Why Do Conservatives Deny The Existence Of The Population Management Crisis

[Ontologuy]

meh, yes and no. the question of "how many people can we support with current resources" is really "how ingenious can we be with available and discoverable resources". Theoretically the Earth could fairly easily support 15 Billion people all consuming like Americans - whether the economy or the technology could is the question.

But since people tend to choose not to reside en masse in 120-degree deserts and -120 degree ice lands, we pretty much know what your idealistic "ingenious ... with available and discoverable resources" would be: people piled on top of people living in skyscrapers that make Manhattan look like a flatland.

News flash for you cpwill -- people don't want to live like you'd idealize them to.

They want to live in a manner supportive of their biological nature to be in touch with the land, with sufficient uncrowded space between their neighbor, without rationally unacceptable restriction on transportation mobility.

Pie-in-the-sky "technology" excuses are simply that -- excuses for not honestly admitting to the major problem that currently exists in population management without true sign of abatement ..

.. Excuses that are likely dishonest in nature, and that really implicate one or more of poll-option responses one through seven as the real reason conservatives have a difficult time providing an honest admission of what everyone knows is a current major problem.

 

[cpwill]

This still badly misframes the consumption crisis in what seems to be implied as an engineering/figure-it-out issue. It isn't...it is a political challenge, not an engineering one.

yeah. that's what people have been telling us for two centuries, now..... yet oddly, they keep getting proven incorrect in their predictions...

Contra the Population Control Advocates, there were no world-wide famines that wiped out a majority of the human species in the 1980's...

Contra the Population Control Advocates, the mongrelization and pluralization of the White Race in the mid-20th Century didn't lead to the collapse of our people into degeneracy and poverty...

Contra the Population Control Advocates, the industrial revolution resulted in greater resources per capita than before...

In fact, contra the Population Control Advocates, to the extent that famine is a political problem it appears to be a result of precisely the kind of centralized top-down autocracy that they advocate.



:thinking Now, as a conservative, I'm required to think that Jesus rode Dinosaurs like a horsey, and all that..... but what I dimly remember from my evil, public-union, sex-ed-teaching, authority-of-God's-Word-Denying, liberal 8th Grade Science Teacher, the Scientific Method involves putting a hypothesis to experimentation by allowing it to make specific predictions, and then if those predictions turn out consistently to be false.......

 

[cpwill]

But since people tend to choose not to reside en masse in 120-degree deserts

really? I've spent quite some time in population concentrations in precisely those temperatures.

:roll: save us from ethnocentric mirror-imaging parading as logic.

we pretty much know what your idealistic "ingenious ... with available and discoverable resources" would be: people piled on top of people living in skyscrapers that make Manhattan look like a flatland.

:lamo we are so far from that, it is ridiculous. Even in the North Eastern United States there is more undeveloped than developed land.

you see that? even in the MOST lit up portions of that, there is more undeveloped land than developed land

They want to live in a manner supportive of their biological nature to be in touch with the land, with sufficient uncrowded space between their neighbor, without rationally unacceptable restriction on transportation mobility.

well, if we all went to a Suburb model, for example, the population of the entire world would fit inside of Texas, with spillover into Oklahoma.

Pie-in-the-sky "technology" excuses are simply that -- excuses for not honestly admitting to the major problem that currently exists in population management without true sign of abatement

not really. it's a basic a priori assumption that people seek their own individual self-benefit. thus far, it's proven pretty trust worthy.

the real reason conservatives have a difficult time providing an honest admission of what everyone knows is a current major problem.

:roll: yeah. let me know when you are ready to organize the anti-zombie drive.

 

[cmakaioz]

yeah. that's what people have been telling us for two centuries, now..... yet oddly, they keep getting proven incorrect in their predictions...

Due to unclear antecedents in your sentence, I can't quite tell what you're saying. Are you acknowledging that the overconsumption problem is a political problem (not an engineering one), or are you talking about something else entirely?

Without clarifying this, the rest of your response doesn't (yet) make much sense (at least not as a response).

 

[UtahBill]

a lot of undeveloped land is that way because the local climate isn't compatible with development...
in the USA alone, we have desert areas that could be developed IF we could somehow get the excess water from flooding areas to huge reservoirs in the west.....not that we can always depend on excess water, tho. Even normally wet areas occasionally have droughts.

as for population spiraling out of control, I think it becomes even more important that we educate the population we have about these and related issues. We should also make birth control easy and cheap, even free in some areas, so people can plan their families.

 

[Ontologuy]

a lot of undeveloped land is that way because the local climate isn't compatible with development...
in the USA alone, we have desert areas that could be developed IF we could somehow get the excess water from flooding areas to huge reservoirs in the west.....not that we can always depend on excess water, tho. Even normally wet areas occasionally have droughts.

Yes.

Areas that have historically been more inhospitable are that way for a planetary reason, one that if we artificially mess with too much, even with the most perfect technology we have or are likely to have short-term, may only come back to bite us.

as for population spiraling out of control, I think it becomes even more important that we educate the population we have about these and related issues. We should also make birth control easy and cheap, even free in some areas, so people can plan their families.

Absolutely.

Job-one is indeed educating the planet about these issues.

And part of job-two is indeed making family-planning materials and implements available and afordable to everyone.

 

[Ontologuy]

really? I've spent quite some time in population concentrations in precisely those temperatures. save us from ethnocentric mirror-imaging parading as logic.

So to you, that some people have adapted to living in harsh climates is an indication that people want to live in harsh climates and would choose them over more hospitable environments.

Meaningless, as usual, as your erroneous perspective overlooks the reality of the huge percentages of immigration from harsh to more hospitable regions that is simply not the comparatively teeny tiny case with immigrations from hospitable to barely inhabitable harsh regions.

:lamo we are so far from that, it is ridiculous. Even in the North Eastern United States there is more undeveloped than developed land.

you see that? even in the MOST lit up portions of that, there is more undeveloped land than developed land

And here your quite convenient map simply proves my point.

Look at all the vacant space in unihabitable Austraila, Africa, South America and Asia, including desert regions of the U.S.

Much of these regions are inhospitable lands, lacking reliable sources (if any) of water, climate for crops and cattle, farmable land, commercial suport traffic, etc., etc., much of which simply cannot be fabricated by current or short-term future technology.

Is that where you'd put all those over-populating the planet?

I don't think they'll go willingly, Herr cpwill.

well, if we all went to a Suburb model, for example, the population of the entire world would fit inside of Texas, with spillover into Oklahoma.

Yeah .. a suburb model of Mexico City and other intollerably dense populations living in squalor .. only stacked up high in Manhattan-like skyscrapers as well. :roll:

Do you call that "living", cpwill?

Would you like to volunteer for residence in that manner?

I thought not.

Meaningless.

not really. it's a basic a priori assumption that people seek their own individual self-benefit. thus far, it's proven pretty trust worthy.

So you call over-crowding, unsanitary, starvation-inducing abject poverty as these people's way of seeking "their own individual self-benefit"???

Thus far, it may have proven pretty trustworthy to you, because you don't live there.

But ask them if they'd like to trade places with you, and, if any one of them says yes, make that trade, because, after all, they would be seeking "their own individual self-benefit .. so you should trust it .. and go live where they live. I'm sure you'll find such squalor to your liking.

:roll: yeah. let me know when you are ready to organize the anti-zombie drive.

Yep, you're all fine and dandy with denying the horrific realities of our population management problem ..

.. Until it's suggested that you go and live in the midst of its squalor. :shock:

Again, the reasons that conservatives have a difficult time facing the reality of our current population management problem is always due to one or more of poll-option responses one through seven.

 

[cmakaioz]

I'm all for family planning, and affordable, universal preventative health care, thorough education on planetary - and a host of other basic human needs being looked after in a manner NOT contingent upon one's bargaining power in profit-based markets.

But there's a larger issue at work here, and the resistance to acknowledgement of population -- or really, consumption -- as a serious crisis isn't at all limited to those identified as conservative.

Born and raised into a global economic system premised upon constant expansion -- and driven by an ideology of consumerism which equates happiness with consumption -- the normal response of people subjected to this system when production capacity increases is NOT to spread out access to resources when one has a personal surplus, but to chase after more and more stuff. This spiraling material disparity is at once both a cause and result of the real cost of goods and services not being reflected in monetary prices, in public policies, or in simple concrete hardships. Because of this lack of full reflection of real costs, even the most well-intentioned and conscientious consumer is incapable of making a rational attempt at sustainable levels of consumption, because s/he has no access to the relevant information which would make that possible. At most, we get an occasional product label for food and body products, for some articles of clothing, etc., but there's certainly nothing close to a product-labeling equivalent of a reasonable estimate of the total real cost of a given commodity. All we usually have is a selling price and (maybe) some very general information about the location of the last few steps of production.

Since money is an object of convention rather than absolute production, money is effectively infinite. As we are so accustomed to using money to trade for things, this habit makes us vulnerable to the illusion that whatever may be bought or sold with money is somehow equivalent to money in terms of renewability. Money is (as a thing which is only useful through convention) infinitely renewable because we can print/loan/declare more of it into circulation at will. Concrete THINGS and specific CONDITIONS, however, are not infinitely renewable, but they are often treated as such because they can be and at least partially are, on some basis, purchasable with money.

This raises a fundamental concern with policy concepts like carbon credits, or (on a more personal scale) slight discounts or refunds from utility companies for end-users who either use less than the average amount of power, or even end up "returning" some power through solar- or wind-based generation. The problem is that ANY kind of purchase system for managing energy consumption necessarily fails -- if it is based upon purchase through money -- to communicate the relevance and urgency of the FINITE nature of finite resources. The response or strategy of many institutions managing aggregate consumption on a basis of purchasing credits or receiving (small) returns on power bills is therefore often to act as thought what is purchases is infinitely renewable (because money is infinitely renewable), and so instead of striving to use less energy, there may instead be a concerted effort to go on using energy and resources at an untenable pace while struggling to come up with more money to pay for it. This entirely misses the point of seeking environmental sustainability in the first place.

So that's why many people -- conservative or not -- come to view sustainability and overconsumption as Not Really A Problem; after all -- so the idea goes -- even if power and food and other commodities become a little more expensive, they can always go on consuming at whatever rate they like and instead push to make more money to purchase it. Never mind the fact that it's possible to actually use something up so quickly that no one can buy it at any price.

 

[Mach]

I would love to know what it is about conservatives that make those of their ideological ilk so obviously in denial of this major problem compared to liberals

Off the cuff:
They tend not to believe liberal rhetoric, knowing their own is also B.S.

Now, there is a real science-driven response that is far more centrist/moderate that you will hear from time to time when you hear experts talk in a less political context, like ted talks, or NPR (depending on the program/topic).

The reason is that when you are faced with managing something like, oh, the welfare of the entire nation and to a degree, the entire world, you tend to follow tried and true, mathematically backed rules like:

It's better to utilize technology and resources to their fullest now because:
1. You will be ensuring you have a strong economy, prosperity, defense, today, and not gamble that for some unknown future state
2. The constant improvements in technology in your decentralized market will likely find solutions for these "potential" future problems, as they have in the past
3. In some cases, time will evidence that some of these problems weren't really problems to begin with
4. In some cases culture will change over time, effectively solving the problem without some big political legislation or expenditure
5. It often can and should be something that more local groups and private intitiatives work to address, because who has more of a vested interest? If they expect big G to solve it every time, no problem would ever get solved

As you now see, there are some very reasonable rejections of adopting very expensive and invasive solutions to potential future problems, at the real cost of hindering our prosperity and development today. You will find on a a personal level, yourself using this exact same abstract principle. You will solve the problems you know today, and worry about the future ones as they come. Sure, some look ahead planning is great, but you don't work on your jacuzzi tub today, when the roof has holes and it's raining, sort of thing.

Also it's good to look at birth rates..the more educated and higher income the fewer children right? What economic and/or government paradigms have moved the greatest numbers of people from uneducated to educated, from poor to prosperous, and thus also had the side effect of lowering population? An example of how improving something needed today, may solve or be part of the solution, to a future problem.

 

[Harry Guerrilla]

Ontologuy, are you ever going to present evidence that over population is a real problem?
If it's so self evident, showing us some real evidence should be no issue.

We're all still waiting for you to prove it.

 

[Ontologuy]

Off the cuff:
They tend not to believe liberal rhetoric, knowing their own is also B.S.

Now, there is a real science-driven response that is far more centrist/moderate that you will hear from time to time when you hear experts talk in a less political context, like ted talks, or NPR (depending on the program/topic).

The reason is that when you are faced with managing something like, oh, the welfare of the entire nation and to a degree, the entire world, you tend to follow tried and true, mathematically backed rules like:

It's better to utilize technology and resources to their fullest now because:
1. You will be ensuring you have a strong economy, prosperity, defense, today, and not gamble that for some unknown future state
2. The constant improvements in technology in your decentralized market will likely find solutions for these "potential" future problems, as they have in the past
3. In some cases, time will evidence that some of these problems weren't really problems to begin with
4. In some cases culture will change over time, effectively solving the problem without some big political legislation or expenditure
5. It often can and should be something that more local groups and private intitiatives work to address, because who has more of a vested interest? If they expect big G to solve it every time, no problem would ever get solved

As you now see, there are some very reasonable rejections of adopting very expensive and invasive solutions to potential future problems, at the real cost of hindering our prosperity and development today. You will find on a a personal level, yourself using this exact same abstract principle. You will solve the problems you know today, and worry about the future ones as they come. Sure, some look ahead planning is great, but you don't work on your jacuzzi tub today, when the roof has holes and it's raining, sort of thing.

Also it's good to look at birth rates..the more educated and higher income the fewer children right? What economic and/or government paradigms have moved the greatest numbers of people from uneducated to educated, from poor to prosperous, and thus also had the side effect of lowering population? An example of how improving something needed today, may solve or be part of the solution, to a future problem.

Yes, but as the OP correctly presents:

The result of such a continued rise in the rate that we add people to the planet far beyond our ability to provide space and needs for them?

* Excessive deforestation that threatens our hospitable climate.
* Pollution everywhere that also threatens our habitat.
* Gross and abhorrent starvation.
* Disgusting wretched mass abject poverty.
* Miserably way-overcrowded cities that not only greatly decrease the quality of life to a neurosis-causing degree but ramp up the horrific person-on-person crime rate beyond law enforcement's ability to even investigate.
* Perpetual traffic jams that make the speed limit a satirically sick joke.
* An excessive drain on healthcare resources and availablity that ramps up the cost of care for those dwindling number who can manage to afford health insurance.
* A dog-eat-dog fight for living-wage jobs that are growing ever scarcer.
* Drastic reductions in living-wage incomes in previously prosperous nations caused by out-sourcing those jobs to wage-slaves in other nations.
* A proportional rapidly increasing drain on remaining global energy resources with no acceptable viable workable real alternative yet in sight.
* An increase in racism complete with the threat of bio-weapons to genetically target specific races.
* The growing threat of an apocalyptic war to "solve" the problem.
* And so many, many more severely deleterious reactions to this primary foundational crisis.

And though these readily visible symptoms of this truly deadly problem are everywhere, not only in third-world countries but in industrialized nations like our own ..

These problems are very real and very here and now and are causing all kinds of misery and premature death in the here and now that simply cannot be honestly stated as nonexistent.

Yes, they portend greater catastrophes if abatement does not soon and rapidly occur.

To imply that this obvoiusly existent problem is not as huge as more immediate or comparatively second-rate as compared to other more utilitarian domestic focuses is, though I would contend perhaps fatally myopic, still makes a comparison that at least acknowledges the existence of the problem.

Doing something about this foundational major problem as presented in the OP does not have to be draconian in nature just yet, but doing something substantive in solution does have a prerequisite of first recognizing the reality of the problem.

Conservatives have a greatly exhibited tendency not to even admit to the very existence of the problem, pooh-poohing it as being chicken-little fantasy fear even in the face of obvious realities to the contrary.

So my question justifiably remains: why do conservatives as an ideological group have such a great tendency to deny the very existence of the population management crisis?

Certainly it's not because "they don't think they can do anything about it"!?

Again, from what I've seen exhibted so far, it's most likely that the reasons for their likely feigned denial is rooted in one or more of the first seven poll-option responses.

 

[Ontologuy]

Ontologuy, are you ever going to present evidence that over population is a real problem?
If it's so self evident, showing us some real evidence should be no issue.

We're all still waiting for you to prove it.

It's long been proven to you.

But, you'll just keep waiting, because you don't like the truth of it ..

.. As the truth of it, facing the truth of it, forces you to admit that one or more of poll-response options one through seven is the reason you don't want to face the truth of it.

You denial is utilitarian in basis.

 

[Harry Guerrilla]

It's long been proven to you.

But, you'll just keep waiting, because you don't like the truth of it ..

.. As the truth of it, facing the truth of it, forces you to admit that one or more of poll-response options one through seven is the reason you don't want to face the truth of it.

You denial is utilitarian in basis.

Right.....
I'll accept this as a concession that, you can't prove your position and that you're unwilling to accept that you're wrong.

 

[Camlon]

My option were not there. The American, or European birth rate is not the problem. It is actually too low. The rising population is due to immigration from countries with very high birth rate. To reduce the birth rate to compensate for the immigration will solve no problems. It will just replace the local population, create poverty, and the new immigrants will eventually increase the birth rate again.

The only way to solve the problem is to reduce the birth rate in third world nations and limit immigration from those countries. Liberals think limits on immigration is inhumane, and don't really care much about the high birth rate in third world countries.

 

[Ontologuy]

I'm all for family planning, and affordable, universal preventative health care, thorough education on planetary - and a host of other basic human needs being looked after in a manner NOT contingent upon one's bargaining power in profit-based markets.

But there's a larger issue at work here, and the resistance to acknowledgement of population -- or really, consumption -- as a serious crisis isn't at all limited to those identified as conservative.

Born and raised into a global economic system premised upon constant expansion -- and driven by an ideology of consumerism which equates happiness with consumption -- the normal response of people subjected to this system when production capacity increases is NOT to spread out access to resources when one has a personal surplus, but to chase after more and more stuff. This spiraling material disparity is at once both a cause and result of the real cost of goods and services not being reflected in monetary prices, in public policies, or in simple concrete hardships. Because of this lack of full reflection of real costs, even the most well-intentioned and conscientious consumer is incapable of making a rational attempt at sustainable levels of consumption, because s/he has no access to the relevant information which would make that possible. At most, we get an occasional product label for food and body products, for some articles of clothing, etc., but there's certainly nothing close to a product-labeling equivalent of a reasonable estimate of the total real cost of a given commodity. All we usually have is a selling price and (maybe) some very general information about the location of the last few steps of production.

Since money is an object of convention rather than absolute production, money is effectively infinite. As we are so accustomed to using money to trade for things, this habit makes us vulnerable to the illusion that whatever may be bought or sold with money is somehow equivalent to money in terms of renewability. Money is (as a thing which is only useful through convention) infinitely renewable because we can print/loan/declare more of it into circulation at will. Concrete THINGS and specific CONDITIONS, however, are not infinitely renewable, but they are often treated as such because they can be and at least partially are, on some basis, purchasable with money.

This raises a fundamental concern with policy concepts like carbon credits, or (on a more personal scale) slight discounts or refunds from utility companies for end-users who either use less than the average amount of power, or even end up "returning" some power through solar- or wind-based generation. The problem is that ANY kind of purchase system for managing energy consumption necessarily fails -- if it is based upon purchase through money -- to communicate the relevance and urgency of the FINITE nature of finite resources. The response or strategy of many institutions managing aggregate consumption on a basis of purchasing credits or receiving (small) returns on power bills is therefore often to act as thought what is purchases is infinitely renewable (because money is infinitely renewable), and so instead of striving to use less energy, there may instead be a concerted effort to go on using energy and resources at an untenable pace while struggling to come up with more money to pay for it. This entirely misses the point of seeking environmental sustainability in the first place.

So that's why many people -- conservative or not -- come to view sustainability and overconsumption as Not Really A Problem; after all -- so the idea goes -- even if power and food and other commodities become a little more expensive, they can always go on consuming at whatever rate they like and instead push to make more money to purchase it. Never mind the fact that it's possible to actually use something up so quickly that no one can buy it at any price.

I like the fact that you're open to thoughtful analysis of both the causative nature of the problem as well as why conservatives, more than most ideologies, evidence a disdain for facing the problem and its causative agents.

One of my pet peeves upon which you've touched here is the nature of consumerism, which I associate with mental or neuropsych temperament and typology.

Those of us who exhibit a stronger intuitive facility, to reason and postulate in conjunction with the thinking function, as well as empathize and be compassionate in conjunction with the feeling function, are, as I've read, greatly in the minority.

It is estimated that nearly 80% of the world's population is very weak on reliance on their "inner senses", their intuition (the facility to abstract, intuit, imagine and speculate) and instead are very strong on being reliant on their outer senses, their sensing (the facility to wax concrete, practical, sensible and realistic).

What this really means is that 80% of the population is easily subject to glitz, personalities, herd-mentalities, gross consumerism, unhealthy excesses, etc. .. all which can, in mass occurrence, contribute to degradations of quality of life throughout the globe.

It also means that those of us who are stronger intuitively, who are capable of understanding the causes and solutions to these associated problems are, though often aware of what needs to be done, in the minority and thus somewhat less powerful, from a "democracy" perspective, to effect the necessary changes.

Perhaps, as some have suggested, that 80% needs to be "taught" how to intuit.

But I wonder if such is really "teachable".

 

[Ontologuy]

My option were not there. The American, or European birth rate is not the problem. It is actually too low. The rising population is due to immigration from countries with very high birth rate. To reduce the birth rate to compensate for the immigration will solve no problems. It will just replace the local population, create poverty, and the new immigrants will eventually increase the birth rate again.

The only way to solve the problem is to reduce the birth rate in third world nations and limit immigration from those countries. Liberals think limits on immigration is inhumane, and don't really care much about the high birth rate in third world countries.

I'm right there with you on this one: immigration.

One of the biggest problems contributing to the degradation of the quality of life for American citizens is excess immigration, especially of the illegal variety.

Third-world countries need to get their populations managed, and I find it egregious that liberals would suggest that we take all their excess in rather than have those countries be responsible for their own.

We're hurting, too, and we're just not in a position to bring in more people to effectively "import" third-world poverty to our country.

If those countries couldn't rely on America and Europe taking in all their excess, they'd likely find their population density too thick for even their "tastes" .. and then they'd begin to address their problem.

 

[cpwill]

Due to unclear antecedents in your sentence, I can't quite tell what you're saying. Are you acknowledging that the overconsumption problem is a political problem (not an engineering one), or are you talking about something else entirely?

I am saying that people have been making the same old malthusian prediction for centuries. And their dire predictions have never been borne out. It's not so much the boy-who-cried-wolf as it is the-boy-who-lives-in-a-world-with-no-wolves-and-won't-stop-calling.

 

[StillBallin75]

I'm right there with you on this one: immigration.

One of the biggest problems contributing to the degradation of the quality of life for American citizens is excess immigration, especially of the illegal variety.

Third-world countries need to get their populations managed, and I find it egregious that liberals would suggest that we take all their excess in rather than have those countries be responsible for their own.

We're hurting, too, and we're just not in a position to bring in more people to effectively "import" third-world poverty to our country.

If those countries couldn't rely on America and Europe taking in all their excess, they'd likely find their population density too thick for even their "tastes" .. and then they'd begin to address their problem.

*sigh*....once again, you have no actual evidence to back up your assertions. If it weren't for immigration of any form INTO the United States, we would have a shrinking population.

 

[Harry Guerrilla]

*sigh*....once again, you have no actual evidence to back up your assertions. If it weren't for immigration of any form INTO the United States, we would have a shrinking population.

It's self evident, derp. :2razz:

 

[What if...?]

My question would be what are proposed solutions to this problem? Enforced sterilization and/or abortion? A one child limit, like in China? I'd hope most people, no matter their political lean, would never support that kind of government control.

I like ince tivised options.

There was once a proposal to give mothers on welfare a car if she got sterilized.

The idea being it would be cheaper in the long run than more kids, AND it would increase her ability to get a good job to support the kids she's got.

I thino we should offer free reversible vasectomies to men starting at about 14 with parental consent.

If you can't afford the couple thousand to have your plumbing reconnected, you probably can't afford to raise a kid.

 

[cpwill]

Alright. I'll waste the time to go through this.

* Excessive deforestation that threatens our hospitable climate.

According to the UN, the United States gains between 600,000 and 1,200,000 acres of forest EVERY YEAR.

* Pollution everywhere that also threatens our habitat.

According to the EPA, Pollution has been dramatically IMPROVING since the 1970's

* Gross and abhorrent starvation.

Does not occur due to a lack of resources, but rather to a lack of free markets, free press, and liberal government, which keep the resources from being deployed. The Agricultural output of Texas ALONE would be sufficient to feed half the world, and needless to say there is enough farmland CURRENTLY under plow in the United States Alone to feed every man woman and child on Earth.

* Disgusting wretched mass abject poverty.

Is being reduced at the fastest rate in human history. After joining the World Trade Organization, China reduced her poverty by 1/3 in 3 years, and has lifted approximately 600 million people out of poverty in this generation. the story is roughly the same in India - as they have freed up their market, huge swathes of humanity have left poverty behind for more comfortable living. An estimated 130 Million Indians have emerged from poverty in just the last DECADE.

If you really want to know what causes wealth (poverty is, after all, the natural state of mankind), then I suggest you take
this list and overlay it with this list and see if you notice any meta-trends.

* Miserably way-overcrowded cities that not only greatly decrease the quality of life to a neurosis-causing degree but ramp up the horrific person-on-person crime rate beyond law enforcement's ability to even investigate.

Here is the math for you:

...The population of the world we will define as 7 billion. What is the density of a large US city, say New York City as a whole? Well, New York City is 790 square kilometers, and has a population around 8.3 million people, giving us a density of (8.3<EEX>6<ENTER> 790 ÷) about 10,500 people per square kilometer. Now granted, NYC is not the wide-open spaces, but it is a density that millions live with in a space-loving nation like the US, so it shouldn't be considered too packed.

So how much land would we need to house all 7 billion of us if we lived in such density? Well, we would need (7<EEX>9<ENTER> 8.3<EEX>6<ENTER> 790 ÷ ÷) 666,265 square kilometers. A big area, no? Well, let's look further...

Upon examining the US, we find out that Texas fits the bill nicely. In fact, Texas has 261,797.12 square miles of land, and that is (261792.12<ENTER> 1.602<ENTER> 1.602 × ×) 671,877.17 square kilometers! Which is, in fact, more than the area we need to house all 7 billion of us at typical New York City densities. Meaning every man, woman, and child living and breathing on the face of the Earth could fit in relative comfort within the land territory of the State of Texas...​

* Perpetual traffic jams that make the speed limit a satirically sick joke.

traffic? really? your Great Self-Proving Scientific Evidence comes down to one-liners about traffic?

* An excessive drain on healthcare resources and availablity that ramps up the cost of care for those dwindling number who can manage to afford health insurance.

:lamo is the result of too little population growth! Medicare is paid for by current workers, and is currently slated to go bankrupt due to the lack of enough younger workers paying into the system and high inflation in healthcare costs. but high healthcare costs aren't driven by overpopulation, but rather by a failed third-party-payment system. How do we know? Because when we switch to a market model, costs go DOWN.

* A dog-eat-dog fight for living-wage jobs that are growing ever scarcer.

see previous figures for the amazing story of people being lifted out of poverty in the past couple of decades.

* Drastic reductions in living-wage incomes in previously prosperous nations caused by out-sourcing those jobs to wage-slaves in other nations.

Incomes have risen for all quintiles in the United States even as we helped lift hundreds of millions overseas out of poverty. Some argue that the vanishingly small income rise for the bottom 10% counts as a slight pay decrease because poor people now want to buy lots of things like iPods and flatscreen televisions that weren't available in the 1980's. But no one (scratch that: no one familiar with the data) has been so foolish as to argue for "Drastic Reductions in Living Wage Incomes".

* A proportional rapidly increasing drain on remaining global energy resources with no acceptable viable workable real alternative yet in sight.

Actually Oil Reserves are constantly INCREASING, along with our ability to reach and tap previously abandoned or deemed untappable reserves. We have more oil in the Rocky Mountains ALONE than Saudi Arabia HAS, and we have only just BEGUN exploring and exploiting. Meanwhile, our Natural Gas reserves have increased by 35% over the past couple of years.

* An increase in racism complete with the threat of bio-weapons to genetically target specific races.

and aliens with giant space lasers!

seriously, 30% of "White" Americans have African blood in them, and the number is significantly higher for African Americans. Hispanics are a mix of European and Native American with some African, and don't even get started in the places like Columbia or Brazil.

Racism is on a historical decline.

* The growing threat of an apocalyptic war to "solve" the problem.

is much lower than it was prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now the world power most likely to actually decide to kick off an apocalyptic war is Iran, who lacks the capability

* And so many, many more severely deleterious reactions to this primary foundational crisis.

Zombies!

seriously, "severely deleterious reactions to this primary foundational crises"? you sound like Newt Gingrich.



And now, I'm going running. I wasted my upper-body-time on this crap. You owe me for 45 minutes of private tutoring.

 

[Ontologuy]

*sigh*....once again, you have no actual evidence to back up your assertions. If it weren't for immigration of any form INTO the United States, we would have a shrinking population.

It's self evident, derp. :2razz:

It is so nice to see liberals and conservatives getting along so well. Hopefully you'll want to keep that up, as the only way you can possibly do so is to meet .. in the middle.

But I did warn you that you don't want to turn this thread into a link-war about the obivious -- it's a lose-lose proposition for you both.

You obviously missed this previous post where I presented U.S. realities: http://www.debatepolitics.com/general-political-discussion/123826-why-do-conservatives-deny-existence-population-management-crisis-5.html#post1060402964

Until the population numbers-change rate drops to zero, or in reality greatly below zero, we are not addressing our own issues on the matter.

Why even a 2.5% population numbers-change rate applied to our current population of a little over 313 million is still a greater increase in numbers of people than a 10% figure applied to a population of 76 million, the population at the turn of the 20th century.

Small 1.0% rates can seem like they're not much, until we do the math: an additional 3.13 million people this year.

Rates are deceiving when the population is this large. In just one year at even a rate of 1.0% (approximately the average annual rate of growth in the last census decade: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-01.pdf) that would still mean that this year we'll add more people than the city populations of both Dallas and Houston combined.

And even at a reduced "rate" of change predicted to be somewhere around .50 by 2050, the expected population of the U.S. by then is still expected to exceed 390 million people. Compared to today, that's more than the total population of our current 50 most populous cities combined -- in just 38 more years. Where the hell are we gonna put all these people? Your analysis is indeed germane: it's not about how small the positive-number rates are -- it's about the sheer numbers and their already gigantic size. (Population Profile of the United States)

Until these rates are greatly negative, we and world are in major trouble.

And here's some more for you ..

The U.S. birth rate is 13.83 births/1000 United States Birth rate - Demographics.

The U.S. death rate is 8.38 deaths/1000 United States Death rate - Demographics.

We're growing on our own accord -- see, I told you the sun rose in the east.

And from all sources, we're still growing at a rate of .963% United States Population growth rate - Demographics.

That's more people producing more people producing more people .. and that all expands out exponentially. So that even if the rate drops, as long as the rate remains positive, our population is growing, and, based on the sheer huge base number of the population to begin with, well, we're all gonna need a rate of -15.00% real quick to avert associated disasters.

But, as the initial quoted links presented, that just ain't predicted .. and so our population by 2050, a mere 38 years in the future .. is expected to grow from the present 313 million to a whopping 394 million! That's, again, an increase equal to the current total populations of our 50 most populous cities!

Where are we gonna put them all, in just a mere 38 years?!

And here's a fun graph for you to play with: the population growth rates of 230 countries: Population growth rate - Country Comparison. 35 countries are responsibly trying to reduce their populations, though their negative rates are still way too small, especially Russia's (though it's good a big country is doing its part) .. 4 countries have managed to at least stablize .. but a huge 191 number of countries are still growing their population, including both China and India!

And I can't help but notice how all the "growth" rates far exceed in size the "reduction" rates.

There are currently more than 7,007,894,631 by the current world population clock: U.S. & World Population Clocks.

So what does that mean for the world by 2050, in just a mere 38 more years? 9,309,051,539! World Population 1950-2050.

And so what if the growth rates are declining -- they're still growth rates. With the size of the base number so unbelievably gigantic, even a 0.25% rate, not close to being foretold, is still an addition of a ton of people! It's greatly now all about the multiplicand (the current actual size of the country's population), not the multiplier (the rate).

Indeed, in just a mere 38 years, the world's population will increase by a humongous 32.84 percent!!!

That's nearly the total current population of both China and India .. combined .. in just a mere 38 years!!!

We have long been suffering under the weight of population mismanagement, and horrifically so, as the OP accurately presents in list.

We are out of farmland, we are out of production resources, we are running dangerously low on atmospheric essentials .. and the list goes on .. for our current population, let alone an additional China and India!

We have no room for all of the people we have now without jeopardizing everyone on the planet.

There is simply no way we can add another China and India to the mix!!!

If the population numbers-change rates are not all moved greatly to the negative in the next couple of years (evidently unlikely under the current philosophy of ignoring the problem!), we simply will not live to see the year 2100, let alone like how we would have lived then.

Yes, the sun is most definitely still rising in the east .. for now.

Tick tock, people.

 

[Ontologuy]

Alright. I'll waste the time to go through this.

Considering how you obviously misunderstood the questions and thus didn't answer the questions, yeah, you did pretty much waste your time.

According to the UN, the United States gains between 600,000 and 1,200,000 acres of forest EVERY YEAR.

Your post here doesn't at all indicate that the U.S. gained more forest land.

It simply states that the existent forest-capable land is being somewhat replanted.

That in no way means we have enough forest land to supply our needs.

But, you misunderstood the question.

Go back to the OP and re-read for comprehension. The OP scope presented is the entire planet.

So you need to go back to your research source and find out how much rainforest has been lost in South America and Southeast Asia. That's killing our global climate and contributing to the ozone hole which portends great disaster.

If you want to get at least a passing grade, you must first understand the question.

According to the EPA, Pollution has been dramatically IMPROVING since the 1970's

All this shows is by 1997 the air was better than it would have been otherwise, and again, only in the U.S.

The list of quantifiable tragedies avoided does not mean the count itself was good or acceptable, as it wasn't, but it only means that the count would have been much greater without the act.

It's still way too bad.

I have friends that live in the Los Angeles area. They tell the smog story all the time. Don't try to tell me we've got that problem licked.

Plus, pollution comes in other forms, not just in the air. Don't go swimming in Lake Erie if you value your health. Our beaches are a mess thanks to over-used sewage outlets just a couple miles off coast. Our local oceans are so full of mercury that we risk our lives just eating the tuna. Our rivers have industrial chemicals in them that could kill a horse. Our land is loaded with radioactive wastes. And we've just about run out of room for our dumps .. and we'll have to build more where we otherwise might have put .. people.

No, you omitted a ton, and likely on purpose.

And, once again, you forgot about the rest of the planet, the scope of the OP.

You're not doing very well here.

Does not occur due to a lack of resources, but rather to a lack of free markets, free press, and liberal government, which keep the resources from being deployed. The Agricultural output of Texas ALONE would be sufficient to feed half the world, and needless to say there is enough farmland CURRENTLY under plow in the United States Alone to feed every man woman and child on Earth.

And here you blame the liberals for all the gross abhorrent starvation in the world.

Your esoteric little ideologial links are substantively lacking in any real informational nourishment.

The claims are simply bogus.

If we had that capacity, it's not that "liberals" are thwarting it .. it's that such capacity is a figment of fantasy.

You can do better.

And especially that part about blaming liberals for all the famine death in the world .. that's pretty egregious considering you really have no proof.

But at least you admit to the existence of all the gross abhorent starvation in the world.

Maybe one day we'll truly address it with actual solutions based on hard evidence.

Is being reduced at the fastest rate in human history. After joining the World Trade Organization, China reduced her poverty by 1/3 in 3 years, and has lifted approximately 600 million people out of poverty in this generation. the story is roughly the same in India - as they have freed up their market, huge swathes of humanity have left poverty behind for more comfortable living. An estimated 130 Million Indians have emerged from poverty in just the last DECADE.

Actually, that's 500 million people, not 600 million -- be careful how you exaggerate.

And that "World Bank" standard of poverty -- well, that would mean poverty essentially doesn't even exist at all in the U.S. by that abysmally low standard.

Plus even if the World Bank poverty rate was 10% there, that would still mean 133,000,000 Chinese still live in unbelievable abject poverty.

And by American standards of poverty, what we here relate to as a poverty standard, 90% of China is impoverished.

As for India, those 130 million Indians emerging from World Bank standards of poverty, well, that's again not saying much by our standards. And, of course, a number of them are doing better because of all our outsourced jobs, so all we've really done is shift their poverty problems to our out-sourced out-of-work American citizens!

And, if you read the rest of your link, you'd see just how abysmal living conditions are for much of India .. and, I've been to India recently -- I can indeed tell you how bad it is throughout there.

Plus, in just the next 38 years we will add to the world the equivalent of another India and China comined in population .. and a good percentage of that will be added there as their population numbers-change rates are still quite positive .. and they're nearly out of farmland. It won't be pretty.

No, you've got nothing here, whatsoever.

Joining the WTO is an absolutely nothing compared to what needs to be done: reduce population quickly.

If you really want to know what causes wealth (poverty is, after all, the natural state of mankind), then I suggest you take
this list and overlay it with this list and see if you notice any meta-trends.

And here you link to irrelvancies where you attempt to profess that your ideology could lift the world out of its population management problems.

But your speculation is without obvoius foundation .. and, it ignores the fact that people simply aren't gonna make the changes in national management style that you think they "should".

The population management problem is going to have to be solved with the current regime philosophies now in place. And indeed, it's not necessary to have regime change to address this problem, as a campaign to reduce population numbers simply does not require a specific type of government.

Again, you're not scoring very many points on your quiz here.

Here is the math for you:

...The population of the world we will define as 7 billion. What is the density of a large US city, say New York City as a whole? Well, New York City is 790 square kilometers, and has a population around 8.3 million people, giving us a density of (8.3<EEX>6<ENTER> 790 ÷) about 10,500 people per square kilometer. Now granted, NYC is not the wide-open spaces, but it is a density that millions live with in a space-loving nation like the US, so it shouldn't be considered too packed.

So how much land would we need to house all 7 billion of us if we lived in such density? Well, we would need (7<EEX>9<ENTER> 8.3<EEX>6<ENTER> 790 ÷ ÷) 666,265 square kilometers. A big area, no? Well, let's look further...

Upon examining the US, we find out that Texas fits the bill nicely. In fact, Texas has 261,797.12 square miles of land, and that is (261792.12<ENTER> 1.602<ENTER> 1.602 × ×) 671,877.17 square kilometers! Which is, in fact, more than the area we need to house all 7 billion of us at typical New York City densities. Meaning every man, woman, and child living and breathing on the face of the Earth could fit in relative comfort within the land territory of the State of Texas...​

And here you go again with your recommedation that everyone in the world pile on top of each other like skyscraping manhatteners.

Absolutely ludicrous.

Your math runs afoul of the milk of human kindness.

Also, your apologetic about "well since NY city is in the U.S. and Americans are freedom loving in their wide open spaces, it must be acceptable to everyone" is so much BS that you must have had to hold your nose while you wrote it!

No one wants to live the way they're forced to live in Manhattan. Take a poll and find out their druthers, and they'll tell you that, under no uncertain terms.

Your Manhattan example is simply an example of the very problems lack of population management has caused!

Plus your Manhattan-filled Texas example is simply farcically ludicrous as it could never, ever happen.

Solutions must be real world solutions, not fantasy abstract exercises is meaninglessness.

You'd think by now people would be tired of embarrassing themselves with that "NY City inside of Texas" sophistry.

traffic? really? your Great Self-Proving Scientific Evidence comes down to one-liners about traffic?

And here you say that neither the U.S. or the world suffers from vehicle traffic jams.

But, of course, you provided no dispoving links on this one, probably partly because it's really hard to ideologically disprove a known fact ..

.. And that you reside in Japan where people are packed into the metropolitan streets like sardines, well, you just couldn't be linkly-dishonest about this one that strikes so close to home, could you.

You have nothing here but denial.

 

[Ontologuy]

:lamo is the result of too little population growth! Medicare is paid for by current workers, and is currently slated to go bankrupt due to the lack of enough younger workers paying into the system and high inflation in healthcare costs. but high healthcare costs aren't driven by overpopulation, but rather by a failed third-party-payment system. How do we know? Because when we switch to a market model, costs go DOWN.

Your little grasping-at-straws links in no way reflect relevance to the world's great crisis with healthcare being both very limited in availability due to great shortages in qualified medical practitioners, machinery, supplies and drugs, and due to the skyrocketing high cost.

If we had less people, there'd be less such shortages, as the reduced demand would both increase the percentage of resources available to meet demand and lower costs.

But here you reveal your penchant for poll-option response number one: the more peple there are in the world, the more money we can make off of them.

Your perspective is indeed very cynical, though typically conservative.

see previous figures for the amazing story of people being lifted out of poverty in the past couple of decades.

And here, of course, you purposely ignore the dog-eat-dog fight for living-wage jobs that are growing ever scarcer because of your additional penchant for poll-response option two: the more people there are, the more wage-slave cheap labor there are for businesses.

Yep, you're doing a good job of illustrating why conservatives prefer to ignore the pending disasters of population mismanagement: it isn't profitable for you Ferengies!

Incomes have risen for all quintiles in the United States even as we helped lift hundreds of millions overseas out of poverty. Some argue that the vanishingly small income rise for the bottom 10% counts as a slight pay decrease because poor people now want to buy lots of things like iPods and flatscreen televisions that weren't available in the 1980's. But no one (scratch that: no one familiar with the data) has been so foolish as to argue for "Drastic Reductions in Living Wage Incomes".

Your chart doesn't illustrate the point you say it does!

But if you look at the percentiles themselves, you'll see that only the green-line 80th percentile had living wage jobs by American standards.

And, your little graph omits the last nine years where out-sourcing jobs was really ramped up leading to the mass wave of lost jobs for those so-susceptible: sub-primers .. thus leading to the sub-prime securities fiasco that ramped out-sourcing up even higher.

You need a more current chart to reflect reality .. and I'm sure there are better ones available than your puposely chosen obscure choice.

Again, you have nothing but misdirection-based inaccuracy.

Without a way over-populated planet, and hey, without the foundational dominoe Reganomics that opened the major doors wide to such unethical behavior, we wouldn't be in The Great Recession mess we're currently in.

Actually Oil Reserves are constantly INCREASING, along with our ability to reach and tap previously abandoned or deemed untappable reserves. We have more oil in the Rocky Mountains ALONE than Saudi Arabia HAS, and we have only just BEGUN exploring and exploiting. Meanwhile, our Natural Gas reserves have increased by 35% over the past couple of years.

It is estimated that some major foreign sources will begin to run out of light sweet crude by 2018. We are not at all prepared for the result of that over-use caused by population mismanagement.

Our discoveries in north western North Dakota there by Montana and Canada require fracking, a timely and costly extraction process, and, at best, this less than perfect grade crude will last us at current population rate only about 40 years. That's not an acceptable long-term solution, obviously.

Natural gas has not yet been shown to be a workable alternative to oil based liquid fuels.

And our own reserves are only about 20,000,000 barrels of proven reserves, which at 2009 production levels, would be all gone in just eight years.

Again, your links have not addressed, both ours and the worlds needs.

And, considering in just 38 years we'll have added the equivalent of both another India and China, no, you've answered nothing -- we're in a major world of hurt here.

Again, the only real solution is to reduce population fast, as we yet have any alternative energy source for mobiles yet even on the horizon.

and aliens with giant space lasers!

seriously, 30% of "White" Americans have African blood in them, and the number is significantly higher for African Americans. Hispanics are a mix of European and Native American with some African, and don't even get started in the places like Columbia or Brazil.

Racism is on a historical decline.

And here you not only give a non-response of irrelevancy, you simply ignore the reality that many of your ideological ilk. and even some in this thread, are quite well aware of the racism inherent in poll-response option six!

You can't just trot out any old link and expect that to be of good-grade value -- I mean really, you might as well have not linked at all!

You are ignoring the reality that as population densities increase, tollerance for diversity decreases in proportion to the increased scarcity of available resources, as India and Pakistan can historically attest.

It's getting worse, racism, not better, despite your racial-minglings mere nothing.

is much lower than it was prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now the world power most likely to actually decide to kick off an apocalyptic war is Iran, who lacks the capability.

Not that much lower, as those nukes still exist .. and all it will take is one election in Russia of a communist -- and they're still trying to climb back in power -- for things to turn vengfully nasty really quick!

Plus you're ignoring nuclear Israel .. and lost clandestine Soviet nukes out there still somewhere .. and that Iran may likely succeed .. plus India v Pakistan for the Kashmir may not be avoidable in the future as we have no more IBM midrange system jobs to offshore to India to placate them anymore .. not to mention what might happen if Germany ever gets the bomb .. again .. and then there's North Korea .. not to mention scientists are now creating back-pack-sized nukes, and just one of those set off in Tel Aviv will likely cause Syria its life ...

... And then there are bioweapons that DNA-target specific races ...

No, don't fool yourself -- as population ramps up out of control way faster than resource production, with no sufficient land available, then like rats overcrowded in a cage begin to neurotically eat each other .. we wil most definitely do the same. In fact, the preamble to this is happening right now in the Middle East.

Zombies!

seriously, "severely deleterious reactions to this primary foundational crises"? you sound like Newt Gingrich.

And here you make light of what you can't post a dollar-profiting link to refute.

There are many, many, more terrible side-effects from population mismangement than the handful of the worst that I've listed.

Denial, simply doesn't serve you .. or your grade on this "paper".

And now, I'm going running.

No .. you've been running already throughout your presentation here -- running away from the truth!

I wasted my upper-body-time on this crap. You owe me for 45 minutes of private tutoring.

Sorry, but you first have to pass the class yourself -- which you've failed to do here -- before I would ever consider hiring you to teach me anything but .. sophistry.

And that's something I don't ever want to learn how to do.

 

[cpwill]

Oh well, I tried. Time to stop feeding the troll.

except for this, this was funny:

And here you go again with your recommedation that everyone in the world pile on top of each other like skyscraping manhatteners.

see, this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about:

You declare that I must be okay for us all to be "crammed" into "skyscrapers" (earlier you referenced Mexico City, but as the disparity between New York and that Capital demonstrate, proximity =/= poverty).

I point out that for that to happen, the world would have to shrink to the size of Texas.

You then triumphantly declare that I am recommending the entire world in skyscrapers.


:roll:


And then I remembered:

Ontological Argument

...The exact criteria for the classification of ontological arguments are not widely agreed, but the arguments typically start with the definition of God and conclude with his necessary existence, using mostly or only a priori reasoning and little reference to empirical observation....

and then it all made sense. :lamo we've been had! :mrgreen: well played, sir.