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Overpopulation -- problem?


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#31 goth_slut

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Posted 19 August 2006 - 12:31 AM

Thanks guys! Let me respond catagorically so I don't miss stuff.



Hi, goth_slut.  Well this question, overpopulation, has been brought up many times before.  Check out the Imminst wikipedia.
http://www.imminst.o...i/index.php/FAQ

They also have the documentary which is found Imminst front page made for people particularly like you who are curious and want to learn more. It can be viewed quite easily, no need at all to download or anything like that, just click and it plays.  The documentary also touched on the subject of overpopulation.

I'll jump ahead and presume you already checked the mentioned out; Seeing that your questions are more detailed than what each addressed.

In an attempt to answer your questions(Keep in mind I not knowledgeable on this sorth of thing [lol] ). Concerning your first question, it depends on what you mean by quality of life, that is for example; Health, having material things money (House, traveling, doing whatever you want). 

With Biological Immortality, there is no need to have any children, having kids is essentially passing on your genetic code.  However, many people would probably wish to have offsprings, the choice is up those individuals.  I personally do not see life being cheapened, if anything it would be more valued, the very least it would be viewed the same way as it is now viewed (The view currently to what I see is that life, human life, is more or less cherished by people around the globe).  Many countries currently take care of their people, for example; Currently governments provides help (social housing, funds etc.) for people who can't find jobs or do not have the ability to work(Ill, handicap people etc.).  I think there will always be various class of people in the future as there are now; Hopefully, society can change and every can get everything he/she desires.



While attitudes towards childbirth would arguably change in the future, it still remains an uncalculable number either way. Either a decrease or an increase in childbirths would have dramatic effects. However, with only a growing population, and the majority of deaths probably resulting from accidental deaths, the number would arguably increase no matter what the general consensus was.

While this could potentially slow or speed up the process, the increase would still exist.

Ultimately, this would put pressure on a number of institutions, and the job market. The latter is of key importance in my eyes. I view the worker force as the primary backbone of any society, yet ultimately the least respected and the least paid. This is typically due to the rather unlimited pool of unskilled laborers being created either by choices on the individuals part, educational reasons, or sociological ills.

Poverty is a prime factor in determining the future job market. In heavy industrial sectors, poverty typically runs rampant, with large factories being able to pull from a steady pool of unskilled persons, lacking in the neccessary funds or education to get anything better. Sometimes digging ditches is all that's left for these people.

With the increase in life spans/immortality, that pool will inevitably increase. No matter how advanced our society will become, there will always be a finite number of "blue collar" jobs. As our society has progressed through technology, physical labor remains the constant standbye of those who simply cannot get anything better. Physical labor is practically the only job that just about anybody with an able back can get, and support herself with.

As population figures increase, there will inevitably be an even larger pool of unskilled laborers to pull from. This leads inevitably, to creating a crunch in the one work area that originally was open to just about anybody. You're looking at a very drastic and potentially economically crushing divide between the social classes.

The burden will inevitably fall to the middle class, of caring for these workers with either their time or tax dollars. As the poverty rate increases, so does the crime rate. A sudden shift in population could create a potentially damning gap between the working class, and the white collar worker classes.

I'm not sure that's a gap that our society can survive.




I make a VERY small income in comparison to most, but I live much better than a nobleman of 100 years past. What a have-not will mean will be different than today. A good example of something emerging right now is lab grown meat. In 5 years it is possible that I can buy whatever cut of meat  want I for .50 to .80 a pound, that has guarentees of healthiness and quality control beyond anything I can buy now. Not only will that make living cheaper with higher standard of living, think of how much space would be saved, positive enviornmental aspects that are possible, etc .

Edit: most = most americans




May I ask what job you currently have?
If it doesn't pay very well, what would you propose your options might be, for bettering your situation?
How would immortality affect your job market, and your ability to compete in a global market economy, as well as a local economy?



I love these threads that have been around for a few years. They are very instructional.  Everything Trouble said could have been said over three years ago when this thread began. The earth now has a couple hundred million more people and devastation has not set in. Almost everything Trouble said was said 4 decades ago in the "Population Bomb"....and it goes all the way back to Malthus. What the doomsayers contiually dismiss is technological progress. Nowadays technological progress is faster than ever and will give us the opportunity to fix problems faster than ever. Most metrics of pollution are falling in advanced western societies (except CO2 emissions). 

Goth_slut, even though real inflation adjusted wages have not risen in recent years most people in advanced societies have nearly every material need they want. While wages in advanced nations seem to be stagnating, wages in southeast Asia, China, and India are rising. I don't see anything wrong with that.


I certaintly don't oppose immortality. Quite the opposite in fact. My argument, is that with all new technologies, certain problems arise. The atom bomb brought us nuclear power. A relatively clean and efficient method of generating electricity. But it also brought us global fear of a threat that may or may not even exist. Entire nations are up in arms as we speak, about certain other nations' desires for entering this global arena with this weapon.

I just want to see what the possible problems are, and if methods for avoiding them have been considered before we all jump on a bandwagon to unknown parts.






Love,
Goth_Slut


#32 Athanasios

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Posted 19 August 2006 - 03:55 AM

May I ask what job you currently have?
If it doesn't pay very well, what would you propose your options might be, for bettering your situation?
How would immortality affect your job market, and your ability to compete in a global market economy, as well as a local economy?


I am/was a cook with 10 years experience and culinary degree. I make $10 an hour when I work as a line cook. I could make $20 to $30 an hour in five years, because I will be old enough to be percieved as fit for a chef/kitchen management position at a place bigger than a subway or mcdonalds, say a hotel. I am not one to just sit around and wait, so I am going to school for biochemistry. I am currently working 4 hours a morning mon through fri selling tacos in office buildings to scrape by with rent/food/supplements/tuition/etc. I want to get into informatics/synthetic biology/interaction with AI, but am currently relatively elementary in this as I am currently laying the foundations with school and supplemental self-study. Personaly, I think I do have security going forward. If I only was in the restaurant business, I still think there would be security and money enough to live at an increasingly higher standard of life as tech moves forward. If we were advanced enough that restaurants were not viable anymore, I believe I would not have to worry about the basic necessities of life. Surely, the marketplace will change as it always has. People will have to adapt as to the new needs of society/economy as they have in the past, although maybe at an even higher pace. I find that the relatively recent surge of the number of small businesses in this country is a good and interesting example of adaption of the individual to new technology in the marketplace.

Hope this answers some of your questions.

Edit:

I thought I would take a stab at addressing this issue:

But it also brought us global fear of a threat that may or may not even exist.


I always liked this Einstein quote in regards to this observation. "The majority will always be ignorant, their tyranny however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency". I do think that sociopaths and certain religious movements have the potential to make the statement questionable enough to be scary. To this I paraphrase Ben Goertzel, in an interview on novamente and AGI, he said that as tech developes the utopian and distopian views of the future both grow stronger, and it is up to us to make sure that the utopian view is established.

Edited by cnorwood19, 19 August 2006 - 05:00 AM.


#33 goth_slut

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Posted 19 August 2006 - 09:57 AM

Good answer. I honestly wasn't expecting anything like that.

Points for a unique P.O.V. :-)



If I may clarify my first question, in light of your response:

What options would you have if the industry you're in, became immediately obsolete for whatever reasons?
What would you say your expected income would be if your skills at culinary arts were suddenly lacking in value?

While I agree that humans can adapt, there is only so much room for adaptation within any given amount of time. I would say at least 1 generation. It's rather hard to work one's way up the ladder, so to speak, with no education, and no job that pays well enough to finance it.




Love,
Goth_Slut


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#34 Athanasios

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Posted 19 August 2006 - 02:47 PM

What options would you have if the industry you're in, became immediately obsolete for whatever reasons?
What would you say your expected income would be if your skills at culinary arts were suddenly lacking in value?


Culinary arts is 40-50% about food, and 50-60% about entertainment. If those skills were lacking in value, the state of technology would be great indeed. At that point, I believe that it would be rather easy to get what is needed to live a satisfactory life such as food and shelter. The lab grown meat is still a good example of things to come. If it happened tomorrow? I can grab a job in computers or tech feild, by next week, that would get me $17 an hour, or go into business for myself. It doesnt take much training or ingenuity to get to $10 an hour, and I have lived off of that comfortably for years. If a wife, 2.5 children, and a picket fence were in the picture, she would have to be working at least for similar pay for us to be able to live comfortably in that situation. If the economy got really bad for some reason in the future, we could start having a tighter family unit as many poorer countries do to cope with it. Does all my family need seperate apartments, cars, and cell phones? No, but we have them. How much less would food cost per person if I cooked for 12 instead of just me? A lot less. Etc

#35 goth_slut

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Posted 19 August 2006 - 09:55 PM

Culinary arts is 40-50% about food, and 50-60% about entertainment. If those skills were lacking in value, the state of technology would be great indeed. At that point, I believe that it would be rather easy to get what is needed to live a satisfactory life such as food and shelter. The lab grown meat is still a good example of things to come. If it happened tomorrow? I can grab a job in computers or tech feild, by next week, that would get me $17 an hour, or go into business for myself. It doesnt take much training or ingenuity to get to $10 an hour, and I have lived off of that comfortably for years. If a wife, 2.5 children, and a picket fence were in the picture, she would have to be working at least for similar pay for us to be able to live comfortably in that situation. If the economy got really bad for some reason in the future, we could start having a tighter family unit as many poorer countries do to cope with it. Does all my family need seperate apartments, cars, and cell phones? No, but we have them. How much less would food cost per person if I cooked for 12 instead of just me? A lot less. Etc



You have the qualifications to get into one of these tech jobs, yes? Assuming that they existed in the future as well, of course. We're also assuming that your experience in computers would be enough to keep you ahead of the thousands of others who were displaced by the dismantling of the culinary jobs. Do you have enough college education to compete? Chances are, with any sort of college, you'd be allready above the worker classes, and finding work would be of a slightly less concern.

I'm thinking more along the lines of the ditch diggers, that will most likely have to compete with the influx of workers, after the collapse of the food industry. I'm looking at the options of unskilled manual laborers in a market flooded with cheap and plentiful workers.





Love,
Goth_Slut


#36 A941

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Posted 15 April 2008 - 05:00 PM

Could overpopulation become a problem for our goals?
Could gouvernmnets outlaw lifeextension?

#37 Mind

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Posted 15 April 2008 - 06:27 PM

If no one dies... AND no one is born, then the population remains the same. There will always be some sort of death and thus there will always be 'room' for a small birth rate. The point is, I think governments would rather restrict the birth rate (as has been done in the past) than outlaw life extension. Outlawing life extension would be akin to sentencing people to death.

#38 forever freedom

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Posted 15 April 2008 - 07:03 PM

I second what Mind said, and i would also like to observe that the earth has SO much more space for us than we can imagine. It's all a matter of developing the technology that allows a bigger population, and that will come naturally. Think of all the ocean space, the places on earth with extreme cold environements where in the future we could live normally with the aid of technology.


There's virtually unlimited space with enough technology.

#39 Cyberbrain

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Posted 15 April 2008 - 07:13 PM

Overpopulation only refers to the number of bodies in existence wasting resources to survive. By the time immortality becomes viable for everyone, we would have already colonized several planets and moons by then. Not to mention that with a cybernetic body (and your mind existing on the Net) then we won't even have the trouble of overpopulation. :)

#40 forever freedom

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Posted 15 April 2008 - 07:20 PM

By the time immortality becomes viable for everyone, we would have already colonized several planets and moons by then.




I wouldn't count on anything referring to man's spacial endeavours. We seem to be crawling at this area, even with all the astounding amounts of cash poured into it. We haven't even created anything relating to even a rudimentary colony in the moon yet.


By 2100, unless the singularity and all it's effects on the pace of technological development occurs, i don't think that we will have colonized Mars yet. And by 2100 we better already have found a way to, if not reverse, at least stop aging.

#41 niner

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Posted 16 April 2008 - 02:38 AM

I second what Mind said, and i would also like to observe that the earth has SO much more space for us than we can imagine. It's all a matter of developing the technology that allows a bigger population, and that will come naturally. Think of all the ocean space, the places on earth with extreme cold environements where in the future we could live normally with the aid of technology.

There's virtually unlimited space with enough technology.

I think it might be better to focus on the ideas that Mind laid out, i.e., that the population doesn't have to grow forever. People tend to have fewer children when they are sure the ones they have will survive. Since people will still die, there will be room for some amount of reproduction without increasing population. I wouldn't want to counter the environmental argument against life extension by telling them that we have lots of room that people aren't living in yet. That raises a huge number of questions regarding the effect of those new people on the biosphere, not to mention resource consumption, and further not to mention what a horrible life it might be for the people living there. We probably have about one more population doubling baked into the demographic cake before the population of the world stabilizes, and that is going to take a hell of a lot of technology to deal with without seeing a lot of disruptions, from the economic to the ecological. Ideally, I'd like to see the population of the earth fall to less than a billion through natural attrition. Without some sort of catastrophe, that's a tall order, especially if we ever manage to take aging out of the picture.

The idea that we are going to colonize anything in our own solar system as an "escape valve" because we lack the political will to deal with problems on earth strikes me as a serious error. Finding and getting to an earth-like planet that's livable without terraforming is going to take some serious technological advances. Here again, we can't use this as an answer to overpopulation questions.

#42 Lazarus Long

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Posted 17 April 2008 - 01:26 PM

First off everyone needs to acknowledge that overpopulation really is a problem.

Second, the source of the problem is not longevity despite repeated attempts to scapegoat the trends. The source of the problem is the evolutionary strategy of confronting *mortality* and poverty of resources with overproduction of offspring instead of education. Education is a memetic strategy, birth rate is a genetic one. The shift for our species from one paradigm to the other reflects a clash of cultures both internally and externally. It is the shift toward or away from the Social Darwinist tactics of zero/sum solutions.

Third, there is an escape valve we can use one last time but it is not off world; it is into the sea. But I emphasize *last time* because the reliance on escape valves is more a part of the problem than solution. The need for escape valves indicates a lack of control over the population problem to begin with.

There are however a lot of reasons that many people don't consider overpopulation a problem because it is a mechanism of evolution, an incentive for innovation, genetic parochialism and competition, sustained genetic diversity, cheap labor, and even because a lot of people are waiting to be rescued for free by the ultimate form of cheap labor, a messiah in the form of a mythic savior.

These interests are not going to slow down the population growth, in fact many of the groups most needing to slow down are likely instead to respond to a variety of social pressures by accelerating their growth rates. We see that in impoverished, uneducated societies but also where populations are under political pressure in the form of asymmetric power struggles. Birth rate is a weapon of mass creation to counter weapons of mass destruction and this leads to the real population leveler we must fear and confront, the tendency to slide into warfare as a form of social selection mechanism. As the 21st century unfolds this will become an evermore significant problem and we already see the trends of the last 60 years to successfully reduce global conflicts starting to unravel.

We probably have about one more population doubling baked into the demographic cake before the population of the world stabilizes, and that is going to take a hell of a lot of technology to deal with without seeing a lot of disruptions, from the economic to the ecological.


I suspect there is already *baked in to the demographic cake* a doubling by mid century, not the end of the century. Even a tripling or more by the end of the century if we survive the doubling. There has actually been a mini baby boom of late and global population is slowly accelerating and not decelerating as it had for most of the last 50 years. Most trends show us cracking 12 to 14 billion by 2050 short of as you put it niner: "some sort of catastrophe".

Ideally, I'd like to see the population of the earth fall to less than a billion through natural attrition. Without some sort of catastrophe, that's a tall order, especially if we ever manage to take aging out of the picture.



Let's be clear the ideal is not going to happen anytime soon; so what is plan *B*?

The current aging population is also just a scapegoat. So let's try and focus not only on birthrate but all the corollary aspects of bringing children into adulthood. If everyone alive today were to stay alive we would still only see a doubling of the Earth's population during this generation and that result is simply a shift of a decade or so forward for the same result. The solution is not to promote death but improve how everyone lives. And I do mean everyone. The fall back is de facto *genocide*, where basically a lot of people on all sides are just looking for an excuse they can *live with* afterward.

Earlier I said we can with a little effort in time alleviate the present population pressure by moving offshore because it is far more reasonable in terms of energy expenditure, support and knowledge of our environment, and technological ability than moving offworld. At best we are still a century away from moving offworld in any significant numbers and possibly more. That also assumes these would be colonists *want* to go.

We are already technologically capable of creating offshore habitat that could absorb millions but it does require a significant focused effort. That effort is virtually nonexistent. It also requires that people understand it is at best a *stopgap* measure because the real problem is birthrate, not death rate and use of death rate as a vector for blame is irrational because it ignores the real problems and distracts everyone from addressing them.

If we cut the life expectancy of everyone alive today in half, global population would still double, only it would take longer. Human populations have been roughly doubling in size every few generations for tens of thousands of years and the general age of mortality was a third or less of what it is today.

Going off world with a mandate to *go forth and multiply* is at the heart of the problem whether we are talking about one nation. one planet, one solar system, or more.

Going into the oceans with the idea of expanding functional habitat for large scale populations is a practical manner of addressing the current circumstances but it is not a solution. However it could provide the needed time to develop real solutions but then it becomes a question of popular will. The good news is that rational, practical, and HUMANE solutions to this growing crisis exist.

Does anyone really think the popular will exists to solve this growing crisis by rational means?

Or is the reality, all too many people just want to go along as they have until they are rescued by some kind of rapture?

#43 renton

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Posted 24 May 2008 - 08:55 PM

The biggest issue we have when it comes to overpopulation is not people - it's resources allocated for people. Fact is Canada, for example, is a severely underpopulated country. We have an abundant amount of natural resources available to us (well, at least for now) and yet we have a population of only 33 million people. Not to mention the fact we're heading for a serious labour crisis in Canada with all the Boomers retiring soon, we're not doing enough to bring skilled immigrants into Canada and recognizing foreign credentials - it's funny how a supposedly egalitarian nation like Canada can be incredibly two-faced when it comes to immigration. We want the best, most talented and wealthy immigrants, but when they get here, many of them have to deliver pizzas or drive taxis because no employer will recognize their foreign credentials. But I digress.

If you really want to demonstrate how the issue isn't about overpopulation but about how populations and resources must balance each other out, let's use three comparative examples: China, the U.S. and Germany.

China's enormous population has been steadily stabilizing in terms of absolute growth for a few decades now - the One Child policy has made this happen. Regardless if you agree with this position or not, population growth has slowed, but at great social cost. The Human Rights issues of forced sterilization, the "little emperors" phenomenon, the grandiose consumerism that comes with it - all of these are very bad aspects to state-driven population control. Even if the One Child Policy is kept in place until 2018 (the Communist Party has stated the policy will likely be in place for another decade or so), the long-term implications of state-driven population control will largely be moot in the face of China's rise to economic superpower. Massive, uncontrolled free markets is going to cause a great deal of environmental damage to China for decades to come. But more to the point, the absolute population of China will not decline for possibly a century or more. It will take a considerable amount of time for the prosperity-population equation in China to balance out, if it all.

In terms of America, this is the most prosperous nation on Earth with a population of over 300 million and is showing no signs of population decline in the immediate future. If anything, prosperity means people are more, not less, likely to bear more than just population replacement offspring - this phenomenon has been clearly demonstrated in post-WW2 America and Canada, when populations exploded due to post-war prosperity. Poverty alone does not mean more kids, I get that. But if you consider, in a post-industrial economy like America, that a steady birth rate and continual influx of immigrants means more and more resources are being consumed at a faster rate, populations are likely to crest at a certain point and then decline. This is what has happened to Europe - the post-industrial framework of countries like Germany, the Scandinavian nations and their ilk have meant so few children being born largely because the average person's prosperous lifestyle is too good to drop in favour of resource-draining children. Further, if you're a young person today in the West with tremendous economic pressure being forced upon you - i.e. post-secondary education costs not keeping pace with inflation, the rapidly-increasing costs of housing, the stagnation of real incomes - why would you ever want to have a child now when you can barely support yourself?

Lastly, Germany. Germany is a highly prosperous nation with serious long-term problems population-wise - like many European nations, they're undergoing population decline at a frightening rate.

The big issue here is this: while there are a myriad of complex reasons for each nation as to why populations are the way they are, it isn't simply as simple as saying "free, functional, empowering markets = low birth rate." That idea only works in a linear, uncontrolled economic milieu where resources are virtually infinite (in theory).

Ronald Wright talked about this in his book A Short History of Progress. His theory goes that once a population enters into a growth stage that has distinctly Malthusan traits (i.e. proportionally declining resources to increasing populations), nature will, unfortunately, solve the overpopulation for us. We run out of resources, we'll quickly run out of people because populations are going to die off very, very, very fast. You want to solve the overpopulation issue? Don't worry, I suspect nature's going to solve it for us.

Just my .02 cents.

#44 VictorBjoerk

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Posted 24 May 2008 - 09:21 PM

Maybe the population should be limited by the government?When someone dies from a accident in a non-aging society a place is empty and through some kind of a lottery a randomly chosen family is allowed to create a child. Laws like this would probably be perfectly accepted if aging is defeated and people have the right to live instead of suffering and dying.But this is just a short-term solution before we start to inhabit places outside the earth :)

#45 forever freedom

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Posted 24 May 2008 - 11:48 PM

A good thing is that the rate of growth of the population will decrease in the future, eventually getting to sustainable levels. We only need to survive until then. If we can't we could just make some giant ovens and put there the dumbest/poorest/most incapacitated people.





(please realize that my last sentence isn't serious)

#46 Heliotrope

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Posted 25 May 2008 - 04:35 AM

do you think our current pop is sustainable , close to 7 billion

#47 forever freedom

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Posted 25 May 2008 - 04:54 PM

do you think our current pop is sustainable , close to 7 billion



Yes i do. Maybe it's not sustainable by the point of view of people who are in the worse conditions like those in africa but most people in the world are living well. And about "all the poorness in the world", there will always be a chunk of the population that will be considered "poor". The only real poor people are the ones that don't have enough money to afford their very basic needs and that's a small percentage of the world population -and it is consistently decreasing-. So i think we're doing fine.

As for the environment, i also think we're doing fine. People are making way too much noise about "how earth is ending". It's not even proven that humans are the major cause behind global warming, for all i know it could just be a normal phenomenon that happens on earth for certain periods of time, and humans are just of very little influence in this.

#48 renton

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Posted 27 May 2008 - 07:03 PM

do you think our current pop is sustainable , close to 7 billion



Yes i do. Maybe it's not sustainable by the point of view of people who are in the worse conditions like those in africa but most people in the world are living well. And about "all the poorness in the world", there will always be a chunk of the population that will be considered "poor". The only real poor people are the ones that don't have enough money to afford their very basic needs and that's a small percentage of the world population -and it is consistently decreasing-. So i think we're doing fine.

As for the environment, i also think we're doing fine. People are making way too much noise about "how earth is ending". It's not even proven that humans are the major cause behind global warming, for all i know it could just be a normal phenomenon that happens on earth for certain periods of time, and humans are just of very little influence in this.


Sam,

Actually the gap between the rich and poor in the Western world is increasing significantly. Part of the problem is the disappearing middle class, for global economic pressures, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, declining availability of non-renewables like oil are all causing costs to go upwards, not down. There's a statistically significant number of, for example, Americans that live below the Poverty Line - moreover, the fact alone 40 million Americans are without any form of health coverage at all (isn't that a basic need?) shows that there's a large disparity between those with access to basic needs and those without. If this is happening in America (allegedly the world's bestest, bestest super-awesome amazing nation ever, so we've been told), what makes you think there's been a conscious effort to shore up income gaps in the Developing World? If anything, there's a super elite emerging in the Developing World too(they're called dictators). Couple that with the AIDS pandemic in Africa (and the subsequent socio-economic breakdown that has come with it), it's very insensitive to say the number of people without access to basic needs are decreasing. It's not. It's getting worse in many regions of the world.

Further, there is real proof that we are definitely instigators of the climate crisis. I won't even begin to cite the hundreds of scientific, peer-reviewed journal articles that cite carbon emissions from human activities as a prime mover in the climate crisis, or the unsettling correlation between carbon emission growth rates and the hottest years ever recorded globally. You're confusing some natural phenomenon - El Nino? - with man-made actions. We need to acknowledge we're part of this problem and if we don't act quickly there won't be a sustainable planet for the nearly seven billion of us.

#49 forever freedom

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Posted 27 May 2008 - 08:07 PM

Sam,

Actually the gap between the rich and poor in the Western world is increasing significantly. Part of the problem is the disappearing middle class, for global economic pressures, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, declining availability of non-renewables like oil are all causing costs to go upwards, not down. There's a statistically significant number of, for example, Americans that live below the Poverty Line - moreover, the fact alone 40 million Americans are without any form of health coverage at all (isn't that a basic need?) shows that there's a large disparity between those with access to basic needs and those without. If this is happening in America (allegedly the world's bestest, bestest super-awesome amazing nation ever, so we've been told), what makes you think there's been a conscious effort to shore up income gaps in the Developing World? If anything, there's a super elite emerging in the Developing World too(they're called dictators). Couple that with the AIDS pandemic in Africa (and the subsequent socio-economic breakdown that has come with it), it's very insensitive to say the number of people without access to basic needs are decreasing. It's not. It's getting worse in many regions of the world.



All in all, if you see the statistics ( i don't have them here), the number of people in the extreme poverty status is decreasing, among the 6.5 billion human population (don't know about the US pop. statistics). Also, we are far better now than we have ever been. Every decade the standarts of living of our civilization rise. There's a lot of poverty and misery in the world of course, but that has always been present, and it is consistently decreasing, for the general 6.5 billion human population. Just look at China and India, with their combined 2 plus billion people. They're FAR better off now than just a few decades before.


Further, there is real proof that we are definitely instigators of the climate crisis. I won't even begin to cite the hundreds of scientific, peer-reviewed journal articles that cite carbon emissions from human activities as a prime mover in the climate crisis, or the unsettling correlation between carbon emission growth rates and the hottest years ever recorded globally. You're confusing some natural phenomenon - El Nino? - with man-made actions. We need to acknowledge we're part of this problem and if we don't act quickly there won't be a sustainable planet for the nearly seven billion of us.


It depends on who makes these reports. The fact that some scientists and environmentalists that look smart say that we are causing global warming doesn't prove anything. There are other scientists saying the opposite.

Global warming? It's natural, say experts

Global Warming Natural, May End Within 20 Years, Says Ohio State University Researcher

#50 Mind

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Posted 27 May 2008 - 08:47 PM

Renton, your statements are not accurate.

Watch Hans Rosling's TED video. It will open your eyes.

The reality is that more of the world is rising out of poverty and at a significant rate. As a percentage of the world's population the number of people living in hunger and living in poverty has been going down steadily over the last few decades.

As far as losing the middle class, from a philosophical point of view, that is alright with me, as long as a greater percentage of the people are moving up the ladder than down. I would rather everyone be rich than have a stratified society with a "middle" class. As a society, I think we should strive for excellence not mediocrity.

#51 abolitionist

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Posted 07 June 2008 - 09:48 AM

It's simple, we just breed less and focus on quality of life rather than quantity.

#52 Oliver_R

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Posted 29 June 2008 - 12:54 AM

Stuff I have seen so far from life extension people seems to suggest the overpopulation idea is just a non-issue, that long-lived people may have fewer children, over a longer period; that in any case population increase is slowing in western countries and set to decline.

Doesn't this rather ignore the long-term implications though? I mean, if we all stop dying, or all live 1000+ years etc, there would surely come a point where there would have to be drastic restrictions on having children, if it was not banned completely. Or do you not think so? Or do you think living forever is worth not having kids?

(edited by Matthias: threads 22840 & 1014 merged)

Edited by Matthias, 29 November 2008 - 12:00 PM.


#53 forever freedom

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Posted 29 June 2008 - 02:51 AM

If we all get to live to 1000+ years, i'm sure we would develop the technology to support the increase in the number of our species. Solutions that come to my mind now are: sea cities, space colonies, sky cities, colonies in cold places like uninhabitable places in russia and in our poles (with global warming they're getting less cold so it should be even easier, soon buying real estate in these russian territories may become an attractive investment :) ). Anyways, 1000 years would be more than enough time to develop the cabality to have all these, but i don't think it will take that long...

#54 Oliver_R

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Posted 29 June 2008 - 09:28 AM

Thanks. So you think we could go on expanding as a population pretty much infinitely? I guess if we end up with efficeint space travel methods that allow us to go out and colonise other parts of the galaxy /universe that would help

#55 VictorBjoerk

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Posted 29 June 2008 - 11:01 AM

Exploring other galaxies are probably millions of years away,but maybe cities on Mars? Let's say a town is allowed to have 100.000 inhabitants and then one dies in a accident or suicide then it's one place empty for a woman to create a child and the one who have waited longest in a queue list is the one who are granted the right. That would be the practical solution. If noone moves from the town or dies well then there are going to be no children at all..........

#56 cyborgdreamer

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Posted 30 June 2008 - 04:49 AM

Well, if the universe is finite and people live forever, there eventually won't be room for more people. It's a shame that people would have to stop having children but that's still infinitely better than a world where every child born is doomed to die.

#57 forever freedom

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Posted 30 June 2008 - 07:01 AM

Well, if the universe is finite and people live forever, there eventually won't be room for more people.



lol.. for that there would have to be like a quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion followed by a few more quadrillions people? ;)

#58 caston

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Posted 30 June 2008 - 11:53 AM

People that are concerned about population growth and decide to exclude themselves from having children be it for the "greater good" may one day regret their decision when they are old and no longer can have children yet share the world with the children of all the people that continued to breed as much as they could.

#59 Heliotrope

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Posted 30 June 2008 - 08:04 PM

the people that breed as much as they could would indeed outnumber the ppl who care about the "greater good" like caston says. those selfish people would not likely have as much intelligence or compassion , when people with "greater good" die off and bred out of extinction, scary.

for sake of human species' survival, may be best to colonize other parts of universe and increase survival chance. we're the last species of the homos genus , last twig on the human family tree, but i guess we were also cruel and clever enough to breed and beat out neanderthals, cro magnon man, java man, those three feet tall little men, and other species of homo


Like Neil Bostrom, I have no ET is ever found, not for his reasoning that extinction is more of rule than life existing being the exception, but if ET species are found, sure homo sapiens can beat out alien bacteria and small worms , bugs, but eventually one ET will make humans extinct like we helped along the extinction of the ones above.

Edited by HYP86, 30 June 2008 - 08:08 PM.


#60 cyborgdreamer

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Posted 01 July 2008 - 09:07 PM

Like Neil Bostrom, I have no ET is ever found, not for his reasoning that extinction is more of rule than life existing being the exception, but if ET species are found, sure homo sapiens can beat out alien bacteria and small worms , bugs, but eventually one ET will make humans extinct like we helped along the extinction of the ones above.


Maybe other species won't be as violent and competitive as humans.




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