Topic: Overpopulation and the Unemployed

[mouse_clicker]

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Mouse, it's like you said in another thread. Nature tends to take care of things. When things get to crowded, disease flourishes and people will inevitably die. Governments don't need to kill people or limit the number of births, because that will happen on its own.

That's thew way it SHOULD happen. If we leave it up to nature now, the human race will vastly overpopulate, deplete our food resources, then starve to death. If we don't go completely extinct human civilization will probably start anew. The problem is we've already interfered with nature- every day we make huge advancements in the medical field, even going as far as erradicating some diseases, such as smallpox and polio. Bill does have a point that no matter the time period there will always be diseases beyond our ability to combat ("influenza", AIDS), but we do have control over a vast array of other diseases that should be keeping our population in check. If nature were left alone in the first place, nature would be able to sort itself out, yes, but if we don't employ artificial means of population control now I believe nature will just start over with a clean slate.

[slacker]

The scenario for a global disaster due to human over population is highly unlikely in my opinion.  Yes, we humans are growing more adept to surviving by findings cures to eradicate certain diseases and getting more production from our food sources.  But these advances are basically solely accessible to developed countries.  China's population has already started to level off.  They don't have the 1 child per couple rule any more.  What they have done is financially penalize those who choose to have more than 1 offspring, while educating the masses about the future if things don't come under control.  Sure, humans are popping up everywhere, but the population boom is actually isolated in developing areas.  They are already declining in Europe and if it weren't for immigration, it would be declining in the USA as well.  Lets face it, the biggest threat to human kind and the world is our systematic global destruction of our environment.  Instead of focusing most of our resources on renewable/clean energy, we focus it on finding more oil, that add green house gases.  Then there's the destruction of our forests.  I know some of you will say that the environmental destruction is due to population increases, but it is not.  Its due to a lack of knowledge and appreciation for our environment and our interaction with it.  There are only a few regions in the world where population boom is a major problem and that is in India, Southeast Asia, and the Latin Americas.  However, in India, things are starting to modernize and so I believe within 10 to 20 years from now, their population will start to level off, much like China.  The trick here is to modernize these countries, while preventing them from destroying their own environment and stunting their development.  A more just and effective method for population control is ultimately education and economic well being.  There aren't many educated people that are financially sound who have a boat load of kids (talking about in developed countries), but of course there are some exceptions.  It worked here and in Europe, so why wouldn't it work elsewhere as well.

[Ocarina Blue]

I agree with Slacker on most issues here. Although overpopulation will eventaully end in castastrophy and cause a significant drop in populaion - it hapens all the time with all life - it is unlikely anything will completly wipe us out for quite a while. Life is actually really robust, especially tough things like us. Not even a huge nuclear war would destroy all humans.

There is little to be alarmed at. Countries that experience vast overpopulation will sort it out as individual cells, be it through disaster or political reasoning.

On the other hand, with lax access to global travel, and dense populations, a massive plauge will hit soon, I reckon.

Oh, and with regards to older diseases being able to keep our population in check: Humans will actually naturally adapt to a lot of diseases. In some isolated areas situated high in the Himalayas, the flu is still deadly. It killed millions in South America when it was first introduced. In the long run, many more deaths have been prevented through natural immunity than through Human intervention.

[mouse_clicker]

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Humans will actually naturally adapt to a lot of diseases.

Or perhaps the disease adapts to humans- disease are essentially parasites and only a bad parasite kills its host soon after infesting it. In any case, yes, eventually certain diseases no longer affect humans, but this takes time for either our immune system to build up a proper defense or for the disease to evolve to the point where it's not killing its host immediately, or more likely a mixture of both. However, new diseases are always appearing, and I think the vast influx in completely unknown diseases recently has been in response to our suppression of other diseases and the beginnings of our overpopulation. Diseases are being destroyed before they've had a chance to run their course, and the lives being saved are only contributing to overpopulation. At the moment humanity as a whole is not overpopulated- while countries like China are extremely crowded, other countries like Mongolia (with a population density of 1 person per square kilometer) form the polar opposite. World hunger can't quite be used as support for current overpopulation, either, since the real reason for world hunger is poor distribution, not lack of resources. Developed nations like America, Canada, France, Great Britain, Australia, etc, have a huge excess of food while dozens of other countries have a huge shortage. We have enough food to feed everyone on the planet, we just don't have a means of getting it to everyone. That doesn't mean we won't run out of food to feed everyone soon, though- the larger the population the faster it increases. I believe our planet will reach its threshold in the not too distant future.    

[nolimit19]

well i read the first sentence of the first post....and overpopulation has almost nothing to do with a countries wealth from my understanding. its the amout of interfence the government imposes on buisness. the best way for countries to get rich and to allow more jobs is for the government to stop regulating everything.

edit: and i doubt a population control is needed anyways....populations of industrialized nations tend to level out. the us hasnt as much as others, but we also have millions of illegals and other immegrants here.  

[nolimit19]

good ole' stossel did a report on this one http://www.ambergriscaye.com/BzLibrary/trust131.html

he even talks about india specifically
http://abcnews.go.com/onair/DailyNews/chat_stossel0901.html

[yellowfellow]

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Bush has clearly set his goal as being to prevent any other country from approaching the U.S.A.'s military and economic might

Military yes, fabricating this new enemy has allowed an influx of over 500 million dollars into the military with little opposition.
Economically no, by outsourcing contracts to foreign countries products available for consumption will increase within the country, however, because this greatly outnumbers the number of products generated within the country, a deficit is generated.  in the 70s it was with Japan... presently a trillion dollar trade deficit exists with China.

[mouse_clicker]

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well i read the first sentence of the first post....and overpopulation has almost nothing to do with a countries wealth from my understanding.

Nolimit, if you don't read the rest of my post I can't and won't take anything you say seriously. You can't read the first sentence of one of my posts and expect to know exactly what I'm talking about. My writing contains many subtle yet essential elements that are easily skipped over but shouldn't be.

[nolimit19]

ok i read the rest of it, and its  says exactly what i thought it would say. the pages i posted have a lot of good info on the true reason most countries are poor. i truely believe it has nothing to do with natural resources or population size. its all about government restrictions on business. not to say there shouldnt be restrictions, but the more there are, the harder it will be for them to do well.  

[mouse_clicker]

Read the whole thing the first time- it'll save us both time.

In any case, I'm not talking about why countries are poor, why they're overpopulated, or anything like that. I'm talking about American jobs, even just a few, being taken away because companies are going overseas for cheaper labor, and that this labor is cheaper BECAUSE of overpopulation.

[nolimit19]

well i have read most of the thread....just not completely. i think that out sourcing jobs is good over all. it goes along hte same priciples of deveolping new technology. when machines can do the work that humans used to do, we can become more productive. similarly, when jobs are exported, there is no longer a demand for people in that position...so people will move to more productive lines of work. thats the way i see it anyways. there are certain jobs that can never be out sourced, and a lof of those are good high paying jobs. regardless of all teh out sourcing we hear on the news, the jobless rate is at 5.5%, which is relatively low. i dont think any amount of out sourcing will hurt the US economy. as long as people dont start to rely on the government to get them out of the hole.  

[RABicle]

Ok if i didn't have 4 minutes left in this period at school then i would type my support for Mouseclicker now. So you'll alll have to wait. But this will be the vibe of it: Overpopulation is the greatest existing threat to humanity.

[slacker]

In the long term, everything should balance out.  Labor is not cheaper in countries with a large population.  Its the demand for labor that is low in these countries because their economy are too weak to produce jobs due to government inefficiency and waste.  Thus, the root of the problem is a political one and not one of population.  We now live in a global economy and what we are seeing is a redistribution of wealth into poorer areas.  I think of the US economy as one part of a more massive one.  Like the economies of individual states that combine to form one big one.  As for the jobless rate being at 5.5%, that is accurate, but also misleading because the government only count those people who are actively and currently looking for work.  A whole lot of people have quit looking for work because they are discouraged afters many many months of searching to no avail and so these people are not accounted for in the unemployment rate.  Remember, approximately 2+ million jobs were lost from 2000 to early 2004.  Since then, the economy has only generated a few thousand jobs.  That says the jobless rate is actually a little higher than it really is because approximately 3%-4% jobless rate is considered full employment.

Anyways, my main concern is finding a more reliable source of energy.  We can't rely on coal or oil forever and hydrogen isn't going to cut it (There's no efficient way to convert Hydrogen from water and we will still be relying on oil to mass produce it any ways).  Once the other economies get going, energy will be scarce and the world will be in a lot of hurting.  We should be more worried about finding an alternative to fossil fuels or start changing our life style to be more efficient and more free of fossil fuels.  The market is too slow to react to worst case scenarios (in my opinion), so the government must take the initiative for preparing for a future without fossil fuel.  I think our real problem is energy.   I believe the rise and fall of man rest solely on a better source of renewable energy to heat our homes, to light our homes, and fuel our cars.  I don't want to think about the consequences if we didn't/

[RABicle]

A lot of the opposition here to population control seem to be saying things like slacker "in the long term things will balance themselves out" and "nature will run it's course." Too bad both of these things include millions of people starving to death (or alternativly, getting wiped out by some terrible plague.) Yet the Perm is still saying that they are taking the moral side of things!

It's this simple, India need to put children per couple limits now. India's population grows by something like 20 million people a year, though child birth alone. So when these kids hit schooling age suddenly schools built by humans out of finite resources have to be built and the next year there will be another 20 million to provide for. Houses to accomodate these people need to be built, clothes need to be worn and despite India having an abundance of fertile farmlands food needs to be provided. And some of you guys are saying that education is the answer. Yeah it's nice to say that but when a country can't physically provide that education then your going to have to address the problem from a different angle.
Now slacker you do seem to have a fair bit of insight into how economies run and unemployment works, that's good, cos I don't but you don't know much about social demographics. Believe it or not, overpopulation and rapid population growth is not limited to just India, Southeast Asia, and the Latin Americas (as you said.) Instead the only places in the world that aren't currently experiencing overpopulation and a massive increase in population through birth are Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, United States of America and various small, rich countries (eg. United Arab Emirates.) What this means is that is is a global problem, most pronounced in countries such as Kenya for it's huge growth rate and India for it's already huge population.

Nolimit seems to have little grasp of the situation. As if getting rich is suddenly going to stop all of a country's problems.

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its the amout of interfence the government imposes on buisness. the best way for countries to get rich and to allow more jobs is for the government to stop regulating everything.

another good way for countries to get rich is if companies that arn't regulated would stop exploiting developing nations and is the world bank would just erase the debts of these nations. Did you know that Nicaragua is supposed to make yearly debt repayments that are 4 times the countries GNP? This happens in countries all thoughout Africa too, the governments have to sell the food that would stop their people from starving just so they can pay back debts. If they dared try to not repay their debts then they would most probably face invasion from some western power in the name of stopping socalism or something stupid like that. Dammit, I've gone off topic, that just struck a cord with me.

Anyway, overpopulation is leading to the destruction of the enviroment, through deforestation, pollution and the ever increasing need for living space. Rich countries maintaining their wealth, through western companies esserting their dominance of a poor population, with the backwards population growth rate of rich contries less people will share the same wealth while population explosions elsewhere means more people have to fight for the last remaining dollar. (actually I'll rephrase that last sentance, it's slowing the economic development of developing countries.) And in some small insignifigant way, it's probably having a bad effect on America's unemployment (which is what this thread is about after all.)

[nolimit19]

well the world bank is a seperate issue. my point is, people dont starve to death because there are too many people in their country. for instance, a lot of people starve to death for political reasons that doesnt even have anything to do with a lack of food.  from what i have read if you want to solve world hunger, become a vegatarian. we waste a lot of food feeding animals so we can eat them.  and again overpopulation has absolutely nothing to  do with lack of jobs. when the govermnent tries to regulate business too much, this will lead to buisnesses leaving the country, or maybe it will stop them from even getting started. this is what loses countries jobs and then money which could by people food. and because there is such a high demand for jobs in these places, businesses can pay them peanuts. but thats why they are brought there in the first place...so to say they should be paid 6 dollars an hour for their work is rediculous because if that was the case, their jobs probably wouldnt have been moved there. and i thikn they would rather have a job then not have a job..am i right?? otherwise they wouldnt be working.

edit: and as for the jobless rate, the same report that says its 5.5% also says A LOT of the people that have stop looking for jobs have started their own business. sure the jobless rate is still higher than 5.5%, but its not like its the same 5.5% that are always unemployed. people get fired, let go, layed off....thats what capitalism is.  

[Ian Sane]

"Instead the only places in the world that aren't currently experiencing overpopulation and a massive increase in population through birth are Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, United States of America and various small, rich countries (eg. United Arab Emirates.)"

I think it's worth noting that the countries you mentioned that don't have this problem are all first world countries with democratic governments that are for the most part not corrupt.  If overpopulation is only a problem in countries with massively corrupt governments then perhaps overpopulation isn't the real problem but rather a symptom of poor government leadership.  Obviously in a dictatorship there isn't going to be enough food for everyone.  Poverty and misery go hand-in-hand with corrupt dictatorships.

[ThePerm]

erm what rabicle? I said propaganda...not education...education is expensive...propaganda is brain washing...brainwashing is free...really all it would take is a few political leaders to mention birth control and all the followers would start using condoms.....

I'm not against population control laws for countries that need it, im jsut saying there are other alternatives. There is always other alternatives. Like ofr instance when your playing a strategy game against other people i have seen strategies that are incredibly off the wall but work. For instance if you group all your resources in one place in star craft your going to prolly get destroyed..however if you place your scvs all over the place it could take an hour for  them to hunt down your men on a huge map. The other problem with starcraft is OVERPOPULATION...you have a limit to how man units you can build and its not a good idea to produce too many units.....theres more to this...but man do i feel like playing starcraft.....hopefully if they make another starcraft they will decide to not take the 3d route..warcraft 3 ses up so much ram..and you can only have so many units before it takes up too much memory...if they were to continue on the 2d route then they could make much huger battles on gigantic maps with thousands of sprtes duking it out.....erm anyways.

Unless you live in India then you really have no control of what india does. If India has a problem with starvation due to its overopulation then maybe they need to switch religions...because theres tons of cows in india and no ones going to eat them.
America is the fattest country in the world..we definitely dont have a problem with getting food. We have an excess of food no one else would eat. Truthfully, im not saying people really should change their religion..that was just a cause for starvation. The world is survival of the fittest...some will die. Everyone dies...its impossible to controll the world. That is an imperialist notion. You cannot tell other nations what to do. They will do what they do, and if millions die then its thier fault. If others survive then it is because they had a better strategy for survival.The other theory is that if there is severe overpopulation then we will all die out....nope its just the people who werent managing themselves correctly. You cannot control the world. The world does what it does. That is how nature works.

[mouse_clicker]

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And in some small insignifigant way, it's probably having a bad effect on America's unemployment (which is what this thread is about after all.)

It was really just a thought that popped in my head a while back, and I really only posted it so Berny wouldn't say I was spamming the Custom Title thread. I didn't quite expect it to get into such a big discussion, but everything seems to be going quite well, so I can't complain.  

[ThePerm]

oblem with america s were just too damn lazy...i will ay a good portion of today's people are not nearly as hardworking as the older generation. Alot of people are not willing to do manual labor. We'd rather leave it to illegal immigrants....

whos going to hire damn lazy people

also employers are very unwilling to hire most people

[Berny]

Exactly, Perm. Even if we DID get some factories over here, there would not be as many people willing to work in them. Too lazy or too rich. The people in those other countries are far more industrious than the average American simply because they need the money and are willing to work for it. It would be really risky to bring factories over here.

[nolimit19]

i dont know if i would say americans are lazy, but i would say they are unwilling to do manual labor. its definitely reflected in how freaking fat everyone is.

[slacker]

Americans are not lazy!  They are the most productive workers on the face of this planet.  We work more than any body else out there.  Manual labor is brutal.  The working condition are terrible and as you grow older, you cannot no longer do that type of job.  If these manual labor jobs paid better than the average office job and the working condition is better, then I am sure there will be long lines of people wanting to get in.  I've done manual labor before and its tiring and unsatisfying personally and financially.  Why would any one want to stay in a job that is almost back breaking and unrewarding when there is a better alternative?  White collar jobs requires a lot of work as well, but at least the working condition is easier on your body and more generous on your pocket book.   Lets face it, American workers don't get as much down time as those in other 1st world countries.

[Berny]

By lazy I mean not wanting to do manual labor. I'm not saying that there aren't people who have worked hard to achieve success. My point is that they do not want to (and for the most part can't) achieve economic success through manual labor. It pays less.

[ThePerm]

hehe where i live in yuma, youd be suprised but something like 70 percent of all crops come from here(or soemthing..all i remember is this place is actually hella important as an agricultural mecca of the U.S)...anyways the majority...or all of the people who go out in the fields and pick the crops are either mexican americans or mexicans.

[RABicle]

Yeha I relise you meant propaganda Perm, I think it was Ocarina Blue who suggested education was the answer.

And MC, I thought you were just trying to relate it to jobs to get the right-wingers to listen up.