I'm hearing alot about how WWIII would fix the problem of overpopulation. Do you guys really think killing people is the only way? do you guys take into consideration you might be the ones getting killed.

The Earths population of humans will always have the tendancy to grow as evolution has dictated, given we all have the right conditions. But say we had something like a 3 kid limit for some couples, and if some people didnt want to have kids, ever, then they could give some couples their option of 1 chile voiding their own, so that people wouldn't really be confined.
And to deal with the situation economically speaking, alot of people would be saying by now that the economy would remain stagnant, with a few up's and downs. Ofcoarse it would grow slightly as people end up living longer, and so on, but eventually we would start colonizing other places. growth would not matter as much as we would gain a broader view of the longer future. Maybe the depths of the ocean. Maybe other planets. We would undoubtably have the technology in 50 years, to do such things. human knowledge has the ability to double ever four years. that means in 50 years, humans will have more than 144 times the knowledge we do now, ( about 12, 4's in 50 and square that to acount for doubled knowledge. ) They would be completely feasable innovations. If you guys live to see it, Never forget me telling you now.......I told you so.

thats an interesting statistic, where did you find it????

I've heard it from many different feasable sources like my teachers.

We would undoubtably have the technology in 50 years, to do such things. human knowledge has the ability to double ever four years. that means in 50 years, humans will have more than 144 times the knowledge we do now, ( about 12, 4's in 50 and square that to acount for doubled knowledge. ) They would be completely feasable innovations. If you guys live to see it, Never forget me telling you now.......I told you so.

I have not yet heard this from an official source. It doesn't sound right. We know that research at least does not follow any specific path. It seems to me that technology comes in spikes. It was a giant leap from sliderules to computers, but going from a 90Mhz computer to a 1.8Ghz computer is not quite as earth- shaking.

I have come to accept that imposing children limits would not be feasable without the authority to do so. We need a new agency of Social Engineers. The main goal would be to make it popular to have less children. We can beat overpopulation, but only through cooperation from everyone.

HOW HORRIBLE OF YOU TO EVEN THINK OF USING A WAR TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF OVERPOPULATION.

That problem isn't even accepted as a valid world problem by many. How dare you use the deaths of tens of thousands and potentaly more as an opening shot in debating how to solve overpopulation.

YOU SHOULD BE SICKENEND.

I am sickened. Not by myself, though.

I said I've heard remarks on sciforums where they say a war will solve the overopulation problem. My idea beats the shit out of war. Incase you havent yet noticed. I'm one of the few people on this site who doesnt want to blow up everyone who's a suspected terrorist. I dont want to kill people, but I think it's alright to let them die naturally, and let the world grow with stability. And, thecurlyone, werent you one of the people who wanted to just go over there and possibly start another war.

Teg, you're right that knowledge gaining doesnt come at a steady pace, but when you look at things through a broad perspective and average things out, it eventually comes to double every 4 years. And I dont just mean leaps around issues like technology but in other fields like biology, astrology, math, all sorts of fields. I mean just look at the beginning of the 1900's. Peope were talking about how Everything was already discovered and known. One century ago, flying across the ocean was crazy, then 30 years later, veni vedi vici. 80 years later, It's a very popular option. You can look at any field, and notice it.

There shouldn't be a limit on how many offspring you can have.

That is totalitarian and evil.

tell me how can knowledge of a human being be mathamatically calculated to fit that. I know it is feasable to say that we have come a long way and greatly increased our knownledge. if that were true then the joke about fusion power wouldn't exist

-in 1960 fusion was 20 years away. In 1980 fusion power was 20 years away and in 2000 fusion sounds about 20 years away

Actually, a kid limit isnt cruel. And dont forget about what other stuff I said. --people who dont want kids can give their 1 offspring credit to a couple. You could have as many kids as you want as long as you get the credits. And i also said, when it becomes feasable to colonize other places then the Idea can be changed or lifted altogher.

I am not a cruel tyrannical person.

Well I'm sorry about not fully understanding your first statement.

Regarding overpopulation, the problem is in third world countries that are poor. The developed/richer countries have low birth rates because of contraception, protection, and a very small percentage of abortions contribuiting to a low growth rate.

The more children you have in a farming, or hunter gatherer community in which most of the world's people live, the better, because your workforce is larger. Plus you have a greater chance of propagating your line of genes to future generations. Thats why the birth rate is high in those countries.

As wealth spreads to these countries birth rates will drop, their governments don't have enough power or money to enforce a birth restriction. If they don't do it it would leave the rich countries to enforce it which in turn would be totalitarian.

Everything will be fine, the high birth rate is also acompanied by a high death rate. Nature has a way of balancing things out.

I could be really silly here and say:
You have power problems, so just put the newly born in vats of goo, and keep them alive by feeding the dead ones to the live ones intreveniously.
But you all know thats fiction! right????

How about learning to build Islands, yes you head, more islands more room. In fact since we are going to end up with a bunch of useless oil rigs with no oil to pump, that's a settlement if I ever saw one. Just relocate a bunch and weld them together and viola, a shanty town out at sea.

Overpopulation isn't just caused by Births though, most of the time it's caused by mass imigration of people all trying to live in one area, so that one area suffers.
So for a cheap method of stopping imigrants, BUY Them an Island, this is far cheaper than giving them money for the rest of their life from your social system.
Infact if they have an island to colonise then you don't have to worry about them getting into racist rows, as you can send imigrants of the same type to that island.

Give them a bit of hand getting their settlements up and their food, water and power and perhaps you can have them making things out there.

MCP

I am probably at least one of culprits who's comments sparked this thread.

Overpopulation is a real problem. And I think it will become more evident as we start to realize just how quickly we are bringing the environment to a point where it will no longer sustain us. Overpopulation is not just an issue of having room for everyone. It's about having enough resources for everyone too.

To solve the problem by making changes to the way we do things would take a complete re-ordering of the way we, the people of the world, approach life and the planet we live on. And we would have to start now. Because by the time the people in charge are willing to admit something has to be done, it's going to be too late. If it's not already too late. Our society consumes so much, so fast that it's already feeding on itself.

It's a nice idea, but we are not going to convince the people in power to end this trend of consumption. Our machine is going to chug away until it crumbles and the people of the earth are forced to deal with disease and famine due to the steady stream of poisons we release into the air, ground and water. Unless, of course, a huge war can both force us to re-build and convince us to do things differently before the machine can die on it's own.

I am not saying that I condone war, or even that I LIKE the idea. I just think that great loss of human life is a forgone conclusion. I suppose we could stumble upon some miracle technology that allows us to begin populating other astral bodies within our solar system, but I'm still not sure that would prevent the catastrophe on earth.

And I can't speak for others that may have made similar remarks to mine, but I most certainly HAVE considered that I could be one of the ones to die. But I have already been sure I was going to die on a few occasions. As a result, I love life all the more. But I also kind of feel like I'm living on borrowed time.

Don't lose any sleep over me, though. I could be wrong. And I'm not one of the ones screaming for war, and even if I was, I'm in no position to start one.

You MAY want to lose some sleep over the my (the US) government, though. They are going to bring our military into action, and the world is ripe for escalation of those actions.

Has anybody watched a television serial in Showtime called STARGATE where the ascend released a bio agent to sterilize the population?

We now have the technology to do this too. Does it give you any ideas?

The world knowledge is now at 700 Petabytes and could double in 3 to 4 years.

I didn't see that, kmguru. But then, I don't have a television, so why would I? I hope no one decides to sterilize all of us. If we lose the ability to reproduce, we may as well throw in the chips and leave the table.

First of all I love STARGATE! I'm glad you like it kmguru, I forgot to mention that as one of my favourite sci-fi films (and series).

One thing I havn't heard mentioned here is that education is the key to solving overpopulation. You will find in developed countries a lot lower birth rate than in third world countries. This is because people use protection plus we are all to busy working to stop to have children or even get married if so inclined.

Our government was getting worried earlier this year with our birth rate. I think its about 1.7 per couple or something. So if we cut out immigration we will get smaller.

Also, with x child policies you get families as in China chucking out(literally) there girl children and trying again for a boy. I saw a poor woman in China once who lived at a dump and she had rescued about 5 girls which were thrown out. She can barely afford to keep them but she tries and can not reject taking them if she sees another child(girl) in the dump.

As well as this you have the sick way the babies are killed. A needle through the top of its head as it is coming out of the mothers whomb. Not very nice for all parties involved.

I would never support that kind of treatment of a baby or even animal. Needle through its head....what the hell. If you have a child illegally I ment then it might mean a fine for expenses on strenuating the pressure on land and economy, or something like that. I'm not that kind of a cruel person, No way, I'm not anything like that, I dont even support the death penalty.

BTW I also wanted to say, as the words of Ghandi, be the change you want to see in the world. So what that we dont have an overpopulation problem here, is it not important that we set an example for those poor nations and the rest of the world.

One thing I havn't heard mentioned here is that education is the key to solving overpopulation. You will find in developed countries a lot lower birth rate than in third world countries. This is because people use protection plus we are all to busy working to stop to have children or even get married if so inclined.

A few items:

Osma has 52 brothers, do not know how many sisters. Blood is thicker than water...Certain religious communities believe in the old adage: Be fruitful and multiply....so multiply...they do. Catholics do not believe in Birth control. Chinese believe strongly.

It is not the education, it is no time to take care of the babies - that is what keeps number of kids down. Mormons are required to have 6 kids per family so their clan can grow fast and cover the planet. Moslems do feel the same. Who will win? In two hundred years, only Mormons and Moslems will be living to fight the battle to win this planet.

What this means, I have no idea...I am just rambling....

That is just a stupid assertion. War and killing do not constitute an effective way of controlling the population. A little basic math and some knowledge of history is helpful in figuring this out. Consider the following:

If you were to calculate the total death toll for all of the major wars, genocides, repressions and man-made famines of the 20th century (ie. the First Sino-Japanese War, Armenian Genocide, Herero War, Boer War, Massacre at Nanjing, Congo Free State; the Mexican Revolution, all of the combat deaths during WWI & WWII, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the Great Leap Forward; the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Pol Pot, Saddam, Idi Amin, Suharto; the Soviet-Afghan War, the Shah of Iran, the Iranian Revolution, Angola, Mozambique, East Pakistan 1971, all of the Latin American "Dirty Wars" of the 60's, 70's and '80s; the Eritrean conflict, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Rwanda, Burundi, Rhodesian Bush War; all of the Israeli wars, the Falkland Islands, the Gulf War, Colombia, Panama Invasion, the drug cartels etc.), the maximum reasonable figure stands at about 250,000,000 people.

With a total global birthrate of 340,500 daily, it would only take 734 days, 5 hours, 8 mins, 35 seconds and 4 decisecs to compensate for a century of man-made carnage. In addition to this, many of the prominent population booms that have taken place throughout history (except for maybe the industrial revolution), take place in the aftermath of major conflicts. With this said, it is not only unethical and cruel to resort to violence as population control, but impractical as well. I rest my case.

The developed/richer countries have low birth rates because of contraception, protection, and a very small percentage of abortions contribuiting to a low growth rate.
Since the turn of the century, the Russian government has repeatedly stated that a declining population is the country's most acute problem. The reasons listed are numerous... a decling birth rate coupled with a rapidly rising death rate. Declining marriage rate/increasing divorce rate. Drug and alcohol abuse. Prostitution. HIV and other STDs. Poor medical care. Economic burdens. Depression. A very high abortion rate. The sex-slave mafia. Increasing emmigration with no influx of replacement immigrants. It is estimated that 2.5 births per female is required to maintain the population. Russia is down to 1.7 and this is expected to contunue plummeting. Many Russian demographers feel that this situation is now irreversible.

The same problem plagues Ukraine and Belarus...

Russia:
1991: 148,689,000
2009: 141,909,000
Net: -4.6%
Estimated: 2025 - 125,687,000 / 2050 - 104,258,000

Ukraine
1989: 51,452,034
2012: 45,633,600
Net: -12.75%
Estimated: 2025 - 39,569,000 / 2050 - 29,959,000

Belarus
1989: 10,151,806
2011: 9,467,300
Net: -7.2%
Estimated: 2025 - 9,335,000 / 2050 - 8,305,000

YouTube: RT News: Russia's population decline speeds up (http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=WAg20BfDxMo)

Interestingly enough, although the reasons for population decline are varied and myriad, all three border nations suffered exceedingly high population losses during World War II.

I don't believe overpopulation of the Earth is likely, perhaps it can happen in certain areas but other parts of the planet can be used to sustain them. If the human race combined its efforts on advancement we could probably be traveling the stars in 100 years. I read a statistic that is a little outdated being from the 90's but it said if the U.S. reduced its meat consumption by 10% we could end world hunger. this is because it takes significantly more land to produce meat than it does vegetables. Also large sparsely populated and fertile areas can be transformed into mega farms, this combined with fusion tech or other free energy would make feeding double the Earths population quite easy. Petroleum based megafarming however is not very good. Also genetically modified plants that aren't evil like monsanto would help us produce more with less. Overpopulation is a myth. Free energy would require much less wasting of resources.

Overpopulation has and does occur in parts of the earth all the time. Which results in a lot of death through famine when food stuffs are not available. This culls the population back. Which then starts to climb again. No different than any other species. So, it seems we're already at overpopulation for the way we organize ourselves. This is what it would look like - pretty normal huh?

Not normal at all to accept humans dying and living in hunger.

I probably should have said 'natural'. Humans, like all animals, expand their population which collapses, and then expands again. "Overpopulation" IS occurring as it does for all animals. Lots of human populations in African go through population collapse due to overpopulation. Unless you're going to prevent human expansion as China did, then I'd expect it to happen in areas where human population exceeds resources.

My point is mostly that the planet can support the growing population but overpopulated areas can not independently support themselves.

My point is mostly that the planet can support the growing population but overpopulated areas can not independently support themselves.You would agree there is an upper limit to the total number of humans Earth can support? Before we reach that limit there will be a limit that can comfortably be supported. These limits will be reached at various places at different times.

I personally think the earth pasted the comfortable limit about 2 billion humans back and would like to see our numbers go into decline through natural reduction in child birth to two per couple.

Exactly how is overpopulation being defined here?

1. One could say as long as you can feed all the people, then you don't have overpopulation.

2. Or you could say, overpopulation can be defined by the stress we are putting our biosphere under.

In the first, we are supporting the population growth with our technology, which in reality is more like building a house of cards. The number of ways that house of cards can come tumbling down are to numerous for me to list here. (It will happen sooner or later) But then starving billions of people is natural, which makes it okay,right?

In the second, humans are currently causing a major extinction event, which will make our planet a less desirable place to live. But then future generations won't miss what they never had, right?

there is a video thats part of a series some guy is doing. I didn't fact check it or anything but I still believe with some advancements in LENR tech or something like that the human race will prosper on Earth and else where in the solar system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZVOU5bfHrM

and here it is, apparently I needed twenty posts so

You guys haven't been reading your memos. The second derivative of population went negative in the early 1980s. I.e., the rate of growth has been steadily dropping for thirty years. The first derivative (rate of growth) is universally predicted to fall to zero sometime near the end of this century at a peak population right around ten billion.

At that point the rate of growth will continue to fall. In other words it will become negative and population will begin to shrink.

The reason is that prosperity turns out to be the best contraceptive. As poverty decreases people have fewer children for a variety of reasons.They can afford contraception. They don't need to have ten children to ensure that two of them will reach adulthood. They don't need progeny to take care of them in their old age. They have other interesting and entertaining things to do at night besides staying home and reproducing.Just a few years ago we reached the milestone at which less than one billion people live in poverty. At about the same time we reached another milestone: For the first time since anybody's been keeping track, less than half the population of Africa lives in poverty.

As a result, in places where families typically had twelve children they now have seven. Where they had eight they now have five. Where they had four they now have two.

In the Western countries the birth rate has already fallen below replacement level--approximately 2.1 children per woman, allowing for childhoold mortality. This phenomenon is masked by immigration in the USA and Europe, where, paradoxically, many native-born people rail against the immigrants who are propping up their social security schemes. Japan does not welcome immigrants and makes it very difficult for them to become citizens, and in that country the falling birth rate is a crisis as a smaller number of working young people support a larger number of retired old people.

So stop worrying about a problem that no longer exists. The still-sparsely populated Western Hemisphere can grow enough food to feed more than ten billion people and still restore our rainforests. Even the USA is a net exporter of food, although in shame I must admit that it's largely corn ("maize" to you Brits), not one of the world's more nutritious plants.

Start worrying about the problems that are already starting to hit, such as (in the USA) the imminent collapse of Social Security. When it was launched there were something like six workers for every retiree. Today there are only three. You kids will be retiring at age 80, although you may not notice because you'll still spend all day sitting at your computers. ;)

Perhaps the biggest problem is that every economic model since Adam Smith implicitly relies on a steady increase in the number of producers and consumers as its engine of prosperity. The last time the population of Homo sapiens underwent a major shrinkage was something like eighty thousand years ago when we were still nomadic hunter-gatherers with tools made of stone and wood. So we're not really prepared for this. :)

I have not yet heard this from an official source. It doesn't sound right. We know that research at least does not follow any specific path. It seems to me that technology comes in spikes. It was a giant leap from sliderules to computers, but going from a 90Mhz computer to a 1.8Ghz computer is not quite as earth- shaking.

I have come to accept that imposing children limits would not be feasable without the authority to do so. We need a new agency of Social Engineers. The main goal would be to make it popular to have less children. We can beat overpopulation, but only through cooperation from everyone.

Technology is increasing logarithmically. We are 10 years away from having laptops that are as powerful as a human brain; cell phones that have enough logic to know when you're addressing it and process requests accordingly; and weak AI in larger computers. We are 25 years away from laptops having more computing power than every human brain on Earth, strong AI in numerous devices, augmented reality and nano-technology the likes of which we cannot imagine Pretty cool. All I need to do is make it another 30 years and I'm home free. After that, I can die peacefully (if at all).

~String

Technology is increasing logarithmically. We are 10 years away from having laptops that are as powerful as a human brain; cell phones that have enough logic to know when you're addressing it and process requests accordingly; and weak AI in larger computers. We are 25 years away from laptops having more computing power than every human brain on Earth, strong AI in numerous devices, augmented reality and nano-technology the likes of which we cannot imagine Pretty cool. All I need to do is make it another 30 years and I'm home free. After that, I can die peacefully (if at all).

~String

Nothing ever happens as fast as we might like and I'm betting your predictions are a bit optimistic. But I do believe higher populations are responsible for faster advancement. More people researching and inventing means faster advancement. But whether we are going to advance fast enough remains to be seen.

Nothing ever happens as fast as we might like and I'm betting your predictions are a bit optimistic. But I do believe higher populations are responsible for faster advancement. More people researching and inventing means faster advancement. But whether we are going to advance fast enough remains to be seen.

I'm betting they are not.

People have been saying since Moore's Law that "it would never happen that fast" because they either cannot fathom or are uncomfortable with the prospects of the technological advancement. One of the most researched technologies right now, who's size cuts in HALF every two years is nano-robotics. Robots have already been engineered the size of human cells. Fully functioning robots the size of human cells. Computer technology has doubled at least every 18 months. Do you doubt that?

Well, all you have to do is plot it on a chart and see what that means. It means, in absolute terms, exactly what I said. And people--of course--have been saying, "Well, yeah, we're here now, but it won't be that way in the future."

I remember Kurzweil predicting talking phones, with cameras and access to the WWW by 2015 back in 1995. People literally called him nuts. Back in 1990 when the Human Genome Project had mapped 1/10,000th of the human genome, they predicted needing another 20 years. Kurzweil predicted they'd need less than ten. They finished mapping the human genome by 1997.

Technology advances logarithmically. Technological advancement is increasing, and the rate of increase is increasing. The most powerful computer today in the USA is over 100,000,000 times as powerful as the most powerful computer just 20 years ago.

~String

Really???? Nature has ways of fixing its problems....wars are not the only way

Regards,
Ekei,
Americanwritingcenter

Ah, yes, technology.

Wonderful stuff yet a double-edged sword, the resources for which are contributing in large measure to many of our environmental concerns.

Still, it acts also as a contraceptive in my observation. No one is going to get pregnant while texting or playing video games. :D

Population densities are variable around the globe and wherever a region cannot support the population, I would consider the habitat to be overpopulated.

To examine the population in a global aspect is a false paradigm, IMO. The math might work but demonstrably human nature does not follow such simple logic. Why don't we share the resources with those who have none? What is preventing us?

Simply using the ability to produce food as a parameter is also inadequate for our nutritional needs are but a small part of the total impacts of our species on this planet. :bugeye:

I'm betting they are not.

People have been saying since Moore's Law that "it would never happen that fast" because they either cannot fathom or are uncomfortable with the prospects of the technological advancement. One of the most researched technologies right now, who's size cuts in HALF every two years is nano-robotics. Robots have already been engineered the size of human cells. Fully functioning robots the size of human cells. Computer technology has doubled at least every 18 months. Do you doubt that?

Well, all you have to do is plot it on a chart and see what that means. It means, in absolute terms, exactly what I said. And people--of course--have been saying, "Well, yeah, we're here now, but it won't be that way in the future."

I remember Kurzweil predicting talking phones, with cameras and access to the WWW by 2015 back in 1995. People literally called him nuts. Back in 1990 when the Human Genome Project had mapped 1/10,000th of the human genome, they predicted needing another 20 years. Kurzweil predicted they'd need less than ten. They finished mapping the human genome by 1997.

Technology advances logarithmically. Technological advancement is increasing, and the rate of increase is increasing. The most powerful computer today in the USA is over 100,000,000 times as powerful as the most powerful computer just 20 years ago.

~String

Over all advancement might be moving alone at the pace you are talking about. But you simply can't point to any one technology and say with much certainty where it will be in 10 or 20 years. I've been involved with computers in business and privately for over 40 years now. I'll admit that looking back it seems like advancement was fast, but that sure was not the way it felt at the time. Also, we are coming up against the limits of silicon and while they do have promising research in non silicon computing, I won't be holding my breath waiting on it or trying to predict it. But I know you are still young enough to believe in the promise and hype and who knows maybe you'll be right. I just wouldn't count on it.

Ah, yes, technology. Wonderful stuff yet a double-edged sword, the resources for which are contributing in large measure to many of our environmental concerns.The resource needs of the technology that drove the previous paradigm shift, the Industrial Revolution, had far more drastic environmental consequences than the resource needs of the Electronic Revolution. Look at how China gave everybody a telephone without cutting any trees down to turn them into telephone poles. Look at how telecommuting promises to reduce America's petroleum consumption by 25-35%. Look at how Estonia has become a player in the software market using almost entirely intellectual capital rather than physical--and how Russia launched an effective attack against it without damaging a single molecule of the earth's physical structure.
Still, it acts also as a contraceptive in my observation. No one is going to get pregnant while texting or playing video games.As I noted earlier, prosperity is widely hailed as the most effective contraceptive since it eliminates most of the traditional incentives to have large families, such as infant mortality, keeping a farm running, no social security, nothing else to do at night. All of these diminutions are the direct effects of industrial and/or electronic technology: modern medicine, the ascendence of non-agricultural work, huge economic surpluses, and a dizzying variety of hobbies and other entertainment.
Population densities are variable around the globe and wherever a region cannot support the population, I would consider the habitat to be overpopulated.But that too is a function of technology. As we already know:Paleolithic nutrition technology (hunting and gathering) could only support a world population of a million or two. Neolithic technology (stone age farming and animal husbandry) could feed maybe ten times that many. Iron age technology (metal plows, traction animals towing wheeled carts, etc.) added another zero. Industrial technology (machines driven by the chemical energy in fossil fuels rather than human and animal musclepower) pushed that into the billions.So depending on the level of technology penetration in any given region of the planet, there can be a phenomenal difference between the carrying capacity of two regions of equivalent size, climate and resource availability.

There are still quite a few places that are barely out of the Stone Age and can't quite feed their people. At the other extreme there are industrialized and largely-computerized regions like NAFTA that could feed something like half of the world's population without breaking a sweat, if only the food distribution network could reach them.

As I've pointed out before, the (by world standards) ridiculously underpopulated USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Argentina and Chile could probably feed twice as many people as there on earth. As the end of the current ice age (whether or not our own carbon contributions are accelerating global warming) turns Greenland and Siberia into farmland, we could probably feed the Klingons and Vulcans too. :)
To examine the population in a global aspect is a false paradigm, IMO. The math might work but demonstrably human nature does not follow such simple logic. Why don't we share the resources with those who have none? What is preventing us?You're looking at the problem from the wrong side. The impediments are at their end, not ours. Non-governmental charities in the United States alone ship a veritable mountain of food to the Third World. Unfortunately when it arrives it comes under the control of their despotic leaders. They sell it on the black market and use the money to buy champagne, armored SUV's, Swiss villas, and of course lots and lots of weapons to make war against the despot in the next country over, or against their own highly dissatisfied population.

Fortunately even this problem is yielding to technology. The main weapon of a despot against his own people is not guns but ignorance. The internet and cellular telephony have opened up the entire world to its most downtrodden people. They're learning to read, arguably their own most powerful weapon against repression. They're making contact with each other so they can organize, and with people outside the country who can provide at least encouragement and information, and sometimes even tangible help.

Twenty years ago village leaders in the world's benighted countries blessed Jim Henson and CTV for "Sesame Street" because it appeared so innocuous that their leaders didn't crack down when the village's one TV set was tuned to it for half an hour every afternoon. That one TV show taught their children that it was okay to strive for a better life than their parents had, and gave them the basic tool to begin striving: reading and writing.

Imagine how those village leaders feel about the internet. :)

With every passing decade, the number of people living under despotic governments drops precipitously. (Even though by our smug Western standards we still call China "despotic," the people who live there with their jobs, cars, TVs, computers and Confucian philosophy of respect for their elders no longer think so.)
Simply using the ability to produce food as a parameter is also inadequate for our nutritional needs are but a small part of the total impacts of our species on this planet.Sure, but don't forget Maslow's Hierarchy. We have to feed everybody (Step 1: Survival) before we can even begin to contemplate taking their hands and escorting them to the higher steps.

(Even though by our smug Western standards we still call China "despotic," the people who live there with their jobs, cars, TVs, computers and Confucian philosophy of respect for their elders no longer think so.)

? China is unambiguously "despotic." There's an authoritarian oligarchy that maintains absolute control. That's the definition of "despotic." Plenty of Chinese will tell you this if you ask them - and are you unaware of the long-standing democratic activist movements there? Or the Tibet issue?

And "respect for elders" doesn't so much apply to a state that's run by "princelings."

The next big "preciptious drop" in people living under despotism will very likely occur when China's current system of government fails.

I hate to be the isolationist here, and I can only imagine the losses. In American, the borders need to be closed and immigration reduced to 1960's levels. That's when America's population began to rapidly expand. The the process, I feel that the original intentions of the Founders has been lost.

I have to blame the Cold War and Communism. If the Red Menace didn't have the overwhelming authority in hand to hand combat, we might have been able to set our fears aside and control the numbers of people entering and staying in America.

Too many people and too few jobs might hurt the economy, but it keeps the barracks full in out all volunteer military. One thing is already certain. America will be the most powerful 3rd World Country by 2050. Dumb as door nails too boot.

I hate to be the isolationist here, and I can only imagine the losses. In American, the borders need to be closed and immigration reduced to 1960's levels. That's when America's population began to rapidly expand. The the process, I feel that the original intentions of the Founders has been lost.

I have to blame the Cold War and Communism. If the Red Menace didn't have the overwhelming authority in hand to hand combat, we might have been able to set our fears aside and control the numbers of people entering and staying in America.

Too many people and too few jobs might hurt the economy, but it keeps the barracks full in out all volunteer military. One thing is already certain. America will be the most powerful 3rd World Country by 2050. Dumb as door nails too boot.

Isolationist! Are you kidding me? Isolation is the absolute worst thing we could do. We just need to invest our resources a little better. Also, who cares what the intentions of the founders was 300 years ago? We live in a completely different world now and we need to express intentions to live with others and work towards a sustainable relationship with the Earth.

I hate to be the isolationist here, and I can only imagine the losses. In American, the borders need to be closed and immigration reduced to 1960's levels. That's when America's population began to rapidly expand.Huh??? America's greatest recent population expansion was the Baby Boom from 1946 to 1964. It was the confluence of:The end of the Depression, when people held off having babies because they could barely feed themselves. The end of WWII, when the men simply weren't home to impregnate any (American) women. The unexpected postwar economic boom that gave everybody a job and a spacious home of their own in the suburbs ready to be filled with children.Sure, there was another miniature baby boomlet when the Boomers reached reproductive age.

If you're looking for an age when immigration made a significant impact on America's population, you want the post-Civil War Era up through the early 20th century. The Scots-Irish fleeing the English occupation, the subsequent famine in Ireland, the collapse of the German economy under exceptionally incompetent leadership, the Mennonites and Jews looking for religious freedom, the Slavic peoples looking for freedom from repressive religion, the Scandinavians in the northern Plains, the huge influx of Sicilians and other Italic people complete with their crime syndicates... how many Americans do you know personally who can't trace at least half of their ancestry to those immigrants?

The only immigration wave that's been in the news since the Baby Boom ended came from Mexico, and man that is so over that our heads are spinning. The Mexican economy has made an astounding recovery (either because of NAFTA or in spite of it, depending on which columnist you read) and today more Mexicans are moving back than are coming here. Mexican immigration is now negative. The only Mexicans who are crossing the border going north in any numbers are the wealthy ones who are fleeing our stupid drug war in their BMWs and can run their businesses from their mansions in San Antonio.

Beyond that, you seem to be a little weak on economics. The fertility rate of native-born Americans has fallen below replacement level, as it has in almost all of the developed world. Our Social Security system would collapse under its own weight except for the moderate influx of immigrants from other countries such as India, China, Colombia (thanks again to our idiotic drug war), El Salvador (victims of a previous generation of American meddling), various former Soviet republics and African nations, all of whom have much higher birth rates than our people and whose children will be supporting us in our old age!
The the process, I feel that the original intentions of the Founders has been lost.You mean the small minority of the pre-revolutionary population who were male, white as the Queen's hiney, owned property and kept slaves? Those sweet guys?

More seriously... as smart as they were and as infected by the Enlightenment as they were, those sweet guys couldn't see the Industrial Revolution coming any more than my grandfather (who refused to have a free telephone installed in his pharmacy because no one would ever feel comfortable transacting business with people they couldn't see) could foresee the Electronic Revolution. When a Paradigm Shift happens, all you can do is thank the people who came before you for keeping civilization going, and then buckle down to figure out what changes the next incarnation of civilization will need, so your great-grandchildren will be as grateful to you.

Overpopulation isn't our problem because it's coming to an abrupt end in less than 100 years. Immigration isn't our problem because immigration is a byproduct of overpopulation aggravated by despotism.

Our main problem is reliance on non-renewable energy sources. Our second priority is worrying about how an economy will maintain prosperity when there is no longer a steadily increasing number of producers and consumers.
I have to blame the Cold War and Communism. If the Red Menace didn't have the overwhelming authority in hand to hand combat, we might have been able to set our fears aside and control the numbers of people entering and staying in America.Good grief, you are truly blind. I'm beginning to see why our political system has become totally dysfunctional. The average American doesn't have a clue as to what's going on. He's still living in 1930.
Too many people and too few jobs might hurt the economy, but it keeps the barracks full in out all volunteer military. One thing is already certain. America will be the most powerful 3rd World Country by 2050. Dumb as door nails too boot.Hey, my friend's son and his wife emigrated to Estonia to start a wildly successful software business. The USA is no longer the only really nice place to live. I'm not even sure I'd call it "really nice" anymore, since the Religious Redneck Retard Revival shows no signs of fading away. Some days I feel like I'm being surrounded by people with whom I really don't want to have to associate. And it ain't the immigrants!

If we were to open up immigration that would just be more people buying goods, getting jobs, paying taxes, and what not. Immigration is very good for the economy. Isolationism is terrible especially when most of the world is just starting to really get going.

Get rid of cars every where! Build a world wide continental high speed rail way based on the world geography, end sovereignty, and all who contribute receive. If you don't do your work, then somewhere else in the world someone is shorted. Do what you love. Live were you love centered with others hopefully. We need a certain amount of everything ex. milk, pigs, radios, ice cream scoops...

We can build giants kitchens, and make chefs be all cool like, like the new fire fighters haha.
You can protect yourself, there will be an army to do nothing but protect free land. No government, just a giant list of what needs to get done. I wanna live in former northern Egypt, or Africa. Maybe Israel. Tonga.

Get rid of cars every where! Build a world wide continental high speed rail way based on the world geography, end sovereignty, and all who contribute receive. If you don't do your work, then somewhere else in the world someone is shorted. Do what you love. Live were you love centered with others hopefully. We need a certain amount of everything ex. milk, pigs, radios, ice cream scoops...

We can build giants kitchens, and make chefs be all cool like, like the new fire fighters haha.
You can protect yourself, there will be an army to do nothing but protect free land. No government, just a giant list of what needs to get done. I wanna live in former northern Egypt, or Africa. Maybe Israel. Tonga.

I agree with getting rid of cars.We need to rid ourselves of the automobile and go with ETT {Evacuated Tube Transport} At first ETT would be a bit slow compared to its full potential but still much faster than the car.Given some time ETT would be running full bore and you would have access to anywhere on the Earth in minutes and hours vs hours and days.Ett could replace all our trucks that criss cross our roads everyday carrying tons of cargo and food.ETT is non polluting and could be ran on renewable energy.

Next would be tackling our energy needs by going with Space based sun energy.As Fraggle as already commented on this in depth I wont repeat it.We
just need it.

That is just a stupid assertion. War and killing do not constitute an effective way of controlling the population. A little basic math and some knowledge of history is helpful in figuring this out. Consider the following:

If you were to calculate the total death toll for all of the major wars, genocides, repressions and man-made famines of the 20th century (ie. the First Sino-Japanese War, Armenian Genocide, Herero War, Boer War, Massacre at Nanjing, Congo Free State; the Mexican Revolution, all of the combat deaths during WWI & WWII, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the Great Leap Forward; the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Pol Pot, Saddam, Idi Amin, Suharto; the Soviet-Afghan War, the Shah of Iran, the Iranian Revolution, Angola, Mozambique, East Pakistan 1971, all of the Latin American "Dirty Wars" of the 60's, 70's and '80s; the Eritrean conflict, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Rwanda, Burundi, Rhodesian Bush War; all of the Israeli wars, the Falkland Islands, the Gulf War, Colombia, Panama Invasion, the drug cartels etc.), the maximum reasonable figure stands at about 250,000,000 people.

With a total global birthrate of 340,500 daily, it would only take 734 days, 5 hours, 8 mins, 35 seconds and 4 decisecs to compensate for a century of man-made carnage. In addition to this, many of the prominent population booms that have taken place throughout history (except for maybe the industrial revolution), take place in the aftermath of major conflicts. With this said, it is not only unethical and cruel to resort to violence as population control, but impractical as well. I rest my case.

Well it would seem, that quite many people, apparently do believe that it makes a lot more sense to "Make love, not war."

That is just a stupid assertion. War and killing do not constitute an effective way of controlling the population..

Actually, it does. With your silly math, you made an invalid logical assertion, namely, you thought that future wars can not kill more people, than what have been killed already. That is obviously incorredct, in the next WW we could easily whipe out 3-4 billions people, and the overpopulation would be solved for a century or so...

I don't believe overpopulation of the Earth is likely, .

I don't know where some of you live, but not in the real world for sure. beside that we already have millions of starving, even in the USA, the real issue is not just surviving, but what kind of level one is living on.

Sure, there could be 10 billion people living in Amish style, but do we really want to?? And there can be no 10 billions people living in a Western middle class level. So it is either or...

Since the turn of the century, the Russian government has repeatedly stated that a declining population is the country's most acute problem.

Since we are talking about world, one country's depopulation can be easily solved with immigration. As long as overall we have plenty of supply, the Russians (or Western countries overall) don't need to worry. They just need to make their country more desirable..

beside that we already have millions of starving, even in the USA, the real issue is not just surviving, but what kind of level one is living on.Most of the misery on earth is the result of despotic governments. That style of government is clearly on the way out: Every ten years there are fewer despotic countries, and a smaller portion of the world's population are living in misery. Just in the last ten years the number of people living in poverty fell below one billion, and the percentage of Africans living in poverty fell below 50%. Sure life is still awful for those people. But if continuing to reduce their numbers by supporting representative governments is the best we can do, history will probably look back on us favorably rather than chiding us for the misery we were unable to banish.
Sure, there could be 10 billion people living in Amish style, but do we really want to?? And there can be no 10 billions people living in a Western middle class level.Balderdash. There are more than enough resources to support a global population at the Western level of prosperity. The USA, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Australia could feed everyone on earth ten huge meals a day. Energy will become a non-issue as the Electronic Age matures and most people no longer have to travel except for socializing and recreation.
Since we are talking about world, one country's depopulation can be easily solved with immigration. As long as overall we have plenty of supply, the Russians (or Western countries overall) don't need to worry. They just need to make their country more desirable..The second derivative of population went negative around 1980. That means that the first derivative will hit zero around the end of this century. (Prosperity turns out to be the most effective contraceptive.) When the world population begins to shrink for the first time in tens of thousands of years, we'll have other problems to worry about. For example, devising an economic system that doesn't depend on a steadily increasing number of producers and consumers to keep the standard of living up.

Does India have a despotic government? I don't think so, and they are on the top of overpopulating Earth. Also, very poor African countries also have a high rate of birth, so misery itself doesn't stop overpopulation.

Food distribution will be always uneven, so it doesn't matter what theoretically is possible. And when we talk about resources, food is just one thing, energy and clean water are the others.

Also, just because you can put 10 people into a 2 bedroom appartment, that doesn't mean you should... We already reached peak oil, and you want to add another 30% to this population? We have been having resource wars already for the last 10 years....


There are more than enough resources to support a global population at the Western level of prosperity.

Really? It can't even support the US people alone, so I don't see how you made that jump in logic...

Really? It can't even support the US people alone,

That's obviously wrong, since it already is supporting the US and many others besides.

The trouble isn't a lack of resources. The problem is that we'll cook the planet and render it uninhabitable if we utilize current technologies on such a scale.

There are about 105 million new people born every year right now. Holding all other things equal, if colonization were the answer and if we had the technology to colonize other planets or the ocean today, we would need to find 105 million colonists to send away each year just to remain at our current population of 7 billion.

How many rockets would it take to carry away 105 million people?

I am still not sure, despite that, that "overpopulation" is the bugaboo some claim. First the rate of increase in the population of the world is falling. The absolute number of people is still increasing, but each year it increases by a bit less, which suggests a leveling off.

Think about this: there are more geniuses alive right now than at any point in human history, all as a result of the fact that we have the largest population. More people means a larger set of people of all types, including geniuses, and they have the ability to improve the quality of life for everyone.

Consider also that the economics is very clear that the problems of famine and drought are not due to a lack of food and potable water. They are due to problems distributing food and potable water. We have food going to waste all over the globe not because it isn't available, but because Local governments, warlords and similar intermediaries in famine hit regions use food-aid as a way to make themselves richer and more powerful. Plus, many unhelpful idiots like to tell impoverished famine struck nations that it would be better to starve than to produce GM crops. Thanks, idiots! I hope there's a special circle in Hell for you!

It seems it was Paul Ehrlich in The Population Bomb who popularized the "overpopulation" hysteria , and he was predicting mass famines and food riots worldwide...except he said that would happen in the 1970s. He was, very simple, wrong. In 1970, on the first Earth Day, he predicted, "In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish."

It you took everyone in the world (about 7.045 billion) and squeezed them into Texas (about 268,820 sq miles which is 7,494,271,488,000 sq ft), then every single person on Earth would have 1,063.77 sq ft (larger than many apartments in Manhattan), which is about a 32' x 32' plot to call their own. While that is a tight fit, since the rest of the landmass of the Earth is larger than Texas, that suggests we're not even close to running out of land, even if we exclude deserts, tundra and other harsh environments.

So what's the problem?

There are definitely good and bad things about a large population, but I see no evidence that the bad things dramatically outweigh the good. For every analysis I have seen that suggests a real issue, there are more recent studies that seem to refute it. In fact, though I haven't looked in a while, the weight of the science I have seen seems to come down against it being a problem, especially in recent decades.

Cavalier

I like the way you are thinking. I too think our current advancement is picking up speed because of the population we have. Just think how much better it could be if all 7 billion people were better educated?

That is just a stupid assertion. War and killing do not constitute an effective way of controlling the population.

Love, and faith work.


A little basic math and some knowledge of history is helpful in figuring this out. Consider the following:

If you were to calculate the total death toll for all of the major wars, genocides, repressions and man-made famines of the 20th century (ie. the First Sino-Japanese War, Armenian Genocide, Herero War, Boer War, Massacre at Nanjing, Congo Free State; the Mexican Revolution, all of the combat deaths during WWI & WWII, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the Great Leap Forward; the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Pol Pot, Saddam, Idi Amin, Suharto; the Soviet-Afghan War, the Shah of Iran, the Iranian Revolution, Angola, Mozambique, East Pakistan 1971, all of the Latin American "Dirty Wars" of the 60's, 70's and '80s; the Eritrean conflict, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Rwanda, Burundi, Rhodesian Bush War; all of the Israeli wars, the Falkland Islands, the Gulf War, Colombia, Panama Invasion, the drug cartels etc.), the maximum reasonable figure stands at about 250,000,000 people.

With a total global birthrate of 340,500 daily, it would only take 734 days, 5 hours, 8 mins, 35 seconds and 4 decisecs to compensate for a century of man-made carnage. In addition to this, many of the prominent population booms that have taken place throughout history (except for maybe the industrial revolution), take place in the aftermath of major conflicts. With this said, it is not only unethical and cruel to resort to violence as population control, but impractical as well. I rest my case.

The only sensical solution is to expand our range and supply, and if need be limit child birth. No cars, no highways, no parking lots. No dirty air.

That's obviously wrong, since it already is supporting the US and many others besides.

Not all of the US's population live on Western standard's level....



The trouble isn't a lack of resources.

Sure it is the problem. We are not just running out of everything, but the developing countries are adding new, richer populations, who want to see their lifes' standard to be improved. Suddenly there is 100 million new car owners in India and China, those automobiles have to run on something....
Extra population needs more heat, land, oh yes, and clean water too... There is already water sortages in the Western USA...

We don't have need to control population. If it is essential, nature will do it naturally. Population is power, just we should see China and India. Most of intellectuals told us that next world leader will be China or India, I think population is the cause.

Not all of the US's population live on Western standard's level....

Did you have some point in there, somewhere?


Sure it is the problem. We are not just running out of everything, but the developing countries are adding new, richer populations, who want to see their lifes' standard to be improved. Suddenly there is 100 million new car owners in India and China, those automobiles have to run on something....

And so they do. The price of oil isn't even particularly high these days.


Extra population needs more heat, land, oh yes, and clean water too...

Plenty of hot land here in the USA, and more than a little water to boot. Other places, too.

There are definitely certain, specific places on Earth that are overcrowded. But as for the Earth as a whole? Doubtful.

Anyway, you do not seem to account for the fact that the carrying capacity of the Earth is a function of technology as much as of available resources. Your views are quite simply out-dated and discredited - and have been since before you were born.



There is already water sortages in the Western USA...

Having myself lived in those exact places for many years, I am unimpressed by these "shortages." All that term means, in this context, is that water is kind of expensive and there are some rules about which days of the week each neighborhood is supposed to water their lawns. It's barely an inconvenience, and the population is still growing rapidly.

And so they do. The price of oil isn't even particularly high these days.

Did you have some point in there, somewhere? Cheap price doesn't mean we are not running out....


Plenty of hot land here in the USA, and more than a little water to boot.

I am sure we could drop 10-20 million extra people on the good folks of the Dakotas, but really, do we want it to be that populous?

You might want to read up on water. Just check out why the water level dropped like 6-9 feet in the last decade behind the Hoover dam....


There are definitely certain, specific places on Earth that are overcrowded. But as for the Earth as a whole? Doubtful.

So the idea would be to make EVERY place crowded? By the way, it isn't just land what is needed for the folks. Generally I would say, Europe is crowded, The USA could handle a 1-200 millions, but I wouldn't want to live here then. Asia is crowded also...


Anyway, you do not seem to account for the fact that the carrying capacity of the Earth is a function of technology as much as of available resources.

And also economy. Why should country A pay for the population problems of country B? Just because theoretically we could put 3 more billions on Earth, that doesn't mean we should, or if that will happen.

Look at this way, when a natural calamity occurs in the future, more people will die...


Your views are quite simply out-dated and discredited

Did you have a point here?


is that water is kind of expensive and there are some rules about which days of the week each neighborhood is supposed to water their lawns.

So why don't we increase the population there by 50% and see how much more expensive the water is going to cost. Maybe you will be able to afford to water your lawn twice a year.

For extra credit, guess what that white line means on Lake Meade?

http://infomotions.com/gallery/las-vegas/Images/Hoover_Dam_intake_tower_1.jpg


For the lazy:

http://www.psmag.com/environment/water-shortages-threaten-the-american-west-lifestyle-31150/

" Between 1920 and 2000, the seven states that share the Colorado River grew from 5.7 million to almost 50 million people. Peter Gleick, co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, says 23 million more people will be added by 2030 amid mounting evidence that our current practices in water use and management are unsustainable."

And that is only 23+ million extra people...

We don't have need to control population. If it is essential, nature will do it naturally. Population is power, just we should see China and India. Most of intellectuals told us that next world leader will be China or India, I think population is the cause.

China, and India are not as advanced as us, the first world leader (possibly first) will come from America.

Did you have some point in there, somewhere? Cheap price doesn't mean we are not running out....

It means that the extra demand you cited (due to development in China and India) is being met. If it were not, the price would be exploding.

Nobody disputes that oil is, ultimately, a finite resource. But that doesn't imply that it won't last a long time yet, nor that we won't invent some alternative system long before it runs short.


I am sure we could drop 10-20 million extra people on the good folks of the Dakotas, but really, do we want it to be that populous?

Why not? Note that there are a slew of other empty-ass states to boot: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, etc. Then there's pretty much all of Canada and Australia, etc.



You might want to read up on water. Just check out why the water level dropped like 6-9 feet in the last decade behind the Hoover dam....

I know plenty about water already. If you don't have any actual point to make about it, and are just going to imply that I'm ignorant, then I'll thank you to fuck right off.



So the idea would be to make EVERY place crowded?

It would be to even out the over-crowded and under-crowded places.


Did you have a point here?

Yes, it was that your viewpoint here relies on out-dated, discredited premises. I thought that was pretty clear, frankly.


So why don't we increase the population there by 50% and see how much more expensive the water is going to cost.

That's exactly what has already happened over the past decade or two, and what will happen again over the next couple of decades. Pretty much all of the population growth in the USA is concentrated in that region.

What will happen, is that we will built some more desalination plants, and maybe reconsider whether lawns are an appropriate type of landscaping for arid climates in the first place.

For extra credit, guess what that white line means on Lake Meade?

http://infomotions.com/gallery/las-vegas/Images/Hoover_Dam_intake_tower_1.jpg



I would agree that it is a problem when too many people live in deserts because then you run into huge collective action problems with respect to water sharing. That is more an issue of needing people to live elsewhere (and there there is plenty of elsewhere to hold them) than it is of overpopulation of the planet as a whole.

That said, the price of water in those deserts should be a constraint on populations there...with the potential problem that the price of water is usually pretty stringently regulated, and held too low.

The Chinese government says that without the already 3 decades long population control, there would be 400 million more Chinese. That is one helluva number. There would be 1.7 billion Chinese. As much as nobody likes such a drastic controls, at least there has been results and also unwanted consequences...
But the bottom line is, we have way less people. After all we aren't rabbits...

There are about 105 million new people born every year right now. Holding all other things equal, if colonization were the answer and if we had the technology to colonize other planets or the ocean today, we would need to find 105 million colonists to send away each year just to remain at our current population of 7 billion.

How many rockets would it take to carry away 105 million people?

I am still not sure, despite that, that "overpopulation" is the bugaboo some claim. First the rate of increase in the population of the world is falling. The absolute number of people is still increasing, but each year it increases by a bit less, which suggests a leveling off.

Think about this: there are more geniuses alive right now than at any point in human history, all as a result of the fact that we have the largest population. More people means a larger set of people of all types, including geniuses, and they have the ability to improve the quality of life for everyone.

Consider also that the economics is very clear that the problems of famine and drought are not due to a lack of food and potable water. They are due to problems distributing food and potable water. We have food going to waste all over the globe not because it isn't available, but because Local governments, warlords and similar intermediaries in famine hit regions use food-aid as a way to make themselves richer and more powerful. Plus, many unhelpful idiots like to tell impoverished famine struck nations that it would be better to starve than to produce GM crops. Thanks, idiots! I hope there's a special circle in Hell for you!

It seems it was Paul Ehrlich in The Population Bomb who popularized the "overpopulation" hysteria , and he was predicting mass famines and food riots worldwide...except he said that would happen in the 1970s. He was, very simple, wrong. In 1970, on the first Earth Day, he predicted, "In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish."

It you took everyone in the world (about 7.045 billion) and squeezed them into Texas (about 268,820 sq miles which is 7,494,271,488,000 sq ft), then every single person on Earth would have 1,063.77 sq ft (larger than many apartments in Manhattan), which is about a 32' x 32' plot to call their own. While that is a tight fit, since the rest of the landmass of the Earth is larger than Texas, that suggests we're not even close to running out of land, even if we exclude deserts, tundra and other harsh environments.

So what's the problem?

There are definitely good and bad things about a large population, but I see no evidence that the bad things dramatically outweigh the good. For every analysis I have seen that suggests a real issue, there are more recent studies that seem to refute it. In fact, though I haven't looked in a while, the weight of the science I have seen seems to come down against it being a problem, especially in recent decades.

The many species that face imminent extinction due to habitat loss are a very strong argument against it. There are those who are complete human supremacists who aren't troubled by this (Pronatalist, to give one example), but they are in the minority.

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth (BBC) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN06tLRE4WE)

The theoretical number is meaningless. Unless we establish a worldwide government and distribute the people evenly, (socialism oh!!) there will always be overcrowded parts and nice part of Earth.

Simple analogy: A house with 5 floors, 20 apartments. On the top a rich guy owns alone 4 apartments. On the bottom, each apartment has 6-7 occupants crowded, in the middle floors, 2-4 renters per apartment, comfortably.

Now could we redistribute these people with a city or government order? Sure, but that wouldn't be capitalism, and some of the people sure wouldn't like it. Now expand this house to the size of the Earth, and you have the same problem...

Can we (and will we) add another 1-2 billions to the population. Probably. Are they gonna be generally happy? Most likely not, and they definitely won't live by average Western standard of living. Hell, if everyone were living like the Amish, we could probably have 15 billions of people.

One more thing: when wars and natural calamities occur, the more people you have, the more people die.

There are about 105 million new people born every year right now. Holding all other things equal, if colonization were the answer and if we had the technology to colonize other planets or the ocean today, we would need to find 105 million colonists to send away each year just to remain at our current population of 7 billion.
First question, are these people immortal? Or do you not need to also account for the number of people who die each year? According to the Worldometer (http://www.worldometers.info/), there have been about 60 million births so far this year, but also about 25 million deaths. Thus the net increase is only about 33 million so far this year which would suggest about 66 million for the entire year.


Regardless, that's still a lot of rockets, but world population is not going to get much higher anyway.

Here's an interesting perspective on the current world population. According to this (http://www.drabruzzi.com/overpopulation.htm), you could easily fit the entire human population into Texas and have a population density no higher than that which presently exists in New York City:

Most people would certainly not consider New York City "unlivable". Indeed, for many, New York City is a highly desirable place to live. ....The current world population would yield a New York City level population density if it was entirely concentrated in Texas. However, this would leave the entire rest of the planet completely unpopulated. (see map below).

http://www.drabruzzi.com/images/World%20Map%20wTexas.jpg

Here's an interesting perspective on the current world population. you could easily fit the entire human population into Texas and have a population density no higher than that which presently exists in New York City:

"The city's population density of 26,403 people per square mile (10,194/kmē), makes it the densest of any American municipality with a population above 100,000."

Yeah, let's make the whole world as dense as NYC!!! By the way NYC can't even handle its own waste, it is carried to NJ. Not to mention, how big of a land is needed to feed NYC???

The latest numbers on the overall growth:

"all birth 2011 level of 134 million, while deaths number 56 million per year"

So that is about 80 million extra people per year (220K per day)... Neither of you were correct...

Where is Waldo?

http://www.titanicawards.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/crowded-beach.jpg

China's Qingdao Huiquan Beach...

The same beach at a different time...

http://www.titanicawards.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/crowded-beach-2.jpg

We haven't even mentioned the enviroment. A few day's ago China asked the US embassy to stop reporting the air pollution in Beijing....

"BEIJING (Reuters) - A senior Chinese official demanded on Tuesday that foreign embassies stop issuing air pollution readings, "

Beautiful Sunday morning in Beijing:

http://davebuemi.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/beijing-smog.bmp

Does India have a despotic government? I don't think so, and they are on the top of overpopulating Earth.You need to stop taking static snapshots and instead look at trends. The birthrate in India has fallen dramatically, just as it has everywhere else as democracy, education, and post-industrial technology spread. These days most educated couples in India have only 2-3 children, and the percentage of the Indian population who can be described as "educated" is growing rapidly. Even that 2-3 rate is as much a nod to the entreaties of their parents' generation as their own desire. When these people become the grandparents they won't be nagging the younger generation to overpopulate.
Also, very poor African countries also have a high rate of birth, so misery itself doesn't stop overpopulation.You're certainly not quoting me on that one. Specific types of misery are causes of overpopulation. Without pensions or a social security system, people need children to take care of them when they retire. With no opportunities for cultural or recreational pursuits, people have nothing to do at night except stay home and make more babies. Etc.

Yes, up through the 19th century, the growth rate was lower in impoverished countries because they tended to have poor sanitation, nutrition and medical care so most children didn't reach puberty. But once we "gifted" them with antibiotics, vaccines, and water treatment plants, without building the economic infrastructure that would have weaned them off of their traditional way of life, those children all lived to have children of their own and their populations exploded.

Never forget the Law Of Unintended Consequences: "You can never do just one thing."
I am still not sure, despite that, that "overpopulation" is the bugaboo some claim. First the rate of increase in the population of the world is falling. The absolute number of people is still increasing, but each year it increases by a bit less, which suggests a leveling off.I've posted the stats on this thread and several others. The second derivative of population went negative in the early 1980s. It's now universally predicted that the first derivative will go negative by the end of this century: in other words, the birth rate will fall below replacement level of 2.1 children per adult female, and the population will start to shrink--after just barely reaching ten billion, a number which, although it seems scary to us, will be quite manageable once all the despotic governments are gone and people can do a better job of caring for themselvevs.
Not all of the US's population live on Western standard's level.No, but slightly better management of our economy (by both government and industry leaders) would bring everybody (except the crazies who avoid interacting with the authorities) up to a satisfactory level without confiscating any rich kid's trust fund.

The problem is that the people who run both the government and industry are morons. One of the loudest complaints we hear today is that taxes are too high. Huh??? Taxes are at their lowest level in more than a generation. No modern, high-tech nation can possibly keep itself going with the paltry taxes the U.S. collects. That complaint is not just selfish, but ignorant.

On the other hand the other complaint commonly heard is that the income gap in the USA is too great, and paradoxically no one listens to this one. In Germany, the average CEO makes about ten times as much money as his average employee. There's absolutely no problem living a glamorous lifestyle on that much money. But in the USA, the average CEO makes more than two hundred times as much as his average employee!

And these guys think their taxes are too high!!!

When you hear a Libertarian complaining that some people are way too rich, others are way too poor, and taxes need to be raised, you know that your country is completely fucked!
Note that there are a slew of other empty-ass states to boot: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, etc.California is universally regarded as a crowded place. Yet about 75% of the state's land is farm, forest or desert.
Then there's pretty much all of Canada and Australia, etc.Virtually all of the countries in the Western Hemisphere are sparsely populated by the standards of the Eastern Hemisphere. Mexico has gigantic farming regions. So does Argentina.

But just wait until the current warming cycle melts the tundra. Greenland and Siberia will become breadbaskets!
I know plenty about water already.That's a problem that will solve itself too. When the current ice age finally comes to an end, which is defined as "no permanent ice anywhere," with the icecaps and glaciers melted and the average temperature a few degrees higher, relative humidity rises and average global rainfall increases. There will still be weather "patterns" and a few dry places will still exist, but on the average there will be no shortage of water or food.
. . . . and maybe reconsider whether lawns are an appropriate type of landscaping for arid climates in the first place.And everybody can have a lawn. With a fish pond and their own pet capybara lolling in it.

The many species that face imminent extinction due to habitat loss are a very strong argument against it. There are those who are complete human supremacists who aren't troubled by this (Pronatalist, to give one example), but they are in the minority.

And it's fine to pass laws that protect habitat, natural resources and that otherwise solve collective action problems (within limits, I think, many people want to go way too far with those things, especially those who live a great distance away the areas they want to "protect").

That is not as I see it a question of planetary overpopulation but "too many humans want to live at position X right now"...in other words, it's not "overpopulation", but "overcrowding" in a local areas of the population that does exist. If there were only 10,000 humans on Earth, and they all wanted to build houses along rivers in which the last living Ashy Darters (an endangered fish) lived, pollution of those rivers would be an issue, even though it could not be claimed that "the Earth is overpopulated"

And it's fine to pass laws that protect habitat, natural resources and that otherwise solve collective action problems (within limits, I think, many people want to go way too far with those things, especially those who live a great distance away the areas they want to "protect").

That is not as I see it a question of planetary overpopulation but "too many humans want to live at position X right now"...in other words, it's not "overpopulation", but "overcrowding" in a local areas of the population that does exist. If there were only 10,000 humans on Earth, and they all wanted to build houses along rivers in which the last living Ashy Darters (an endangered fish) lived, pollution of those rivers would be an issue, even though it could not be claimed that "the Earth is overpopulated"

It would be much, much easier to save an apex predator like the tiger if there were fewer people. Humans don't like to have their livestock eaten, much less be eaten themselves, and will naturally defend themselves. Also, it's hard to fault extremely poor people for poaching when irrational demand and scarcity have made tiger bits so valuable. Between the habitat loss, and the lack of political will, I think wild tigers are doomed.

These animals were doing pretty well forty or fifty years ago, and it isn't as though the world was dangerously underpopulated then. Why not have a world where the vast areas needed to support such a predator can be left wild? This is just one example of many, many species that require vast areas over which they can roam/and or migrate without coming into conflict with farms, ranches and cities.

I think overcrowding will be with us always. Many places that are empty, or were once populated and are now abandoned are that way for a reason; they are miserable places to live. Humans are only really comfortable in a pretty narrow range of climate. We can survive just about anywhere, but there's a big difference between living comfortably, and surviving. Even here in the USA, more people want to live in our most popular cities than really can. Supply and demand see to it that rents/property values shoot sky high, and people move farther out where they can afford an apartment or home. I'd really like to live in Santa Barbara. And while I'm dreaming, I'd like Miranda Kerr to leave Orlando Bloom, and move in with me.


The tiger (Panthera tigris) is the largest cat species, reaching a total body length of up to 3.3 metres (11 ft) and weighing up to 306 kg (670 lb). They are the third largest land carnivore (behind only the Polar bear and the Brown bear). Their most recognizable feature is a pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with lighter underparts. They have exceptionally stout teeth, and their canines are the longest among living felids with a crown height of as much as 74.5 mm (2.93 in) or even 90 mm (3.5 in).[4] In zoos, tigers have lived for 20 to 26 years, which also seems to be their longevity in the wild.[5] They are territorial and generally solitary but social animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey requirements. This, coupled with the fact that they are indigenous to some of the more densely populated places on Earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans.

Tigers once ranged widely across Asia, from Turkey in the west to the eastern coast of Russia. Over the past 100 years, they have lost 93% of their historic range, and have been extirpated from southwest and central Asia, from the islands of Java and Bali, and from large areas of Southeast and Eastern Asia. Today, they range from the Siberian taiga to open grasslands and tropical mangrove swamps. The remaining six tiger subspecies have been classified as endangered by IUCN. The global population in the wild is estimated to number between 3,062 to 3,948 individuals, with most remaining populations occurring in small pockets that are isolated from each other. Major reasons for population decline include habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation and poaching.[1] The extent of area occupied by tigers is estimated at less than 1,184,911 km2 (457,497 sq mi), a 41% decline from the area estimated in the mid-1990s.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger

You need to stop taking static snapshots and instead look at trends. The birthrate in India has fallen dramatically, just as it has everywhere else as democracy, education, and post-industrial technology spread.

Since India has been a democracy for at least 4 decades, the highest rate of growing also fell under the democratic rule.


These days most educated couples in India have only 2-3 children, [

Pretty much irrelevant, when you have 800 million (just made that up) poor and uneducated, who can and do still breed.


Even that 2-3 rate

Do you know what you get when you apply 2.5 kids to every family? Huge growth. As long as it is higher then 2.1, the population is going to grow... And that is just the educated, still a minority.


Without pensions or a social security system, people need children to take care of them when they retire.

I know, and India's crowdedness doesn't bother me, because I don't live there. They also easy on resources because overall they don't use much. It is the Westerners (USA it is you) who waste resources...


It's now universally predicted that the first derivative will go negative by the end of this century:

I don't really care because I will be dead for a long time by then. And if we still add 3 billion people by then, that doesn't really help us now does it?


in other words, the birth rate will fall below replacement level of 2.1 children per adult female,

We "think" it will. My guess is that it never will, but wars and viruses will decimate the population anyway...


once all the despotic governments are gone

An assumption. Second, even democratic governments start wars or don't care about their people, so just despotism disappearing doesn't solve the problem.


and people can do a better job of caring for themselves

I could make a point that people are LOSING this skill, and depending more and more on the government. Unlike 200 years ago, when nobody cared about them, thus they really had to care for themselves...


No, but slightly better management of our economy

Slightly?? America is deep in debt and the number of homeless is actually GROWING. So your daydream is not coming to pass, at least not very likely. But keep dream on...

Otherwise I have to start to call you Captain Obvious. You sated lots of facts, but those are pretty much well known and kind of irrelevant to the topic.

Although in one way a bad economy is good for population loss. People getting poorer can't afford more kids, like before...

This is just in:

With forests and fish stocks declining, water demand rising and lack of action on climate change, humanity's path is anything but sustainable, the UN warns:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18339905

Now where is that extra 3 billion people when I need them???

It would be much, much easier to save an apex predator like the tiger if there were fewer people. Humans don't like to have their livestock eaten, much less be eaten themselves, and will naturally defend themselves.We used to have an Anatolian, a gigantic Turkish dog (120lb/55kg) bred specifically to protect livestock from lions. (Imagine a greyhound on steroids with the head of a mastiff. You're already running away!) African lions are apparently a little larger, so American breeders have been producing larger Anatolians (150lb/70kg) and simply donating them to African farmers. Two of those suckers will keep the lions away from a whole village. Everybody wins. The lions don't die, the farmers don't lose their stock, the environmentalists are happy and the people in the village have milk and beef.

Tigers are the largest feline, but they don't hunt in groups. Perhaps it will require three Anatolians to keep a village free from tigers.
Even here in the USA, more people want to live in our most popular cities than really can.I think places like Shanghai have proven that there's no limit to the size of a city.

Although humans started out as a pack-social species like gorillas and chimpanzees, living in extended-family units of a few dozen, somewhere along the way we have made the transition to herd-social, living more-or-less in harmony and cooperation with millions of anonymous strangers. Both the USA and the planet as a whole reached the toggle point in this century: More than half of the population now live in cities.
Supply and demand see to it that rents/property values shoot sky high, and people move farther out where they can afford an apartment or home.That said, of course I can't ignore the impact of the Industrial Era work paradigm on population movement. People have to "go to work" every day, which means that they have to live within practical travel distance of their jobs, which are all in the cities.

The Electronic Era is changing all that, and doing it much more quickly than any previous Paradigm Shift. It took thousands of years for the majority of the population to shift from hunting and gathering to farming and animal husbandry, and there are still a few places where the Industrial Revolution hasn't quite happened yet. But it's taken less than 180 years for the first commercial telegraph to evolve into an internet connection in everybody's pocket linking them to the whole world.

Fewer and fewer jobs require human labor as process-control software takes over everything from janitorial work to grain refining. We still have a generation of dinosaur managers who insist that people can only work as a team when they're working in the same room, but my grandfather insisted that no one would ever be comfortable transacting business over a telephone wire. Telecommuting will become the norm as webcams proliferate, we all have multiple monitors, and "pass the mouse" software makes it easy to take turns writing on the six virtual blackboards in every virtual conference room.

At that point we'll find out how many of us really want to live out in the country, and how many of us really like living in the city where there are museums, concert halls, crafts fairs, foreign restaurants, night clubs, exotic apparel and the sounds of exotic languages, stadiums, zoos, art galleries, flower shows, and magic around every corner. (Oops I guess now you know which camp I fall into. ;))

Fortunately everyone will be able to live wherever they want. It will certainly take the population pressure off of the cities without causing them to drop below critical mass so a rock concert can't fill a stadium and the flower show only has six varieties of daffodil. In particular it will take the pressure off the poor people to live in a place they can't afford because it's the only place they can find work and/or welfare.
I'd really like to live in Santa Barbara.I can tell that you've never really spent any time there. If you paint your shutters the wrong color the cops will show up in the morning. I'll take Hollywood any day--lived there for ten wonderful years.

Syzgyz, how is socialism correct? Does everyone work equally? What is a liar to a truth teller in socialism?

Much of the habitat destruction is being done for raising cattle for disgusting fast food restaurants such as mcdonalds. This is either for the cattle itself or food to feed the cattle. Many third world countries waste resources farmiing cattle to sell to the U.S. which consumes immense amounts of meat. A reduction in meat consumption would solve many world hunger problems and leave more land for nature preserves. One acre of land can produce up 60000 pounds of potatoes but only 300 pounds of beef. Vegetarianism requires much less land to produce so much more. Few major obstacles exist that can't be easily solved. Most don't even require a significant technological breakthrough. Though I do believe some form of fusion or other technology will come out in the next decade to solve the energy crisis and bring power and education to all the world. Then again I am an optimist. Infinite free energy can let us do almost whatever we want. Build giant orbiting farms or housing complexes, shipping becomes very easy. If these don't come to fruition I have backup strategies but they aren't all as nice.

I can tell that you've never really spent any time there. If you paint your shutters the wrong color the cops will show up in the morning. I'll take Hollywood any day--lived there for ten wonderful years.

I lived in Goleta, the northern suburb of Santa Barbara, for half a year back in '85. Still my favorite place. Part what makes it so nice are the growth restrictions, but that's also part of what makes it so expensive.

WW3 population control? Our governments are a little smarter than that. They would simply blame a massive solar flare on shutting down all our electricity or something. During a bad economic time. Then wait a few years and let everyone dependent on running water, electricity, and processed food to die.

The great depression, WW1, and WW2 didn't put a dent in the skyrocketing human population that started in the 1800's after the discovery of oil.

Lots of people consume, drive, and pollute. The earth can't stand the amount of people on it nor a growing amount.

Carrying capacity is a law of nature, although we can alter it we can never outdo it at its games.

Whether population control is implemented or carrying cap wakes us up, People will have a different perspective on life in the next 300 years.

People will have a different perspective on life in the next 300 years.

As it will suck more. Anyway, reading your post it was hard to tell which side you were on...

This is just in:

With forests and fish stocks declining, water demand rising and lack of action on climate change, humanity's path is anything but sustainable, the UN warns:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18339905

Now where is that extra 3 billion people when I need them???

Even that is to say only that we need to change environmental practices and revise our assumptions about the economics of the future (i.e., ceteris paribus, we could not imagine that many people all having a high standard of living), but that again is Malthusian thinking. The "ceteris," so to speak" are not "paribus," and there is no economic model of what the future will actually look like...as that depends on more than just population, but also on future technologies. The U.N., at most, tends to assume that past trends will continue, but economic pressures do drive innovation (because necessity is the mother of invention) in a way that they ignore.

It's the same class of problem you see with many "peak oil" theories, where they assume that prices won't adjust to equilibrate supply and demand. Sure, life will change, and life may be less (or more) luxurious for future generations, but how much do we want to curtail actual liberty today, for a speculative gain in standard of living in the far off future?

The answer is not "we will curtail no liberties" and the answer is not "anyone caught having more children than their government permit allows will see those children executed," but it lies somewhere between the two extremes.

We can't even successfully model what the economy will look like in a year, or ten, or even make a compelling guess about what policy changes by have a beneficial effect on the current economy (despite mountains of data on it and the fact that in the short run, ceteris paribus is a more compelling assumption). So don't put too much faith in UN projections of the worldwide macroeconomy many decades from now, because macroecon is more voodoo than science.

Further, that leaves aside the fact that U.N. is not always, or even often, a disinterested arbiter in these issues. Have you ever seen a U.N. report that said, "After extensive study, we find that there are no problems with the status quo"? Pols at the U.N., who are doing their best and aren't trying to be deceitful, have a bias towards wanting there to be action. It's a combination of personal interest (they get to keep their current jobs, if the problem they are working on is not yet solved...if it were not a serious problem, no need to pay them any more salary) and confirmation bias (you wouldn't be placed on a the UN panel on sustainability, if you weren't already interested in sustainability issues...and people interested in those issues almost all think sustainability is a problem...very few people take an interest, politically, in things that are not problematic (or perceived as problematic) in some way).

So, the question is "what will you give up today to solve that potential problem tomorrow?" I think environmental regulation and government subsidies into sustainable tech is fine, in general. But I still see nothing compelling to urge me to want to see us go further. As problems go, the world would be better off if we dedicated that effort to vaccine dissemination or treating/preventing malaria (though that would tend to increase populations and, if overpopulation is a problem, exacerbate the situation).

Hello Friends
overpopulation is biggest problem of the all over world.
In last fews year overpopulation is slow down.
people awake now is topic.

The biggest problem the world has is good morality, and evil morality both existing together. We must segregate good from evil! :eek:

I haven't read this thread, but I'm thinking that if we keep the world busy and working they won't have time for children.

I haven't read this thread, but I'm thinking that if we keep the world busy and working they won't have time for children.

Welcome to the forum. One of the big problems with zero or very small population growth, is no one knows how to model an economy that works well in that kind of zero growth society. Our current capitalistic system is based on expanding markets and population growth. I just don't see how that's going to work and it's not going to change without a great deal of pain and suffering to millions of people for an extended period of time. Good luck to those that will have to live through it.

I can't believe how the establishment (educational institutions, MSM, etc.) has conditioned so many to believe that "overpopulation" exists or is a problem.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vZVOU5bfHrM


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zBS6f-JVvTY


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OXrN9HhnCcM#!

A large global population is dangerous for one reason, it is harder to control for a small group of elite international interests who wish to control events, wealth, information, science, truth, and resources. (Look at the birth rate in Greece, look at how easy it is to control.)

I can't believe how the establishment (educational institutions, MSM, etc.) has conditioned so many to believe that "overpopulation" exists or is a problem.

Sure, because I can't make up my own mind. Now just why do you think it is NOT a problem? (when pretty much everybody think it is)

If you don't mind, I didn't check your videos. If you can't explain yourself in 2-3 sentences, you don't have a point...


it is harder to control for a small group of elite international interests who wish to control events,

Bullshit. Large populations are just as easy to control. The USA is the 3rd largest country by population, and pretty well controlled, so is China...

Do you care to debate further, or you acknowledge your loss???

Sure, because I can't make up my own mind.

See, that's the point. You're operating under the tacit assumption that your mind is your own to make up. It has been conditioned long ago. . .



Now just why do you think it is NOT a problem? (when pretty much everybody think it is)

If you don't mind, I didn't check your videos. If you can't explain yourself in 2-3 sentences, you don't have a point...



Bullshit. Large populations are just as easy to control. The USA is the 3rd largest country by population, and pretty well controlled, so is China...

Do you care to debate further, or you acknowledge your loss???
5590

Listen, frankly, if you can't be bothered to watch a couple short informatory clips, which tell you about how society has falsely propagated the notion that there is an overpopulation crises, I won't bother you. The videos also have links to statistically backed up research. I don't want to get into it with you. Both China and the US would like to have a lot less people in them. Which nation has, and is the first to institute a population control policy?

And now US tax payers are funding our very own voluntary population control policy. I feel bad for kids that come from broken homes, kids that have downs syndrome, AD/HD, Autism, ODD, OCD, bipolar, etc. In the past ten years school have been getting troubled kids on a host have medications to control them. Now I'll be by the time they graduate, the state will start influencing parents to get some of these same kids sterilized before they ever discover how unique and wonderful they truly are.
They Want To Sterilize American Women: Sterilization Won't Cost Women A Penny Under Obamacare (http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/they-want-to-sterilize-american-women-new-obamacare-regulation-makes-sterilization-100-free)

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-dangerous-myth-of-overpopulation

See, that's the point. You're operating under the tacit assumption that your mind is your own to make up.

Just how do we know that between the 2 of us I am the brainwashed and not you? :)

By the way, the Rulers love continuous growth, so they would never tell you we have too many people. More people, more profit. So who is the one who has been misled???

Edit: I took a look at the last video, it is easily refutable. The overpopulation is more complicated than just a simple food issue. You need ENERGY, LAND and WATER to have more food. Land isn't a problem but water and energy are. Also, the main issue is, just what kind of level you want those people to live on? Amish? Fine, we could have 20 billion people. But if you want a Western society's level, we have already too many of us.... You think all that 1-1 billion Chinese and Indian will live on a middle class American's level? Dream on....

Quick point. More people indicate the need for more food. More people means more farmers means more food. Just saying.

More people indicate the need for more food.

More food needs more water. Hey, we are out of water already!!! (see my Peak Water thread)

See, that's the point. You're operating under the tacit assumption that your mind is your own to make up. It has been conditioned long ago. . .


...
And now US tax payers are funding our very own voluntary population control policy. I feel bad for kids that come from broken homes, kids that have downs syndrome, AD/HD, Autism, ODD, OCD, bipolar, etc. In the past ten years school have been getting troubled kids on a host have medications to control them. Now I'll be by the time they graduate, the state will start influencing parents to get some of these same kids sterilized before they ever discover how unique and wonderful they truly are....

Slippery slope fallacy. Just because you and I have a right to get sterilized doesn't mean that kids with disorders are going to be influenced to get sterilized. I'm autistic and I could make a case for not wanting to reproduce because my children might have to suffer the way I did.

More food needs more water. Hey, we are out of water already!!! (see my Peak Water thread)

More aqueduct workers.

Slippery slope fallacy. Just because you and I have a right to get sterilized doesn't mean that kids with disorders are going to be influenced to get sterilized. I'm autistic and I could make a case for not wanting to reproduce because my children might have to suffer the way I did.
Your assumption being that autism is genetic and not environmentally caused? Likewise you contention being that your suffering was a product of your behavior rather than how society had expectations for all children to act in a preconceived way that all children weren't necessarily intended to behave like?

I don't get why people don't realize this, the countries that are the point of civilization and industrialization, they have a declining national populations, the birth rate is very low. The influx of population comes from third rate world countries with uneducated untrained mostly with disease people. And the ones who promote the idea of overpopulation are the ones who don't realize that the people in their country are loosing their own people and jobs, to immigrants. The recent Bill Gates foundation devoted billions of dollars into contraceptives...for who? for the women of urbanized first world countries who are already loosing the battle of population to the Chinese/Arabs/Mexicans you name it.

Just how do we know that between the 2 of us I am the brainwashed and not you? :)

By the way, the Rulers love continuous growth, so they would never tell you we have too many people. More people, more profit. So who is the one who has been misled???

Edit: I took a look at the last video, it is easily refutable. The overpopulation is more complicated than just a simple food issue. You need ENERGY, LAND and WATER to have more food. Land isn't a problem but water and energy are. Also, the main issue is, just what kind of level you want those people to live on? Amish? Fine, we could have 20 billion people. But if you want a Western society's level, we have already too many of us.... You think all that 1-1 billion Chinese and Indian will live on a middle class American's level? Dream on....

Wrong. TPB love the game more than the wealth. If you are the one that controls the money supply, sets the interest rates, creates depressions, recessions, bust and booms, what need have you of more profit? None. You make profit by a simple flick of the pen by indebting entire nations. You really have no clue how the entire system and the entire world works, do you?

The oligarchic powers are the ones who control the energy, the land, and the water. There is plenty for all. They are the ones that release reports from foundations and MSM that have you believing that there isn't enough. Likewise, they horde what little there is to themselves. Hell, they even make it illegal for the people to gather rain for pity sake.


Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else.

As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from "diverting" water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use.
http://www.naturalnews.com/029286_rainwater_collection_water.html (http://www.naturalnews.com/029286_rainwater_collection_water.html)

The housing bubble was meant to get the population dynamics to change, out of their houses, and more people into cities. Go on, buy a new house or flat. I am sure you will get a much better mortgage deal for a place in a densly populated area rather than a rural area. Your terms will be much more generous. They will break your financial back if you want any help with a mortgage that attempts to acquire property in an area outside of the UN's goals laid out under Agenda 21.

Likewise, those in power also control technological progress in terms of new energy technologies by controlling all access to patents. A new technology comes out to challenge established energy companies? They can just buy it and sit on it. The scarcity paradigm benefits the oil companies and governments after all, doesn't it? To raise the living standards of all the people we have in the world? We could probably do it quicker and cheaper than we are doing. But a happier, healthier, better educated population would start to question why we need to have such barbaric rulers and hateful dull media seperating us all making us attack one another.

This is actually serious. Not meant to be horrific conditioning or Orwellian at all. What a stitch.
Megacities on the Move - Plannedopolis (http://vimeo.com/18125856)

Wrong. TPB love the game more

I love The Pirate Bay even more...

This is major problem of every country, i just feel that this is every countries problem,
this is main and major problem of every country ...

don't be so blind! Industrial nations are declining in populations while being surged by third world immigrants, which make for the artificial gain in population of the cities. It is third world countries that face the problem of overpopulation. The industrial countries are facing exact opposite of that!