Population growth, China, etc.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Japan has failed so miserably because it's focus was on development?

Japan is not Sub-Saharan Africa. It was never wanting for effective government or infrastructure. Even before "gun boat diplomacy" forced the nation open to Western trade, it was hardly like Japan was poor off.

I was referring to the nations of the Middle East, and those like India and China. In the case of the latter, they looked to developing their markets and infrastructure first (though it took India a bit longer to catch on than China), then per capita income gradually began to increase afterwards. The Middle East did so in a slightly more incompetent fashion (the whole "Import Substitution Model" unfortunately dominated economic thought at the time), however; they did look to develop infrastructure and industry before going wild with social programs.

With few exceptions, this is the path most successful Third World nations have taken.

How would a country like Nigeria have a more 'solid' base if it's population growth was higher?

Once again, you are missing the point. I'm not advocating more population growth. I'm advocating more action to deal with economic problems, rather than just dumping funds into futile efforts to implement population control. There is no reason we cannot look to both. The manner in which we happen to list these goals as priorities is simply completely skewed.

Denryle said that growth and industrialization should be avoided? Where?

Look at his equation earlier in the thread. He made it quite clear that "economic growth" = "higher birth rates" and therefore population growth.

Until you actually provide evidence that pop control is contributing to underdevelopment, you're proving nothing except how stupid you are.

I never said that it was contributing. I'm saying that dumping fuckloads of money into it while basically either completely ignoring or paying halfassed lip service to other goals is counterproductive to fostering development in the Third World.

Lack of action is the problem here.

You realize that "living" is a subset of "living comfortably", yes?

You do realize that it is the other way around, right?

See again the part of the post you blantantly ignored comparing India and Taiwan.

Countries like Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan are the exceptions, not the rule.

[Simon_Jester]

You're misunderstanding my point. I never denied this.

You see, this is what I was talking about with "Liberal entitlement" earlier. The Third World shouldn't be looking to develop it wealth per person, but strengthen its economic base. You are going about development backwards from how it played out historically during the industrial revolution.

Frankly, the Third World has no rational reason to expect to be able to pick up its per capita income without first paying its dues where growth, industrialization, and infrastructure are concerned.

I sense a problem with your vocabulary.

Per capita income is an important measure of economic development. You cannot develop a country without this increasing. It is not as if a country can say "screw increasing per capita income, I'm going to become a developed nation!" This would be like saying "screw breathing, I'm going to go exercise!" You cannot exercise without breathing. It is not possible.

Nations which are trying to develop think about per capita income a great deal. There are good reasons for them to do this. Your assertion that this involves some kind of entitlement complex makes no sense. It is as if you do not understand the meaning of the words you use.

China is more powerful than Italy, and it is much more productive. Frankly, this is all it needs to be.
You are confusing "living comfortably" with just plain living. Regions like Africa need to forget about the former for the time being and focus on the latter.

And now you compound your foolishness, by ignoring a government's interest in having a better economy or an educated population. As if large countries should rest on their laurels, ignoring the fact that the potential of their people is being wasted on subsistence agriculture, because they have a large population and therefore a "large" economy. Again, this makes no sense. It is as if you do not the understand the sources of national power, and have mistaken the symptoms for sources.

Once again, I never denied this. I'm simply saying that the Third World needs to focus on fostering its infrastructure and industry before it begins looking towards such matters as individual wealth and education. You can't have an educated middle class without first having schools and the necessary industry and infrastructure to support their material needs. Sending all of the condoms in the world isn't going to change this.

On the contrary, you have denied all of it. You have denied even your own argument, because that argument is self-contradictory. It is as if you think there is no relationship between the skills and assets available to a nation's people and that nation's success. As if a nation could have a working modern industrial base when its people cannot read, write or cipher.

Once again, absolute growth results in improved economic stability and productivity, which results in less scarity and better service infrastructure, which results in lower birthrates, which results in increased per capita income.

This chain of assertions is rank nonsense indicates a complete failure to grasp patterns in economics; I hope that you got this idea from nowhere, rather than from reading a book, because I shudder to imagine such gibberish getting published. The idea that this relationship flows the way you think it does is wrong on many levels, all of which have been addressed earlier.

Proof? All the evidence I've seen shows that food production is only increasing.

So far as I can tell, this is because your understanding of agriculture and ecology are inferior even to my own understanding, which is itself far from impressive. You speak as if you believe that soil is infinitely fertile, or failing that, that you are sure of hearing about desertification and salinization on the evening news. Both are equally foolish.

What makes you think Alyrium has an agenda?

Comments like this perhaps?

Which as I pointed out earlier, studies have shown to be ineffective unless they utilize the most Orwellian measures possible as they did in China.

Which I advocate.

This too makes no sense. You seem to believe that anyone who believes anything must have an ideological "agenda" driving them to believe it. As if there is no such thing as strong beliefs based on facts or logic. I understand why you might think this is true. But it remains foolish.
________

In short, I have nothing but contempt for your arguments, because they show no sign of being anything more than Mad Libs thrown together on the spot, with no knowledge of the meaning of the words being used. I have met twelve year old children with a better grasp of economics and geopolitics than you. Continuing this conversation would be less rewarding than carrying on one with a wall, and the wall would understand almost as much of what I was saying.

I hope that some day you learn enough to understand the objections that I and others have raised here, but I'm done holding out hope that they can be explained to you today.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Per capita income is an important measure of economic development. You cannot develop a country without this increasing. It is not as if a country can say "screw increasing per capita income, I'm going to become a developed nation!" This would be like saying "screw breathing, I'm going to go exercise!" You cannot exercise without breathing. It is not possible.

India and China have done just fine doing basically just that. Once again, I'm not saying "screw per capita income." I'm saying that there is no point in harping on such matters in nation which goes through dictators by the year, or has simply had the same grossly incompetent one for the last 20 or 30, and can't figure out its head from its asshole where industry, infrastructure, and agriculture are concerned.

Dumping condoms on Africa and just hoping that per capita income will magically increase as a consequence because "uhh...there'll be less people and stuff" is foolish at best, and simply idiotic at worst.

Nations which are trying to develop think about per capita income a great deal. There are good reasons for them to do this.

Yes, they do. Do you know what usually ends up happening to said nations? All of their vaunted "development" ends up blowing up in their faces when the economy goes bust due to the market not being able to keep up with the demands of an increasingly wealthy and well educated population. Once again, what do you think happened to Iran?

Per capita income generally goes up in relation to absolute growth when such absolute growth is well managed.

And now you compound your foolishness, by ignoring a government's interest in having a better economy or an educated population.

Who's ignoring anything? I'm pointing out that there is a difference between investing wisely in your nation's future and cashing checks to the future that are almost guaranteed to bounce.

As if a nation could have a working modern industrial base when its people cannot read, write or cipher.

Don't be an idiot. I said nothing of the kind.

This chain of assertions is rank nonsense indicates a complete failure to grasp patterns in economics

Once again, considering that said chain of events was the EXACT course industrialization in the West took during the Industrial Revolution and is currently taking in India, I would honestly love to see you back that up.

So far as I can tell, this is because your understanding of agriculture and ecology are inferior even to my own understanding, which is itself far from impressive. You speak as if you believe that soil is infinitely fertile, or failing that, that you are sure of hearing about desertification and salinization on the evening news. Both are equally foolish.

Technology and advances in agriculture are all fully capable of fixing such problems. Did you not read the article?

You seem to believe that anyone who believes anything must have an ideological "agenda" driving them to believe it.

I am a Capitalist. My agenda involves driving economic growth and development. Denryle is rather obviously an environmentalist who seems to have a vested interest in driving down population growth no matter the cost.

I'm sorry, but both are "agendas."

[Samuel]

With few exceptions, this is the path most successful Third World nations have taken.

What about South Korea, Singapore, Japan and the USSR, nations that moved out of the category 3rd world? After that is the goal- not to be a successful 3rd world nation but to get out of the rut.

He made it quite clear that "economic growth" = "higher birth rates" and therefore population growth.

Because it leads to a malthusian trap were population growth eats up the gains from economic growth resulting in a situation with the same per capita income but more fragile.

I'm saying that dumping fuckloads of money into it while basically either completely ignoring or paying halfassed lip service to other goals is counterproductive to fostering development in the Third World.

Do you have numbers to back up this claim?

Dumping condoms on Africa and just hoping that per capita income will magically increase as a consequence because "uhh...there'll be less people and stuff" is foolish at best, and simply idiotic at worst.

None of us have advocate population control as a growth measure.

Do you know what usually ends up happening to said nations? All of their vaunted "development" ends up blowing up in their faces when the economy goes bust due to the market not being able to keep up with the demands of an increasingly wealthy and well educated population.

If you mean "they spend alot on universities" what happens is the 1st world gets their best and brightest. Of course they send back money so it isn't a loss, just a less than efficient use of their scarce resources

Once again, what do you think happened to Iran?

A religious theocracy took power and there was a brutal war that involved chemical weapons with their neighbor and tanker killing?

Once again, considering that said chain of events was the EXACT course industrialization in the West took during the Industrial Revolution and is currently taking in India, I would honestly love to see you back that up.

Except the West experienced absolute growth through almost all of its history prior to the industrial revolution without this occuring.

Technology and advances in agriculture are all fully capable of fixing such problems. Did you not read the article?

The countries that are the problem can't afford such fixes. Unless you want them to import food... except that costs money as well.

I am a Capitalist. My agenda involves driving economic growth and development.

Actually that goal is also shared by technocrats and socialists.

Denryle is rather obviously an environmentalist who seems to have a vested interest in driving down population growth no matter the cost.

That is real easy to do- trigger WW3. His goal is to reduce humanities footprint because he doesn't want us to destroy the habitats of the majority of life on earth.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

What about South Korea, Singapore, Japan and the USSR, nations that moved out of the category 3rd world? After that is the goal- not to be a successful 3rd world nation but to get out of the rut.

Singapore had an advantage that many other Third World nations didn't in basically being a hub of British trade and power in Southeast Asia, South Korea has basically been the United States' pet project for the last 50 some-odd years, and for as long as Japan has been open to the world, it has been stable and open to trade. It managed to Industrialize not long after the West did.

Furthermore, I really don't buy the notion of thinking of Russia as being a Third World power. It may not have been as powerful as Western Europe, but it was hardly on par with India or China.

Do you have numbers to back up this claim?

Look at the sources I provided on the US budget and foreign aid a few posts back.

None of us have advocate population control as a growth measure.

It doesn't matter whether you advocate such measures or not. It is the reality of the situation in Africa. We spend a disproportionately large amount of money on condoms and birthcontrol, while not spending nearly enough on economic and industrial development.

If you mean "they spend alot on universities" what happens is the 1st world gets their best and brightest. Of course they send back money so it isn't a loss, just a less than efficient use of their scarce resources

What India and China are doing is just fine. They have the money to support it, and their economies are stable enough that they aren't going to pay for it in the longrun. I was referring more to the situation in Iran under the Shah.

A religious theocracy took power and there was a brutal war that involved chemical weapons with their neighbor and tanker killing?

Close, but look at why the theocracy came to power to begin with. The Shah's "White Revolution" stressed social spending to try and force modernization in Iran, and used yet more social spending to try and quiet the clamor for democratic reform this caused among the newly created educated urban middle and lower classes.

It worked pretty well...for about ten years or so. At that point, the economy basically imploded due to inflation and a lack of available goods, services, and infrastructure to meet the enhanced demand.

I'm sure you can piece together what happened afterwards.

Except the West experienced absolute growth through almost all of its history prior to the industrial revolution without this occuring.

Exactly. The agricultural revolution drove up population growth and absolute growth in the economy, changes in societal organization brought about by these factors and an influx of capital from various European colonies and trade routes, in addition to newly made technological advances lead to the development of industry, and the development of industry drove the exponential development of ever more sophisticated infrastructure and services, which resulted in higher per capita income while reduced scarity gradually brought down birth rates.

The Third World has the absolute growth and population necessary to industrialize, and they have the technology. If they could just get the whole "societal organization" bit under control, and derive sources of capital from trade, foreign aid, or foreign investment (as China and India have done) to drive growth, industrialization, and development in their economies, they should be able to do the same.

The countries that are the problem can't afford such fixes. Unless you want them to import food... except that costs money as well.

All the more reason to stop spending such exorbitant amounts of money on condoms and contraceptives, and start spending more on developing infrastructure in the Third World.

[Samuel]

South Korea has basically been the United States' pet project for the last 50 some-odd years,

Which means what? Can you give any foreign aid figures? The only benefit we gave them was our military presence, but they had to have their own to help counter the threat of North Korea.

Furthermore, I really don't buy the notion of thinking of Russia as being a Third World power.

The USSR was wealthy enough to have a space program, provide a standard of living almost as good as the west and maintain a massive military. They were a world power.

Look at the sources I provided on the US budget and foreign aid a few posts back.

The US is not the only source of foreign aid in the world.

Close, but look at why the theocracy came to power to begin with. The Shah's "White Revolution" stressed social spending to try and force modernization in Iran, and used yet more social spending to try and quiet the clamor for democratic reform this caused among the newly created educated urban middle and lower classes.

It worked pretty well...for about ten years or so. At that point, the economy basically imploded due to inflation and a lack of available goods, services, and infrastructure to meet the enhanced demand.

I'm sure you can piece together what happened afterwards.

Brutal dictatorship overthrown by a populance that tired of oppression and extremists take power after revolution? That sounds exactly like the French and Russian revolutions.

The agricultural revolution drove up population growth and absolute growth in the economy,

Except the rate of growth in that case was less than the increase of productivity. That was the important factor- that per capita income increased and the increased nutrition wasn't spent on more people but making the existing people live longer.

That, and in the case of Africa they already have enough people. You can have an industrial economy with a planetary population of "only" 1 billion. Humanity did at the turn of the last century.

All the more reason to stop spending such exorbitant amounts of money on condoms and contraceptives, and start spending more on developing infrastructure in the Third World.

If you are planning on using nuclear power to make water requirements obselete and push back desertification I should point out even industrialized it will be out of their reach. If the methods you are talking about were cheap they would have already be in use by 1st world farmers.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Alyrium, what would you say are the main bottlenecks affecting carrying capacity?

Food and energy production for the most part. The two things without which we cant get anything else done.

Thanks to Aly and Stas for your explanations. So if I'm reading you right, ideally we would have an oscillation in birthrates, from excessively high, to below replacement rate, and then back to replacement rate.

Ideally we need to bring ourselves below replacement for a while in order to stop growth due to our long life spans. Then we can bring it back to replacement and stabilize it. Provided we dont hit capacity first

India and China have done just fine doing basically just that. Once again, I'm not saying "screw per capita income." I'm saying that there is no point in harping on such matters in nation which goes through dictators by the year, or has simply had the same grossly incompetent one for the last 20 or 30, and can't figure out its head from its asshole where industry, infrastructure, and agriculture are concerned.

Their per capita income has increased as a matter of fact. Massively. Just not fast enough for the majority of their population to not be in extreme poverty.

Sure, this might also bring about a temporary increase in population growth in the form of increased birth rates and infant mortality. Once again, however; so what? That is the path the West took during the Industrial Revolution and it is the path India is currently taking (and doing so rather successfully all things considered) whether you or I may like it or not. No one ever said that Industrialization was going to be or even should be a perfectly painless process.

There are ways of avoiding that problem which you completely ignore. It can be mitigated for example with a low GINI. Equitable resource distribution (leading to higher per capita income for each marginal increase in growth) will decrease the likelyhood that the poor will fall into a malthusian trap.

I think it might be more humane in the longrun to simply allow the Third World to take its licks on this issue, so that they eventually can come about and enjoy the benefits which industrialization and modernization bring to a nation's overall standard of living. The process may take longer, but it will ultimately result in a signifcantly more stable, and internationally relevant Third World.

And the increase in population will drive the world into mass famine when we hit carrying capacity.

The alternative you are proposing; namely that we hamper the economic growth of third world nations by fostering increases in per capita income through the depression of birth rates without first building up infrastructure or an industrial base simply strikes me as being an absolutely ass backwards way of going about doing things.

Not what we are proposing at all. These things can be done concurrently. Depress birth rates, while at the same time building an industrial base for growth. Make sure the money from said industrial base stays in the local economy (all of it. An american company building a factory and then leaching its profits while paying the locals a pittance is not acceptable. Shit like this contributes to economic growth, but builds a high GINI and low per capita income and only exacerbates the malthusian problem), and use wealth redistribution to create a low GINI.

We have been smothering Sub-Saharan Africa in condoms and population control programs for well over 20 years, and the place is still a poverty stricken humanitarian nightmare due to its lack of political stabiliity, industry, and infrastructure, WITH ridiculously high population growth rates to boot.

And who says we should be doing one thing to the exclusion of the others? The catholic church has not helped matters either.

Once again, I'm sorry, but the population control centric model of development simply hasn't been satisfactorily shown to actually work in a real world environment. We have nothing to show for decades of such policies.

That is because you are attacking a strawman.

We have been at this for over 20 years in Sub-Sarahan Africa, and we have seen no such development. In fact, India has pushed through with development IN SPITE of what your model states should have been the case.

The population growth swamps the efforts and birth control for a few reasons. 1) Only one sex, the male, is responsible for condom use. Women in third world countries generally cannot insist males use them. 2) lack of education and decent distribution. 3) They are not being employed for birth control, but to prevent the spread of disease and are thus not generally used by married couples in the first instance.

Furthermore, what is your basis for claiming that productivity is certain to drop in agriculture over the course of the next century? In fact, two technologies are being researched to up agricultural technology and bring new lands under cultivation every year.

My basis for this is the drop in cereal crop production per capita as shown on my little graph. Additionally, the documented drop in nitrogen uptake efficiency that has been documented in croplands subject to high input techniques, as well as the increase in topsoil erosion found in high input agricultural fields. That is my fucking basis. Even if none of that was true, and they are, we would still have problems feeding 3 billion more people.

Coastal areas are a miniscule fraction of their land area, and there are other problems, it is not enough to make up for loss of farming efficiency we would need to support the current population, let alone 3 billion more. Modifying a plant to be more salt tolerant is easy. The issue is getting it to grow on waterlogged wetland soils in significant quantity, and in order to do that they will need more than water. They will need high input techniques like metric fucktons of nitrate fertilizer which will not only decrease in efficiency over time, but will also create massive hypoxic zones through eutrophication along their coast lines.

Now, the one regarding ocean acidification is interesting. However ocean acidification is a long term problem. When I was talking about the collapse of ocean foodwebs from the loss of fish stocks, and coastal eutrophication.

The report you posted first is not peer reviewed, and covers one clade of fish. Lets take a look at something that is a bit better.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... lapse.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... 003881.pdf

The picture is not pleasant for a lot of coastal fisheries, and once you start getting to the point where most of them only have a 50% chance or so of being fished in a way that wont lead to a trophic level collapse

"Abstract
Fisheries catches represent a net export of mass and energy that can no longer be used by trophic levels higher than those fished. Thus, exploitation implies a depletion of secondary production of higher trophic levels (here the production of mass and energy by herbivores and carnivores in the ecosystem) due to the removal of prey. The depletion of secondary production due to the export of biomass and energy through catches was recently formulated as a proxy for evaluating the ecosystem impacts of fishing–i.e., the level of ecosystem overfishing. Here we evaluate the historical and current risk of ecosystem overfishing at a global scale by quantifying the depletion of secondary production using the best available fisheries and ecological data (i.e., catch and primary production). Our results highlight an increasing trend in the number of unsustainable fisheries (i.e., an increase in the risk of ecosystem overfishing) from the 1950s to the 2000s, and illustrate the worldwide geographic expansion of overfishing. These results enable to assess when and where fishing became unsustainable at the ecosystem level. At present, total catch per capita from Large Marine Ecosystems is at least twice the value estimated to ensure fishing at moderate sustainable levels."

It's part of the same coin! Population control is allowing for greater economic development, and vice versa!

Greater development yes, but not just in terms of growth. Both need to be carefully managed.

ow exactly? Spending 15 billion dollars on condoms, abstinence programs, and birth control had no appreciable effect. How are you planning on enforcing such a stringent birth control policy in states which have little to no effective government?

You can do it without being that ham-fisted. You have a certain amount of economic growth. Keep the money in-country, and in the local economy. Keep GINI low.

When you do this, you increase per capita income and not just per capita GDP (though that goes up too). The equal distribution from low GINI means that unpredictability is reduced at the same time you are giving people more resources. No need to gamble on the lives of babies. Birth rates reduce, life expectancy goes up, generation time drops. Growth slows without anyone needing to die. At the same time you give women (not just men, but women, the ones who have to ultimately deal with the kids) access to birth control for free, by the west. This gives them reproductive control.

It is not the growth directly that is the problem. It is the fact that it is not even across the population which sets off issues with birth and death schedules from Fitness Gambling.

That said, if a country has a strong enough government like china does, then they should definitely use strict population control measures if they can. The problem with the scenario above is that it takes time. At least a generation or two. This is time we don't have, and if a country has the ability to do it, then they should. Weaker governments can do the former option lined out above relatively easily.

I am a Capitalist. My agenda involves driving economic growth and development. Denryle is rather obviously an environmentalist who seems to have a vested interest in driving down population growth no matter the cost.

I'm sorry, but both are "agendas."

There is a difference. My knowledge of the subject informs my ideology, and makes me an environmentalist. I am an ecologist by training, not some idiot uneducated Luddite environmentalist. Your ideology informs your knowledge of the subject, and causes you to interpret reality based upon the lens through which you view it.

The two types of agenda, while agendas they are, are very different in the way they are formed and in the way they compel a person to operate.

[TheKwas]

Look at his equation earlier in the thread. He made it quite clear that "economic growth" = "higher birth rates" and therefore population growth.

You need to take a class in not just economics, but logic and statistics as well. You have betrayed any fasade of you understanding the issue at hand.

When he said that economic growth intially causes higher birth rates, he was saying that economic growth causes higher birth rates, not that they were equal. He meant it in the Malthusian sense. He did not say that lowering birth rates would result in lower economic growth, because that's not the direction the causation works.

If you can't understand one-direction causation (as you illustrated above), I suggest you X off this entire page and restart your education from stratch.

Others touched on the main points I wanted to touch one.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Look at his equation earlier in the thread. He made it quite clear that "economic growth" = "higher birth rates" and therefore population growth.

You need to take a class in not just economics, but logic and statistics as well. You have betrayed any fasade of you understanding the issue at hand.

When he said that economic growth intially causes higher birth rates, he was saying that economic growth causes higher birth rates, not that they were equal. He meant it in the Malthusian sense. He did not say that lowering birth rates would result in lower economic growth, because that's not the direction the causation works.

If you can't understand one-direction causation (as you illustrated above), I suggest you X off this entire page and restart your education from stratch.

Others touched on the main points I wanted to touch one.

I love you.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

LOL!!!

He did not say that lowering birth rates would result in lower economic growth, because that's not the direction the causation works.

Where in God's name did you get that idea? When in the HELL did I ever say anything even remotely like that? You need to learn some basic reading comprehension skills before making these kinds of wild accusations.

In any case, I'll deal with everyone's replies in the morning. I just thought that this particular strawman idiocy demanded a response.

[TheKwas]

Denryle said that growth and industrialization cause a spike in birth rates, and that they should be avoided in the Third World for that reason.

"economic growth" = "higher birth rates" and therefore population growth.

If that's not what you meant, you need to work on both your english and your math skills. Two more classes to pick up during your education.

[K. A. Pital]

Not what we are proposing at all. These things can be done concurrently. Depress birth rates, while at the same time building an industrial base for growth. Make sure the money from said industrial base stays in the local economy (all of it. An american company building a factory and then leaching its profits while paying the locals a pittance is not acceptable. Shit like this contributes to economic growth, but builds a high GINI and low per capita income and only exacerbates the malthusian problem), and use wealth redistribution to create a low GINI.

*nods* Depression of birthrate with simultaneous industrial growth leads to rapid increase of per capita incomes and life level. Usually it increases the HDI as well, because with a stabilizing population it becomes easier to provide services and infrastructure (as opposed to providing these services to an explosively growing population).

I see Peter continously chooses to argue with strawmen - "either development, or birth control". What a load of bullcrap.

[Anguirus]

He's been flogging that strawman since he first started talking about birth control.

As far as the pernicious "agenda"...look dude, don't you think Aly and I want to live in a world where there are umpteen billion healthy, happy human beings who all have enough to eat and a fucking XBox?

Your wishful thinking does not make such a scenario possible, and your answer to "there is a theoretical limit to the amount of food we can grow on this planet" is an article that describes one of the technological advances that will be needed to maintain our population.

You also show a continued lack of understanding that the ENORMOUS human manipulation of the global nitrogen cycle may not be sustainable in the long run because it costs lots of money, time, and energy, and tends to make other large parts of the biosphere develop a horrible case of death. This is the only thing that makes 7 billion humans remotely possible; to reiterate, without Norman Borlaug, a genius and humanitarian who you've probably never heard of, the horrible global population crash due to famine would have ALREADY HAPPENED.

It is the wild, mad dream of Aly and I that perhaps, with sufficient education and smart public policy, such unprecedented suffering may not have to happen, or it can be mitigated. Even putting it off for two hundred years is no victory, and really a defeat because the population will crash harder.

But hey, by all means, keep flogging your strawman that we are monsters who want to destroy women's fertility rather than give them food, thus calling us little Hitlers while yourself showing a knowledge of the situation that is sub-childish. Invoking the Free Market God-King will not get you anywhere, and more importantly it will not get the WORLD anywhere. Capitalism is only part of the solution, and it's often part of the problem.

[Simon_Jester]

Alyrium, what would you say are the main bottlenecks affecting carrying capacity?

Food and energy production for the most part. The two things without which we cant get anything else done.

Thank you. Is there any specific problem that limits (for example) food production, or is it such a big complex of things that there's no way to pin it on one or two critical factors?

Though I would appreciate it if, next time, you mark your first reply to one of Petey's comments in the "quote" tags; reading farther down your post I had a jarring moment of "Wait, I didn't write something that dumb, did I? Oh, right!"

[Alyrium Denryle]

Alyrium, what would you say are the main bottlenecks affecting carrying capacity?

Food and energy production for the most part. The two things without which we cant get anything else done.

Thank you. Is there any specific problem that limits (for example) food production, or is it such a big complex of things that there's no way to pin it on one or two critical factors?

Though I would appreciate it if, next time, you mark your first reply to one of Petey's comments in the "quote" tags; reading farther down your post I had a jarring moment of "Wait, I didn't write something that dumb, did I? Oh, right!"

Sorry.

First off is space. A lot of land cannot feasibly be farmed in the long run. We could convert this land to agriculture, but that will have other effects we dont want. For example: We could convert the everglades to agriculture, but it is needed for parts of global nutrient cycles, and to provide a storm surge buffer.

The second is what our agricultural practices do to the soil. Irrigation leaches out nutrients and salinates to soil, making it unsuitable for most plants over the long haul. Additionally, the heavy inputs of nitrogen and phosphorus get washed into the local watersheds and go downstream, ending up in the ocean where they create massive hypoxic zones, and in freshwater systems making the parasite populations explode. This says nothing of the fact that all of this erodes the topsoil away faster than conventional farming.

We cant keep this up. We will lose existing farm land, albeit slowly, and what we do have is already becoming insufficient to fuel population growth, with per capita cereal crops showing a distinct inverted parabola for its distribution through time.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Water tables may be a bigger threat than top soil in the immediate future. In China and India, they're losing metres of fresh subterranean water supply daily, all over the place. The Punjab region in India is, in places, so depleted that farms that have been productive for growing crops for decades are now totally barren and their top soil blowing away in the wind, along with many a livelihood. There was a good programme with David Attenborough about overpopulation which looked at a lot of these issues from all angles, from peak oil and the energy/exergy crises, to living space, geo-politics and biodiversity. In pretty much every category, we've long overshot the limits. Many reports I've looked at on the subject put the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet, using Western living standards, at maybe one billion, likely a lot less. And yet, here we are: seven billion strong, possibly going to nine by mid-century, all things being equal.

We can't keep this game up, and we're seeing the buckling in the systems already. Before anyone proposes space colonies or colonising arctic tundra, be mindful that that does nothing to address the problem, even if it were economically and technically feasible to do so. Pointing to increased agricultural land area as places become more hospitable thanks to climate change, or improvements in crop yields using genetic engineering, or alternative energy and more efficient transportation and housing... none of these address the issue, merely side-step it briefly. And compound net growth in a large population soon makes even those advances utterly worthless.

The problem is too many people, consuming too many resources with too much waste. It's just that simple. NO ONE has proposed a solution to this, because no one touches the population question and expects to have a political career. Even the most liberal public speakers are wary of inciting hatred against their own cause by suggesting, what to many, may sound like genocide or clamping down on one of the most sacred rights humans have.

So, are humans smarter than yeast? No.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Water tables may be a bigger threat than top soil in the immediate future. In China and India, they're losing metres of fresh subterranean water supply daily, all over the place. The Punjab region in India is, in places, so depleted that farms that have been productive for growing crops for decades are now totally barren and their top soil blowing away in the wind, along with many a livelihood. There was a good programme with David Attenborough about overpopulation which looked at a lot of these issues from all angles, from peak oil and the energy/exergy crises, to living space, geo-politics and biodiversity. In pretty much every category, we've long overshot the limits. Many reports I've looked at on the subject put the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet, using Western living standards, at maybe one billion, likely a lot less. And yet, here we are: seven billion strong, possibly going to nine by mid-century, all things being equal.

We can't keep this game up, and we're seeing the buckling in the systems already. Before anyone proposes space colonies or colonising arctic tundra, be mindful that that does nothing to address the problem, even if it were economically and technically feasible to do so. Pointing to increased agricultural land area as places become more hospitable thanks to climate change, or improvements in crop yields using genetic engineering, or alternative energy and more efficient transportation and housing... none of these address the issue, merely side-step it briefly. And compound net growth in a large population soon makes even those advances utterly worthless.

The problem is too many people, consuming too many resources with too much waste. It's just that simple. NO ONE has proposed a solution to this, because no one touches the population question and expects to have a political career. Even the most liberal public speakers are wary of inciting hatred against their own cause by suggesting, what to many, may sound like genocide or clamping down on one of the most sacred rights humans have.

So, are humans smarter than yeast? No.

I had not thought of the loss of ground water (which is sad because I work in wetland systems that are all too often fed by said ground water). We have lost 50% of the wetlands that we need to recharge the groundwater table, and are pumping too much out, too fast.

Once aquifers start collapsing into sink holes, we have a problem. Or rather, once that started happening, because it has.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

If that's not what you meant, you need to work on both your english and your math skills. Two more classes to pick up during your education.

Let's go back over the record, shall we?

Denryle made the claim in his equations that...

"economic growth" = "higher birth rates" and therefore population growth.

I responded with...

Of course having a higher GDP and economic growth tends to initially drive up birth rates. However, history has shown that these rates tend to even out after these advances bring about corresponding societal changes(EDIT: as your figures pointed out, due to increases in life expectency and other variables).

To which he replied...

Economic growth drives up birth rates. But it also drives up the per capita death rate of infants, and drives down life expectancy even faster if this is not accompanied by an already high per capita GDP. Population growth is high, but the attrition rate is fucking astronomical, the price of high economic growth is paid in blood.

And later further elaborated upon with the statement that...

If we can keep growth negative for a bit, then ease it up to simple replacement after population growth levels off, we can avoid the horror that will be carrying capacity.

And even stated that he supports cohersive birth control to support such a decrease.


Now, I'm sorry, but what is the overall implication of these statements?

A) Denryle is really, REALLY concerned with population growth (a position which may or may not be warranted).

B) Denryle quite obviously doesn't care as much about economic development as he does about lowering birthrates. He basically offered the argument that economic concerns can be looked to after birthrates have been reduced (which, as I'm sure any objective observer to this conversation will notice, is essentially an extremist position which runs exactly counter to the my own argument).

C) He is willing to use force to make this his solution to the problem a reality.

Denryle is welcome to correct me in this. He may already have (I haven't yet gone over everything thats been said in the last few hours). However, up until that point in the conversation, that was Denryle's position as far as anyone could tell.

Your wishful thinking does not make such a scenario possible, and your answer to "there is a theoretical limit to the amount of food we can grow on this planet" is an article that describes one of the technological advances that will be needed to maintain our population.

The simple fact of the matter is that every time the population alarmists (going all the way back to the Great Grandaddy of them all, Malthus himself) have crawled out of their holes to preach the whole "THE END IS NIGGGGHHHH" schtick, more advanced technology, agricultiral methods, and enhanced societal organization have promptly come about to pick up the slack. You have absolutely no evidence to suggest that the same will not happen again in the near future, or could not continue to occur indefinitely.

You simply have extrapolations which suggest that things might go to shit if we continue using the exact same technologies and methods we are using now.

*nods* Depression of birthrate with simultaneous industrial growth leads to rapid increase of per capita incomes and life level. Usually it increases the HDI as well, because with a stabilizing population it becomes easier to provide services and infrastructure (as opposed to providing these services to an explosively growing population).

There is no strawman being utilized here, only fact. Namely, the fact that there is no "simultaneous industrial growth" taking place anywhere in the Third World where they have not taken the initiative to develop it themselves.

Once again, I never denied that you guys can "talk the talk" well enough. You have simply failed to "walk the walk." The simple fact of the matter is that our current approach to alleviating the ills befalling the Third World is heavily skewed towards ineffective methods of population control, and not economic growth, and that it has been overwhelmingly unsuccessful for precisely that reason.

Apart from strawman arguments trying to misrepresent the nature of my arguments, I haven't seen any of you successfully contradict this claim. So far, you seem content to merely ignore it.

Their [India and China's] per capita income has increased as a matter of fact.

THAT WAS MY POINT! To quote the old(ish) addage, "What we have here is a failure to communicate!"

India and China have increased per capita income precisely because they looked to bringing in new sources of capital and driving economic development first, and then reaped the benefits of these developments afterwards.

Once again, my whole point throughout this entire debate has been that the whole "reduce birthrates and then focus on development" argument is fundamentally backwards.

And the increase in population will drive the world into mass famine when we hit carrying capacity.

Once again, according to alarmist malthusian projections, which might not even be accurate.

These things can be done concurrently. Depress birth rates, while at the same time building an industrial base for growth.

Then do them concurrently! The policies we currently advocate are disproportionately skewed towards population control.

And who says we should be doing one thing to the exclusion of the others?

No one. In fact, I have been proposing that we do more to focus on more than one aspect of development this whole time.

My basis for this is the drop in cereal crop production per capita as shown on my little graph. Additionally, the documented drop in nitrogen uptake efficiency that has been documented in croplands subject to high input techniques, as well as the increase in topsoil erosion found in high input agricultural fields. That is my fucking basis. Even if none of that was true, and they are, we would still have problems feeding 3 billion more people.

And none of this can be dealt with? I find that hard to believe. Additionally, there is the fact that global warming (in one of its few positive side effects) should bring new areas of the globe into more temperate climates, and possibly open them up for agriculture.

You have a certain amount of economic growth. Keep the money in-country, and in the local economy. Keep GINI low.

When you do this, you increase per capita income and not just per capita GDP (though that goes up too). The equal distribution from low GINI means that unpredictability is reduced at the same time you are giving people more resources

So you are basically advocating a form of soft redistributive socialism? Ok, show me the proof.

Has this worked anywhere? In fact, it sounds suspiciously like the ISI model the Middle East utilized during the 1950s and 1960s. In case you haven't noticed, this didn't work out particularly well in the longrun.

The only benefit we gave them was our military presence, but they had to have their own to help counter the threat of North Korea.

The presence of the US military in a nation is an economic boon for one thing. Secondly, the South Korean's association with the US gave them something of a leg up in their relations with neighboring countries like Japan. This resulted in a great deal of trade which aided growth and development in the ROK.

The US is not the only source of foreign aid in the world.

The US is the largest supplier of condoms and birth control in the world.

Brutal dictatorship overthrown by a populance that tired of oppression and extremists take power after revolution?

He wasn't all that brutal. He surely wasn't a humanitarian. However, he wasn't exactly Saddam Hussein either.

like the French and Russian revolutions.

Yes, what of it?

Except the rate of growth in that case was less than the increase of productivity. That was the important factor- that per capita income increased and the increased nutrition wasn't spent on more people but making the existing people live longer.

Once again, I have yet to see any of you justify this reasoning. India is industrializing in spite of having masssive population growth.

According to your model, the rampant population growth taking place in India should be drawing too much of the nation's resources for this to be the case.

If you are planning on using nuclear power to make water requirements obselete and push back desertification I should point out even industrialized it will be out of their reach. If the methods you are talking about were cheap they would have already be in use by 1st world farmers.

R&D makes technologies cheaper.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Denryle made the claim in his equations that...

Learn better reading comprehension skills, and the ability to analyze statistics.

The proper causal chain is this.

Economic growth with poor per capita GDP and high GINI-->High birth rate, low life-expectancy, and high fertility rates-->Population growth.

It is a causal chain, not an equivalence.

And even stated that he supports cohersive birth control to support such a decrease.

Because the consequences of not doing so when the possibility is there, are worse than any human rights violation. Barring that possibility, then others methods can and should be used. The issue is a matter of time. The other methods are rate limited. They take effect slowly, over the course of decades. Decades we dont have.

A) Denryle is really, REALLY concerned with population growth (a position which may or may not be warranted).

Are you an ecologist? Are you even capable of a layperson's understanding of population growth, soil biogeochemistry, and plant ecology necessary to analyze the evidence in this regard? It just so happens that I am the former, and you are not even the latter. You have no basis upon which to make a claim regarding the uncertainty in my position.

B) Denryle quite obviously doesn't care as much about economic development as he does about lowering birthrates. He basically offered the argument that economic concerns can be looked to after birthrates have been reduced (which, as I'm sure any objective observer to this conversation will notice, is essentially an extremist position which runs exactly counter to the my own argument).

Actually no. The two things can be done concurrently. Because the causal chain is not direct, it is possible to break the other links.

For example, economic growth combined with a decrease in GINI will mute the link in the chain relating to birth and death schedules. It requires management. A partially planned economy. Not the free market exploitative free for all that currently exists.

C) He is willing to use force to make this his solution to the problem a reality.

Damn right I am. Every reform to a free market requires some level of coercion. The amount of coercion necessary is directly proportional to the amount of change that must be accomplished per unit time.

The simple fact of the matter is that every time the population alarmists (going all the way back to the Great Grandaddy of them all, Malthus himself) have crawled out of their holes to preach the whole "THE END IS NIGGGGHHHH" schtick, more advanced technology, agricultiral methods, and enhanced societal organization have promptly come about to pick up the slack. You have absolutely no evidence to suggest that the same will not happen again in the near future, or could not continue to occur indefinitely.

Actually, we do.

When Malthus was making his predictions, agricultural technology had not advanced much in the prior few centuries. He was looking only at the increase in cultivated land, and the exponential growth of the population. Norman Borlough came around at about the time we had reached the maximum limit that we could support on existing methods. He was practically a gift from a non-existent god. We got lucky.

However, the methods he pioneered have hard limits. High input agriculture destroys the very foundation upon which agriculture is possible. Soil chemistry, fresh water availability, and the top-soil existing. It boosted production rapidly, but the amount of time that this can continue is inherently limited. In other words, if we do nothing, we will go back to where we were before the 1970s in terms of food production. More likely we will be in a worse position because we will have fucked the soil with a rusty knife.

What technology can you envision that will save us from that? Are you willing to bet the lives of literally billions of people on that?

You simply have extrapolations which suggest that things might go to shit if we continue using the exact same technologies and methods we are using now.

Actually, it is the mathematical certainty that things will go to shit if we keep using the same methods.

What is the better risk mitigation strategy? Preparing for the worst case scenario in the hope that it wont happen, or sticking your head in the sand and hoping it wont happen?

You are doing the latter, me the former.

. You have simply failed to "walk the walk." The simple fact of the matter is that our current approach to alleviating the ills befalling the Third World is heavily skewed towards ineffective methods of population control, and not economic growth, and that it has been overwhelmingly unsuccessful for precisely that reason.

Because we have not been trying to stop population growth. We have not been providing birth control, or doing things that will create demographic shifts naturally (like lowering GINI through wealth redistribution). We have been using condoms to try to combat the spread of AIDS, and entirely different problem. The two are not the same.

Once again, according to alarmist malthusian projections, which might not even be accurate.

It holds true for every single species on earth. We know what carrying capacity is at our current level of technology. And in fact, it may drop due to the problems I mentioned with food production. We have 50 years, approximately, until that happens. Are you willing to gamble on the lives of billions?

Then do them concurrently! The policies we currently advocate are disproportionately skewed towards population control.

Gee, and who ever said I advocate only the one set of policies?

And none of this can be dealt with? I find that hard to believe. Additionally, there is the fact that global warming (in one of its few positive side effects) should bring new areas of the globe into more temperate climates, and possibly open them up for agriculture.

And it would also shift global patterns of rainfall and increase desertification, destroying cropland. Just because the temperatures are nice, does not mean the land is suitable for agriculture.

Has this worked anywhere? In fact, it sounds suspiciously like the ISI model the Middle East utilized during the 1950s and 1960s. In case you haven't noticed, this didn't work out particularly well in the longrun.

No one has thought to try it in a poor country. The math tells me that it could work, and it is better than sitting around doing nothing.

What lowers birth rates? Decreasing the variation in the success of offspring. What does this? A decrease in the variance of resource distribution. What does this? Wealth redistribution.

Once again, I have yet to see any of you justify this reasoning. India is industrializing in spite of having masssive population growth.

They can do both at the same time, but the way they are doing it decreases what is available per person. This should be very simple for your primitive brain to grasp.

If I have 8 slices of pie, and 8 people we are fine. If I then get 9 slices pie, and three more people show up, I have to cut those slices into smaller ones.

Use your brain.

[Simon_Jester]

Alyrium, if I were you I'd do myself a favor and let it go. You've more than done your educational duty here; you can't win the argument any more thoroughly until your opponent goes back to school and studies for a few years to learn the prerequisites needed to understand what you're telling him.

[Formless]

Alyrium, if I were you I'd do myself a favor and let it go. You've more than done your educational duty here; you can't win the argument any more thoroughly until your opponent goes back to school and studies for a few years to learn the prerequisites needed to understand what you're telling him.

Or, maybe no one else is arguing the point, and Aly needs a hobby?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Alyrium, if I were you I'd do myself a favor and let it go. You've more than done your educational duty here; you can't win the argument any more thoroughly until your opponent goes back to school and studies for a few years to learn the prerequisites needed to understand what you're telling him.

Or, maybe no one else is arguing the point, and Aly needs a hobby?

Oh, that is definitely what this is... God damn even my hobbies require that I format datasets and run statistics.

How sad is that?

[Iosef Cross]

What about South Korea, Singapore, Japan and the USSR, nations that moved out of the category 3rd world? After that is the goal- not to be a successful 3rd world nation but to get out of the rut.

Singapore had an advantage that many other Third World nations didn't in basically being a hub of British trade and power in Southeast Asia, South Korea has basically been the United States' pet project for the last 50 some-odd years, and for as long as Japan has been open to the world, it has been stable and open to trade. It managed to Industrialize not long after the West did.

Japan pretty much became a industrialized country in 25 years, from 1950 to 1975. In 1950 Japan's per capita levels of energy consumption were lower than Britain in 1820 (in terms of tons of oil equivalent per capita), second to Angus Maddison. By 1975, Japan's level of energy consumption was 6 times the level 25 years before. That change the in west took about 100 years to make.

[Alyrium Denryle]

What about South Korea, Singapore, Japan and the USSR, nations that moved out of the category 3rd world? After that is the goal- not to be a successful 3rd world nation but to get out of the rut.

Singapore had an advantage that many other Third World nations didn't in basically being a hub of British trade and power in Southeast Asia, South Korea has basically been the United States' pet project for the last 50 some-odd years, and for as long as Japan has been open to the world, it has been stable and open to trade. It managed to Industrialize not long after the West did.

Japan pretty much became a industrialized country in 25 years, from 1950 to 1975. In 1950 Japan's per capita levels of energy consumption were lower than Britain in 1820 (in terms of tons of oil equivalent per capita), second to Angus Maddison. By 1975, Japan's level of energy consumption was 6 times the level 25 years before. That change the in west took about 100 years to make.

And they did because we were occupying and reconstructing them at the time.

[Admiral Valdemar]

And they didn't need to R&D that hundred years of development either. It's a lot easier when Britain (namely my home county) did all that before. Get a dedicated workforce, a happy-to-support-benefactor-of-enormous-wealth interested in you not fighting people because of destitution, and you've a recipe for a colossal turnaround.