It should be obvious that when you have more people consuming the same amount of resources, each individual will only get a smaller amount of said resource as before. We have to innovate to increase resource efficiency if that happens. If you aren't convinced by that obvious axiom, consider this: increases in oil prices, salt prices, land prices, etc.; what are they being caused by? Maybe increased global demand due to increased global population, or at least, increased usage of said resources by billions of people? Increased global demand for oil and salt is why they're becoming more expensive. Same with copper and a lot of other valuable physical resources. If you have X amount of resources and N number of people, and N increases and X remains the same, the amount of economic wealth that each person has decreases proportionately, unless some innovation(s) occurs to increase the economic wealth per person. Most people suck at thinking and don't realize this, even though it's mathematically as obvious as 2+2 equals (*)(*)(*)(*)ing 4. My question is this: why is it that people are so opposed to Malthusian-ism?
First off, calling everyone who doesn't think like you an idiot right off the bat instantly endears you to masochists and not much else. How do you expect to get debate going by pretending everyone ELSE is an idiot? Here's the irony. Your post is idiotic. For example, you're pretending like there is only X amount of oil for Y people. That isn't true. There is X PRODUCTION of oil for Y people. X gets used up. Once it is used it is gone, but there is more to be had from the ground. Once it is gone, it is gone. There will be no more sharing of the resource. Is production static? No. Is this as simple as 2+2 = (*)(*)(*)(*)ing 4? Not even close, but thanks for showing us how stupid some posts can truly be. Maybe you should reconsider who really sucks at thinking.
It's rather like the Seventh-Day Adventist. For most people, they begin to lose confidence around the 14th time you declare the end of the world. I thought when the eighties passed without the predicted world-wide famines and wars we'd have some peace and quiet for awhile but now the King has taken those nitwits into his court. Amazing, isn't it?
Or expand the pool of resources, which human societies have done fairly continuously. This, however, was not really the Malthusian argument--which is itself denied by the inverse relationship between resource utilization and population growth. The more resources a society uses, the fewer children they have. Population growth rates aren't really exponential; that was only observed in resource-poor societies. As we've later discovered, education and economic development absolutely crush population growth. X does not remain the same, however. You're right. Most people (including Malthusians) suck at thinking about this. They make all kinds of nonsensical assumptions that don't reflect the evidence, and project out growth projections based on faulty understanding of demographic trends. Because it leads to a lot of horrible policy, the dehumanization of people, and it frankly doesn't reflect reality.
And if Y increases (like say, as of now; Chinese and Indian people are buying a lot more cars due to having all our jobs), then the ratio gets smaller. Well, duh. If you have X production and Y consumers and Y increases, the average consumption per person decreases. In other words, wealth per person decreases. Innovation and increased efficiency etc. can change this, but that's irrelevant.
I still say we should not let poor/stupid people breed but oh well. What kind of horrible policy? That we shouldn't let impoverished people raise kids in abject poverty? If we stop giving poor people the INCENTIVE to reproduce with excessive welfarism and whatever else it is that leftwing hacks support, this country will stop (*)(*)(*)(*)ing breeding failure.
Frankly, anyone can call anyone 'poor/stupid'. Heck I could call YOU that and make it 'stick' if I had enough power. Perhaps you should consider not breeding? (see what I mean?) The whole idea of a government with the power to declare anyone 'poor/stupid' and then have them sterilized should shock anyone with 1 ounce of brain cells.
Ok. How 'bout instead of government, we have the people decide this? Of course, most people idiotically think that people have the right to raise children in broken, impoverished, (*)(*)(*)(*)ty conditions and breed/train failure, but I do not. Period. Never have, never will. That's the whole problem here: you think people have the right to have kids and then raise them in bull(*)(*)(*)(*) conditions.
As population increases, the pool of available resources also expands due to an increase in labor availability. About the only example for which that isn't true are fossil fuels that are expended upon use.
The only way to increase the available base resources in an economy is to violate the law of conservation of matter, unless we travel to other planets.
Intelligence tends towards the median anyway. The children of poor/stupid people will tend to be richer/smarter than they are, and the children of rich/smart people will tend to be poorer/dumber than they are. Trying to control reproduction is a futile effort and needlessly cruel. Needlessly cruel regulations on reproduction; like forced sterilization and the like. We should solve that by... providing an adequate lifestyle for everyone, not by executing the poor. If you really believe that, you'd be dumb enough to be banned from having children under your own proposal.
Hardly. The pool of resources a society has available is not every ounce of a resource available anywhere on Earth. It's the pool of resources they can actually access right now for production. There are many ways to expand that. And frankly our use for resources change over time reflecting innovation and changes in technology. Finding a way to replace one rare resource with another common one has a significant effect on the ability for a society to maintain production in a resource shortage. Okay? There's plenty of others, especially if we include asteroids and comets. It's only science-fiction because we've got so many untapped resources on Earth.
Copper is a conserved quantity on Earth. Oil is. Fossil fuels in general are. LAND is. Space itself is. Air is. Water is. Everything is. Until we create the nuclear technology to convert atoms into other types of atoms and develop the chemical ability to make any desired chemical economically from these artificial atoms, we will suffer the inevitable consequences of supply and demand..fixed supply of raw materials, increasing demand from increasing populations.
eh who cares. Forced sterilization should only be done to deadbeat pieces of (*)(*)(*)(*) that have too many illegitimate children, and perhaps welfare queens. Not anyone that doesn't deserve it. We shouldn't violently kill anyone, ever. However, we shouldn't have an economically destructive/leeching welfare state either.
"He who isn't a liberal under 25 has no heart, and he who isn't a conservative above age 35 has no common sense". I don't consider myself right-wing, but I do consider myself "conservative" (i.e. fairly minimal government) and also can't see the logic behind a massive welfare state. It is pure parasitism and economically destructive. It does nothing but hamper everyone else for the irresponsibility of those on welfare, when it becomes as massive as most leftists want it to become. To not realize that is lunacy.
I love it when people pretend they are smart and everyone else is dumb and then they prove the opposite is true. If you have X production and Y consumers and Y increases, you increase X. X is not the resource. X is the means to produce the resource. X is not fixed, nor is that fact irrelevant unless someone is trying to make an irrelevant point by lying about the truth.
Ultimately, X is fixed due to the law of conservation of matter. But in any case, it requires a lot of time and economic production to actually increase X; it requires a lot of innovation (usually technological) to actually do so. Population usually grows way faster than such technological innovation can take place to compensate.
Listen very carefully. X in your examples is NOT the resource but the ability to produce the resource. Your bull(*)(*)(*)(*) example is only valid if ALL of a resource has been found and is available to the population. Is this the case? No. Let us stick with oil. Right now OPEC restricts production of oil They can increase production globally with the stroke of a pen. No need for technology. No need for innovations. No need for time or economic production. Think the population can grow faster than OPEC can open the valves wider?
Malthusianism formed the basis for white supremacy, abortionism, Western imperialism, international war, and Nazism. It is the single most destructive ideology in modern human history. Contrary to the mysticism believed in by its defenders, it is totally baseless and indefensible. Limited resources? No such thing except for manufactured shortages such as occurred during the Great Depression and both World Wars. The fact is that resources existed then and there are plenty more available today. Let's take a closer look at the delusion that there is a food shortage: some argue food resources are limited and that there is the peril of severely limited availability. That is total rubbish. The fact is that scientific advancements has made commodities such as rice to be very available. In fact, the availability is virtually limitless. Scientists at the University of Minnesota developed a hybrid breed of rice that can be harvested within a much faster time frame that normal rice brands. Some argue that hybrid foods are dangerous. Again, that is total rubbish as science has proven that corn is not a natural commodity but was engineered by Native America agricultural scientists circa 1500BCE. All this time you and I have eaten corn or meat products from animals raised on corn and no harm has come from consuming any of it. Science can do the same with other commodities. Contrary to the ideas of some deluded pundits, hybrid foods are safe, can be grown and harvested in very short time frames, and can be used to feed millions of people. Same thing with water ~ desalination can purify billions of gallons of water which can be used for irrigation and for daily consumption. Same with medicines and other alleviatives. All these can be stored by the government and put into stations where local officials can readily access them for distribution to those in need. This was the system used in the Bible. Recall from the Book of Genesis how the Pharoah was told by Joseph to store foods because of famine. The advice was followed and starvation was avoided. Therefore, contrary to the ideas of certain right wing delusionals, government does have a role in alleviating poverty and in prevention of illness. Further, government assisted prevention is the proper way to avoid hunger and poverty. Nothing in this prevents churches and local communities from doing the same. In fact, if they follow suit, it would help even more people. This is the way to deal with the destructive ideological crime of Malthusianism.
The U.N. statistics project a continued global population increase. On the expansion of the pool of resources. The current sustainability is thanks to the agricultural revolution made possible by utilization of fossil fuels and introduction of artificial fertilizers. The production of artificial fertilizers is itself an energy intensive process requiring fossil fuels, so when these diminish, artificial fertilizers may be much harder to come by. An extension on resources in the manner of how agricultural revolution has increased yields, will come in form of genetic engineering producing better crops. After that, it's food grown in test tubes. After that, who knows? The Bill Gates Foundation for example is researching methods of obtaining food directly from feces rather than the inefficient way of growing crops in soil. So possibilities are endless, depending on how far you're willing to go compromising ethics, esthetics etc.
Don't forget the gigantic famines in Egypt costing a multitude of lives during the First Intermediate Period. The government then felt powerless and was quickly toppled, one year into a pharaoh's reign. Someone of a hallucinating foresight like Joseph may have helped to avert a famine from a 7-year long milder draught, but it did not take much for the whole system to unravel when conditions got a little more severe. Once again, no perpetual population expansion can be perpetually sustainable, and over-exploitation of resources which it will create carries costs in the quality of life and deterrioration of the environment. The answer is to create policies that will ensure population stabilities rather than seeking magical solutions.
Because every time people thought we (humanity) were about to reach Malthusian limits, there were changes in technology and resource utilisation that made those limits recede into the distance. Somehow that answer was omitted from the poll, even though it is the recorded historical answer to Malthus.
We have not yet mined all of the copper on Earth, meaning that our pool of available copper can expand. No, they aren't. They're expended upon use. Technology provides answers to this; if space truly becomes a premium, people will begin utilizing "land" not used before--barren deserts, ocean habitats, etc. Societies have not even come close to the point where there is no available space to spread into. Highly concentrated populations are almost always there by choice, or because laws require them to be there. You yourself noted a way out of that. Hardly. The vast majority of resources on Earth are entirely unused. We can tap those resources; thereby expanding the pool of available resources. A source of copper buried hundreds of feet underground is not currently in the pool of available resources; but it could be if we needed more copper and had the labor available to mine it. Population growth provides additional labor to explore ever more extreme options for gathering resources. The Earth has more than enough resources to carry present societies over the population hump; and it is a hump, because expanding educational and economic opportunities for the third world will ultimately crush population growth. Far more than any intentional policy would manage. Except the supply isn't fixed. We keep adding more resources to the pool of available resources every day.
