Higher Game said:
With a sustainable population, food quality is much higher. Grass fed cattle are leaner, healthier, and have more omega 3 fatty acids than grain fed factory farmed cattle, which are very fattening and unhealthy. Sure, we can eat steak all we want, but we have to PAY for it if we want the real, lean, healthy stuff!
That's because it's more expensive to make and so therefore costs more to buy.
Higher Game said:
Overpopulation, ironically, leads to fatness in Western countries and starvation in 3rd world countries, with little or no middle ground!
Erm.. what's this theory based on?
Higher Game said:
Also, if the world has 10x the number of people as in ~1900, then why aren't there 10x as many Einsteins, Beethovens, and Shakespeares? Obviously, the population growth isn't coming from the geniuses.
There's more music, scientists and play-wrights in the world today then there's ever been in any point in previous history. There are plenty more scientists of Einstein's calibre, musicisians of Beethoven's comparative calibre (Beethoven was after all, nothing more than a "pop artist" of his time) and writers of Shakespeare's calibre (who in his time, was nothing more than a populist playwright).
bryce777 said:
Even 'poor' people in the US are better off than the average people in many countries.
... because of Government (and privately) funded soup kitchens, charities funded by relatively wealthy private individuals and access to welfare resources. People in Africa aren't starving to death because their country lacks the natural available resources to feed them, which is a key point of your argument. They're starving because of local political conditions (see that link to the Zimbabwe article you didn't bother to read earlier).
bryce777 said:
Poverty is a complete red herring, but it is definitely caused by overpopulation.
So poverty in Ancient Rome was because of overpopulation too then, I suppose? Reducing the world's population won't eliminate poverty. It wouldn't even help it one little bit.
bryce777 said:
Once, you could simply live off the land in the US by hunting and fishing and gathering chessnuts. Hell, you could go across the country and live on just chestnuts. Now, with more people, forget it. Very little hunting and fishing is left, it is licensed and regulated, and living off chessnuts crossing the country? What a laugh. You could never hope to now.
Yes you could. With enough money you could source all the fish, chestnuts and other food stuffs you'd need for such a journey. It's called the economy. Fishermen catch more fish then they need so they sell the extra fish to people who want to eat fish, but can't be bothered catching it themselves. Chestnut farmers grow more chestnuts than they need to eat themselves so they sell the extra they produce to people who want to eat chestnuts but can't be bothered growing them themselves. Just because you can't find them at convenient intervals along the highway doesn't mean there's a lack of them, for the world's current population.
Of course, if everyone ate chestnuts
like this guy then boy, would we have a problem.
bryce777 said:
Higher game has the right of it - already you can see how greater population makes resources scarcer. The only thing that's wrong is the quantties. taht is true for now, but ultimately, less resources leads to less food. More expensive houses, etc. etc. Why do you think property is so expensive in europe relative to income? And now increasingly in the US? Yes...population.
That's true and that's why the cost goes up. The higher cost is a disincentive to live in densly populated areas and instead move out towards the country, where land is more readily available. Of course this means a reduction in land available for other people who want to do the same thing but the fact remains that the Western World's population is stabilising.
Australia has had a decreasing birthrate,
as has the United States. Two resource guzzling nations. In fact the only reason population is going up in those countries is because of immigration, which is a shifting of resources rather than a real increase.
bryce777 said:
The only 'poverty' in the US is mostly social in nature - there are always going to be people who are too crazy, lazy, stupid, disabled, addicted, or just plain screwed up somehow, to fit into society. In the US these guys become homeless.
That's true. None of them are there because of overpopulation though. Likewise in other countries. These people aren't poor because of the high population. It's because they're usually unskilled people who can't do anything beyond basic farm labour, of which there is little need.
bryce777 said:
So, as I said you can pick a reasonable lifestyle and work backwards from there. If your reasonable lifestyle is anything remotely like the western world, it is utterly impossible to support it worldwide.
That's been true for years and I have no argument with this statement. However, it does not prove the world is overpopulated. It proves that the world is using resources irresponsibly. Westerner's eat too much. They drive when there should be reliable public transport systems. They drive fuel guzzling cars when they could be driving electric cars powered by renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind power or energy made from nuclear power. The western world's only now beginning to come to grips with its resource usage in recent years. Again, that doesn't mean the world is overpopulated.
This argument works exactly the same way for everything else any human being does anywhere. For example, I run a business. If every person world-wide ran their own business there'd be nobody to employ! It'd all be going backwards and the world would fall apart. I ride my bike around a local reserve where I live. If everyone in my area rode their bikes around the same reserve, it'd be no fun and lead to massive environmental damage (which would probably result in bike riding in that area being banned). It is overly simplistic to take what works or what someone does in one country and apply it to the rest of the world and then presume that that's what's going to happen.
There was a newspaper in London once which took the same view. It predicted that if horse use continued the way it was, the streets of London would be covered 6-feet deep in horse manure and the city would need to employ thousands of people just to keep the streets clean. That was back in the late 1800's. Funnily enough, I don't see any horse dung on London's streets today...
bryce777 said:
Idiots take an econ class or two (I have taken much more)
I can see it hasn't helped.
bryce777 said:
Food does not come from a factory, and the steps already taken to make more food has made food of much lower quality as it is.
Eh? The food we eat today is of better quality than it's ever been. The seeds we plant produce more grain and wheat per head because of managed crop breeding than anything we had in the past. Not only that, it is of the same or better quality than what we used to eat. The water we drink is of a better quality then the water they used to drink, thanks to filtration.
bryce777 said:
All kinds of cheap shit like soy, and cheap genetically engineered shit like canola. Think that's good for you? Well, think again. It's used because it's the cheapest shit possible, and canola has transfat acids that don't even occur in food you would normally eat. Your body is not equpped to handle it.
Seriously, do your research. Anything that's genetically engineered is not "cheap". There's a couple of billion dollars going into that industry. The fact that human beings are living longer than they ever have before seems to dispute this fact too. If our food really was in such a shitty condition as you say, we'd be dropping like flies, surely? Thaknfully, we're not. So it either clearly doesn't matter or it's not true.
After all this, you are forgetting one rather simple thing though. These resources are going to run out anyway. Having less people simply delays the inevitable for a wee bit longer. That is in no way a sustainable practice. Coal, petroleum and all the other natural resources are made over millions of years. To have a "sustainable" long-term renewable use for those resources would result in a world population of about 50 human beings. With such a population, you may as well kill of the human race anyway. The planet's only going to last about another 5 billion years as it is and I doubt 50 people would figure out how to build a rocket to escape the expanding sun in time.
Not every human being in the world eats the same food, the same way not every human being in the world drives big gas guzzling American cars. Not even Americans are driving their cars as much as they used to as petroleum prices have skyrocketed. You're apparently a highly educated economist, take a look at your notes on supply and demand.
