I recently had a discussion with someone about overpopulation. He was saying that this is the biggest problem our species faces. I of course replied that overpopulation is not really a problem; the real problem is statism.
To illustrate my point, I (perhaps flippantly) said that I thought the Earth could quite easily accomodate 100 billion people, if there were no governments. I was mocked for this viewpoint.
I wonder what people here think about this. There must be some “carrying capacity” of the Earth to support humans, and I think it’s way more than 100 billion. What do you think?
Well considering that under any reasonable projection, that 100 billion is very far into the future, you figure we’ve got to be colonizing space by then anyway.
As for the complaints about overpopulation, 20-30 years ago they were predicting mass famine and death by now.
The whole concept of a fixed carrying capacity rests on the premise that humans are mindless automatons. Animals have fixed carrying capacities, humans do not. The key difference is that humans can create resources, and hence can change their environment’s carrying capacity. Even though population is growing exponentially, the carrying capacity of the earth can grow even faster.
I think it would be more productive if you asked why it was a problem. Undoubtedly he’ll mention things like hunger and poverty. So then you can explain how the market deals with those problems and how the market isn’t allowed to work, adding to hunger and poverty.
If the overpopulationist really took his position seriously, he would commit suicide and bring the population level one man closer to it’s optimum. Preference is demonstrated by action after all.
Actually, it is far more likely that he would prefer to live (gain a higher resulting standard of living from a reduced population) and have others do the dying (bearing the costs for his higher standard of living).
Yes, I regret doing this now. It was out of frustration that the guy (in fact the whole group I was speaking to) seemed to think it was self-evident that there are “too many people” in the world. Some of them even supported China-style limits to reproduction. None of them went quite so far as to say that culling is required though, unlike some of the global elite.
Indeed. Paul Ehrlich said in 1968 that the 1970’s and 80’s would see famine and mass death. Malthus made similar predictions in 1798 about the mid-19th century. And a Carthaginian priest made similar predictions around 300BC (when world population was ~150million), as I recall. I mentioned all this and it didn’t seem to have much effect (“Yeah, but things are different now…”).
Thanks for pointing this out, you are absolutely right.
Yes, and also the peak oil and climate change ‘problems’, and ‘problems’ of running out of resources in general. There was also a strange zero-sum mentality whereby it was supposed that if the population doubles, everyone has half as much wealth as before. Crazy stuff.
I think by this time they weren’t really taking me seriously though. I discredited myself by mentioning the 100 billion figure I think, even though I stand by it. Oh well… win some, lose some…
My suggestion would be to tell them not to reproduce, if they are against culling, tell them if they are committed to this overpopulation that should be their first priority, get sterilized…
Or abstain from sexual activity…
See how many of them are hip to that idea…
You can always make the claim Block does that Forde posted if they do approve of culling, I keep a box cutter on me for work, it is an interesting use of props to hand it to them and say, “Well, if you are committed to culling, please do your cause the favor, and do yourself in. Prove your conviction with action.”
That’s because they don’t understand the cause for the poverty of : Socialism! is huge! with plenty of natural resources. A similar situation can be said about . The reject Capitalism so they are poor. They recently became more open to it so they became wealthier. If there were only 1 million people living in semi-communist , they would still be poor.
Consider 's neighbor , which is one of the most densely populated place in the world and they literally have no natural resources. Yet, they are currently the 2nd richest country in the world after the . What gives? has had one of the most capitalistic economies in the world over the last few decades.
What does he mean by “overpopulation”? That there will be too many people to feed? But so far it’s obviously not the case. If agriculture has been able to keep up with rising world population in the past 100 years, despite a lot of government intervention, why would it stop now? In fact, the rich countries actually face depopulation, what with only one or two children per family, and only immigration has prevented that from happening so far.
Maybe listening to Hoppe’s speak called “From the Malthusian Trap to the Industrial Revolution” throws some light to this issue. There are not only market issues, but sociological, cultural and religious too.