticize the idea behind that all you want, but don't act like it was the end goal.
No one is saying that there will be "no jobs." Of course there will still be things that need to be done. The point is that there will be no more pointless jobs, and work will not exist in the form of wage labor, where individuals have to sell their labor power to a capitalist in order to survive. There is absolutely no reason to suggest that a democratic society in which everyone has their basic needs met cannot figure out a way to determine which services need to be provided (and, even more, which additional services people want to provide) and a method as to who provides them, and there is no reason to suggest that a state is necessary to carry this out. Of course there will be issues that we can't predict, of course this will not be a perfect system, but "not perfect" doesn't mean "not a hell of a lot better than now."
Wyatt Martin
Fuck of Malthus, the ability to produce food is rapidly increasing thanks to Vertical Farming and GMOs. Present Environmental scarcity is caused by improper resource management and consumerism. A socialist state should strive for a bigger population because it will result in a higher intellectual labor output creating more tech which will allow humanity to expand beyond Earth. There’s nothing wrong with having 8+ children. I know I will strive to.
Zachary Brooks
Fuck off, child raising requires labor so parents should be compensated for said labor. Not those who refuse to do said labor.
Jayden Bailey
Natural selection will inevitably cause the current demographic transition to reverse itself. Traits that maximize reproduction, such as religious fundamentalism, are currently under strong selection pressure, and religious fundamentalists and low Autism Level individuals should theoretically eventually become the majority of the population.
objectively false. Marx hated Malthus(read chap.25 of Vol.I), Birth Control was primarily promoted by eugenicists, and China under Mao(when it was socialist) generally had high population growth rates.
Jeremiah Cooper
This. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, it's a survivable prospect, not to mention that global population decline will force a major crisis for capitalism, with its deeply ingrained "growth, growth, growth!" fetishism: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-autistic_economics Also, a large chunk of that ~10B projection comes entirely from a handful of countries such as Nigeria, which careful economic policy could certainly prevent.
We've heard that same song & dance ever since the 1960s, but it didn't happen.
What a stupid assumption. People did shit before the profit motive. They even do creative work without pay incentives now. There always is, and always has been, a reason to make things that people need.
David Adams
Natural Selection is meningless when genetic engineering is available.
There’s no reason to prevent it though. The more people the better. Nothing wrong with growth.
If you thing socialism will be any different about growth your retarted.
Gavin Miller
People will go back to collage in STEM fields and learn useful skills.
Eli White
you can just rotate labor if there's work shortages ie person A does job for 2 weeks, then person B, etc keeps everyone with roughly the same amount of work time
Kayden Clark
Reminder that a significant number of people are taking their cues on this topic from Purple Space Daddy. As usual, popular media is preparing people for an authoritarian turn. In a scenario where people start dying from rising sea levels and getting thrown in concentration camps people are going to unironically quote the Avengers movie to justify it.
Alright, so few people do the absolutely needed jobs while the rest do nothing dance to lord Kumbaya, paint giant dildos on walls and stream their gaming and lives, now that's… much better, I guess?
Juan Rivera
That's due to high labor productivity. It has nothing to do with population (if workers are too productive to need more than 10% at full time jobs supporting the rest, that's going to be true no matter how many or few people there are), nor with "socialism"welfare (whether they're supported in comfort or hunted for sport, under capitalism or otherwise, people without any useful task to perform will always exist in a highly industrialized society). Perhaps humanity could bend itself to some demanding and meaningful task, such as space exploration, to consume idle time, but that's about it.
Except the earth is a physical object of finite dimension, as such greater population on it imposes greater squalor and misery.
Contrariwise, the only reason to have significant population is to reach economies of scale for industrialization, which 1/10th current population would be far more than adequate for.
well for starters, if you want to get to the root of the problem (Roots lol) stop letting Shaniqua and Tyrone shit out kid and after kid, here AND in Africa. it begins with you. you can do it. sometimes genocide is cool and radical and wikked sikk.
Brandon Morris
just leave this place a ruin and colonize mars and the universe
William Gutierrez
people will work shorter hours and get higher real wages via labor vouchers. People will still be able to afford stuff from what they get for working one day a week.
Living there is better than what most people experience today. There’s no reason not to. >>>Zig Forums
Caleb Bell
pretty much every prediction the old demographers from the 60s made has come true and the situation is even worse than they predicted
Asher Thompson
Fuck off, Mao. The solution to every problem is not kill people until it stops.
Andrew Gonzalez
The only places getting overpopulated are shitholes like Africa, India, etc. If you nuked them you would solve the overpopulation problem overnight.
Jacob Cruz
Sure, but it's well below the standards of the 1st-world, and a global reduction in population (as is already in motion) would instead allow everyone to live in conditions far better than at present, in addition to giving us a more lenient schedule in our (probably rather clumsy, given current precedent) transition to sustainable technology.
Look at my graphs, and notice that fertility rate has been plummeting in every region, every economy, every culture, every religion, for decades. In addition, both crystalized intelligence (the "Flynn Effect") and irreligion have been rising in every corner of the world.
Eli Myers
The only people who would have their living standards reduced are mega prokies
My right to procreate surpass your right to a McMansion. Besides the two aren’t incompatible as long as people recycle and don’t waste resources. The only thing which can truly increase living standers is more technology, which you need more people to produce more of it.
We already have a linnet schedule. Average temperatures aren’t expected to go above 2 degrees Celsius until 2100. And that assumes no geoenginerng and that we’ll be burning fossil fuels are present rates for a few more decades.
So there’s no reason to unnaturally suppress it even more. Most of the world has a fertility rate lower than replacement level, so if you want stability it needs to be increased.
Matthew Campbell
If we can terraform mars we can terraform earth.
Brody Howard
I knew I hated capeshit for a reason.
I have some very fucking bad news for you. That news is called abrupt climate change.
Jeremiah Clark
>>>Zig Forums
literally not an argument.
only I, the unique I get to decide what's an argument and what is not
you fucking faggot.
Jordan Bell
Kys. Stalin banned abortion
Adam Allen
If there was 50x less people everything would have been fine. I am not saying that we need to kill people and stuff, but i just can't understand why nobody is trying to fix this problem, because the government only needs to do only 2 things in order to fix overpopulation. 1) allow abortions 2) limit the number of children in 1 family (like japan) 3) Allow people to adopt children ALONE, without a partner ————- The reason why the government probably won't do it is because of power. If you lose number advantage against other countries - you are going to be fucked. Also there are religious reasons and so on… ————- Well, that's how i think.
Joseph Lewis
BS. Climate change is a slow process, because of how the environment works. What is considered “abrupt” on a geological timescale is centuries. Even the most alarmist models say shit won’t hit the fan tell 2050. Which is plenty of time for geoenginering.
Your wrong though. There wouldn’t be a labor pool large enough to sustain modern industry with 50x less people. Also if you lower fertility rate you’ll end up with a time bomb where if a few decades most of your population will be retired and you won’t have enough workers to care for them.
Jackson Gray
Thats what they always say the first time
Hunter Sanchez
There are plausible "abrupt" runaway catastrophic scenarios, like clathrate guns and current/jetstream inversion, but none of them are particularly likelier than the slower models.
Logan James
It's time to genocide atheists
Hunter Thompson
I've seen some documentary on national geographic last night where some imbecile was trying to convince republican senators to support some climate pact or something and his argument was literally "muh electric cars". No wonder they failed to convince them. They still think we can keep living like this without making sacrifices.
1. More localized economy+infrastructure, lesser need for transport. Today people travel several hours to work there and back every day. 2. Reduce usage of plastic radically 3. Electric cars yes but if you will spy on me (and they will) I won't travel, fuck your cars and collecting all data about me
Another problems: 1. Making electricity still damages environment 2. Who cares if you use batteries for everything when they end up in ocean
Still you have problems like china and india fucking up Earth real good and I'm afraid because of this we might even go to war if it won't improve.
As far as overpopulation goes, in western world it seems nature is trying to solve it and people have less and less children. China and India are developing very quickly so the only issue is if we will drop natality soon enough. If not, we just won't have enough water and food and then people will die. Also yes, capitalism plays big role in this, they need more workers and even more consumers.
Gavin Parker
overpopulation isn't real. we can all live in giant tower blocks, using up every available square inch of land, then just have vertical farming and lab-grown stretched meat. we'll never need to leave the building we are assigned to, and can order everything we want online and have it 3d printed in our cell. they say 20 billion but the real 'limit', if there is such a thing, is nearer to 100 billion. think of all those forests and oceans wasting space. we can build there with 3d printed 200 story tower blocks. utopia also, don't look at any of the statistics from 1900 to 2019 regarding geographical location and population increase. if anywhere is overpopulated, which doesn't exist, then it is europe, which needs new europeans to solve the deadly birth rate decline.
Aaron Torres
I misread that as 'terraform wars'
wtf. I need to go to bed.
Julian Morales
capitalist scaremongering, none of which has any basis in straight forward logic, let alone fact. modern industry is highly automated, to the point where 50% unemployment is common, especially amongst the young. same applies for old people being cared for, much of that can be done with technology and automation. Japan has been focussing on that for decades. the only reason for endless population growth, is to support a capitalist pyramid scheme of constant lending, debt and greed.
Jordan Mitchell
Yeah, absolutely dead on.
Alexander Perez
"Muh electric cars" is actually a great justification to switch, for the specific reason that the types of inputs consumed by our current technological base aren't sustainable. Whether that means escalating inefficiency eating up increasing amounts of resources simply to obtain more resources, or literally exhausting our supply, that spells disaster for civilization, especially if the 3rd-world is to be raised to our level of prosperity.
None of that is really a sacrifice, just a change. The fact is, embarrassingly trivial alterations to the structure of today's industrial civilization would yield enormous savings in environmental health, sustainability, and economic expense. Standard of life can keep going up uninterrupted.
Environmentalism can't and shouldn't be sold wrapped up in a debbie downer attitude. We need a triumphalist, optimistic environmentalism, marching in lockstep with engineering toward the promise of an unambiguously bright future.
Meme, there is no such thing, only labor-multiplying technology. It has never caused unemployment, and never will, because of Jevons' Paradox under capitalism: epi.org/publication/the-zombie-robot-argument-lurches-on-there-is-no-evidence-that-automation-leads-to-joblessness-or-inequality/ You can't just invent your way to FALC, because capitalism's autistic economics mean there is always infinite consumer demand ready to exploit the labor freed up by better technology. Even something as basic as reducing the length of the standard workweek was invariably the result of legislation, not technology. Bullshit
But we need more labor in STEM for the development of new technologies to fix our modern resource problems. And educating these people requires labor, doing research requires labor. Everything revolves around labor. Automation can’t do the highly skilled highly educated jobs the civilization in the third millennium will depend on.
Most of the modern consumer shit can be gotten rid of without destroying people’s quality of life. This couldn’t be said a century ago when most goods were nessicites, not wants.
