In short: it's bullshit.
Oh, the poor little wogs, they lead such brutal lives, it's so sad that there are so many of them, if only there were fewer of them the world would be a better place. This is the sub-text that I see underlying these comments. It's "surplus population" crap yet again.
These are people. People with dreams and ambitions. People with lives and families. People who are capable of amazing things if given a chance. They're not just grubby uneducated unwashed masses. These are folks who will build the world of the 21st century, who will help lift their own countries out of poverty. These are people who will build fusion reactors, and space ships, and nano-technology. People who will cure cancer, create art, and music, and literature. They don't need people who think that they are wastes of resources, all they need is a chance, and just enough help to start building their own futures.
Bill Gates is a massive investor in Monsanto, if you are naive you might think Bill Gates is a saint. He is really just a globalist with an extremely stubborn perspective of the future.
Think of his contributions to IT: Proprietary software.
Anyone that is a fan of Bill Gates cannot also be a fan of humanity unfortunately.
a) bringing affordable / usable home computing to the majority (something I usually see Jobs credited with)
b) using a large amount of his vast wealth for good causes (I never heard of Jobs doing anything).
Several parties have said Jobs donated to causes, but would often do so anonymously. Known is that he donated to the Democratic Party and to cancer research.
As for Gates: he is once again the richest person in the world. He could give away half of his wealth and he would still be in the top 6. Let’s not think too long about how he amassed his fortune, but I’ll give one example: under his leadership at Microsoft, he ’gave away’ tens of millions of Windows licenses to schools, so that kids would grow up being used to using Windows. It was presented as charity and Microsoft received tax benefits from doing so.
Also: oh boy, Monsanto = evil, haha.
I take it you aren't a fan of GMO foods then? If so, then you are wrong. I'll leave it to former anti-GMO activist Mark to make that argument[1].
If you are talking about their business practices, then generally I agree with you. I can understand the point of view of people who think otherwise, though. I think people who agree with Monsanto's view are wrong, but that is a disagreement about methods, not outcomes.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/09/mark-lyna...
GMOs present numerous issues. Proprietary interest in seed corn and yet another usurpation of privileges by corporate interests are a key issue. It's not intrinsic to GMO, but it's quite the extant problem. Genetic drift is another. Encouraging use of pesticides (through resistance).
And ultimately, they don't address the root issue: humans have to live within ecological limits.
On the question of population growth, families are getting smaller across the globe. If you're in the UK, I recommend this excellent programme presented by Hans Rosling.
Don't Panic: The truth about population http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03h8r1j
From the programme description: "With seven billion people already on our planet, we often look to the future with dread, but Rosling's message is surprisingly upbeat. Almost unnoticed, we have actually begun to conquer the problems of rapid population growth and extreme poverty."
Rosling is, of course, a well-known statistician so he actually presents his conclusions based on real data.
What utter nonsense. If you want people to take your opinions seriously, you should start having opinions that aren't obviously wrong.
I don't think surplus population is the issue (in the present) because we do have enough resources for everyone. At least to give everyone a decent standard of living if not a first world one. And the way population growth is declining I don't think it will become a problem. Not the real problem anyways.
However yours is a terrible argument against overpopulation fears. It is possible for there to be too many people for the world to support, regardless what you think of them as individuals.
What if all the progress we've built is not built on any solid foundation? How much of our QOL boosts are based on actual increases in carrying capacity vs. capital drawdown? What happens when we run out of capital and built a system dependent on it's continual usage?
The reasoning is that capitalism can solve EVERY problem that it creates, but not until that problem is right up in it's face (because you know, capitalism is so short sighted, which incidentally is not a bad thing, just an odd trait).
So we wait and hope that the capitalists are right, which they of course aren't, but then they'll say they're sorry and we will feel good again.
OOPS, we are sorry, our predictions did not pan out. Good that we didnt follow our own conclusions because life would have been so much worse and it was not necessary.
I'm a Popperian. When the facts (best available science) changes, I change my opinions. Also known as "science".
Whatever their faults, the Malthusians made predictions. To be debated, validated, debunked. Far more useful than the techno utopian unverifiable views of the libertarian ostriches.
And capitalism isn't that bad. If a resource is running out, people can predict that decades in advance and have strong incentive to conserve it or invest in replacements. The price gradually rises over many years giving the world time to adapt, it doesn't just disappear overnight.
Malthusianism is correct in a closed system. Predictions of doom and gloom are as of yet unfulfilled because humans are clever and find new pockets of resources to exploit.
Do you believe our Earth is a closed system or an open system?
Malthusianism is incorrect in that they did not foresee ever increasing productivity leading to costs approaching zero. So reaching many limits has been postponed (e.g. peak oil is an economic issue).
I'm personally optimistic. We're in a bear race. I hope and work towards a sustainable economic model. Trivially, that means decoupling economic growth from resource consumption. I hope it happens.
But don't pretend the current situation is anything but dire. A positive outcome is far from certain.
* Earth is not a closed system, it receives an enormous influx of energy from the sun
* We are no where close to using even a fraction of that potential, or using too much of it, most of our energy use is in the form of digging up time-compressed solar energy.
* We are enormously wasteful in manufacturing, no where close to what can be achieved according to the laws of physics
* Life itself shows you that you can manufacture or an enormous quantity of material and continue to recycle it sustainable over eons. So while our current manufacturing techniques cannot sustainably scale forever, there's no fundamental reason why we can't have a manufacturing ecosystem that works more like a biological one
* Matter is neither created nor destroyed by our industrial processes, only rearranged. We benefitted by digging up low-entropy material filtered and concentrated by slow geological/biological processors, but again, there is no proof that we cannot, in an energy efficient manner, recover the used material. Whether through bio-technology or nanotechnology.
The basic premise that man is clever and keeps finding ways to postpone the Malthusian bombs is correct, but it's not just because we keep finding new pockets of resources to exploit, it's because we are getting more efficient at using those resources.
Not to mention the fact that the assumption that GDP growth is equal to manufacturing or population growth is wrong. The math allows value of goods and services to go up even as amount of energy, people, or raw materials used goes down.
We have clear challenges, and we should be scared enough to invest in them heavily. But if you're not a techno-optimist, that we will find ways to address and improve these issues without throwing away our entire style of life, and instead thing the world is going to renounce the last 300 years in favor of a return to life before the industrial revolution, you're backing a set of policies that will never succeed.
As I see it, if collapse is coming, only our smarts are going to save us, not a retreat.
And no, I'm not a Luddite. The only way is forward. Full speed. Any hesitation means humanity loses.
There's something called "Jevon's Paradox". It asserts that increases in efficiency (via technology) increases consumption rather than decreases.
The extent and degree of risk each poses to our life are debatable.
> Do you believe our Earth is a closed system or an open system?
The sun being a source of massive amounts of ongoing energy puts it squarely into open system territory in my opinion. Also, the human brain's ability to learn and build tools to improve upon what we are given by nature, as well as the ability for society to work together for common goals also to me distinguishes us from a classic closed system.
> But don't pretend the current situation is anything but dire. A positive outcome is far from certain.
These two sentences seem contradictory to me. I don't see anything particularly dire about our current state of affairs at all. Certainly we could be far better stewards of the planet, but I see very little that indicates a "positive outcome" (depending on your definition I suppose) is unlikely. At some point we may push the earth beyond its carrying capacity in certain areas, at which point we can simply shift to something else. Where I can agree is, some things are more important than others. If we lost the means of our current mass produced agriculture for example, we'd have to make some very serious lifestyle changes very quickly. But life would go on, and it may even be more fulfilling in some ways.
Misremembering, but there's a Soviet era quote about being 3 days away from revolt. People need to eat.
Yes, Life (sic) will find a way. But governments are far more brittle. Should we (humanity) experience food riots, things will get very bad very quickly.
Food won't vanish, like poof. It's about the disruption. That's when "normal" channels drys up and food is only available thru the black market. During a famine, there's always plenty of food. But the speculators withhold supply and the consumers don't have enough cash. (Note that I said cash, vs credit or savings.)
That's when people starve. That's when civil society (law and order) breaks down.
I'm all for fixing corruption and increasing transparency of governance worldwide, including here at home.
Perhaps. I've been accused of having a random free association narrative most of the time. :)
We seem largely on the same page about the challenges. So we're cool. I'm far more pessimistic than most people. For instance, I believe we're already way past the tipping point on climate change, per the opinions of the experts, and most people aren't there yet.
There is an interesting Ted talk on this: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_o...