Overpopulation in a free market world

[Ashton]

At the moment we are ignoring the overpopulation issue but without change we'll grow beyond sustainability.

 

Explained here:

 

 

 

As such how would you in a free market world stop or curb population growth without force?

[Cornellius]

Great question.... huh.... if there is such a thing as overpopulation ever in human history, then maybe... living expenditures peak dramatically, rendering any child birth over the renewal rate of the family unsustainable, and therefore people have less kids?

 

Then only problem with that completely natural course of action is aging population, but that's only a problem in a statist system where the young have to pay for the old farts' undeserved public sector pensions and irresponsible state retirement homes. How do we make sure that services normally provided by youth don't become inaccessible? Don't completely stop having kids.

 

Don't even find the sweet balance. Nature is a sweet balance.

 

In a free society, a withdrawal of births is no problem whatsoever, and singlehandedly solves concerns of overpopulation. In a statist world of helpless unreality, every negative aspect inherent to life: scarcity, lack of space, poverty, unhealthiness, pollution, competition, violence, etc. is considered a death sentence, and therefore becomes a death sentence.

[TheRobin]

So the argument is that married couples who can't get any more food or living space will still give birth to children? Also he seems to equate econoic growth (which is wealth increase) with growth in the sense that "there are more people around", which have not muhc to do with each other, other than, that for peopel to have food, there needs to be an adequate economy.I don't know, maybe I'm missing something, but the whole argument seems embarassingly stupid.

[Ashton]

So the argument is that married couples who can't get any more food or living space will still give birth to children? Also he seems to equate econoic growth (which is wealth increase) with growth in the sense that "there are more people around", which have not muhc to do with each other, other than, that for peopel to have food, there needs to be an adequate economy.I don't know, maybe I'm missing something, but the whole argument seems embarassingly stupid.

 

The video is an explination of the overpopulation problem.

 

The question is as i've wrote:

 

"How would you in a free market world stop or curb population growth without force?"

[Jer]

The video is an explination of the overpopulation problem.

 

The question is as i've wrote:

 

"How would you in a free market world stop or curb population growth without force?"

I would not.

I just listened to a FDR podcast where he talked about the silliness of the idea that we're going to run out of oil and I think it's the same idea. The market will solve the problem. Food will get more expensive so it will be profitable to grow your own again. In the past the majority of people were involved in farming of some sort, now it's less than 10% as technology has made farming more efficient.

[TheRobin]

The video is an explination of the overpopulation problem.

 

The question is as i've wrote:

 

"How would you in a free market world stop or curb population growth without force?"

 

Well, yeah, I watched the video, I get what it's supposed to do(i.e. explain the supposed problem with exponential population growth). I just don't see any argument there, except static math and invalid metaphors with the word "growth", which isn't an arguement at all. Hence why I asked what I missed, cause I still see the argument as being pretty stupid. Like, if this guy believes that humans just breed uncontrollably regardless of the environmental context and circumstances, then idk even where to start to make a meaningful rebuttal. 

[ProfessionalTeabagger]

There are several assumptions embedded in this that are wrong. Humans do not grow exponentially, at least not in the way bacteria do. Bacteria multiply mindlessly at an extremely rapid rate and cannot choose to not reproduce or reproduce less. That is not the case with humans. Humans can choose to base their reproductive choices on the circumstances so that's how the free-market solves any supposed problem. It is often the state that incentivizes and subsidizes reproduction, enabling millions of people to have kids when they cannot afford it. Bacteria cannot manipulate their environment in the way humans can so the notion that we live in a closed system or finite system is fallacious. We can live in space FFS. It does not follow that because we can invent new ways to sustain a growing population that that will necessarily lead to just more exponential growth. This is fallaciously derived from this guy's sinister analogy of humans with bacteria. He's an environmentalist activist who supports taxation to protect the environment. As with many environmentalists he sees human beings as a problem.

We're in the 59th minute and most scientists you've "talked to" agree??? Scare-mongering crap. "Over-population", just like "the balance of nature" is nonsense. There is no objective standard for the correct number of humans. If there were only a few thousand humans on the planet but they had problems feeding themselves then that could also be called overpopulation. 

[cab21]

voluntary suicide of those that think it's a problem?

[Cornellius]

voluntary suicide of those that think it's a problem?

 

90% of world population?

[JCalvin]

Great point to the "professional teabagger".  Those remarks certainly made an unseemly comparison of humans to mindlessly growing bacteria. I would only add one thing:  his analysis - along with most analysis from these environmentalists and Malthusian resource-limited acolytes - is entirely static! It  assumes people are nothing more than resource hogging drains on society and not additional resources that create more wealth.   Very arrogant, when you think about it.  When the planet was "burdened" with a mere 100,000 people, I doubt very much they were living the high life, but barely in survival mode.  

[cab21]

90% of world population?

 

i don't think that many people think overpopulation is a problem.

 

what i am saying is that people that do think it's a problem can kill themselves, and that is the most fair way to address this non-problem

 

choosing to sterilize themselves would be another option, but that does not lower population at the same speed of killing themselves would. killing themselves is simply the quickest way for them to do what they can to fight population.

[Carl Green]

Okay so he says in the first few seconds that we can do all these things because we can manage and control them. "we create them [those things] and do them"

 

...he then talks about bacteria for the remaining 3 minutes on the basis that the entire earth's ecosystem is analogous to a test tube with a static and finite amount of food.

 

 

 

So what's the concern here?  I mean, is the question a real question or is it an argument against a non-violent market?

[rogerhicks]

The global European, i.e. white, population, whose development of science and technology made possible the huge increase in human numbers, is no longer growing, but declining.

 

What isn't declining is the drain and strain whites are placing on our planet's finite resources and carrying capacity, locked as we are into a grossly materialistic, growth dependent economy and ways of life, and with the rest of the world following our bad, unhealthy and non-sustainable, example.

 

Insanely, European governments - against the sensible protests of most citizens, who are silenced by accusations of "racism" - have allowed in millions of immigrants from the third world, to counteract the godsend of its declining native population. Native Britons, like myself, have already been reduced to an ethnic minority in our capital city and are predicted to become one in the country as a whole before today's children reach retirement age. But thus far, any attempt to address this madness is dismissed as "racism". Although, this situation is rapidly changing, not least, thanks to ordinary people now being able to express their views online. Public opinion is no longer just the opinion of newspaper editors or TV pundits, who, as favoured clients of our "patron state" are bound by its post-racial multicultural ideology, much as their medieval counterparts were by Church ideology, which is largely responsible for this madness.

[Jer]

It does seem kind of racist the way you complain about non whites moving to your town... Why should you have more right to live there than a person born in Africa?

[Ashton]

This link here:

 

www.bit.ly/1hwvYdh

 

 

The more technology increases, the higher life expectancy you have and that decreases populations. So essentially disproving my post.

 

So people get out there and have babies!

[LovePrevails]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz_kn45qIvI&list=WL5c3HmsA3vJL-4au1EjcIYC4NaqT5ZIss

[st434u]

We don't have an "overpopulation" problem. We have a population misallocation. The problem is not too many people in the world, but too many people who don't produce anything and just feed off of those who do, like parasites.

 

In a free market, if you can't support your own children, they will have to rely on charity or starve. But because most people don't like to see their children starve, they will have less children to begin with. Also, the human body is not stupid. A woman is unlikely to get pregnant if she herself is starving, or close to starving. Therefore, the main problem is drastic changes in the amount of food available. Having a very powerful State which meddles in everybody's business is the best way to ensure such disruptions in the production of food, and having a State which steals from some to give to others is the best way to ensure disruptions in the the distribution of food.

 

Finally, what the guy in the OP's video says is just wrong in terms of scales. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, the land could only naturally grow enough food to feed one person per square mile. Today, land can be modified to grow enough food for over ten thousand people per square mile. And with further advances in technology, we are likely to keep expanding this ability to massively produce food.

 

What would likely happen in a free market is that population would be better allocated. That is, the more productive would have more children than they have now, and the less productive or unproductive would have less. Nevertheless, because productivity would grow drastically, the population would continue to grow at a fast pace. Whether we reach the point where the population can't grow anymore or not, is not terribly important. If it comes to that, then the birthrate will simply drop to the sustenance point. But even if that point is reached at one time, chances are it won't be long before the population can start growing again. Especially once you get to a situation where humans can profitably colonize the moon or other planets and/or build space stations that are fit and desirable for long-term living.

[Daniel Unplugged]

So I'll assume for a minute, that this guy is right, that the human population must mathematically stop growing at some point due to finite resources. Great, problem solved. When we run out of resources, the population will stop growing. There is a natural limit to the human population that makes overpopulation impossible. Of course, instead of letting nature take it's course, what he wants is some sort of forced control, like forced sterilization or limits on childbirth. He would have found a nice government job in China ten years ago.

  As such how would you in a free market world stop or curb population growth without force?

I doubt I would want to do such a thing.

[dsayers]

Another thing to consider is that raising a child correctly is a huge investment of time and resources. None of this plop them in front of the TV and it's like not having a kid at all. In a free society, people wouldn't have the drive to have many children.

 

Compare this to the current corruption of government that pays people to have more children, exploits resources, pollutes to no end, etc. I have no reason to expect that birth rates/patterns would look at all the same in a free society as it does under a government.

[Matt H]

I don't think there is an overpopulation problem globally. Stef points out all the time that we could relocate the entire world to the state of Texas, and it not be populated as densely as NYC.

 

BUT, any overpopulation that does exist, even within certain geographic areas, is a result of the state. It disrupts the free market by enforcing laws and regulations to make moving or staying in certain areas to the point of overpopulation. For instance, the 40 hr work week and other labor laws, government schools, rent controls, government roads and utilities all cause people to make decisions that they otherwise would not.

 

And as dsayers points out, giving women in poverty a cash reward for making more babies directly influences decisions causing pain and abuse to children. 

[Prairie]

There's an interesting hypocrisy in people who call for solutions to global problems. They preach that we're all in this together, that we all need to think of one another, and they support systems where they can push the costs of their personal choices on everyone. Questioned further, these people have serious feelings of entitlement, that a whole laundry list of things are their right to have, and that using force to make others provide these things for them is fine. They employ the worst kind of thinking for others, the kind that is made out to be helpful but is really attempted slavery.

[st434u]

There's an interesting hypocrisy in people who call for solutions to global problems. They preach that we're all in this together, that we all need to think of one another, and they support systems where they can push the costs of their personal choices on everyone. Questioned further, these people have serious feelings of entitlement, that a whole laundry list of things are their right to have, and that using force to make others provide these things for them is fine. They employ the worst kind of thinking for others, the kind that is made out to be helpful but is really attempted slavery.

 

Exactly. Think of someone who does the same thing in a personal relationship. We all know this kind of people. And those of us who have good senses stay clear of them.

[Livemike]

Ok, let's assume (against all reality) that this is a valid analogy to the human population and earth.  

 

At 59 minutes he says 1/2 a test tube full (1/2 TTF) of bacteria find 4 new test tubes.  So if 1/2 a test tube full find 4 new test tubes in a minute how much easier would it be for 2 TTFs to find another 8 test tubes in 1 minute?  Well twice as easy.  He's basically setting up exponential growth in resource use but no exponential growth in resource discovery/utilization.  This is the exact opposite of what has historically happened.   

It's the old Malthusian bullshit AGAIN.  It has never been more irrelevant.  The main economic problems are not limits on physical resources but limits on how many ideas we have and the mental ability to implement them.  Those scale, or more than scale, with population.   

But it this way, suppose you wanted to generate power from the sun more efficiently.  More people mean more people who can have ideas on how to do that.  Whether or not there is a large population this requires a certain number of person-hours of effort.  The larger the population the less this costs each person, but the benefit to each person remains the same as cheap power is available to all.  Same thing for cancer cures, better weather prediction, etc. etc.  

 

While it's true that a bigger population will mean less fixed resources (e.g. oil, iron ore, wave energy from the ocean) available per person that hasn't been the primary determinant of prosperity for some time now.

[MAvery]

"Necessity is the mother of invention" - when the population grows the market will figure out ways to deal with it. If you are not satisfied with that then it may be prudent to remember that NGO's and charities currently run voluntary family planning programs in some African countries to tackle the high fertility rates. These programs help to educate parents about the problems with having too many children and they provide contraception to help reduce accidental births. If population becomes a problem in the free society I don't see why the market could not educate people about the issues and subsidise(using charities) reducing population growth.

 

Also in the current world many MEDC's have fertility rates below the replacement rate. For example the US the fertility rate is 2.05 - this is only slightly above the replacement rate(2). Many developed countries such as Germany and Japan have fertility rates below replacement level. In all honesty an ageing population is more of a threat than a youthful one. Although of course the free market can handle this "problem" as well.