Where do the ruling class get their Malthusian ideas and why?

[RadioRaheem84]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_rsVcAnnnw


Here is billionaire Ted Turner rambling on like a maniac about the world population being too large and that we're going to resort to cannibalism if we do not depopulate the Earth and influence people to just have two kids.

Where do they get this stuff and why re they so obsessed with neo-Malthusian theories and have such a low view of the population not in their top income bracket?

The guy literally believes that if more poor babies are born that we will end up in some Mad Max style post-apocalyptic scenario.

I've even read that some of this junk has seeped into the left too, I believe I read somewhere about overpopulation from the Monthly Review School and even Michael Parenti, who while doesn't subscribe to the notion that it's the poors fault for having too many babies does think that population control would help the global environment.


What is with this notion that the world is too overpopulated?

[danyboy27]

cant be bothered to find you the link but go in youtube and type overpopulation is a myth. saw a verry short and clear video on the subject.

[danyboy27]

the main cause of hunger is war.

[RadioRaheem84]

So then what is the reasoning behind such bullshit in the minds of people with influence and wealth to help steer policy toward neo-Malthusian lines?

[RadioRaheem84]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece

While it's fodder for the right wing NWO crowd, the billionaires club wanted to meet in secret so they wouldn't be painted as a "secret alternative government".

Apparently, they act as if they do not influence public policy, even though they're meeting to help influence public policy towards concerns about overpopulation.



Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, said the summit was unprecedented. “We only learnt about it afterwards, by accident. Normally these people are happy to talk good causes, but this is different – maybe because they don’t want to be seen as a global cabal,” he said.



The issues debated included reforming the supervision of overseas aid spending to setting up rural schools and water systems in developing countries. Taking their cue from Gates they agreed that overpopulation was a priority.

This could result in a challenge to some Third World politicians who believe contraception and female education weaken traditional values.

Gates, 53, who is giving away most of his fortune, argued that healthier families, freed from malaria and extreme poverty, would change their habits and have fewer children within half a generation.

[Tommy4ever]

Where do the ruling class get their Malthusian ideas?

Malthus. :cool:

Any time bro.

[Tablo]

How is overpopulation a myth? Pretty sure the shift of humans from hunter-gatherer to agrarian living was driven by overpopulation. Not saying I think we are going to have any end of the world problem with overpopulation, just wondering why you think it is a myth. Or is it the ideas of Malthus in particular that you see as a myth?

[RadioRaheem84]

What is the general consensus on overpopulation then? Is the world too populated?

[RNL]

Malthus's population principle is wrong, but obviously there are physical and social limits to the Earth's capacity to support human civilization. And it's important to keep in mind that our current ability to produce enough food for 12 billion people doesn't imply our ability to do that indefinitely.

[Aurora]

What is the general consensus on overpopulation then? Is the world too populated?

No, since thousands of years ago people have been able to produce a surplus this has only gotten bigger over time as labour has become more productive, in a very simplistic analysis this means that the more people in the world the more productive capacity. Obviously there are limitations to this, the size of the world and it's resources and most importantly from a political perspective the limitations of profit that capitalism imposes on the world.
The majority of the world uses very primitive agricultural techniques, with the implementation of a planned economy we could massively develop agriculture around the world with the most modern techniques easily providing many many times more food than we would require. Not to mention the fact that our technological level is constantly increasing and in the most advanced capitalist countries today population growth is very low or at a standstill.

[RNL]

What about peak oil? Our high agricultural yields are dependent on the use of oil-based chemical fertilizers.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Overpopulation is absolutely a myth. There have been many threads on this, even in the last few months. Do a search.

Billionaire Ted Turner: 'adopt global one-child policy' (http://www.revleft.com/vb/billionaire-ted-turner-t146568/index.html?t=146568)

We all complain about capitalism, but what about overpopulation (http://www.revleft.com/vb/we-all-complain-t154407/index.html)

How many people can the earth support? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/many-people-can-t148400/index.html)

Where does it come from? The inability of the system to meet human need, the need for it to attack the living standards of the working class to keep its system going, the need for more profit, the need to curtail development / competition, paternalism, etc., etc., etc.

My posts from recent threads:

Tertullian made the argument in the year 200. Malthus made it in the 1800s. Neither were correct.

Resources are fluid.

Examples: Many years ago, iron was used to basic tools by humans who couldn't fathom that the same material would one day be used to build skyscrapers and bridges that span huge distances. Coal was once used for jewelery by people who never thought it would later power the industrial revolution, and once the industrial revolution came it was used to produce steam power by people who had no idea that power would one day come from uranium. That's because uranium was used to color glass, not as an energy source.

Get it?

The human species is truly brilliant. We continue to find ways to move forward with the things available, and create them where they don't exist.

The problem is not and has never been that there are “too many people,” or “not enough resources.” The problem is social: the capitalist minority controls the tools and technology used to produce the things we want and need.

In a modern society, the labor of 1 person can feed and house more than 1 person. Because of that, and because resources are fluid, there's no excuse for the wants and needs of all to go unsatisfied. There are simply obstacles (i.e. capitalism) in the way.

The Malthusian doomsday prophecies have been around since ... the days of Malthus, and in fact much earlier than that. They always fall flat.

Of course they're useful for powerful people -- who want to maintain their positions of power by restricting the development of everyone else -- and religious hucksters.

* * *

Carbon fuel is controlled by massive corporations that have done everything from limit research to initiate wars to scrap plans for public transportation. Anything that gets in the way is attacked, including the very environment we live in. Profit is their concern, so that's what they pursue.

Do you honestly think a human community wouldn't focus the necessary time and resources on developing the best sources of energy? On maintaining the environment necessary to preserve our species?

* * *


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fOORhFmbA6s/TJjSQcnKMvI/AAAAAAAAB7Y/dPU9eoHCcVY/s1600/Overpopulation+and+Texas.png

[danyboy27]

What about peak oil? Our high agricultural yields are dependent on the use of oil-based chemical fertilizers.


Peak oil is not a mathusian idea, its verry real, and the only reason why its an issue is beccause there are no reason for the cappies to invest in alternative source of energy.

[RNL]

Peak oil is not a mathusian idea, its verry real, and the only reason why its an issue is beccause there are no reason for the cappies to invest in alternative source of energy.
I know it's very real. That's why it's relevent to the question of the Earth's capacity. Our current agricultural yield is based on an unsustainable use of oil-based chemical fertilizers.

I haven't studied this, so I'm not drawing any conclusions, but that is a fact.

[Dacaru]

Marx handles Malthus in the Grundrisse Section F...He calls him a baboon...:laugh:
Essentially Marx argues that Malthus' fundamental flaw is that his abstract geometrically or exponentially reproducing man is separated from the historical realities of a given mode of production. What was overpopulation for say Ancient Athens is like a drop in the bucket for today's late capitalist world. Maybe there is an overpopulation limit for Capitalism as a mode of production but that limit is not the same as the Earth's limit. Again we have ideology equating capitalist limits with natural limits...I know that I am preaching to choir here when I say that the hunger in this world is the result of both maldistrubtion and production investment rooted in the Capitalist relations of production and not in nature's inability to provide enough resources. The wasting alone in this system enormus over and above the structural exploitation. So of course Ted Turner, great lover of humanity that he is :rolleyes: is concerned about overpopulation, capitalism is probably as natural as the sunrising to him. What we should get rid of is the ability for billionaires and millionaires like himself to exist in society!:thumbup1:

[Jimmie Higgins]

So then what is the reasoning behind such bullshit in the minds of people with influence and wealth to help steer policy toward neo-Malthusian lines?

The same as when Malthus came up with these ideas: to create an ideological and pseudo-scientific justification for not aiding the poor and starving. Malthus saw rural and industrial poverty as an environmental "check' to unwanted population growth - that's a convenient scientific observation if you are part of running a system that profits off of exploitation.

The British used these ideas to justify allowing people to starve to death in the Irish famines - famines caused not by overpopulation in the abstract but the monopoly of the best lands for British crop production rather than the traditional farming. The Irish didn't own the good land and so were forced to grow food in poorer areas making things like the potato a staple crop so when the potatoes suffered from a disease, the poor starved while the British continued to export commercial food products out of the country. Obviously the starvation was not a problem of too many people in the abstract, it was a problem with the way land use was divided up and what it was used for.

The US continues to use Malthusian arguments for not sending more relief in times of crisis for poor countries.

[theblackmask]

The reason Malthusian ideas are still around is because they cater perfectly to the needs of the ruling class. The idea of "all these poor people having too many kids" fits in very well within bourgeois ideology.

It also has a racist aspect to it, as most of the ruling class is white. It is also fed on down the line to the "white trash" in a racist attempt to further divide the working class. The reason these ideas have been around for about 200 years is because a) they let the ruling class sleep at night, knowing that the destruction of our planet is the fault of poor people, and b) because they serve as an excellent tool for turning the proletariat against itself on a racial basis.

[Kiev Communard]

The Malthusianism and Social Darwinism are perfect ideologies for the bourgeoisie due to the fact that they explain the existing inequalities and irrationalities of capitalist crises by supposedly "natural" causes, thus putting the blame not on the capitalist mode of production but on the seemingly "objective" Mother Nature itself.

[Jeraldi]

one of the best ways to counter this type of bs is to educate people that people and nature create everything and that money is only a means of trade.

also if we simply stop our process of genetically engineering all of our food and remember that there are other ways to increase agriculture output. so the overpopulation myth is a byproduct of everything else comes after personal profit nature of capitalism.