Historically the world has dealt with a surplus of men by having wars.
So, you can rearrange the semantics all you like, but he's essentially correct.
A standing army plus reserves and the population you could call up to fight is what kept enemies from wanting to invade.
So, again: "There aren't enough resources" is essentially what people mean when they say "There are too many people." Sending people to war -- win, lose or draw -- tends to get the number of people down and may have long term impact on keeping the number down by removing the potential for those who died young on the field of battle to reproduce at all.
You can claim all you like that "BUT, THAT isn't THE REASON we go to war" and, you know, it just makes me think you have no understanding of history. It doesn't convince me you are right.
The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire could be interpreted as Spain not having enough gold, land, and people.
The US invasions of Panama and Grenada could be interpreted as due to a lack of pro-Americans in power in nearby countries.
The Norse fights with the Dorset and Thule "skraelings" could be interpreted as due to a lack of desired cultural homogeneity.
But it's hard to make sense of anything at that level of generality. To push it a notch higher, I could say that wars are due to specific arrangements of atoms. I would be absolutely correct, but it wouldn't be helpful.
Often times wars were fought for stability. If you were stronger the weaker adversaries would be less likely to wage war against you. So your going to war was more to counteract someone else's lack of resources who might fight for them rather than your need for resources...
Anyhow it like saying we went to war because we wanted to live longer.... Ok. Yes, but that's not how we typically present the issue.
This is causing me a blue screen of death moment. You are disagreeing with me by saying "But the war could start because of someone else's lack of resources..." and I cannot fathom how that is an argument against the idea that a lack of resources is almost always the root cause.
So, I think I shall step away from this discussion now.
Thank you.
> we go to war due to "scarcity" of resources, which is the flip side of the coin of what people mean when they say "we have too many people."
> Then we go to war in order to make sure some other country can't create artificial scarcity of resources, which would reduce the number of people we have against our wishes
It is about preventing someone else from cutting off your supply lines.
Infantry assaults with men marching shoulder to shoulder has not happened since the Russo Japanese war - even Somme and the Japanese Banzai charges are significantly less dense than how they tend to be portrayed in the media.
Sufficiently well-organized places to not have robbery bands internally or raiding parties externally would, in absence of wars, often be big exporters of mercenaries.
The problem has been exacerbated in recent years because of limitations on how many children couples could have, but a lack of financial resources could also place pressures on people to have fewer children, and make as many boys as possible. But this is certainly not "just" a modern problem created by modern abortion technology.
"Son preference is traditional in Chinese Confucian patriarchal culture" ... "China implemented its one-child policy from 1979 onwards" ... "Given strict family-size limitations and a preference for sons, girls have become unwanted in China because they are considered as depriving the parents of the possibility of having a son" ... "About 37–45% of China's missing females may have been missing at birth [due to Sex-selective abortion]", and other factors include infanticide, poor nutrition leading to poor health conditions, and under-registration.