B3tans please...
Please stop talking about overpopulation as part of your choice not to breed.

The world is NOT overpopulated by Americans and Britons with the resources to see that their children are well-educated and disciplined and capable of becoming productive and contributing members of society.

The more SMART people that choose to breed, and the MORE smart children they have, the better off the world will be.

Without lots and lots of future b3tans and others of similar ilk that value sick humor and common decency, the world is headed for trouble.
(not here, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 16:45, 15 replies)

Citation?
40,000 people die of malnutrition every day. This world is overpopulated to the point that there aren't enough resources to go around.
( Bob Todd whee, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 17:05, closed)

Oh Miss Todd, it's not a lack of resources in the world at large that leads to those 40,000 dying of malnutrition
It's the misuse of what we have.
(Skittlemcfluff ......................, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 17:26, closed)

Starvation isn't caused by Overpopulation
There's no shortage of food, it's a shortage of will to confront the tyrants that are allowing those people to starve that's the problem.

Pity those that whine about the starving masses are the same that complain about the free-market system and political assassinations, as bullets in the heads of less than 3 dozen tyrants around the world, combined with an opening of those economies would do more to feed the starving masses than OxFam and the UN ever could.

But no, killing a few dozen tyrants would be evil and unacceptable, while letting tens of thousands starve is just unfortunate.

(I'm pretty sure it was a well-educated American that started the "Green Revolution" that kept untold millions from starvation. Look up Norman Borlaug if you need more info - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug . Probably the greatest living person, and almost completely unknown.)
(not here, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 17:43, closed)

but the more smart children, the more people overall,
and misuse of resources is not something that is going to go away, so it is a worry. The term "Malthusian population check" is not a pleasant one.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 17:51, closed)

and
based on a sample size of my road today, Britons are having no problem breeding, to judge by the number of pavement-blocking, off-road, three-wheeler buggies laden with free-range toddlers in hand-knit cashmere eco jumpers next to the reusable bag full of Soil Association organic vegetables. I couldn't even get into my local Fair Trade independent coffee shop for my usual pretentious latte.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 18:01, closed)

Um..
Except that Malthus made his predictions in his famous Essay of 1798 (Thanks Wikipedia), and the past 210 years have seen nothing but a larger and longer-lived population with an ever expanding food supply.

How many more centuries have to pass before this jackass is rightly consigned to the ashheap of history as a consistently wrongheaded individual? His ideas are about as accurate and relevent as the idea of phlogiston.

The great thing about human beings is that we have the minds and technology to create new methods and use resources in new ways to avoid disaster. (Or do you still light your lamps with whale oil?)

Malthus was wrong, and has ALWAYS been wrong. Just because he seems logical to those who hate thinking for themselves doesn't make him correct.
(not here, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 18:03, closed)

I could be wrong,
but I think Malthus' famous essay was written largely with an agenda of proving that starvation was natural, and not caused by particular policies...like, you know, taking all the poor people's food away.

He also stated that one solution to overpopulation was contraception, but of course that would be immoral and so shouldn't be considered.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 18:20, closed)

but
The thick people will always outbreed the smart people, because not having kids is smart. So the world is doomed through increased stupidity (let alone through global warming etc), so that makes not having kids even smarter.

Therefore, I am not going to breed, because the world my kids would grow up in would be going to hell in a handbasket.

"Safeguard the world for your children" is the cry. Well saving the world is not possible, because it is full of idiots. So the logical solution is not to have children instead. The future may consist of idiots drooling at each other as the rising sea covers them all, but neither I nor my children will be there so it's not my problem. So ner.
(Axeman Jim, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 18:21, closed)

Hmmm
Even if his theories may no longer hold water, Malthus still had some important influence - Darwin, for example. Okay, so he didn't quite anticipate the impact of the industrial revolution in supporting an expanding population, but if there is pressure on resources surely there is going to have to be some kind of check - what's the alternative?

It's similar to one of the arguments made about climate change: sure, we can move into marginal land and we can stockpile resources, just as people have done throughout history, except millennia ago there weren't big scary soldiers with machine guns stopping people from going where things might be better for them.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 18:22, closed)

People have been saying the world is going to hell in a handbasket since the beginning of time.
Perhaps not with that exact phrase, but that is the gist of many things that have been written over the centuries. Yet at the same time, technology and science have improved the lives of the very same people who are saying this. We've come quite a long way from hunters/gatherers with only a 30-40 year life expectancy.

Yes, stupid people tend to breed more, which is why the smart people should make an attempt at educating them. Yet, in more affluent nations, most are no longer having 10+ children. And that has only stopped in the last few generations.
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Sat 19 Apr 2008, 18:44, closed)

but
attempting to improve quality of life through enhancing resources does not always work quite as planned:
Ethiopian development raises birth rate
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 18:51, closed)

Ah, but the article pointed out the reasons behind the expanding population...
It showed that only improving the water supply without also providing family planning, an educational element, will cause more problems. You can't improve only one technology, you must also provide other technologies (say farming technologies perhaps) AND education. While they were increasing the overall health of the people with improvements in the water supply, they were also increasing the amount of free time, without giving them knowledge of other activities to do in their free time other than what they already know, which is fucking.

“This research shows that development projects that focus on just one issue can cause long-term problems and that it is preferable for development to be ‘multisectoral’. Improving access to contraception, which was poor in the area where this study was done, should be a key part of development programmes.”

I don't know all that much about how to create more food sources in an arid region, but that is one of the bits of education that should have been added as well as education and access to birth control.
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Sat 19 Apr 2008, 19:06, closed)

Additionally...
Just because you improve one portion of life in an uneducated society doesn't mean they will figure out the rest on their own. It was irresponsible of those who improved the water supply to assume it would improve life overall and not have any drawbacks.
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Sat 19 Apr 2008, 19:08, closed)

"Give a man a fish
and you teach him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he dies of malnutrition because nothing lives in nearby watermasses".

We have a choice in places like Ethiopia; To either be a Deus Ex Machina and sort their problems out without teaching them how to solve them- which doesn't really solve their problems- OR we could mostly keep out of it and let them figure it out, giving them prods in the right direction every so often, and let them either die out (at least until their population can be supported by local methods at a local scale) or grow and adapt and develop.

We fought our way up from their tech level, remember. Because of that we've got sufficient food of a good quality, lots of clean water, decent sanitation, etc. We're doing so well, in fact, that we can support our elderly and vast numbers of people on Benefits- whether they deserve them or not- even with only a slim majority of the population working and a vastly slimmer proportion of the population working on actually keeping us all alive.

What we could do to help would be stop them basing their economies and ways of life around our wants and needs and let them develop on their own. And if we're going to help, we should help using materials they could get their hands on at that time in that local area so that they learn how to do things and gradually build up an understanding of how things happen. Like we did. Maybe keep a covert eye on things and sort out potential troubles (like someone not abdicating when voted out in a democracy could accidentally brutally cut his own throat while shaving).

Meh, that's just my $0.02 on this topic. We did it, why shouldn't they?
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 19:48, closed)

Ban Catholicism.
Or at least replace the Pope with a puppet that doesn't condemn the developing world to starvation and AIDs through banning contraception. Ditto Islam (although it doesn't have a single leader so that would be a bit harder). These two religions are probably the biggest in the developing world and are responsible for this mess.

If either Mohammed or Jesus come back to life, I'm personally going to hunt them down and shoot them, although presicely no-one would be bothered because no-one would belief their blasphemy that they were actually Jesus or Mohammed, which of course is the greatest irony. I think this has gone slightly off-track and descended into a rant about religion more than overpopulation.

But as people have alluded to, the meme to breed more (I think it's this rather than pure genetics) is passed down much quicker than the one not to. Which is fairly obvious really. It's a viscious circle.
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 22:14, closed)