Posted on 05/31/2017 7:39:30 AM PDT by Kaslin
In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote "An Essay on the Principle of Population." He predicted that mankind's birthrate would outstrip our ability to grow food and would lead to mass starvation. Malthus' wrong predictions did not deter Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich from making a similar prediction. In his 1968 best-seller, "The Population Bomb," which has sold more than 2 million copies, Ehrlich warned: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." This hoax resulted in billions of dollars being spent to fight overpopulation.
According to the standard understanding of the term, human overpopulation occurs when the ecological footprint of a human population in a specific geographical location exceeds the carrying capacity of the place occupied by that group. Let's look at one aspect of that description -- namely, population density. Let's put you, the reader, to a test. See whether you can tell which country is richer and which is poorer just by knowing two countries' population density.
North Korea's population density is 518 people per square mile, whereas South Korea's is more than double that, at 1,261 people per square mile. Hong Kong's population density is 16,444, whereas Somalia's is 36. Congo has 75 people per square mile, whereas Singapore has 18,513. Looking at the gross domestic products of these countries, one would have to be a lunatic to believe that smaller population density leads to greater riches. Here are some GDP data expressed in millions of U.S. dollars: North Korea ($17,396), South Korea ($1,411,246), Hong Kong ($320,668), Somalia ($5,707), Congo ($41,615) and Singapore ($296,967).
The overpopulation hoax has led to horrible population control programs. The United Nations Population Fund has helped governments deny women the right to choose the number and spacing of their children. Overpopulation concerns led China to enact a brutal one-child policy. Forced sterilization is a method of population control in some countries. Nearly a quarter-million Peruvian women were sterilized. Our government, through the U.N. Population Fund, is involved in "population moderation" programs around the world, including in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia and Colombia.
The entire premise behind population control is based on the faulty logic that humans are not valuable resources. The fact of business is that humans are what the late Julian L. Simon called the ultimate resource. That fact becomes apparent by pondering this question: Why is it that Gen. George Washington did not have cellphones to communicate with his troops and rocket launchers to sink British ships anchored in New York Harbor? Surely, all of the physical resources -- such as aluminum alloys, copper, iron ore and chemical propellants -- necessary to build cellphones and rocket launchers were around during Washington's time. In fact, they were around at the time of the cave man. There is only one answer for why cellphones, rocket launchers and millions of other things are around today but were not around yesteryear. The growth in human knowledge, human ingenuity, job specialization and trade led to industrialization, which, coupled with personal liberty and private property rights, made it possible. Human beings are valuable resources, and the more we have of them the better.
The greatest threat to mankind's prosperity is government, not population growth. For example, Zimbabwe was agriculturally rich but, with government interference, was reduced to the brink of mass starvation. Any country faced with massive government interference can be brought to starvation. Blaming poverty on overpopulation not only lets governments off the hook but also encourages the enactment of harmful, inhumane policies.
Today's poverty has little to do with overpopulation. The most commonly held characteristics of non-poor countries are greater personal liberty, private property rights, the rule of law and an economic system closer to capitalism than to communism. That's the recipe for prosperity.
A couple of points come to mind.
If you see people as sources of problems and not as sources of solutions, you will think overpopulation is a problem. Switch your thinking, and you can see more hands available to work out solutions is not a problem.
It is stealing to encourage population control in subsistence societies. Children are the only wealth a poor person has - there is no social security to take care of you in such a society. Think of what Mother Theresa has to say about this.
If you call eating and defecating a useful life then there is no limit. Useful work is becoming scarcer and scarcer.
Overpopulation is not a myth in the overcrowded, liberal, urban cities.
But out here in rural America, overpopulation IS a myth. We're lucky to even see another human being during any random week on or around our cattle farm.
I actually read Erich's Population Bomb right after college, thinking, wow, millions of people are going to starve to death because the earth can't sustain itself with so many people.
But over time I realized that he is just like Al Gore, spreading false alarms about millions of people dying from the water levels rising and flooding the coastal cities.
Nature has a way of adapting and adjusting. I think any potential population problems will sort themselves out naturally over time. Civilizations have disappeared throughout history, because they grew faster than their resources could keep up. It's like a tree shedding it's leaves in a drought just trying to survive.
Ironically, a solution to overpopulation was available, but not widely practiced, while Malthus was alive. All you have to do is educate girls, and they won’t want to spend the best years of their lives barefoot and pregnant. That is a major reason why birthrates have fallen in developed countries everywhere. In some places, like Japan, Singapore, Russia and most of Europe, population is now actually falling rather than growing.
Growing up in the Population Bomb era I regret to say that I fell for it. (Joined ZPG and the whole thing).
Now in my 70’s I regret this foolishness very much. I should have learned more about critical thinking, and so now I do not fall for the global warming hype either. One must think about things, and draw conclusions.
In my retirement my wife and I have toured the US multiple times in our trailer. The country is spacious beyond belief. The only crowding is in the cities which are overcrowded by our choice.
Peace of mind comes from understanding that you do not need to fall for everything that you find in print or on the internet.
It's per capita GDP is $1,500 US dollars per year.
Bangladesh is, and always has been, one of the poorest countries (or regions) in the world.
The USA population density is just 8% of Bangladesh.
But the USA produces almost forty times more GDP per citizen!
Under my plan every couple has 3 kids. Then take 10% of the population(slackers) and OFF them. Same as the animal world. Alpha males do the impregnating and the weak ones die off. It insures survival of the species.
I watched Colorado go from a paradise with mostly friendly hard-working people and conservative politics to a nearly unlivable liberal ****hole in less than 30 years.
Trying to stuff too many apples into too small a sack creates problems. There’s a reason liberals are trying to jam-pack the country full of people. Think about it.
We’re definitely overpopulated, there are way too many garbage people who voted for Obama.
The rule of 7/10. At 7% growth you double the principle every 10 years. You can extrapolate for 1%, 2%, 10% etc ...
So at our current course setting it’s inevitable for the future. The only thing that will interfere are Black Swans and Mother Nature.
You obviously have NEVER FLOWN across America!!! And you obviously have no idea that people are FLOCKING to cities all across America!
Huh? The demographic trend is that the rural country side is depopulating as people try to get into cities and the suburbs are holding their own. But cities do tend to more government control which is not good. By what measure are city overpopulated? Density does not equal overpopulated.
Public Schools are how we got all these Liberals today.....Most of the Liberals have ABORTED their kids and RUINED the rest.
And those stats prove nothing except that our system is better. We are prosperous because we are free. Every place that is “overpopulated”, starving, or in chaos is a Democrat/Socilaist/Prog/Communist hellhole. Name a free society that is not prosperous with or without a large population.
Here is where misconceptions, requiring a better knowledge of science, appear.
First, overpopulation is a myth. By definition, you cannot overpopulate. You can only populate to the carrying capacity then fluctuate below that boundary limitation. The limit is dynamic based on technology and techniques that have done a stellar job of increasing food and resource availability. These have moved the carrying capacity upward over the centuries. This is consistent with a Malthusian view provided Malthus did not believe there was a static carrying capacity.
The world, the earth, the infrastructure, etc., will not “collapse”. These structural characteristics of the physical world will be there, however, the utilization of these structures may increase and we will have high levels of utilization that motivate increased infrastructure creation or improved utilization.
The economic costs of more people using bounded resources raises the cost of resource utilization to each individual, tending to limit the increase in producing individuals. This is a negative feedback loop that helps manage the match between available resources and population demand. There are other system forces that constrain as well as promote growth.
There is no-to-little danger of worldwide catastrophe, only regional, short-term mismatches.
Just my opinions.
That will be no problem, since we will have figured out how to use the oceans to create rain clouds way before 2100. The 350 M sq miles of the Sahara alone is enough to house the entire 7B population, every man, woman, and child, with a population density that is less than Ada County, Idaho. Just do the math. Zimbabwe used to be the bread basket of Africa before that troll Mugabe took over and spoiled it with his corruption.
BTW, Soylent Green is people!
100%. OTOH, there is a known “solution” to the problem.
Even better, you could house the world’s entire population in the state of Texas.
Texas has 261,797 square miles of land area
1 square mile = 27,878,400 square feet
So Texas has 7,298,481,484,800 square feet of land area
The world population is 6,706,993,152 / 4 = 1,676,748,288 households of 4 people each
Dividing the 7,298,481,484,800 square feet of land area in Texas by 3000 (3000 sqft. lots)
Giving us 2,432,827,161 1500 sqft homes on 3000 sqft lots,
Subtracting the 1,676,748,288 households from the 2,432,827,161 1500 sqft homes leaves us with
756,078,873 houses still empty.
Even better, you could stand the entire world’s population in Jacksonville, FL. (Jacksonville is the largest city by area in the continental US. It now has 840 square miles.)
840 square miles
23,417,856,000 square feet
3.5 square feet for each of 6,706,993,152 people
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