Overpopulation is a Myth???

[Reginus]

Overpopulation is a scary term, but holds little weight in reality, as long as agricultural research continues humans will multiply exponentially, if agricultural research stops, then the top will be hit and third world nations will proceed to starve, if you are inhabitant of an industrialized nation you should not be remotely concerned.

:bananacolor:  

... but seriously, thats like saying we shouldn't be concerned about the people in the Middle-East.

[-43-]

The middle east is filled with third world religious zealots who depend on a resource that will disappear in a couple centuries, they have little access to ingenuity, and use whatever weapons they can get thier hands on, which is generally a poor selection. The Middle East is low on my list of concerns.

[Ninteen45]

One day the world will be damaged beyond repair and it will reset, and only the strong will survive.

They will learn from their mistakes and overpopulation will never happen again.

[Reginus]

One day the world will be damaged beyond repair and it will reset, and only the strong will survive.

They will learn from their mistakes and overpopulation will never happen again.

hehe, nice one.

[Ultima22689]

The middle east is filled with third world religious zealots who depend on a resource that will disappear in a couple centuries, they have little access to ingenuity, and use whatever weapons they can get thier hands on, which is generally a poor selection. The Middle East is low on my list of concerns.

This attitude is part of the problem, if there is a leak in your pipe it is only going to continue to erode further until the pipe busts and becomes destroyed. The #1 mentality is the reason the USA is in the state it's in now.

[Loffler]

So I saw this poll today and took it.  It asked "Should People Have Fewer Kids to Help Save the Planet?  I was shocked to see the numbers - 51% of respondents thought that the idea of family planning is asinine to discuss.  Then I read through the comments.  Holy crap!  (Sometimes literally religious junk.)  I had known there were people who think that overpopulation is a myth but I didn't know there were so many of them!  Nor did I know that they were as racist and venomous about it as many of the replies in the comments are.

There were the expected "go forth and multiply" bits but I was surprised by how many people mentioned "preservation of the white race" as a reason to not limit their reproductive activities.  

Are those people really a majority?  If they are, I'm deeply disturbed by it.  

Any time you get too fixated on picture of the world painted by internet comment sections, just remember this: before the 2008 presidential primaries, Ron Paul won nearly every online poll in a landslide. What did he get in the actual primary? 1%. The internet is not reality.

So, to cash in on the controversy and maybe collect a few nuts, er... gems, of my own I created a duel page entitled Is Overpopulation a Myth?

Have you encountered any of these "overpopulation is a myth" folks?  Or does anyone here believe that overpopulation is a myth?  As far as I can tell, it seems to have a direct correlation to religiosity.

The direct correlation to religiosity isn't automatically a point for the truth of overpopulation. People rationalize their emotions, even atheists. Secular people are more concerned with matters of Earth and reality. So if an atheist is naturally an anxious person, they're gonna find something to project their anxiety onto.

The truth is the world can certainly overpopulate. This will be terrible if all land is owned in common. But as long as there's private ownership, the price of resources will go up as the supply relative to population decreases. In a free market this signals to producers of resources to invest in that resource, or in alternatives to that resource. As the price of oil goes up, alternative energies become more feasible. As real estate gets tighter, technology will look for ways to spread people out into less currently-habitable environments.

[Ultima22689]

Not if everything is monopolized the way things are. There needs to be a healthy amount of competition for capitalism to work that way which doesn't seem to exist anymore, the big corporations like it that way and Washington won't fix it because their pockets are being lined with gold. Money needs to be taken out of politics and fast.

[Tank]

This is an old thread but related to world population, a subject that has popped up recently elsewhere.

[ThinkAnarchy]

There are too many variables to consider in regards to over population. With continuous technological advances we can sustain greater numbers of humans. 200 years ago, any major U.S. city today would have been immensely over populated. Skyscrapers allow for large segments of a population to live and work in small area's.  Perhaps we begin mining other planets for resources we run low on, future advancements in agriculture allow us to produce more food at cheaper prices, taller skyscrapers further expand limited land skyward, etc, all would influence the over population equation.

It is far easier to judge overpopulation on a local scale, like Japan. They currently have a limited amount of space on their island and their are fewer variables.

Ultimately, there are still major parts of the earth that are uninhabited. Humanity has the option to spread civilization out to the sea, underground, in the sky, or throughout space.

The bigger problem seems to be how humanity sections itself off from other portions of the population with imaginary borders. The potential growth of civilizations are being limited by imaginary lines in the sand. To escape overpopulated areas, you have to jump through hoops in order to move to another part of the world. Some nations even forbid or make it very difficult for their citizens to emigrate. Other nations make it extremely difficult for immigrants.

I simply think people look at overpopulation far to narrowly, as if it's a black and white issue.

There is also no certainty regarding the "ideal" number of people, nor is there anyway to maintain that ideal number without totalitarian measures.