Overpopulation: at the base of it all but nobody talks about it

[LMuhlen]

Seems to me most counter-arguments are "we don't need to reduce population", but regardless of needing, what is wrong with doing it? Is it only because the proposed means to achieve reduced populations are all too invasive? Is it merely a problem of 'how'? From most posts it looks like people don't want to reduce population, even if it were simple.

Even if we don't NEED to reduce the population, I think it would still be great if we did.

[Vash The Stampede]

Clearly you're wrong.

Clearly your argument is well thought out with all the not points you have.

Don't forget what? Conjecture!
Is that a good magazine?
What?
Yes? Don't keep us waiting.
Which ones?
Debatable, I prefer cow meat but each to their own.

You don't even quote the entire sentence, you just choose phrases out of context.

TL;DR: I hate it when people dissect peoples' posts to the point where they quote tiny snippets taken out of context and try to "dismantle" their argument that way. It's so buffoon-headed and belongs on Reddit. Attack his argument head on and stop being difficult on purpose.

My quotes were based on his statements, not taken out of context.

Back on topic: overpopulation isn't an issue until you realize that the system this society is based on will make it an issue. It's going to end up becoming a Great Filter unless we do something about it now. Which a lot of people don't want to understand or do anything about because it means having to admit a great deal of uncomfortable truths that change everything about society in the first place.

The birth rate in America, Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and etc are lower than the death rate. America grows because of immigration. The problem is poor countries where having children is a financially good idea due to labor costs. If we fix the poverty issue in those countries they too will slow down in birth rates. Meanwhile places like Europe and Japan have a growing aging population that relies on the shrinking young working tax paying population to pay for social security.

We don't have an overpopulation problem, we may even have it in reverse. That all depends on much longer those poor countries stay poor.

[Hilhen7]

Seems to me most counter-arguments are "we don't need to reduce population", but regardless of needing, what is wrong with doing it? Is it only because the proposed means to achieve reduced populations are all too invasive? Is it merely a problem of 'how'? From most posts it looks like people don't want to reduce population, even if it were simple.

Even if we don't NEED to reduce the population, I think it would still be great if we did.

Great for who?

[kail]

HL3 will be released before we're overpopulated. Why are people worried about such a distant issue? By the time it does become an even slight concern, we would have the capability of living elsewhere.

[LMuhlen]

Great for who?

Great for everything living.

[Illyrian]

From a ecological and economic point of view, it is indeed true that a average Westerner consumes far more than a average person living in a third world country. However, as the third world countries develop, they start to consume as much as a average Westerner. Western people are already a demographic minority in the world, and will only continue to shrink as the time goes by. That will have rather rough consequences for your economies and your pension systems.

There is no magic number of monies to have before having children. Women cannot possibly plan around that, we have a limited shelf life to make kids in.

Correct. I know couples who are always waiting to reach some imaginary money or career goal before they decide to have children. After they hit their desired goal, they simply change it to something else and time flies by very quickly. As much as it can and will be hard, it is better to have at least one or two children before people cross the 30 age mark.

[Hilhen7]

Great for everything living.

Please explain how, and how it would be achieved.

[Ubermensch]

My quotes were based on his statements, not taken out of context.

No they weren't, you were nitpicking and focusing on small points and basing your entire deconstruction on that. Again, attack with a solid argument, attack his actual points and not the ones you want to create for yourself to fight, like a training dummy. My "deconstruction" was a parody of what you were trying to do, in case you missed it.

The birth rate in America, Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and etc are lower than the death rate. America grows because of immigration. The problem is poor countries where having children is a financially good idea due to labor costs. If we fix the poverty issue in those countries they too will slow down in birth rates. Meanwhile places like Europe and Japan have a growing aging population that relies on the shrinking young working tax paying population to pay for social security.

We don't have an overpopulation problem, we may even have it in reverse. That all depends on much longer those poor countries stay poor.

If we fix the poverty issue in these countries, which we won't in this lifetime or the next. Overpopulation will be a problem if we don't change the way society works now, and it'll hit us out of nowhere because of our arrogance and willful ignorance.

[The Stormbringer]

Thanos did nothing wrong.

Okay, I know you're meme-ing, but... Thanos had the ability to flood the universe with all the resources and planets it could ever need. He chose to kill people instead. He did wrong.

[Ubermensch]

HL3 will be released before we're overpopulated. Why are people worried about such a distant issue? By the time it does become an even slight concern, we would have the capability of living elsewhere.

Overpopulation will come closer than you think and not at all for the reasons you'd imagine. It's not a matter of numbers, it's a matter of how the system society uses will no longer be able to keep up. We've already got tons of unemployed people, homeless, starving and so on. And we're not building new cities or towns in a hurry, how long before cities cannot house all these people? Protect these people with security services? Help these people in hospitals when there's no more beds, room or even money to do it?

It's not the Hollywood version of overpopulation that's going to happen, it's the quiet, realistic and boring version that'll quickly become a depressing nightmare in the future.

- - - Updated - - -

Okay, I know you're meme-ing, but... Thanos had the ability to flood the universe with all the resources and planets it could ever need. He chose to kill people instead. He did wrong.

He had the ability to make it so that nobody required food, water or any other form of sustenance and to never die. But at the same time, rendered them all sterile so they couldn't multiply.

Everybody would live forever, wouldn't be able to multiply and pretty much live in an universe with a perfect, static and indefinite balance. He could've done anything that would've solved the problem forever, but he was the Mad Titan so of course he went and killed everybody.

[Hilhen7]

Overpopulation will come closer than you think and not at all for the reasons you'd imagine. It's not a matter of numbers, it's a matter of how the system society uses will no longer be able to keep up. We've already got tons of unemployed people, homeless, starving and so on. And we're not building new cities or towns in a hurry, how long before cities cannot house all these people? Protect these people with security services? Help these people in hospitals when there's no more beds, room or even money to do it?

It's not the Hollywood version of overpopulation that's going to happen, it's the quiet, realistic and boring version that'll quickly become a depressing nightmare in the future.

- - - Updated - - -



He had the ability to make it so that nobody required food, water or any other form of sustenance and to never die. But at the same time, rendered them all sterile so they couldn't multiply.

Everybody would live forever, wouldn't be able to multiply and pretty much live in an universe with a perfect, static and indefinite balance. He could've done anything that would've solved the problem forever, but he was the Mad Titan so of course he went and killed everybody.

The original story made more sense. He fell in love with mistress death and killed people to make her happy.

[LMuhlen]

Please explain how, and how it would be achieved.

I don't think I need to explain how it would be achieved, since my post was literally about asking why it is not a desirable result regardless of 'how'.

And I think it would be great since most things negative about our presence, in relation to one-another and to the rest of the living world, seems to be proportional to the intensity of our presence, which is in turn proportional to our population. Of course we could reduce our negative impacts by reducing the 'proportionality' constants, but it seems much more straight forward to reduce the population.

The entire topic seems to be:

We don't need to reduce the population, all we need to do is:
- produce more food;
- distribute food and resources better;
- reduce pollution;
- make everything more efficient;
- redesign our society;
- find new sources of resources;
- develop technologies;
- etc.

OR...

We could have a reduced population.

So I ask, why is it that we want to increase our population, even if it means we have to go through so much to sustain it?

Forget about the 'how' for a minute. Before that, the question should be 'do we want to reduce our population?', and my personal answer to that is a yes, it would be great if we could reduce our population.

Then, and only then, we ask 'how?'. Maybe there isn't a good way to do it, and even though we would want to reduce the population, it is not feasible to do so. But that is a completely different answer than 'we don't want to reduce our population'.

[fakaroonie]

Once we develop a sufficiently advanced A.I. and all jobs will be automated, Lab grown meat, Universal Basic Income, etc you really don't need to worry about overpulating.

In 100+ years or so we will already have a colony on Moon and Mars.

But yeah, if no advances are made in science, I think the critical point is 15billion...

[Hilhen7]

I don't think I need to explain how it would be achieved, since my post was literally about asking why it is not a desirable result regardless of 'how'.

And I think it would be great since most things negative about our presence, in relation to one-another and to the rest of the living world, seems to be proportional to the intensity of our presence, which is in turn proportional to our population. Of course we could reduce our negative impacts by reducing the 'proportionality' constants, but it seems much more straight forward to reduce the population.

The entire topic seems to be:

We don't need to reduce the population, all we need to do is:
- produce more food;
- distribute food and resources better;
- reduce pollution;
- make everything more efficient;
- redesign our society;
- find new sources of resources;
- develop technologies;
- etc.

OR...

We could have a reduced population.

So I ask, why is it that we want to increase our population, even if it means we have to go through so much to sustain it?

Forget about the 'how' for a minute. Before that, the question should be 'do we want to reduce our population?', and my personal answer to that is a yes, it would be great if we could reduce our population.

Then, and only then, we ask 'how?'. Maybe there isn't a good way to do it, and even though we would want to reduce the population, it is not feasible to do so. But that is a completely different answer than 'we don't want to reduce our population'.

If it's not feasible then what's the point? Also reduced population would crash the economy depending on what exactly we are talking about....

Imagine if the US population was cut in half overnight. Okay you just lost a huge amount of tax revenue, how exactly are you going to pay current debts and infrastructure costs? All retailers would have to close tons of stores, massive layoffs to follow and starving people in the streets. Economies of scale would kill a lot of businesses.

[Unholyground]

Just start farming insects as our primary source of "meat" and then we'll be fine. Biggest problem with population is that livestock farming, cows in particular, take up a huge amount of land and resources.

Fish are easy to farm and it can be done environment friendly as well.

[Unholyground]

Okay, I know you're meme-ing, but... Thanos had the ability to flood the universe with all the resources and planets it could ever need. He chose to kill people instead. He did wrong.

He actually did it for love in the comics, he was trying to impress death.

[The Stormbringer]

He actually did it for love in the comics, he was trying to impress death.

Well yes, but in the MCU he's just nuts. He was also arguably nuts in the comics, but he was trying to get laid, so it's understandable.

[Morssoe]

Don't worry, Finland has already started to reduce native ppl so all those who fucked up their countries can move there.

I also like those help packages they send around the world for hungry children. The best option would be to not go fuck every man if you know you can't feed your children.

[Hilhen7]

You're again back to the "how" question. And the one thing I can answer towards that is: No proponent of population decrease EVER has or would propose to do so "over night". That this wouldn't work well should be rather obvious, and it also would require active killings which is just stupid to assume anybody would propose for real.

Kind of hard to discuss the cons if you don't give me any information on how it's going to happen...

For example if you say we will sterilize a portion of the population, I could say that it would go against our rights.

If you propose the one child policy, then we can end up with the same problem china has. Imagine the Incel problem in that situation.

Or for example someone proposes that everyone be provided free food and medication. On paper it looks like only positives, because if you don't tell us how it will be achieved we can't really point out the cons.

[Ubermensch]

I'm exactly in the same boat as you. I have no idea whatsoever why many here want to defend population growth almost religiously. To me, it's a total no-brainer that less people means less things to worry about on a GRAND scale.

I'm not defending population growth but just keeping a reduced population alone just solves one problem out of several. Changing or redesigning society would take out two birds with one stone and ensure it's permanent. Change the mindset of society, change the system and you'll see how things solve themselves spontaneously without us having to locate, analyze and tackle each problem individually, which just turns into a game of whack the mole and nothing ever gets solved.