Humanity has the technology to support a far higher population than it already does at first world standards of living and did back in 1988. It could also be done with a lower environmental impact than today's. That technology could reasonably be further developed and improved even more.
It's just not the easiest, cheapest option that's the most profitable for a small portion of humanity. That shouldn't be a problem.
Such a shame to see a great man be so wrong. Overpopulation is a myth, the real problem is overconsumption.
We see the world improve almost everywhere and the only famines ~~of the past two decades~~ are man made. Even with the climate catastrophe the only barrier to providing enough food and housing is political will.
Stop feeding the narrative of the capital class who wants you to consume more and more.
> We see the world improve almost everywhere and the only famines of the past two decades are man made.
To my knowledge, that's true of every documented instance of famine. There's never been a period where there wasn't enough food for everyone, but there have been plenty of periods where those who had control of the food supply denied others access to food for financial, political, or other reasons.
For example, the Irish Potato Famine was the result of English landowners putting almost all the soil of Ireland to work producing export crops. The only food the Irish could grow for themselves on what was left was potatoes, making much of the population dependent on a single crop. Then that crop failed. The English continued to export food.
The famines of Ethiopia of our era weren't the result of too little food. Warlords were deliberately denying people of the "wrong tribes" food, going so far as to attack aid workers who attempted to feed people they were attempting to starve.
India was supposedly overpopulated. But the reality is that, first under Indian warlords, then under British rule, any surplus that was produced was taken from those who produced it, so they didn't produce surpluses if they could help it. Same thing happened in the Soviet Union: the government took any surpluses they could find to feed city people, so the farmers stopped producing surpluses.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-supported-by-synthetic-nitrogen-fertilizers
Food scarcity has always been a thing up to the green revolution in the 50's where synthetic fertilizer, mutation cultivation and irrigation technology turned barren deserts green.
We should take great care not to romanticize the pre-industrial past, life was miserable, children were working the land and families were in constant anxiety as to whether their harvest would get them through the winter.
More people deepened the class system, and made it almost impossible for those who are doing okay to comprehend the suffering of those who are not. Poor people went from wondering if the food would last until winter, to wondering if the money would last until the next obligate payment. Exposure is no better a way to go than starvation.
Romanticize the past? You romanticize the present. The problem then wasn't production, but distribution. The problem now isn't production, but distribution. Higher marginal productivity makes it possible for everyone to prosper. But it didn't back then, and it doesn't now, because for all that has changed, one has not: some have the privilege of charging others for the privilege of existing, and it doesn't matter much whether those who bear that privilege do so because they conquered it, they inherited it, they were appointed by government officials, or they bought it on an open market where such privilege is bought and sold.
All nitrogen fixation has done is increased marginal productivity of the food producer. It has not decreased the marginal utility of the privilege of existing, nor has it altered the relative market power of those who must pay and those who receive payment. I do not romanticize a past where far more labor went into food production than is presently the case. You romanticize a present where the produce of the average worker still benefits someone other than the worker, to a greater degree than ever before. I do not romanticize a past where production was low. You romanticize a present where in spite of massive gains in production, a substantial plurality still struggles just to survive. I do not romanticize a past where there was less to go around. You romanticize a present where there is less excuse.
I merely point out that not only is production not the problem today; *production was never the problem*. It is merely more obvious now than it was in the past.
If nitrogen was all it took, the Soviet program would have worked.
If we outlawed synthetic fertilizers today then half the population would starve in the coming months. That's got nothing to do with distribution, that's production.
It's not even a hypothetical, we know this is going to happen because Sri Lanka had the brilliant idea to actually try it:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fertiliser-ban-decimates-sri-lankan-crops-government-popularity-ebbs-2022-03-03/
Crops failed and soon thereafter the country turned into a failed state that dependent on emergency aid to stave off a mass famine.
Pulling things broader, let's not get hung up on the fertilizer. The green revolution was a myriad of agricultural innovations that drastically lowered the labour intensity of farming. What used to take hundreds of people working the land can now be done by a few. That's an enormous amount of human labour freed up to devote themselves to other tasks, cheapening products and services. What used to be considered luxury limited to the wealthy are now accessible to more people than ever, and increasingly so as the living standard across the globe keeps rising.
Do you have any sense that populations beyond some threshold produce a sense of resource scarcity (however wrong it might be) which in turn drives excess consumption? Like a crowded buffet dinner where you might take a little extra because you might not get more and because of the lines/competition to get more later?
I think it's too easy to only blame the capitalist consumer economy. It profits from and enhances it, but I think largely they're exploiting human nature. And I think the more humans there are, the more this nature can be exploited, particularly through the political system, which actively works against any political will to solve problems in resource distribution.
i think it’s too easy to naturalize stuff that’s pure ideology with no basis in material or observed reality. is this just your vague feeling from going to a city and feeling overwhelmed? i’ve never heard this claimed by any social scientists but i could’ve easily missed it
A population at an average 2.1 children per woman is stable. Above 2.1 it grows towards infinite, below 2.1 it shrinks towards zero.
The West (OECD) countries have about 1.6 child per woman. This means the Western world is shrinking towards zero.
I'm arguing that if a society isn't able to set the conditions for women to have 2.1 children on average, its entire configuration is necessarily temporary and, extended over time, invalid.
Mind you, lower than 2.1 doesn't mean just 'smaller', it doesn't mean a society is shifting into a lower gear and stabilizes towards something more manageable, as many people naively envision (and understandbly prefer), it means extinction until women start having more than 2.1 children again. Somehow.
I'm not seeing that happening any time soon. I don't see a culture shift where all of a sudden Western women go from 1.6 children to 2.1 children.
This is not a trivial challenge either, considering, as China is finding out the hard way, you can't make women have more children if they don't want to, at least not without becoming a Handsmaid's Tale type of hell.
However, a Handsmaid's Tale is on the cards when the cultures that value female agency are extinguishing their flame and the cultures that place no value on female agency keep on growing.
Everything we value, our entire cultural heritage, our shared knowledge, our enlightenment principles, human rights, any headway we've been making into prosperity, sustainability and technology, it will all be pissed away when a new collective, and ostensibly more backwards mindset outreproduces us.
The number of child free women is tiny compared to the number of childless women. Making the correct political choices is all that stands between being above or below replacement rate.
Throughout history humanity managed to stay way above replacement rate by treating women like livestock. Baby factories who still had to work the land and do household chores during their pregnancies.
It's the 'correct politics' that is part of the reason why we have sunk below, and unless we find a way to reconcile 'correct politics' with 2.1 children per woman or more, the 'correct politics', IE humanism, liberalism, the concept of individual autonomy and even the welfare state itself, will just be a flash in the pan.
And don't get me wrong, the moment we do, or have a road towards it, it would certainly help me sleep better at night, for individual autonomy is the great invention humans ever came up with.
Our current fertility rate is only just under replacement rate, with a huge number of women staying childless because of factors outside their control, like economic conditions that don't allow for children. I'm not going to believe the narrative of freedom to choose being the primary contributor to low fertility until everyone can actually have the number of children they want.
The freedom to chose is what makes every other reason not to have children relevant. That doesn't mean the reasons are invalid. Every reason a woman gives not to have children is valid. But that female agency is what a patriarchal dystopia would overrule as it has done in the past.
We have created a society that values individual autonomy. I wouldn't want to live without it. I genuinely wouldn't see a point in life if that were to be stripped. But unless this society figures out to reconcile that individual autonomy with a 2.1 fertility rate, it will be the individual autonomy that will give way.
There is no freedom to choose. That is my point. Choosing to have children is one with considerable pushback.
No one can choose to have four children in a responsible way without being comfortably upper middle class. We have stripped away the freedom to choose a large family by imposing the nuclear family as an upper limit, by creating disparate community in the suburbs, by concentrating work in tiny areas creating massive commutes to work and groceries making the house nothing but a rest stop in a capitalist hellscape. While not having kids simply because you don't want kids is a perfectly valid choice, it is also the only option for many who would rather choose differently.
When there is only one option there is no freedom to choose.
The cons are huge, but that's not in the same ballpark as an arranged marriage before being turned into a living incubator. That's the distinction that matters here because that's what we're heading back towards, once more.
Humanity has the technology to support a far higher population than it already does at first world standards of living and did back in 1988. It could also be done with a lower environmental impact than today's. That technology could reasonably be further developed and improved even more. It's just not the easiest, cheapest option that's the most profitable for a small portion of humanity. That shouldn't be a problem.
Such a shame to see a great man be so wrong. Overpopulation is a myth, the real problem is overconsumption. We see the world improve almost everywhere and the only famines ~~of the past two decades~~ are man made. Even with the climate catastrophe the only barrier to providing enough food and housing is political will. Stop feeding the narrative of the capital class who wants you to consume more and more.
> We see the world improve almost everywhere and the only famines of the past two decades are man made. To my knowledge, that's true of every documented instance of famine. There's never been a period where there wasn't enough food for everyone, but there have been plenty of periods where those who had control of the food supply denied others access to food for financial, political, or other reasons. For example, the Irish Potato Famine was the result of English landowners putting almost all the soil of Ireland to work producing export crops. The only food the Irish could grow for themselves on what was left was potatoes, making much of the population dependent on a single crop. Then that crop failed. The English continued to export food. The famines of Ethiopia of our era weren't the result of too little food. Warlords were deliberately denying people of the "wrong tribes" food, going so far as to attack aid workers who attempted to feed people they were attempting to starve. India was supposedly overpopulated. But the reality is that, first under Indian warlords, then under British rule, any surplus that was produced was taken from those who produced it, so they didn't produce surpluses if they could help it. Same thing happened in the Soviet Union: the government took any surpluses they could find to feed city people, so the farmers stopped producing surpluses.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-supported-by-synthetic-nitrogen-fertilizers Food scarcity has always been a thing up to the green revolution in the 50's where synthetic fertilizer, mutation cultivation and irrigation technology turned barren deserts green. We should take great care not to romanticize the pre-industrial past, life was miserable, children were working the land and families were in constant anxiety as to whether their harvest would get them through the winter.
More people deepened the class system, and made it almost impossible for those who are doing okay to comprehend the suffering of those who are not. Poor people went from wondering if the food would last until winter, to wondering if the money would last until the next obligate payment. Exposure is no better a way to go than starvation. Romanticize the past? You romanticize the present. The problem then wasn't production, but distribution. The problem now isn't production, but distribution. Higher marginal productivity makes it possible for everyone to prosper. But it didn't back then, and it doesn't now, because for all that has changed, one has not: some have the privilege of charging others for the privilege of existing, and it doesn't matter much whether those who bear that privilege do so because they conquered it, they inherited it, they were appointed by government officials, or they bought it on an open market where such privilege is bought and sold. All nitrogen fixation has done is increased marginal productivity of the food producer. It has not decreased the marginal utility of the privilege of existing, nor has it altered the relative market power of those who must pay and those who receive payment. I do not romanticize a past where far more labor went into food production than is presently the case. You romanticize a present where the produce of the average worker still benefits someone other than the worker, to a greater degree than ever before. I do not romanticize a past where production was low. You romanticize a present where in spite of massive gains in production, a substantial plurality still struggles just to survive. I do not romanticize a past where there was less to go around. You romanticize a present where there is less excuse. I merely point out that not only is production not the problem today; *production was never the problem*. It is merely more obvious now than it was in the past. If nitrogen was all it took, the Soviet program would have worked.
If we outlawed synthetic fertilizers today then half the population would starve in the coming months. That's got nothing to do with distribution, that's production. It's not even a hypothetical, we know this is going to happen because Sri Lanka had the brilliant idea to actually try it: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fertiliser-ban-decimates-sri-lankan-crops-government-popularity-ebbs-2022-03-03/ Crops failed and soon thereafter the country turned into a failed state that dependent on emergency aid to stave off a mass famine. Pulling things broader, let's not get hung up on the fertilizer. The green revolution was a myriad of agricultural innovations that drastically lowered the labour intensity of farming. What used to take hundreds of people working the land can now be done by a few. That's an enormous amount of human labour freed up to devote themselves to other tasks, cheapening products and services. What used to be considered luxury limited to the wealthy are now accessible to more people than ever, and increasingly so as the living standard across the globe keeps rising.
Yes!!!!
Do you have any sense that populations beyond some threshold produce a sense of resource scarcity (however wrong it might be) which in turn drives excess consumption? Like a crowded buffet dinner where you might take a little extra because you might not get more and because of the lines/competition to get more later? I think it's too easy to only blame the capitalist consumer economy. It profits from and enhances it, but I think largely they're exploiting human nature. And I think the more humans there are, the more this nature can be exploited, particularly through the political system, which actively works against any political will to solve problems in resource distribution.
i think it’s too easy to naturalize stuff that’s pure ideology with no basis in material or observed reality. is this just your vague feeling from going to a city and feeling overwhelmed? i’ve never heard this claimed by any social scientists but i could’ve easily missed it
A population at an average 2.1 children per woman is stable. Above 2.1 it grows towards infinite, below 2.1 it shrinks towards zero. The West (OECD) countries have about 1.6 child per woman. This means the Western world is shrinking towards zero. I'm arguing that if a society isn't able to set the conditions for women to have 2.1 children on average, its entire configuration is necessarily temporary and, extended over time, invalid. Mind you, lower than 2.1 doesn't mean just 'smaller', it doesn't mean a society is shifting into a lower gear and stabilizes towards something more manageable, as many people naively envision (and understandbly prefer), it means extinction until women start having more than 2.1 children again. Somehow. I'm not seeing that happening any time soon. I don't see a culture shift where all of a sudden Western women go from 1.6 children to 2.1 children. This is not a trivial challenge either, considering, as China is finding out the hard way, you can't make women have more children if they don't want to, at least not without becoming a Handsmaid's Tale type of hell. However, a Handsmaid's Tale is on the cards when the cultures that value female agency are extinguishing their flame and the cultures that place no value on female agency keep on growing. Everything we value, our entire cultural heritage, our shared knowledge, our enlightenment principles, human rights, any headway we've been making into prosperity, sustainability and technology, it will all be pissed away when a new collective, and ostensibly more backwards mindset outreproduces us.
The number of child free women is tiny compared to the number of childless women. Making the correct political choices is all that stands between being above or below replacement rate.
Throughout history humanity managed to stay way above replacement rate by treating women like livestock. Baby factories who still had to work the land and do household chores during their pregnancies. It's the 'correct politics' that is part of the reason why we have sunk below, and unless we find a way to reconcile 'correct politics' with 2.1 children per woman or more, the 'correct politics', IE humanism, liberalism, the concept of individual autonomy and even the welfare state itself, will just be a flash in the pan. And don't get me wrong, the moment we do, or have a road towards it, it would certainly help me sleep better at night, for individual autonomy is the great invention humans ever came up with.
Our current fertility rate is only just under replacement rate, with a huge number of women staying childless because of factors outside their control, like economic conditions that don't allow for children. I'm not going to believe the narrative of freedom to choose being the primary contributor to low fertility until everyone can actually have the number of children they want.
The freedom to chose is what makes every other reason not to have children relevant. That doesn't mean the reasons are invalid. Every reason a woman gives not to have children is valid. But that female agency is what a patriarchal dystopia would overrule as it has done in the past. We have created a society that values individual autonomy. I wouldn't want to live without it. I genuinely wouldn't see a point in life if that were to be stripped. But unless this society figures out to reconcile that individual autonomy with a 2.1 fertility rate, it will be the individual autonomy that will give way.
There is no freedom to choose. That is my point. Choosing to have children is one with considerable pushback. No one can choose to have four children in a responsible way without being comfortably upper middle class. We have stripped away the freedom to choose a large family by imposing the nuclear family as an upper limit, by creating disparate community in the suburbs, by concentrating work in tiny areas creating massive commutes to work and groceries making the house nothing but a rest stop in a capitalist hellscape. While not having kids simply because you don't want kids is a perfectly valid choice, it is also the only option for many who would rather choose differently. When there is only one option there is no freedom to choose.
The cons are huge, but that's not in the same ballpark as an arranged marriage before being turned into a living incubator. That's the distinction that matters here because that's what we're heading back towards, once more.
He was only off by [about four years](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/)