Comment by searchableguy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by searchableguy | Hacker News Reader

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<incoherent rant>

Everytime, I end up with the same conclusion. Overpopulation and imbalanced distribution of resources is the root cause for everything wrong with this world.

I keep doubting myself. The problem shouldn't be that visible. People don't seem to blame overpopulation... maybe it's not a problem but everytime, it is the problem. Look at education systems of smaller countries. They are way better than what you get as the number of people in your country increases despite bigger spending.

Stopping overpopulation shouldn't be hard. We haven't tried anything. How can people be so sure? Why not disincentivise having kids by making it too expensive? Maybe use a tax cut equivalent to someone's wealth so rich people are as much affected as poor people (albeit a bit less in the grand scheme). Free birth control for everyone - poor people in less developed countries are responsible for most kids. Force longer education period so fertility rate goes down by the time people settle down. There are so many ways you can push the average marriage age faster than it is happening naturally now. Why not do it for less developed countries? Isn't it better if there is less suffering collectively in this world?

How about paying people to not have kids and adopt? What's the problem with it? Taxes are used for so many other useless things.

</incoherent rant>

I am okay with downvotes but please provide a reason. I really want to know. Maybe my thoughts are unhealthy.

To me the problem is only injustice and distribution of resources, not how much or little we have in absolute terms. And if we must make up a measure as to who gets to have kids, maybe make it empathy, not wealth, which is a much worse indicator of the quality of a person than even physical strength would be.

How does someone measure empathy at institutional level?

Every other metric I can think of will be hard to convince and implement. It can also be pretty subjective.

I didn't say it's easily doable, I say while making up arbitrary factors, at least attempt to make it a good one. If you pick poverty as the criterion, convincing anyone isn't even a question, the coercion is a given, so there's no need to suddenly shift the goal posts for empathy, of all things.

> It can also be pretty subjective.

The comment I replied to literally mentions "everything wrong in the world" in the opening, it couldn't get more vague and subjective than that, but empathy is the problem? Overpopulation is subjective, misdistribution is subjective, quality of education is subjective (you may say knowing things and being able to use them well is "better", but that's subjective, too), even human extinction being a problem is subjective. As anything else relating to human ambitions and what we consider a good life.

Some things are more subjective than others.

Reasonable people will agree that poverty is bad.

Depending on the axioms you have defined for yourself. There is statistical evidence for poverty causing health problems or people to die early on average. Infant mortality rates among poor households or kids with malnutrition.

You could always think of unexpected death as unreasonable or objectively bad. By that line of thinking, you can conclude that poverty must be objectively bad. Anything that can result in unexpected death afterwards is objectively bad.

No matter what you end up with, you still need a fundamental axiom or moral position, I believe.

Like why is 3 greater than 2? Because I attach a greater position value to 3 but what makes this objective really? Most people agreeing with it?

Can most people agree that this world needs less unexpected deaths?

Yes.

Does stopping the number of people born reduce that?

Yes.

Should you stop the demography with highest infant/kid mortality rate first?

Yes.

What's so subjective about it now? Unless you believe that unexpected deaths are a great thing, in that case I think you are fucked up.

There will always be scarcity. That doesn't make all kinds of scarcity the same, morally or in other ways, nor does it mean there will be the same objects of scarcity, nor scope, nor distribution of scarcity at differing population levels.

Still, it will always be a "problem" but that also makes it an opportunity. Lack of opportunity or access to the things needed to even take an opportunity are worse than scarcity (in itself).

> Overpopulation and imbalanced distribution of resources is the root cause for everything wrong with this world.

Those can't be the roots, since both are symptoms.

Symptoms of what?

I live in a country with 1.34 billion people. Surely, overpopulation isn't a problem when every place is crowded with pollution that people can't/won't be able to control due to sheer numbers and poverty.

Poverty is there for myriad of reasons. Improper distribution is one of those. And poverty breeds overpopulation which again breeds more poverty as people having the most kids can't properly pay for them. They don't pay enough taxes either. Tax theft is big in india.

You want to solve tax theft or thousands of other government problems?

Biggest democracy has got you covered there. Most people won't or don't care about it. It's too much friction to move things but it's there for a good reason. A big nation shouldn't disappear under its citizens feet in a night.

So now you have a slow corrupt bureaucratic system as a feature.

> Symptoms of what?

If you're looking for root causes, the place to look is human nature. What do people naturally do, without even thinking?

You get cities because people need things from other people, so there's value in living close together. Cities overstrain the environment because, well, you packed in a ton of people all doing things in close proximity.

You get inequality of wealth and power because of network effects. Why do people form networks? Would it really be better without these networks?

> And poverty breeds overpopulation which again breeds more poverty...

Yet many nations got out of that cycle, so it's not that simple. And poverty is consistently on the decline globally, so doing nothing is a great strategy at the moment.

> You want to solve tax theft or thousands of other government problems?

Tax avoidance is easy: lower the rates to what people will actually pay. Even when you can charge high rates, you still quickly hit a point where it's counterproductive. Governments, like all kinds of organizations, work best when they limit themselves to a well defined mission rather than trying to be everything to everyone.

Why are we stuck with governments? Again, it's human nature. It used to be that people were stuck with a dictator running their life: you'd work all day and send a portion of it to the dictator, who used that to bribe his lieutenants to support him, and they'd make sure some other invader didn't take over.

Democracy simply means that instead of having a dictator confiscate our wealth, we elect representatives who take our money to bribe our neighbors so they can stay in power.

We live with this protection racket of taxation because, fundamentally, power struggles are inherent to human nature. The best we've been able to manage is to set various groups at odds with each other so no one has too much power.

You'll have the same shit but on a smaller scale.

See - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23170398

Please explain more.

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