[mike777]

billw55, on 2013-January-07, 15:56, said:

I think that overpopulation is the number one problem humanity faces going into the future. Most other problems are either consequences of overpopulation, or irrelevant in the shadow of it. Unfortunately human nature is such that this very solvable problem will IMO never be solved. When the next fall of civilization comes, this will be the cause.

And to save posting in two threads, I predict this will happen before the advent of autonomous cars

I respectfully strongly disagree.

Human capital is the most important resource we have.

btw autonomous cars/robots are coming to try and solve one looming problem, a demographic labor shortage. Innovation in such matters as you mention and others including that solar energy technology is increasing at an exponential pace gives hope for our future.
-------------


As of 2010, about 48% of the world population lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility.[3] Nonetheless most of these countries still have growing populations due to immigration, population momentum and increase of the life expectancy. This includes most nations of Europe, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Iran, Tunisia, China, and many others. The countries or areas that have the lowest fertility are Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan, Ukraine and Lithuania. Only a few countries have low enough or sustained sub-replacement fertility (sometimes combined with other population factors like emigration) to have population decline, such as Japan, Germany, Lithuania, and Ukraine.[4]

]http://en.wikipedia....ement_fertility

[TimG]

billw55, on 2013-January-16, 12:08, said:

The technical meaning in demographics is (roughly) "births per female".

Isn't the demographic term "fertility rate" rather than just "fertility"?

Even so, it also makes sense that educated people have smaller families since a significant portion of educated people postpone the child rearing until after education and career establishment.

I don't think it is clear that educated people are more aware of a world population problem and have smaller families than uneducated people as a result. Maybe that is the case. But, it would seem to me that the loss of child bearing years to education and career could easily explain the difference without any global consideration.

[blackshoe]

When you needed as many hands as possible working just to get the job of survival done, large families made sense, and large families there were. When the need for many hands decreases, so does the size of families.

[Vampyr]

TimG, on 2013-January-16, 20:34, said:

But, it would seem to me that the loss of child bearing years to education and career could easily explain the difference without any global consideration.

I am sure that your assumption that people will have as many children as they are able to have is just wrong. A person who has a first child at, say, 35 never wanted to have scads of children, so those child-bearing years are not "lost", as they would never have been utilised.

[mgoetze]

kenberg, on 2013-January-16, 17:54, said:

This is sort of an odd thread in that I doubt anyone has any really solid workable ideas.

Well, the interview I linked to in the OP had some interesting ideas one might discuss. Soap operas seem to be quite effective.

[onoway]

mgoetze, on 2013-January-17, 12:34, said:

Well, the interview I linked to in the OP had some interesting ideas one might discuss. Soap operas seem to be quite effective.

The interview was very interesting but a couple of things come to mind. Hans Rosling has a series of TED Talks on population, the last one http://www.ted.com/t...ion_growth.html

He maintains child survival rates are the key to population control; that when children live, there is no need to have so many of them, in a nutshell.

The speaker in the original video missed a somewhat crucial point when he talked about the water table levels falling in India and leading to drought and potential famine. That was directly connected to the widespread switch to GMO crops and has led to a very large area of India now being designated by the Indian Government as a GMO free zone.This whole thing was dealt with by Dr Vandana Shiva in her Melbourne Peace Prize talk in 2010.( I think it was 2010)

The land..and the water table.. can and will recover when it stops being abused by chemical and mechanical stress. Work done by Geoff Lawton and others have successfully and spectacularly brought land back into production using permaculture techniques. One of the first and best known of these projects can be found on You Tube under Greening the Desert, where Lawton headed up a project which brought land near the Dead Sea back into productivity. (The video is long,has two parts, and has a lot of extraneous stuff in it; later ones were better, but this was the first big project afaik.)

The people involved with such projects maintain that changes in agricultural practices will be the key to the survival and prosperity of future generations. Presently industrial agriculture tends to treat the earth as enemy to be forced into producing food, in much the way some ancient tribes used to beat the earth with sticks every spring so it would grow crops for them. Permaculture techniques have rather dramatically demonstrated that working with an understanding and sympathy with natural systems is not only much more productive but also uses minimal resources, and as the earth heals, springs, creeks and wells will also recover.

As an aside: It was very interesting to hear him say that soap operas have been hugely effective in changing people's attitudes. And yet it seems relatively few people will entertain the idea that a steady and apparently addictive diet of murder and mayhem on TV and video games has an effect on society. Seems to be a bit of dissonance there...

[billw55]

mike777, on 2013-January-16, 18:46, said:

I respectfully strongly disagree.

Human capital is the most important resource we have.

btw autonomous cars/robots are coming to try and solve one looming problem, a demographic labor shortage. Innovation in such matters as you mention and others including that solar energy technology is increasing at an exponential pace gives hope for our future.
-------------


As of 2010, about 48% of the world population lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility.[3] Nonetheless most of these countries still have growing populations due to immigration, population momentum and increase of the life expectancy. This includes most nations of Europe, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Iran, Tunisia, China, and many others. The countries or areas that have the lowest fertility are Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan, Ukraine and Lithuania. Only a few countries have low enough or sustained sub-replacement fertility (sometimes combined with other population factors like emigration) to have population decline, such as Japan, Germany, Lithuania, and Ukraine.[4]

]http://en.wikipedia....ement_fertility

Yes, "human capital" is a valuable resource. It is also a drain on other resources. Obviously there is a point where the population is too high to be sustained at an acceptable (average) standard of living. This point may already be passed.

Also, the statistics for individual nations are irrelevant to my point. Nature does not recognize political borders. The earth as a whole has no immigration or emigration, and is undeniably growing in population.

[mike777]

dup post


.

[mike777]

billw55, on 2013-January-20, 10:56, said:

Yes, "human capital" is a valuable resource. It is also a drain on other resources. Obviously there is a point where the population is too high to be sustained at an acceptable (average) standard of living. This point may already be passed.

Also, the statistics for individual nations are irrelevant to my point. Nature does not recognize political borders. The earth as a whole has no immigration or emigration, and is undeniably growing in population.

You and the article supply no evidence or even argument that it has or what that number is. In fact the article does not even present a way to measure that number, as such it becomes impossible to have a discussion.

You do not even mention discover or innovation.
In fact you only state that human capital is a valuable resouce, in fact the most important one, is growing.

Yes we may reach our resource limit of horse power or buggy whips.


As you mention " Nature does not recognize political borders. The earth as a whole has no immigration or emigration, and is undeniably growing in population."
Since you raise that point...Yes at some point mankind's future may be to move out into the stars.

[Vampyr]

mike777, on 2013-January-20, 16:52, said:

As you mention " Nature does not recognize political borders. The earth as a whole has no immigration or emigration, and is undeniably growing in population."
Since you raise that point...Yes at some point mankind's future may be to move out into the stars.

Maybe. But that time is a long way off, and in the meantime the earth's carrying capacity is probably already exceeded.

[hrothgar]

mike777, on 2013-January-20, 16:52, said:

You do not even mention discover or innovation.
In fact you only state that human capital is a valuable resouce, in fact the most important one, is growing.

Mike, you constantly and erroneously conflate human population and human capital.

An ever increasing number of subsistence farmers does not increase human capital in any significant manner. It can actually decrease human capital if you need to divert resources away from education and towards environmental remediation.

Meaningful improvements in human capital requires a strong education system.
In turn, this is strongly associated with small families who invest more resources in each child.

[mike777]

First lets make clear that yes more humans means more human capital and every human is a valuable resource. Of course other factors may reduce or increase the future value of human capital.

I understand some may view humans as a virus, a dangerous, indeed, harmful, virus to planet earth.


Second just saying we have reached the earth's resource limits in not a strong argument, resources that cannot be discovered or innovated. I understand many posters believe that limit has been reached but belief is not science.
I used one small example, population growth is around 1%, solar energy technology growth rates are vastly higher.

Third lets not confuse the evolution of a strong education system with the present university system. You may be able to scale Education. I do strongly agree with the posters who point out the present University system must evolve to survive in a useful form.




Finally is should be obvious to all that what cannot grow any more, wont.

--


btw as I have posted elsewhere Richard Roll has a theory that a decrease in the future value of human capital was the cause of the economic crises.

[onoway]

hrothgar, on 2013-January-20, 17:53, said:

An ever increasing number of subsistence farmers does not increase human capital in any significant manner. It can actually decrease human capital if you need to divert resources away from education and towards environmental remediation.

There is a pretty strong case to be made that it is NOT the subsistence farmer who is forcing resources away from education and toward environmental remediation. The amount of pollution being dumped into the sky and water from industrial practices are far and away more damaging on a daily basis. I don't know of any examples of subsistence farmers poisoning the ground water, rivers and lakes with agricultural runoff such as is the case in North America at least.

There is also the research that shows as population density increases the incidence of crime and socially aberrant behaviour increases, at least in rats..mothers abandoning their young, unusually aggressive behaviour within the group etc.

One example of how stereotypes of the subsitence farmer may not exactly fit the reality is this quote from a longer article from the New York TImes http://opinionator.b...le-land-can-do/

Subhankari Nag lives in the village of Burdwan, West Bengal, about 70 miles from Kolkata. Until this year, the Nags — Subhankari, her husband Uttam, and their eighth-grade son and sixth-grade daughter — had spent their entire family life squatting on other people’s lands. They had so little space that Subhankari even had trouble finding a place to cook meals. Uttam was a day laborer on other men’s farms, earning very little. What was worse than his wages, he said in a phone interview through a translator, was the affront to the family’s dignity. “When I was out working, people would come to my children and wife and say ‘this is not your place. Your father cannot buy land for you — go away.’”

The Nag family did go away. In the very beginning of 2012 they moved to a plot of land given to them by the West Bengal government, a few hundred meters from where they had been living. It has a water pump, and electricity is on the way. They now have a garden where they grow papaya, eggplant, pumpkin, cucumber and other vegetables. They have two cows and three goats; the family has added milk, cheese, vegetables and fruit to its diet. The government gave the family trees to plant. Subhankari has space for a loom. “As a village girl, I knew the work of weaving clothes and kitchen gardening,” she said. “But I couldn’t do it. Now I make 200 rupees a week weaving (about $3.60), and the garden, cows and goats bring extra income.” She spends most of the money keeping her children in school.

The Nags still live in a tiny thatch hut. “But it doesn’t matter,” said Subhankari. “It’s really thrilling to stay in my house. I am confident nobody will come to say bad words to my children and ask us to go away.”

I believe Abraham Lincoln said that "The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land". He may well have been right. Not for everyone of course, but for a lot of people who admit that they hate their jobs and live dissatisfied lives.

How ecologically sensitive are the slums of the cities being ever more crowded with people who cannot find work? How many cities are still dumping garbage and effluent into the ocean, out of sight out of mind?

Perhaps the problems of the industrialized society, educational and otherwise, ought to be fixed before we chase more subsistence farmers off their land for the benefit of the rich and multinationals.

[Vampyr]

onoway, on 2013-January-21, 00:49, said:

I believe Abraham Lincoln said that "The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land". He may well have been right. Not for everyone of course, but for a lot of people who admit that they hate their jobs and live dissatisfied lives.

How ecologically sensitive are the slums of the cities being ever more crowded with people who cannot find work? How many cities are still dumping garbage and effluent into the ocean, out of sight out of mind?

Perhaps the problems of the industrialized society, educational and otherwise, ought to be fixed before we chase more subsistence farmers off their land for the benefit of the rich and multinationals.

Why do you think slum-dwellers are living in shacks at the edges of cities rather than making a comfortable living from a small piece of land? There is not enough arable land in the world for every family to be subsistence farmers, and even if there were, the supply would soon run out.

In any case, why not be honest onoway -- are you really ready for a world where all the land is taken up by people's little family farms, and we have no parks, shops, roads, cafes, bridge clubs, etc? It's very romantic, thinking about scraping out a living on your own little plot, but when there is nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, it would get old very quickly.

Now, you may say that the microplots mentioned in the article you cited are a lot smaller than the plots calculated in the article I cited. But in the article you quote the people don't have to produce absolutely everything from scratch, such as their own clothes, crockery, books, etc. The fact that they can make a small supplemental income and use it to buy these things is due to the fact that most of the rest of us live in "the industrialised society".

[onoway]

Vampyr, on 2013-January-21, 08:26, said:

Why do you think slum-dwellers are living in shacks at the edges of cities rather than making a comfortable living from a small piece of land? There is not enough arable land in the world for every family to be subsistence farmers, and even if there were, the supply would soon run out.

In any case, why not be honest onoway -- are you really ready for a world where all the land is taken up by people's little family farms, and we have no parks, shops, roads, cafes, bridge clubs, etc? It's very romantic, thinking about scraping out a living on your own little plot, but when there is nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, it would get old very quickly.

Now, you may say that the microplots mentioned in the article you cited are a lot smaller than the plots calculated in the article I cited. But in the article you quote the people don't have to produce absolutely everything from scratch, such as their own clothes, crockery, books, etc. The fact that they can make a small supplemental income and use it to buy these things is due to the fact that most of the rest of us live in "the industrialised society".

wow, where to start? I would suggest you provide some evidence that those slum dwellers have any other place to be and that the vast majority of them would not leap at the chance to HAVE a small plot of land somewhere. I have read of people in refugee camps trying to nurture a tiny garden in even those most difficult of circumstances.

Also, the idea that a small farm family would want or need to be so isolated that they would necessarilly be providing their own clothing dishes books etc is totally bizarre to me. It seems to me that everything I have ever read or heard about people who have worked with subsistence farmers is that they consistently comment on the remarkable degree of social interaction they enjoy. Ever heard of barnraising?

As far as that goes, I grew up on what would today certainly be considered a subsistence farm for North America. Certainly there was very very little money; once to the point that my mother sold most of her hair to a dollmaker to pay some bills.(Yes I know there is a story that goes something like that but this actually did happen in my family) My parents played bridge regularly, the whole family went to square dances and other community events, there were lots of beach picnics with neighbor's families. I learned to play badminton in the community hall, I was involved with live theatre and music festivals, and I got at least one or two books for every birthday and Christmas. Perhaps not typical but certainly not unusual either.

Obviously not everyone will want to farm, some will want to work with leather, some want to work with clay, others to build or fix things, some like to entertain, some to design and make clothes,and still others would be shopkeepers. Etc. ALL of these things require some space. Some will be better at it and have more pride and work harder than others, just as in anything anywhere.

So perhaps they can't afford Pravda and have to settle for something other than a Lamborghini or a 100 foot yacht. So what? Certainly the majority of people in industrialized nations can't either, In fact, many these days can't even afford the house they're in or the car they drive.They can't pay back the cost of a very expensive education which has ended up not even rewarding them with a job. This is better?

As far as not having sufficient arable land, in spite of busilly paving over or building on the best land there is still a whole lot of productive land around. Someone once pointed out that if only the pastures for pleasure horses was put into food production, the amount that could be produced would increase by an order of magnitude. In WW2 many families had Victory gardens in their yards which helped a whole lot to keep families healthy and fed in times of rationing and shortages. Now in some places it is illegal to grow potatoes along your own front walk. What's up with that?

OTOH there was a TED talk some time back which detailed the plans of a group in the States which is reclaiming derelict strip malls and parking lots into green spaces.

Also, Will Allen of Growing Power in Milwaukee Wisconsin (US) has demonstrated it is possible to grow immense amounts of food on a very small area of land, but it is labour intensive. He grows an estimated million pounds of food annually on 3 acres of land, all organically, without any chemical inputs whatsoever. He has turned his business into a nonprofit and spends much of his time speaking to groups around North America about what he is doing and how he is doing it. The thing is, though, if you are not going to use poisons and chemicals, then you need people.

There WON'T be enough arable land if we continue the drive toward industrial agriculture, and the cost of feeding a family will increase drastically, along with increasing pressure on water tables to keep up.

Did you know that depression is considered to be an epidemic in North America and gardening is considered one of the top non medical treatments for it?

As far as having nothing to do, you clearly haven't spent much time if any on a small farm. In any case, what about the young people rioting in Spain France and Britain in the last few years because of no jobs? The chronic whine of kids complaining about having nothing to do except play video games or watch TV has become a truism for those kids not being rushed from organized activity to organized activity. Farm kids learn early NEVER to say they're bored, as there is always some sort of work available for a bored kid.

I am certainly not suggesting that the life of a subsistence farmer is easy, many of those in the " developing" nations have a very hard life. BUT. Years ago, the Cherokee were removed from their lands and forced to march on a trek now called the "Trail of Tears" because so many died. The government of the day said that the Cherokee went willingly and would be much better off in the place they were being sent. All conscious, despicable lies.

We and other "have" nations are continuing this practice in other countries now and it is more than time we stopped. It is not helpful to the farmers, the planet or us to move these farmers off their land. It's simply theft.

[billw55]

mike777, on 2013-January-20, 16:52, said:

You and the article supply no evidence or even argument that it has or what that number is. In fact the article does not even present a way to measure that number, as such it becomes impossible to have a discussion.

You do not even mention discover or innovation.
In fact you only state that human capital is a valuable resouce, in fact the most important one, is growing.

Yes we may reach our resource limit of horse power or buggy whips.


As you mention " Nature does not recognize political borders. The earth as a whole has no immigration or emigration, and is undeniably growing in population."
Since you raise that point...Yes at some point mankind's future may be to move out into the stars.

What I said was "this point may already be passed". You even quoted it. You think it isn't? OK, maybe not. Maybe technology can do better, or maybe you have a different idea of an acceptable average standard of living.

But it doesn't matter. No matter what you think the acceptable maximum population is, an ever growing population will eventually surpass it.

And moving to the stars is just really LOL. Science fiction is not a solution to real world problems.

mike777, on 2013-January-20, 18:01, said:

Finally is should be obvious to all that what cannot grow any more, wont.

This is irrelevant. First of all, momentum of growth can easily carry the population beyond the reasonable maximum. It will take time for natural controls such as famine and epidemic to take their toll and correct the situation. Secondly, why on earth would we want the maximum possible population? At some point, more people means less sustenance for each, and dwindling quality of life. Third, available resources are not constant. If population grows to use all obtainable resources, and then those resources take a downturn, what do you think will happen?

[Vampyr]

onoway, on 2013-January-21, 15:52, said:

Obviously not everyone will want to farm, some will want to work with leather, some want to work with clay, others to build or fix things, some like to entertain, some to design and make clothes,and still others would be shopkeepers. Etc. ALL of these things require some space. Some will be better at it and have more pride and work harder than others, just as in anything anywhere.

What will these people eat, since subsistence farming means having very little left over to sell; certainly not enough to feed, say, an additional family.

onoway, on 2013-January-21, 15:52, said:

As far as having nothing to do, you clearly haven't spent much time if any on a small farm. In any case, what about the young people rioting in Spain France and Britain in the last few years because of no jobs? The chronic whine of kids complaining about having nothing to do except play video games or watch TV has become a truism for those kids not being rushed from organized activity to organized activity. Farm kids learn early NEVER to say they're bored, as there is always some sort of work available for a bored kid.

What I was talking about was leisure/social activities. Do you spend a lot of time at medieval fairs? They are not real life.

[blackshoe]

billw55, on 2013-January-22, 07:44, said:

And moving to the stars is just really LOL. Science fiction is not a solution to real world problems.

Some day this idea may no longer be science fiction. I grant that it is silly to count on it, but…

Ad astra per aspera — motto of NASA, and of the State of Kansas, not to mention many other institutions around the world.

There is also "Once you get to low Earth orbit, you're halfway to any place in the Solar System" — Robert Heinlein. Heinlein wrote sf, but the statement quoted is a fact, considering energy cost. The Solar System is a pretty big place, with a lot of resources. Limited, yes, but with a big enough limit that it will be a very long time before we hit it. Assuming we don't kill ourselves off first.

[dwar0123]

Quote

Ad astra per aspera

Far be it from me to suggest that the stars are not a goal worthy of pursuit but they will never be a solution to overpopulation. Short of discovering "Stargate" level technology, there is no way to move people off Earth faster than we make new ones. It isn't even close, if you plug in the actual numbers its actually laughably silly. It would be like trying to hold back Niagara falls with a Dixie cup.

Getting into space is about taking all of our eggs out of one basket, the problems of Earth will still have to be solved by those on Earth. Not to mention no matter how bad things get on Earth, existing on Earth is still going to be vastly cheaper and easier than anywhere else in this solar system.

[onoway]

Vampyr, on 2013-January-22, 07:54, said:

What will these people eat, since subsistence farming means having very little left over to sell; certainly not enough to feed, say, an additional family.



What I was talking about was leisure/social activities. Do you spend a lot of time at medieval fairs? They are not real life.

First of all, the goal is not to maintain subsistence farmers in a state of poverty. It is to help them learn better ways to use the land they have so it is able to produce more in a sustainable fashion and we now know how to do that, It is NOT via chemical agribusiness techniques but through systems such as permaculture and biodynamics which work with natural systems instead of being at war with them. Wars of any kind always cost.

In the meantime, ever heard of barter? Governments hate it but it has been a viable means of providing for families what they need without requiring the money that buying stuff does. There's even a show about it on TV, the one time I watched it they supposedly bartered their way up from something worth $200 to a working kit plane. Even so, in the article I cited above, even on that miniscule plot of land they were given, they found that they were able to produce a surplus of product and sell it so they could send their kids to school and buy essentials they could not produce. It's exactly how it has always worked and indeed works now. When food production ceases for reasons such as drought or land degradation, then everything else fall apart.

You may be able to produce your gizmos in your gizmo factory with robots but who are you going to sell them to, if people are starving and need food, not gizmos?

Perhaps you should be specific about what sort of thing you are talking about when you speak of leisure and social activities. Concerts? Sports? I can't imagine why you would think that because people have minimal money they are cut off from leisure and social activities. Possibly because you are stuck thinking inside the box of what you consider is essential for social activities, such as perfectly zambonied ice in an arena and lots of expensive equipment to play hockey or expensive instruments needed to make music? Every culture I have ever heard of has music and theatre and sports of one sort or another. If, as an example, they want to experience the music of other cultures, poverty is not always a barrier to an imaginative mind.


Quite probably the opportunities for PASSIVE recreation such as going to movies would be less accessible. I'm not convinced that being unable to spend money and time watching Wrath of the Titans is something to lose sleep over.

How many gas jockies or people working at Walmart can afford to play hockey, or go to a concert which will cost them maybe two days wages, wages already earmarked for rent or food or other essentials? Should they somehow be rescued from the lack of unlimited social interaction that wealthier westerners enjoy? If not, why not? Could it be because they don't have anything that rich or multinationals want, like land?

How many people living in tent cities or poor city neighborhoods have great social activities and leisure time? Why are the Food Banks in virtually all North American cities stretched to their limit and beyond? If these people could at least raise some of their own food then those resources could go to support other needs.

I sent this TED Talk about an architect in Texas helping people build houses out of recycled materials http://www.ted.com/t...imed_stuff.html to someone with a very comfortable lifestyle. She was clear that nothing about it would ever apply to her, which is probably true. Your comments seem to me to have as she does, a somewhat privileged view of the world which is so far from the reality of so many people's lives today it's difficult to see how to bridge the gap. I suppose that's what the Wall Street protests were about.