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I support any person who chooses not to have children. It’s saving the planet. There are way too many people.
"Overpopulation" is a right-wing myth.
Overpopulation as a dogwhistle for racism is a conservative myth.
Overpopulation in a "I'd rather not turn Earth into Coruscant and so many of our climate and food/water issues would be easier to deal with if the global birth rate slowed voluntarily" is not.
FTFY.
Sooo... when will you actually be rejecting this right-wing myth?
Soon, I hope?
"as"
We can handle feeding everybody, we can't handle the trash.
We don't need to make nearly this much trash; it's just more profitable for shareholders. Not denying that some plastics are essential for medicine though.
FTFY.
i have a theory that the food shortage is a sort of example of the overpopulation at play.
The sheer fact that there are so many people in this one place, that we can produce too much food, and then not distribute it effectively, implies to me that there are simply too many people in one place for it to be effectively distributed. I.E. over populated.
That's not because there are too many people. That's because the incentives are set up wrong.
that's definitely a possibility as well. Regardless, if it were literally as simple as "just give food to people" then one would think it would already be done. I suppose this could be an evil capitalism moment, but honestly, i just don't think that's the whole story.
It's not hard to imagine a room with 1000 people, and only 10 of those people distributing things at the wholesale level. There is inevitably going to be some amount of people that never get distributed to. It's just a lot of people in one space.
There isn't a food shortage, there's an equitable food distribution shortage.
i literally said this exact thing, go read my comment again.
Your theory is bad.
i mean yeah, that's a possibility. Why though? I think there is some potentially sound logic there.
If people in a city starve, it's not because there are "too many people in one place" - it's because the people who has control of the food distribution systems of that city chose to let them starve.
Pick a famine - Irish, Bengal, Ethiopian, the current ongoing one in Gaza... you name it. All preventable. All of them not prevented because the people who had control of the food distribution system saw fit not to prevent it because doing so didn't serve their interests.
It has absolutely nothing to do with there being "too many people in one place."
that's the thing though, it's not people in a city starving. It's people across the world starving. I mean sure homeless people are starving and food security IS an issue in the states. But that's also a macro level issue type deal.
yeah, no shit, that's not what im talking about. You could argue an abusive mother not feeding their child one night is also proof against that claim.
My point is that currently, in our collective society, globally, i do not think that our system is capable of supporting the amount of people that exist, in a functional manner. For example, if there were less people in the israel/palestine region, and the rest of the middle east, since they seem to love proxy wars so much. There would likely be a lot less war leading to famine. These wars are cropping up LITERALLY over territorial disputes, gaza especially is done for this reason. Seems like the Irish famine you referenced was in part, due to unsustainable population growth. Again, the Bengal famine, was in part, due to an increase in population, which was unsustainable. Ethiopian famine is actually a little bit different, seems to be both in part due to war, and drought, or just drought, but it seems like another significant factor at scale was the food being grown being sold to other parties. As well as political shenaniganry. Though this was also happening during a civil war. Probably also in part, due to well, people existing over top of eachother.
But yeah no, those were absolutely preventable. Just give them food. Then they won't starve. It's that simple.
It is very discouraging to see someone with a presumably functional brain make an argument like this. Back in the 80s this could be written of as simple ignorance - but not today, when we have the information available at our fingertips.
So how do you explain the very same kind of genocidal colonialist wars of the previous three centuries when there were a whole lot less people around?
Colonialism is not merely a "territorial dispute."
No, genius - it wasn't. Stop trying to apologize for colonialist exploitation by hiding behind right-wing "overpopulation" myths.
the only people who liked colonialism were the colonizers. Also to be clear, i never stated that over population was the only reason, merely that i think it's an influential factor.
a little bit, 90% of the time colonialism turns into a war, is because the people being colonized, would prefer to not be colonized. You know, on account of the colonialism. I don't know if you understand what colonialism is, but it's basically the equivalent of me walking into a random suburban home with a gun, and claiming that it's my home now, and that everybody in that home now works me. Seems rather territorial by nature to me.
i'm not, colonialism was pretty explicitly a part of the reason as well. I don't know if your eyes just glazed over at every instance of me saying "in part" or something, but i was being pretty explicit about it.
You have, so far, made absolutely no case that "overpopulation" was a factor in any way whatsoever. Period.
It seems to me that you think a community becomes "overpopulated" as soon as anything bad happens to them - which is pretty much the shittiest take I've ever seen when it comes to this myth.
You don't know a lot about the subject matter involved in this conversation, do you?
so far your entire argument is that not having enough food to feed people is a food issue, which is very true. But there is also another variable here. The people, the amount of people consuming the food being produced can lead to a food shortage. Lets say you as a small country grow a lot of food, but export the majority of it, because money. And let's say you have a food shortage, hey wait a minute this sounds familiar. Yes you can just look at it as if it's just a food/distribution issue, and that's definitely one way of looking at it, but i think it's also reasonable to consider where the food is going, and why.
it seems to me you are aggressively simplifying my argument, i'm just using the term overpopulation to describe the situation in which there are too many people involved in something, for it to be an equitable trade. I feel like given the context that it's pretty reasonable.
no, not really, i've also never claimed to know anything. I've also never claimed this to be the reason why it's happening. Perhaps you have some sort of knowledge in the subject matter, i don't know!
Environmental eugenics is still eugenics
Hey, haaaaave ya ever heard of personal autonomy?
Exactly what part of that is eugenics? Deciding not to have kids, or recognizing the environmental impact of the choice?
"There's too many people on earth" is a eugenicists talking point by affluent westerners. It's a short slippery slope from there to completely dehumanizing humans born in nations deemed "lesser than"
My main argument for antinatalism is that there are too many idiots willing to reproduce and raise children as bigger idiots than they are.
Instead of dehumanizing people for being born in a crowded, exploited region you dehumanize them for being less educated than you.
It's not a question of education, but of willing persistence in stupidity, entitlement and hubris.
The irony of you decrying hubris in people you deem lesser than yourself is lost on you
Anti intellectuals, jingoists, gun fetishists, imperialists and right wingers are objectively worse that everyone else who's not any of these things. This has nothing to do with me specifically.