Overpopulation questions

[Philosophos]

So overpopulation is a huge problem because of the limited resources on this planet. What can we do to prevent it and would overthrowing capitalism help? Please also explain with simple words so I can get a main idea of the issue. In addition if you have any legitimate/worthwhile (I don't know which is correct) documentary please don't hesitate to link :grin:

[Creative Destruction]

Well, overpopulation is an issue for areas that can't reasonably sustain its population. I'd figure if you abolish borders (and economic insecurity) and give people the chance to migrate away from areas that are struggling due to overpopulation, then it would be a lot more spread out and the burden on specific resources would be less.

[Tim Cornelis]

Firstly, you will get a lot of misconstrued responses saying that overpopulation is a myth because all people could live into Texas. Which is, as you say, not the issue. The issue is limited resources. If we wanted to live as the average American we'd need three planets.
Secondly, communism would reduce the fertility rate by providing comprehensive social security and birth control.
Thirdly, vertical agriculture.

[Thirsty Crow]

Firstly, you will get a lot of misconstrued responses saying that overpopulation is a myth because all people could live into Texas. Which is, as you say, not the issue. The issue is limited resources. If we wanted to live as the average American we'd need three planets.
Secondly, communism would reduce the fertility rate by providing comprehensive social security and birth control.
Thirdly, vertical agriculture.
The resources are limited only insofar as a static view of the social creation of resources is held. In short, what is now deemed as resources can change with the development of society and technology. This needs to be taken into account for any discussion on overpopulation.

[rylasasin]

Overpopulation is a huge "problem"... For capitalism.

Most resources are "limited" mostly because they are wasted on stupid shit. And other, better resources are not considered at all because certain Bourgeoisie have too high of a stake in keeping their consumption the status-quo.

Example: Food resources are not as limited as we'd like to think. We don't have a lack of food to go around. What we have is a very shitty distribution mechanism. Food is produced for profit, not for human need. If it can't find consumers it doesn't generate profit. And if it doesn't generate profit it's useless to the distributer. While people starve food sits on supermarket shelves until it expires, then it's thrown out.

The problem isn't that there's too many people and not enough food to go around, the problem is that the food doesn't generate profit for the bourgeoisie, and isn't distributed to those that need it the most.

We do however have limited amounts of certain resources like oil. Though there are very sane alternatives (such as solar power), but rather than being implemented en-mass they are at best kept to a minority position and at worst shut out altogether because oil generates too much profit for the oil bourgeoisie to simply let that go.

It also doesn't help that capitalism NEEDS "overpopulation": having more people than there is work generates desperation among the proletariat, and desperation leads to fiercer competition among the proletariat, meaning that the Bourgeoisie can more easily exploit them.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

We are nowhere near the 'overpopulation' mark, if there is one.

Capitalism, in addition, encourages the doomsday scenario of 'over-population' because it is pretty crap at achieving an equitable distribution of resources, so many people needlessly go hungry and have low living standards.

Secondly, capitalism encourages the doomsday scenario because it is not the most creative producer of goods and services. In other words, it is inefficient at transforming inputted resources into outputted goods and services, because it is a system where production is based on profit, not on human need.

Cut out capitalism and you begin to see that this idea of 'overpopulation', at least when the population is barely over the 7billion mark, is totally false.

[Loony Le Fist]

As was stated before, switching to a system based on production for use would alleviate some of the problem. There are a multitude of technologies that are capable of solving the problems in the Third World and overpopulation. The trouble is that in the current capitalist system goods are merely profit instruments. That means there's always the excuse of a solution "costing" too much. Which really means that a capitalist somewhere has decided they can't make surplus value. Never factored in to this, ironically, is the human cost of not solving the problem. We have the technology to solve overpopulation.

Of course it's also been shown that as people become more educated they produce fewer children. I don't know if that's a artifact of the capitalist system (due to awareness of cost), or if it's just a product of people understanding how difficult raising a child is. It might be a combination of both. Contraceptive use of course factors into this.

[#FF0000]

The issue is limited resources. If we wanted to live as the average American we'd need three planets.

What resources, exactly? As far as I can tell, the only issue is our extremely inefficient and damaging means of producing energy.

I have to say, I very rarely see people on revleft saying anything about lack of space being the problem when it comes to overpopulation.

[Creative Destruction]

One of the big issues of "overpopulation" that crops up is the issue over water. We hear a lot about water wars in the third world, and in agricultural areas in the Western world. There was even a feared water shortage for the area in Texas where I was living sometime back.

These issues specifically can be drawn back to the capitalist mode of production. Much of the "water wars" in the third world have to do with privatization of water sources and blocking out access to the poor folks in those countries. Our incessant need for growth, which can be drawn back to capitalist focus on unreasonable and illogical growth for the sake of growth, also puts stress on water sources needed for agriculture and also to serve the need of people generally. An argument could also be made that climate change spurred on by this growth has changed the water situation for a lot of places, like in Syria where they had their worst drought and where some social scientists are starting to say that it is the drought (possibly caused by climate change) that was a huge factor in spurring the crisis over there right now.

[Gold Against The Soul]

So overpopulation is a huge problem because of the limited resources on this planet. What can we do to prevent it and would overthrowing capitalism help? Please also explain with simple words so I can get a main idea of the issue. In addition if you have any legitimate/worthwhile (I don't know which is correct) documentary please don't hesitate to link :grin:

Overpopulation is not a huge problem. Irrational economic organisation is a huge problem. More people is a good thing. Our ancestors, going back not very far, would have been utterly baffled at us now saying that there are too many people around. Malthus was predicting disaster 150-200 years back but he didn't figure in advances in technology with would allow us to produce so much more and he didn't figure in that more people meant greater productive powers generally. We should celebrate more and more people. It is a great thing. The same for the fact we're living longer and longer.

[Red_Banner]

If we could have oil power plants replaced by solar, that would ease up things for other uses such as automobiles.

What sucks is the capitalists apparently do not want wide useage of solar, because that would mean many of their power companies would go out of business.

Yeah sure there is an initial cost of putting panels on homes, but it will eventually pay for itself.

I've found solar works good. It isn't a "pipe dream".

On my camper trailer, I have 3 panels that charge 2 truck batteries.
I have a 17 inch LCD tv that is 12v DC.
Then I have a good power inverter to change it to 120v AC.

[Creative Destruction]

If we could have oil power plants replaced by solar, that would ease up things for other uses such as automobiles.

What sucks is the capitalists apparently do not want wide useage of solar, because that would mean many of their power companies would go out of business.

Yeah sure there is an initial cost of putting panels on homes, but it will eventually pay for itself.

I've found solar works good. It isn't a "pipe dream".

On my camper trailer, I have 3 panels that charge 2 truck batteries.
I have a 17 inch LCD tv that is 12v DC.
Then I have a good power inverter to change it to 120v AC.

Well, tbf, I don't know if it's so much "capitalist" as it is a certain sector of the capitalist class. It's good to keep in mind that, often, individual interests clash with each other. So all of the "green" capitalists come up against a lot of the large energy companies in this regard (even when those same energy companies are trying to greenwash themselves.)

Aside from that, while solar is a adequate replacement for coal-based grid energy for individual houses, it is not yet efficient enough to serve the power demands for the biggest power hogs: industry. It's getting there and there was just a breakthrough two weeks ago where a German university lab was able to make a 44% efficient panel. That's pretty amazing, but it's still a long ways to go in order to get solar to scale right. The good news is that we can do it and there are a lot of people pouring a lot of money into making it happen.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Well, tbf, I don't know if it's so much "capitalist" as it is a certain sector of the capitalist class. It's good to keep in mind that, often, individual interests clash with each other. So all of the "green" capitalists come up against a lot of the large energy companies in this regard (even when those same energy companies are trying to greenwash themselves.)

Aside from that, while solar is a adequate replacement for coal-based grid energy for individual houses, it is not yet efficient enough to serve the power demands for the biggest power hogs: industry. It's getting there and there was just a breakthrough two weeks ago where a German university lab was able to make a 44% efficient panel. That's pretty amazing, but it's still a long ways to go in order to get solar to scale right. The good news is that we can do it and there are a lot of people pouring a lot of money into making it happen.

Fuck distributed generation, centralised will always be more economic (from non-monetary points of view in particular), so fuck this hippie shit with solar panels and wind farms everywhere. Envision gigantic nuclear power stations (and large solar ones in areas with plenty sun, too) and when possible replacing those with more efficient things, envision more effective transmission methods with lower loss over great distances, envision more total energy consumption; while making more effective the use of energy is good, too, the modern method of restricting energy input is shit.

Fuck Greenpeace, the next time those odorous liberal shits lay down on a railway track to stop the transport of nuclear waste or uranium, they better be fucking in for having their heads roll down the embankment.

[JoeHoganSmokyDaHeefa]

People who say over population is not an issue are so agenda driven.

Liberal response to overpopulation is: Everyone in the world can fit in texas.


The problem is as the population expenentially rises, we see pollution, land aridity, water shortages, starvation, homelessness and poverty rise.

I like the idea we are just bacteria here to eat the sandwich. Humans are clearly going to fuck things up beyond saving, but even if we did get this shit solved in time ev entually the sun dies and we all follow suit.

I think we should pollute, fuck, go to war for the next few thousand years and go out like Kane in menace to society.

[Skyhilist]

A lot of people don't believe in overpopulation on here. But I don't think they're really looking at things correctly.

In all likelihood, our population will taper off at around 10 billion people. Now, there are more than enough resources that under a system like socialism, 10 billion people could all be provided for. That's not the problem.

The problem is that with our current population, we're already inherently unsustainable. The environmental impact of 7 billion people is enormous, and detrimental. Although this impact would be lessened under socialism, our impact would still be extremely harmful environmentally due to the large space and resource requirements for 7 billion people. Now, imagine we cut into the earth, developed 50% more, consumed 50% more and increased our population by 50%. Things would be even more of a disaster. We've already caused something known as the 6th great extinction, where species are going extinct at 1000 times their natural rate. 50% more development would only greatly exacerbate this problem... and it isn't just something that we can solve by allocating resources more fairly. The amount of space and resources used by so many people is inherently unsustainable.

So if we want a sustainable planet, we are indeed overpopulated. The only (humane) solution to that is for the birth rate to drop below 2 kids per family. Will that happen under socialism? I can only hope.

[JoeHoganSmokyDaHeefa]

A lot of people don't believe in overpopulation on here. But I don't think they're really looking at things correctly.

In all likelihood, our population will taper off at around 10 billion people. Now, there are more than enough resources that under a system like socialism, 10 billion people could all be provided for. That's not the problem.

The problem is that with our current population, we're already inherently unsustainable. The environmental impact of 7 billion people is enormous, and detrimental. Although this impact would be lessened under socialism, our impact would still be extremely harmful environmentally due to the large space and resource requirements for 7 billion people. Now, imagine we cut into the earth, developed 50% more, consumed 50% more and increased our population by 50%. Things would be even more of a disaster. We've already caused something known as the 6th great extinction, where species are going extinct at 1000 times their natural rate. 50% more development would only greatly exacerbate this problem... and it isn't just something that we can solve by allocating resources more fairly. The amount of space and resources used by so many people is inherently unsustainable.

So if we want a sustainable planet, we are indeed overpopulated. The only (humane) solution to that is for the birth rate to drop below 2 kids per family. Will that happen under socialism? I can only hope.

While I agree capitalism is an inefficient system, you can't say socialism is any more efficient, but rather far less, if you are talking about state capitalism like we saw in supposedly socialist states.

If you mean socialism in the marxist sense of communism, stateless, classless, money free society where production is controlled by the masses and we produce to make things, with no profit system or surplus value being extracted from a monied wage, then you can't really say that will be efficient other, because we have never seen it.

We can predict, I just think the certainty of something that has never been done being affective is like being a christian. we don't have all the asnswers, just like the jesus freaks don't.

But yeah I agree, that the technological and productive advancement of our species along with the lowering birth rate are possible solutions.

as far as most people on this site not agreeing, that is because it goes against their agenda. It is the same response we see from white nationalists about the holocaust and the same reaction we see from windows users against macs and vice versa.

They are on an ideological team, they rep that team like their name is Ray motherfuckin Lewis.

[Skyhilist]

While I agree capitalism is an inefficient system, you can't say socialism is any more efficient, but rather far less, if you are talking about state capitalism like we saw in supposedly socialist states.

If you mean socialism in the marxist sense of communism, stateless, classless, money free society where production is controlled by the masses and we produce to make things, with no profit system or surplus value being extracted from a monied wage, then you can't really say that will be efficient other, because we have never seen it.

We can predict, I just think the certainty of something that has never been done being affective is like being a christian. we don't have all the asnswers, just like the jesus freaks don't.

But yeah I agree, that the technological and productive advancement of our species along with the lowering birth rate are possible solutions.

as far as most people on this site not agreeing, that is because it goes against their agenda. It is the same response we see from white nationalists about the holocaust and the same reaction we see from windows users against macs and vice versa.

They are on an ideological team, they rep that team like their name is Ray motherfuckin Lewis.

Let me tell you a story. My father used to run a recycling program in the south. Each day, large companies like WalMart would throw out perfectly good items just because they couldn't sell them -- they sent them straight into the landfill. It was illegal for people to take them no matter how badly they needed them. It was better in WalMart's eyes to throw these things out than for people who needed them to have them. My dad who was in charge of running things would tell people "I'm going to leave for an hour, and if anything goes missing, I probably wont notice."

Anyways, my point is that, this is the type of wasting that we can clearly associate with capitalism. There would be no incentive to throw these things out when people needed them without a profit motive. Nor would there be any motive for infinite expansion into the environment. Capitalism rewards economic growth even when it harms the environment, and is therefore responsible for most environmental harm. Take away the profit motive for this, and it's not hard to see how the problem is lessened.

It's not hard to see how a lot of environmental harm is the result of money and profit. Take this away with socialism (I use that word interchangeably with communism) and you at the very least lessen the problem, by taking away one of the biggest causes of environmental destruction. Unlike religious people, we have plenty of evidence to support this. Now, as you say that isn't to say that just establishing socialism is sufficient. We must be ardent ecosocialists who seek to improve our environmental impact as much as possible if we want to salvage the situation on this planet. We can't be complacent with eliminating capitalism and think that it'll solve everything.

[JoeHoganSmokyDaHeefa]

Let me tell you a story. My father used to run a recycling program in the south. Each day, large companies like WalMart would throw out perfectly good items just because they couldn't sell them -- they sent them straight into the landfill. It was illegal for people to take them no matter how badly they needed them. It was better in WalMart's eyes to throw these things out than for people who needed them to have them. My dad who was in charge of running things would tell people "I'm going to leave for an hour, and if anything goes missing, I probably wont notice."

Anyways, my point is that, this is the type of wasting that we can clearly associate with capitalism. There would be no incentive to throw these things out when people needed them without a profit motive. Nor would there be any motive for infinite expansion into the environment. Capitalism rewards economic growth even when it harms the environment, and is therefore responsible for most environmental harm. Take away the profit motive for this, and it's not hard to see how the problem is lessened.

It's not hard to see how a lot of environmental harm is the result of money and profit. Take this away with socialism (I use that word interchangeably with communism) and you at the very least lessen the problem, by taking away one of the biggest causes of environmental destruction. Unlike religious people, we have plenty of evidence to support this. Now, as you say that isn't to say that just establishing socialism is sufficient. We must be ardent ecosocialists who seek to improve our environmental impact as much as possible if we want to salvage the situation on this planet. We can't be complacent with eliminating capitalism and think that it'll solve everything.

All you just told me is capitalism uses an inefficient and environmentally harmful mode of production, you didn't show me proof communism would work or would help climate change or help overpopulation, because there is no evidence for any because we can't read the future.

Hyperbolic/heart warming story was still nice though, despite being what officer Riggs would call "pretty fucking thin"

[Creative Destruction]

Fuck distributed generation, centralised will always be more economic (from non-monetary points of view in particular), so fuck this hippie shit with solar panels and wind farms everywhere. Envision gigantic nuclear power stations (and large solar ones in areas with plenty sun, too) and when possible replacing those with more efficient things, envision more effective transmission methods with lower loss over great distances, envision more total energy consumption; while making more effective the use of energy is good, too, the modern method of restricting energy input is shit.

Fuck Greenpeace, the next time those odorous liberal shits lay down on a railway track to stop the transport of nuclear waste or uranium, they better be fucking in for having their heads roll down the embankment.

Wow. You need to calm the fuck down before you give yourself a heart attack.

With distributed generation, it makes it a lot less likely that things can go awry when a piece of a grid goes down, like in natural disasters or what have you. And I never said I was against nuclear completely. I think nuclear is a good transition technology, but eventually power needs to be appropriate and it needs to be ecological. Nuclear power still takes a lot of resources and mining uranium still has a big environmental toll. There's also the issue of possible meltdowns, even with the newer, better technology, whereas that doesn't exist with solar or wind technology.

Aside from all that, I'm not completely sold -- just yet -- that solar will be able to meet our industrial energy needs (again, the biggest user of power), even when we get to a high-standard of efficiency. However, if we had distributed solar power, that'd be just that much more resources to dedicate to industrial power and we could also probably end this phenomenon of rolling brownouts and blackouts, as well.

[Skyhilist]

All you just told me is capitalism uses an inefficient and environmentally harmful mode of production, you didn't show me proof communism would work or would help climate change or help overpopulation, because there is no evidence for any because we can't read the future.

Hyperbolic/heart warming story was still nice though, despite being what officer Riggs would call "pretty fucking thin"

The story wasn't hyperbolic at all, that is how it actually happened.

And my point was not specific things that socialism alone would do -- in fact it was the opposite, that is things that socialism wouldn't do. It wouldn't throw things out that people needed creating more pollution and it wouldn't involve expansion or pollution for the same of profit -- because profit wouldn't exist.

Having said that I am not saying that establishing socialism alone is enough. My point is that capitalism cannot be sustainable and therefore must be abolished if we wish to be sustainable. We still must go beyond just achieving socialism and ardently fight for the environment.

[Firebrand]

There is a good book on the subject of overpopulation called "Peoplequake", I can't remember who it's by, but it basically explains that even in developing countries the number of kids people are having is generally going down.

Besides that point it is also important to take into account the effect of built in expiry dates on a lot of technology. In a capitalist economy there is very little incentive for things to be built to last and a lot of incentive for things to be built to break the day after the warranty expires. These things are then thrown away (and yes recycling is a good idea but we have to look at the reality of the situation, most people don't bother), this means that all the resources that go into making the thing are wasted. Even if the stuff isn't designed to break, the constant pressure to have the latest model of whatever massively increases peoples consumption.

We don't know for sure that communism will reduce the rate of consumption but the odds are that it can't be much worse than a system that at its core is based on an ever increasing spiral of consumption. It is impossible to effectively cut consumption in a system that collapses if people stop consuming.

[d3crypt]

i think that overpopulation is a very serious problem, and if you disagree you are oblivious to the facts. I think that in a communist society cars would not be used very often, and we would use green energy. Capitalism is a system that relies on endless growth in a limited planet. It would be easy to stabilize population growth, as people would have access to better education and birth control and this would cease to be a problem. In 1st world countries where people have access to these things, the population growth is much less. The main reason why such harm is done to our environment is because it is profitable for the ruling class. In communism that wouldn't be there.
http://www.susps.org/images/worldpopgr.gif

[Creative Destruction]

i think that overpopulation is a very serious problem, and if you disagree you are oblivious to the facts.

No one said it wasn't a problem. It is a capitalist problem, though.

[Kamp]

i heard from a friend of mine that the world produces more food then it has mouths to feed.
Don't hve any statistics but in my mind it sounds resonable. The problem is that it's placed in piles to rut. the west and many other places lso eats for the sake of eating and that creates the average american.

A wild guess is that it's the same in ceveral topics. However it will one day reach a peak no doubt. The future will hold the answer to overpopulation, what we can do now and tody is to spread the reasorses we have equally and perhaps remove borders and create a borderless world for people to move around in freely.

Humans were created to be free anyway.;)

[Jimmie Higgins]

No one said it wasn't a problem. It is a capitalist problem, though.Right and this is what is wrong with most of the overpopulation arguments. First they tend to be greatly overstated, second and more importantly they imagine that capitalist production is neutral and "the most natural or rational" way for people to get what they need to survive (not that it actually does that very well).

The misanthropic "human-bacteria" argument is a great example of this: bacteria consume to reproduce and do so at pretty constant rates. Humans, on the otherhand, do not just consume the same way, they can change they ways they produce and consume and have done so in a fundamental way many times. It's actually capitalism which must constantly expand, exploit any raw materials it comes across and transform the environment into commodifyable bits - sedintary human populations that don't have major class divides tend to try and find a balance so that the lakes or hunting grounds or land can be replenished and reliably used again.


i heard from a friend of mine that the world produces more food then it has mouths to feed.Yes, the UN has had many reports demonstrating this. Their explaination for world hunger is "problems of distribution" however. I guess in a way that's part of it, but it acts like the problem is that poor people don't have access to roads or ports, rather than the problem actually being capitalist relations and the need for profits and everything that flows from that.