Posted on 12/03/2025 6:41:21 PM PST by ransomnote
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Jim
Start with him.
That’s only fair, and I am sure the family would be glad to be a part of helping make the old man’s dream real.
SHADES OF “EARTH FIRST” & DAVE FOREMAN-—1980
I have yet to hear these big-mouthed pinheads demonstrate that they understand exactly how very many humans are needed to maintain and advance our technological base. The fact they make these grandiose pronouncements shows they don’t understand and they’re pulling these numbers our of the air.
Not to mention Ira Einhorn, who reduced the population when he murdered his beautiful girlfriend Holly Maddox in West Philadelphia.
Good point by Musk, but he’s also pointed out the problem of AI sucking up many jobs. I’ll get back to that in a moment.*
An interesting case can be made by examining Israel. Israel does not naturally have an environment conducive to a high density human population. Yet, it’s population density is over 10x that of the USA, and it does well (and very much encourages making babies), and it’s most definitely NOT any sort of dictatorship, even though it is under considerable threat(s). Technology and sensible decisions can get you a long way. (Perhaps Israel’s most sensible decisions have been those regarding their water supply.)
Israel HAS swung recently into a negative balance of trade, but for reasons that appear to be mostly external-political. Outside of those, there appears to be no reason Israel could not swing back to a positive trade balance.
The converse of Israel is Iran, which is also arid, is far more blessed with natural resources, and has a population density just over 1/8th of Israel’s. But... they have been idiots, and now face a staggering water crisis. Their fertility rate has also dramatically crashed, and had fallen to only 1.44 before this water crisis really began to bite.
On a planetary scale, because resources are not distributed evenly, you HAVE to have high volumes of international trade, to maintain a large population in at least halfway decent living conditions. So, those who go by the biblical adage “go forth and multiply” need to tack on “trade, but fairly” and perhaps even Rodney King’s “can’t we all just get along”.
*Several days ago, I observed as a road repair crew repaired some broken up asphalt pavement near my house. I also have some background, which ended a few years ago, with capabilities of AI robots in industrial production. (I’ve done some production engineering, but am not myself an AI developer.) Anyway, I couldn’t help but think the entire job could be done by advanced AI robots, perhaps with a human supervisor to address anything the programmers could not foresee.
Don't agree with you there. There are scads of ranchers, hunters, fishermen, foresters, and even heavy equipment operators who are passionate about what they do on the land. One could call them environmental zealots. Certainly what I do would fit. But at the same time I'm taking to task the people to whom you clearly do refer. The key difference between the two is that most of the former recognize the need for management, while the latter think unattended "Nature" is self optimizing. Little do they realize that a world operating under "survival of the fittest" necessarily results in planetary death. Darwin was wrong in generalizing a special case beyond its useful limits.
Good points.
Speaking of people crops, all them people would suppy a lot of
Soylent Green and Soylent Brown.
Why waste good crops?
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