patrick.net

We should be forcing birth control onto the third and figure out how to lower global population by a few billion.

anonymous says

Could we meet the needs of everyone on the planet without stripping the Earth of all its resources?

Only if we all are willing to live like they do in Haiti.

Reversing population growth, the greenest of all the potential green policies. I wonder how many political parties world wide have this as part of their platform?

RC2006 says

... and figure out how to lower global population by a few billion.

We know how to do it: Install a TV in every bedrooms for free. Broadcast soap operas boosting women egos.

Most of the population increase we see now if because of people living longer. We have the solution for this too: coke + french fries, and opioids.

anonymous says

Could we meet the needs of everyone on the planet without stripping the Earth of all its resources? A paper in this week’s Nature Sustainability says: kind of.

Very interesting question. I don't believe the needs of everyone can be met. Not today. Here's why:
1. We are still dependent on fossil fuels. China and India have to shut down their airports due to heavy smog. A billion people dont even have electricity. There is no way enough fossil fuels can be produced to give the whole world the same standard of living we have.
2. There isn't enough of any commodity to provide the same standard of living for 7 billion, that 320 million in the US has. We need the technology to recycle everything, quickly, and cheaply.
3. Dictators, Islam, and Communists, prevent their people from prosperity for their selfish wants and foolish beliefs.
4. Who will produce all that wealth to sustain a good standard of living for all? We can't provide welfare to the whole planet. They have to learn to fish for themselves.

Strategist says

4. Who will produce all that wealth to sustain a good standard of living for all?

The first thing I thought of in this pie-in-the-sky 1974 style article. Doesn't wealth just create itself? How do you "give" anyone a decent standard of living? Perhaps Americans earn theirs?

P N Dr Lo R says

Strategist says

4. Who will produce all that wealth to sustain a good standard of living for all?

The first thing I thought of in this pie-in-the-sky 1974 style article. Doesn't wealth just create itself? How do you "give" anyone a decent standard of living? Perhaps Americans earn theirs?

By being productive. By learning to fish.

Hey, I already got 2 "dislikes" for comment on 6. There must be people who think taking from the rich creates prosperity for all. So sad people just don't learn from the failures of Venezuela and communism. Very sad.

You don't give a standard of living, but you do create policy and promote standards that promote a good standard of living.
I seen it first hand with the outskirt slums of Peru. Villa El Salvador where my Mother in Law lives. In 2002 when I first visited though my MIL has a Concrete and Brick Lima Lego Style house, I would say 37% of her surrounding neighbors had nothing more than reed fencing, blue tarps and bits of wood, they shit in a bucket and cooked on an open flame in the street. It was depressing sheer destitution.
By 2010 when I went back, our RE markets and Stock markets crashed. But by 2010 their economy was booming. 40% of the shabby Hooverville shacks where started with the first floor Concrete and Brick structures. They all build up in multi levels eventually, when kids grow up and get married the family builds a new floor on the family Lego house.

I just saw video footage my SIL brought back from her Christmas visit to Peru, my MIL's neighborhood looks like a street in Queens NY now. Sidewalks paved streets everyone finished their houses at least two stories, finished stucco and painted facade. It's night and day. They did it by working domestically and creating a domestic economy. Everyone has a neiche they make money doing, if you make money you have money to spend. It perpetuates a flourishing economy. My BIL self deported in 2010 because it was already hopeful sign of economy.

Everyone buys goods and services from each other. They don't have a WalMart on every corner or none of this would have been possible.

A person in a first world country uses 100 times the resources of someone in the third world. If one actually believes that environmental damage and resource depletion are serious problems, then one should be actively against migration into first world countries, and against the idea that populations need to be sustained. The USA was prosperous when we had 200 million, and likewise Western Europe , Canada, Oz and NZ back in the day when they had lower populations. Odd how so many of the "man made climate change" faith are strong proponents of unfettered immigration into the USA.

I was wondering how the OP could be Trump's fault?

anonymous says

The Dotard is planning that right now

Ahhh, there it is.

The way that humans evolve has been and will be in large part a function of our economic and social systems. What kind of priorities does a potential spouse look for in a mate ?

What kind of responsibilities does a person take on in the future, if they don't have children and don't have financial burdens ? It's clear that humans need to take on responsibilities and have meaning in their lives. They need to contribute to the greater good, if not just the good of their own family. But is it clear that most of our responsibilities need to revolve around financial burdens ? Maybe the answer is yes. I don't know.

So many interesting questions these days. I have no idea about the answers to most of them.

anonymous says

RC2006 says

figure out how to lower global population by a few billion

The Dotard is planning that right now, the methods may not be to everyone's liking however....including ours.

Explain.

Most of the third world nations have experienced growth over the last two decades on a scale unheard of in their histories. This is primarily due to proliferation of first world technologies that don’t depend on mass resource consumption. It’s amazing the progress a people can make when you give everyone in a mud hut their own smart phone and it’s connected to an information store unparalleled by any library in history. All indexed and searchable.
If individuals want to accomplish something, they’ll soon know how, and this will drive their national economies.

Only communist ideology can stand in the way of this progress, eating the producers to death before they ever really maximize their potential. Thus we have North Korea, Tibet, Malawi, Uganda, etc. Karl Marx has the blood of billions on his cold dead hands...

It’s amazing the progress a people can make when you give everyone in a mud hut their own smart phone and it’s connected to an information store unparalleled by any library in history. All indexed and searchable.

Good point, but that smart phone only works with electricity. Great if the phone can be charged by solar, along with towers and other phone support structures. Remember, a single cel tower has a 100 watt transmitter, and many would be needed. You would also need a way to power the towers at night, unless they are daytime only.

Why do we need to revisit stupidity?

Strategist says

By being productive. By learning to fish.

My "questions" were a round-about way of stating the obvious just as you did.

HeadSet says

A person in a first world country uses 100 times the resources of someone in the third world. If one actually believes that environmental damage and resource depletion are serious problems, then one should be actively against migration into first world countries, and against the idea that populations need to be sustained. The USA was prosperous when we had 200 million, and likewise Western Europe , Canada, Oz and NZ back in the day when they had lower populations. Odd how so many of the "man made climate change" faith are strong proponents of unfettered immigration into the USA.

You would also need to make sure China, India, and the rest of the world achieve zero progress. That is not gonna happen.
We need a solution for the world that keeps getting smaller, not just a few countries.

1. Think of all the "resources" that you have used today, aside from air (which is free), is there a single thing that is not the fruit of someone else' labor or ingenuity? "Planet's natural resources" is a dumb religious idea that contradicts our every day real life experience. Before people figured out a way to refine petroleum, what we today consider a quintessential "natural resource" -- petroleum/oil -- was just something that oozed out of the ground and made a mess of the farm land in Pennsylvania, while people hunted whales to near extinction in order to get oil to light lamps at night; when petroleum was first refined to produce kerosene (thereby saving the whales), the manufacturers dumped gasoline! because it was too dangerous for use as lighting fuel. The commercial value of gasoline had to wait for the invention of gasoline engine! Almost all resources of consequence are produced by someone else, not "natural." Have some respect for the productive members of our species. The "natural world" would gladly eat you for lunch! in a big gulp by a lion/croc or in many little bites like by army-ants/bot-flies.

2. We don't have a fixed standard of living. What constitutes satisfactory living standards is dependent on expectations. Queen Victoria did not have TV, internet, cellphone or even automobile, but she was living a happy life with high living standards. Every loser on welfare today has TV, internet, cellphone and most likely automobile or at least access to one when needed. The angst and discontent among the poor is the result of misplaced expectations vs. their skills to earn a living that meet those expectations.

3. Indians, Chinese and Africans largely skipped over the land-line phone experience, and jumped on the mobile data phone directly. Likewise, much of the world's population will jump over the driving experience and enjoy self-driving taxis taking them to their desired destinations. The level of pollution will likely be much lower, as will the per-head cost of individual mobility, compared to the cost today.

4. Giving everyone what he/she wants will not be sustainable, for a very different reason: genetic degeneracy. We have already witnessed what happens in cities where a large section of the population live off welfare: under such circumstances, the girls choose to mate with thugs; instead of honing skills to be productive or manifest genes that show intelligence, the boys would be induced to exhibit thug traits in order to stay in the gene pool. It's just like, when food is plenty year-around, peahens picked peacocks with large useless tails. Will idiots thus produced in the following generations be able to sustain a modern complex human society with all the technology necessary to maintain such standard of living? Of course not. Some people having more and some people having less is the reason why men built civilization in order to seduce women (just like male birds build nests in order to attract female birds). What we call Civilization is actually a by-product of male-female mating sexual strategy. If everything were free for the taking, there wouldn't be a genetic drive to be productive or building/enhancing a civilization at all; that's why a city living on welfare quickly degenerates into primitivism within a few generations.

A planet sustainable for human beings who wish for rising standards of living needs people who can produce more than they consume themselves; the surplus is what enables capital formation and rising standards of living. Without the "rising" part of "rising standards of living," everyone would be disappointed and society quickly degenerate into fighting over the fixed/shrinking pie. The "planet's natural resources" religion is a piece of atavistic thinking that harkens back to pre-1776, when Adam Smith published "The Wealth of Nations," which proved conclusively that resources and wealth come form division of labor enabled by a market place, not mutual predation fighting over a fixed pie.

Quigley says

Only communist ideology can stand in the way of this progress, eating the producers to death before they ever really maximize their potential. Thus we have North Korea, Tibet, Malawi, Uganda, etc. Karl Marx has the blood of billions on his cold dead hands...

Just look at Silicon Valley. They mostly come from India and China where more than a third of humanity lives. No one society has a monopoly on scientific research.

P N Dr Lo R says

Strategist says

By being productive. By learning to fish.

My "questions" were a round-about way of stating the obvious just as you did.

I know. I just want to make sure some people here understand the obvious. It's hard to soar with the Eagles when you are working with Turkeys.

Great post! @reality

Makes me think that America and Western civ is dragging the rest of the world into modernity and prosperity.
The first part of this process is to defend the progress from the barbarians who would drag it down and destroy it out of ignorance and malice. Thus, the West has controlled the most powerful military and armies of the modern era, and maintained borders against barbarian encroachment while seeding advancements into barbarian culture to slowly begin the process of civilization in their shitholes.

This is a process that has every chance of working in the long term, bringing light to the darkness. However the movement that the open borders advocates have made could destroy it all. You can’t let the most backwards barbarians in to destroy the seat of civilization!

Reality says

What we call Civilization is actually a by-product of male-female mating sexual strategy.

A few weeks back Gene Simmons (KISS band member) remarked on "The View" how women can attract men just by existing, but for men to attract women, men need to build skyscrapers. He caught hell for that remark, likely because the remark was an uncomfortable reality that violated the "men and women are the same" catechism.

RC2006 says

We should be forcing birth control onto the third and figure out how to lower global population by a few billion.

This.

If you can't afford kids, don't have them.

All of these third world countries need some serious birth control education. There's no reason why a leather tanner in Mumbai, India should have 8 children when he can only afford to live in an unused chicken coop.

We need to embargo all aid to Impoverished Nations, money, food, etc.

When we give them aid, it goes to Warlords and Politicians anyway, and when it does float down to the local level, it is simply used by the Village Elders on themselves and/or to create a patronage network, further retarding their progress.

Give impoverished nations the gift of pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps.

So much Right On in this thread.

zzyzzx says

Fap Fap Fap.

Don't send Salvation Army T-Shirts Afar.
Let's get our Ass to Mars.

Reality says

4. Giving everyone what he/she wants will not be sustainable, for a very different reason: genetic degeneracy. We have already witnessed what happens in cities where a large section of the population live off welfare: under such circumstances, the girls choose to mate with thugs; instead of honing skills to be productive or manifest genes that show intelligence, the boys would be induced to exhibit thug traits in order to stay in the gene pool. It's just like, when food is plenty year-around, peahens picked peacocks with large useless tails. Will idiots thus produced in the following generations be able to sustain a modern complex human society with all the technology necessary to maintain such standard of living? Of course not. Some people having more and some people having less is the reason why men built civilization in order to seduce women (just like male birds build nests in order to attract female birds). What we call Civilization is actually a by-product of male-female mating s...

The problem in the Inner City is Black Bitches, not the boys who are simply going where the Cows are.

www.4KLLIs4tS_c

Thanks Goran.

She Personifies the Problem. Welfare has produced useless bitches like her for several generations now.

Each one of those Tattoos is at least couple of hundred bucks, btw. 4 kids.

Now Imagine if at age 18 she had gone to the Plissken Unwed Mother's Home, light on and blaring trumpets at 8AM, Work Training Programs, Healthy Cafeteria Meals, mandatory shared Cleaning and Child Care, 9PM Curfew, mandatory birth control, and no non-family male visitors allowed. And she refused it would be child endangerment since traditional AFDC/Welfare/HUD would be made unavailable to those with less than 10 years of adult marriage or work history.

The Welfare state destroyed the momentum of black America. One of the worst social programs unleashed on a culture in the modern era.

Goran_K says

>www.4KLLIs4tS_c>

If they are happy with welfare, they must be getting too much.

anonymous says

If we gave everyone a decent standard of living, could we sustain it?

This is easy, no! But that doesn't mean everyone couldn't have a good quality of life, just that you can't give it to them. Why? Because the quality of our life depends first on us. So people who don't care, wouldn't benefit from this. Second, who is the "we" that is giving, and how are they getting what they give? Socialism doesn't work, see Venezuela.

As to the natural resources running out, this is a load of shit. Most people over-consume, if everyone just took what they needed, there'd be plenty to go around. Think tiny houses, and you're responsible for your water, so not a city. There are huge swaths of perfectly good land with no one living on it across the globe. So the solution to this is decentralization, self reliance, and responsibility. With those three things everyone, EVERYONE could live a very nice life.