Gotcha.

Since most of this discussion takes place in developing countries, your first 2 points are hardly valid to the discussion.

Furthermore your 3rd and 4th point cancel out your 5th.

That leaves 2 points (3 and 4) that we are aware of and have already pointed out as difficulties in regulating overpopulation.

At least try next time...

> {Poo}((BoNaNZa)) wrote:
>
> People is born everyday. The world is more than big enough to support the
>whole population. People Live everyday People Die everyday. Perfect balance.

"Perfect balance" would imply that the people dying everyday equal the people entering life everyday.  In fact, the world's population has increased by nearly 50% during my short life.  I honestly think we have some room to go but Thomas Malthus made centuries ago a very compelling observation.  Throughout human history, population growth has generally been logarithmic but the technological innovations to support that population have been linear.  Throughout human history we've run into one Malthusian catastrophe after another.  It's the story of most of human history.

Throughout the past century we've experienced dang near exponential technological growth.  We have a bountiful surplus today and there's plenty of low-hanging fruit to pick over the next few decades to avoid a Malthusian disaster, even if technological growth once again becomes linear.  But we also have a unique opportunity.  Throughout the industrialized world population growth rates aren't even linear anymore, let alone logarithmic.  The question is if we can extend that innovation to the rest of the world and permanently put to rest the brutal reality of the Malthusian catastrophe.  We probably have 30-50 years to do so.  Several posters have noted concern about the fate of farmers in industrializing nations, but that isn't relevant to the question at hand.

It's probably unrealistic to assume that everybody will be able to consume at modern-day American consumption levels, but I do think we can avoid a Malthusian disaster if we start acting within the next couple decades to limit growth rates (and there's a lot of factors that are important there).

Not sure of the profit margin's of farming outside the US, but here, farming is big business. The amount of cash that's thrown around in farm subsidies is ignorant and unbelievable.

im on my phone so i cant read all of the above posts just yet but how about removing the tax cuts and financial incentives  to have children in the united states. im not suggesting a one child policy because i beleive this can cause off the books children but perhaps just make it non profitable to have children?

> twosidedeath wrote:

> im on my phone so i cant read all of the above posts just yet but how about removing the tax cuts and financial incentives  to have children in the united states. im not suggesting a one child policy because i beleive this can cause off the books children but perhaps just make it non profitable to have children?

You mean... like requiring that parents be financially responsible for children for 18 years, require education, and ban children from working before age 16?  So... the most basic parent guardianship and child labor laws in every developed nation on the planet, aside from those experiencing population declines? 

> twosidedeath wrote:

> the farm subsidies is another interesting situation. knowing that this is a huge import in china it would make sense to let the prices rise in order to help inflation in thier country but perhaps we are trying to force a dependance where later when they are unable to replace us we effectively have a monopoly. this is also what china does for thier manufacturing which is thier major export. it is a funny system

Well, there's a couple reasons why that is probably a terrible idea.

1: It's not a real economic monopoly.  Yes, it's a monopoly in the sense that there would only be a single producer in the market.  However, the only reason any single business would obtain that market share was because subsidies were offsetting the cost of production, so a significant portion of the industry are producing beyond their cost of production, simply because they don't realize the losses.  If I sell shoes at $5.00 a pair, but it costs me $6.00 a pair to produce, I'd normally be producing no net gain for society.  But if the government subsidizes my business for $2.00 per pair produced, I can produce despite the fact that I'm not actually adding any sort of wealth to society.

2: What you're describing is clearly illegal under international law.  Both the US and EU signed onto the General Agreement on Trade an Tariffs, which among other things banned exactly the behavior you described.

3: Empirically, we know that nations retaliate against US and European subsidies with their own trade barriers.  Most recently, the Doha round of international trade talks, meant to advance World Trade Organization tariff reductions, collapsed because a coalition of developing nations, led by Brazil, argued that cutting tariffs without seeing reciprocal cuts in US and European farm subsidies.  In addition, the WTO actually found the US liable for damages to Brazillian farmers as a result of US cotton subsidies, allowing Brazil to levy a huge tariff on US pharmaceuticals (the US and Brazil actually settled out of court, with the US paying the equivalent amount in subsidies to Brazillian cotton farmers, rather than allowing the tariff to come into effect).

4: At the point where both US and European governments offer subsidies on sometimes competing products, clearly complaining about the subsidies of the other while ignoring their own... it's clearly not a monopoly because the US and Europe will be competing with one another... the result being increased subsidies to compete with on another (and thus, decreasing product efficiency in production).

5: Seriously... your argument is that the world won't be able to produce agriculture after a while?  Now, I understand where this is coming from (that they can't compete with a subsidized US product), but the end goal just committed the US to perpetually keeping subsidies at dumping prices.  The moment subsidies go away, whether by domestic pressure (probably because we're spending hundreds of millions subsidizing big business) or by international pressure (the more monopolized the market becomes, the more likely the WTO, Brazil, or other agents that don't like US subsidies will endorse reciprocal barriers against the US), the market becomes competitive again... and the decades of farm subsidy policy are rendered useless.  Agriculture's not that difficult a business to get into once you can buy the land. 

It's very rare that I get to agree wholly with xeno on an economic issue.  What the hell's going on here? 

Though I'm pretty sure he'll read mine and have plenty to argue with there, but we would just be having the same argument in two different threads at the same time... lol!

EDIT: Wait a second...

I understand your argument from the context of Worm's post... but for the sake of comparison, would you argue that my overpopulation solution (development of the developing world) would be a net harm or benefit to this goal?  Yes, it reduces total population by effect... but it also empowers people as a whole with technological backgrounds to eventually develop the capacity to reach beyond Earth quicker.

Not sure where you are on this... just want to check before I give blanket agreement. 

@Zarf

"would you argue that my overpopulation solution (development of the developing world) would be a net harm or benefit to this goal?  Yes, it reduces total population by effect... but it also empowers people as a whole with technological backgrounds to eventually develop the capacity to reach beyond Earth quicker.

Not sure where you are on this... just want to check before I give blanket agreement."

This is a tough one.  I am not convinced that urbanization and specialization (as we've discussed in the past), and a lower birth rate as a result of the post-industrial economic model, is conducive to humanity launching itself to the stars, for the very reason that the post-industrial economic model, as it currently is, is effective in limiting population growth to a sustainable level.  I would argue that there are some purely contrived social mechanisms which limit population growth in the post-industrial economic model, and that these are not only unethical in and of themselves, but unethical because they create negative population growth, and that ultimately negative population growth is a bad thing for humanity as a whole as it negates the economic incentive for us to launch ourselves to space.  What I think ideal is is mildly unsustainable population growth. 

@Wornstrum

"people already starve"

They do not starve because of the limited capacity of the Earth, just our limited capacity of our hearts to care enough about social inequalities and system corruption, greed, and apathy to develop ACCESS to ample existent resources.

Your premise of there being an essential scarcity of resources is false: there is only an existential scarcity of resources, a scarcity created by greed, apathy, and corruption of our economic system by its inherent propensity to maintain on global markets a scarcity of resources rather than an abundance, and therefore maintain inflated prices of those resources.

People are starving not because there isn't enough land to grow more food, but because the system maintains an inflated price developing the consumer's access to more of an abundance of food resources.   

Your head has been inundated with neo-malthusianist innuendo, which most people eat up, because, ultimately, it allows them to justify the existence of poverty and starvation as a necessary 'good', when it is really an unnecessary evil.

Give your head a shake, will you?

And I would like to add this:

If today, we had the kind of society where there were inter-planetary portals that anyone could take to travel to other planets and these portals were accessible to all people (let's say there were one in every town square of even the smallest agricultural community) how many millions of people would be leaving Earth today, I wonder, for somewhere safer, based solely only on today's apparently increased probability of war developing in the Middle East:  http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111094636369185.html

I would bet there'd be millions, who after reading this morning's news, would opt to pack their bags and make their way to the nearest town-portal.

We should be aspiring to create the opportunity for everyone to pick and choose which planet (and thus which society) they might wish to inhabit. 

What percentage of people on this planet, if given the choice between hundreds of thousands (if not billions) of alternative worlds on which to live, would actually opt to stay on this one?

Not many, if simply only for the high probability that this one will be blown up by those ruling it.

"Earth DOES HAVE A LIMITED CAPACITY"

Right, fine.  And MY POINT IS THAT WE ARE NOWHERE NEAR REACHING THE LIMMIT