I don't think we can any more relate to our history.
Science has done a lot of good, but it also boosted fertility unbelievably, to the point of 2 billions in two decades..! Or say one billion every decade added to 8 billions, this takes its weight on politics and economics, and I don't think governments and leaders can handle it!!
Most of us tend to think that there are aliens taking care of us, or a certain god, or gods. And that's it. They won't rationalise for any unified destiny! And I believe I am more anxious than my ancestor at a time when he was feeling that his progeny have a lot of space he can offer them, rather than send them coweredly into a bad future that he won't witness.
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Thank you all for the vigorous controversy on the topic, it made a very clear public opinion. Sorry for any incorrect expression.
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I didn't word the question correctly, I said "anxiety" when I meant more of "stress" or "tension" I apologise for that.
Got to admit, that is one I have never heard before. Still, voted "No" as the question is based on a mistaken premise.
In a nutshell: What overpopulation problem?
In general, fertility rates soar when populations are predominantly rural and the economy is relatively poor and primitive. Children are needed to work the fields and take care of their parents as they get older and can no longer work. The more children, the more work that gets done and later the more evenly the burden of caring for elderly parents is distributed.
Then, as an economy industrializes, modernizes and gets wealthier, birthrates tend to drop. As an economy industrializes, there is no need to have children who can help out on the farm, so to speak. The cost of raising children goes up proportionately as the need to educate them to work and live in a more complex and technologically sophisticated economy increases. Moreover, such economies tend to produce welfare states that take care of the needs of the elderly, meaning that children no longer need care for their aging parents.
(The paradox being that a welfare state, over the long run, actually needs more young workers and taxpayers in order to pay the benefits of the elderly. As yet, it is not clear how modern welfare states will work this out as the tax burden on the young will begin to grow exponentially as the population ages.)
Indeed, China's demographic patterns are already shifting. The population is aging and the workforce is growing more slowly. This was aggravated - intensely - by the now revoked "one child policy." Indeed, that policy was revoked in no small measure because it was having adverse effects on the aging of the population.
Not to mention that it was resulting in a disproportionate number of male to female births. As a rule, when there is a disproportionate percentage of male births, crime rates tend to rise and societies tend to go to war more frequently. Science is not entirely sure why this is - though there are clearly evolutionary patters and instincts at work - but the ideal balance is 51% female/49% male. (In China, the ratio peaked nationally in 2004 with 121.2 boys born for every 100 girls, and some provinces have seen the ratio climb as high as 130. But the figure has been falling for the last seven years and stood at 113.5 last year.)
Put simply, population control tend to occur spontaneously over time and where men step in with a priori plans to implement it, things can go badly wrong. As an ethical matter, children become mere commodities. As a demographic matter, the natural balance between girls and boys tips wildly toward boys, resulting in rising crime rates and even war. As an economic question, labor shortages develop, productivity drops and economic growth slows, thereby causing rising poverty over time.
To be sure, at any given moment in any given place population and resources may not match up. There is no perfection in this life and where imbalances develop aid in the form of food, medicine and other ameliorative measures can - and should within reason - be provided.
That said, the notion that there is a need for population control is an outgrowth of the theories of Malthus. In this such notions are about as cutting edge as 1798. Not exactly the latest science, to say no more.
The law of unintended consequences always pertains and where man has stepped in with his own theories of eugenics and/or population control to affect that which nature and evolution have mastered long ago, bad things are apt to follow. (See also China above.) Best to leave nature to takes its course and treat the consequences as opposed to trying to "fix" that which millions of years of experience tell us is not broken.
Well, that appears to be a factor. However, the causes of war are various and rooted in human nature and circumstance. To speak of ONE cause of war is too simplistic and loses much nuance and detail.
For me a lot of anxiety comes from our government officials it's pretty sad when you hire somebody to do the wise things for us you have a great future in return you're trying to control this the people that hired them. He put us in a lot of bad positions. There is so much manipulation going on in politics nowadays it's a greed game we have been bought and sold so many times we don't own any of our national parks anymore our land is being brought up by foreign countries we vote for the people that we want to represent us but with all the backdoor deals they don't represent us they represent big business the ones that give them the money to be re-elected I wish one day when politician would stand up until the whole truth nothing but the truth on how our country is being ran we have plenty of control were using up our natural resources like there's no tomorrow if I was a younger person I don't think I would bring a baby into this world because you do not know where you're headed
Well I think you for the question no matter how you intended to say it it's a good question we hired these people to protect us we hired these people to make the right choices for us and it just seems like we're all being lied to and that's hard to trust anybody when that is being done
Overpopulation isn't as much of an issue as people make it to be. Basically the more developed a country is, the slower the growth rate will be. The exception is that in recent years recent many 3rd world countries have developed quickly and so the birth rate stayed the same, but the death rate declined sharply causing a population spike. This results in the illusion that the whole world is going to run out of space, or that we have overpopulated our planet.
In developed countries like the usa, the population is very slowly growing causing a stable population. In newly developing countries population is booming because of improved healthcare causing less deaths combined with traditionally having many children to help on the farm. But in countries like Japan, having children is very expensive and isn't a necessity to stay alive. A negetive population growth results in less consumers causing a weaker exonomy and it becomes harder and harder to replace the elderly and for the country to sustain itself for the future. THEY ACTUALLY PRODUCE MORE ADULT DIAPERS THERE THAN BABY DIAPERS.
So really we should be worrying about negative population growth. Were all heading twords it, just some countries have reached it sooner.
That's very intelligent detailed view. Basically you tackled my biased perspective as to where I am coming from, and you made me comfortable about group behaviour as to have some sort of organism. Because the examples you provided are true, even the ones you didn't mention it's true, the more welfare a nation has the more stable or declining the growth becomes.
I am very amazed and honestly convinced. Considering your age I wonder what do you have in store for your future college doctors. God help them they will be so embarrassed like me here lol. 👏👏🎩🌷
The Us is a very developed country and our population is almost double what it was 20 years ago. Sometimes I feel like I cannot breathe there are so many people. I hate driving because there is traffic even at 5AM Every summer I cannot water my lawn because of the impending water shortage. Food is getting more scarce and ever more expensive. I know you have a lot of graphs to back up what you say but I am just s guy that gets up in the morning and goes to work.
@exitseven it may appear that way, but it isn't so. You must live in a very large city that is rapidly growing. Again, as countries develope substinance agriculture is no longer needed and it becomes commercialised. As a result, people living in urban areas more to cities for jobs.
The map is merely a representation of the usa as a whole. The growth rate for the usa is about.4% I believe. And this is expected to lower exponentially in the coming years because of covid. Just take a look at rural areas, they won't seem overpopulated because the bulk of the usas population is urban. Graphs are important because they give an accurate visualization of the whole entire picture, not just the fraction that you see as a guy that gets up in the morning and goes to work lol. I hope this makes sense and I hope the traffic improves!
Overpopulation isn't concerning, even scientists say so. The concern is our resources. Will we have enough resources in the future for the next generation, the generation after that and so on. Which is why sustainable development and saving the environment is extremely important.
We cannot rely on corporations and billionaires to give two craps about us. The first solution is to get off N-P-K as the nutritional solution for our crops. It is insanity what we would start our food off with nutritional deficiencies for profit. Or perhaps it is intentional. Multinational conglomerates own most of our food supply as well as agricultural companies and the same shareholders own most of the publicly-held stocks, so it is advantageous for them to be synergistic in their up and downstream operations.
IE they also own pharmaceutical company stocks and nutritional deficiencies are the cause of most disease alongside the chemicals and other threats. All public company generated, all owned by the same small concentration of interests. And repeat this in every industry across the board. Same issues. Over and over again.
Now they are going for the kill with their World Economic Forum (WEF) global fascism rollout. Klaus Schwab has not been quiet about it. Read his book The Great Reset.
They first had to find a way to destroy small business: covid-19 and get everyone vaccinated with nanoparticle technology: covid-19. Event 201 (October 2019) shows you their plan. Also on the WEF website.
So it's okay to have more and more people using more and more resources but scientists say that it isn;t concerning as long as we have enough resources?
27.2K opinions shared on Society & Politics topic.
I would not be surprised. When I was a kid the population explosion was a big deal. Now you hardly hear anything about it. When I was a kid the population was 200 million for many years. Now it is more than 350 million. It feels like every square inch of space is being developed and highways are more congested than ever and we are faced with shortages of resources. Years ago nobody ever heard of bottled water, now the supermarket has a whole aisle for bottled water. Soon we will have shortages of that as well.
Over population is not a thing. People need to have on average 2.3 kids to just replace themselves. People in the first world are below sustainable rates. As developing nations grow stronger healthcare will also have lower birth rates.
There is a natural process keeping overpopulation from being a thing. Any heavy handed control has no effect and against human rights.
Considering only 3% of the surface is covered by urban areas, I'd say that the earth is pretty damn far from being overpopulated. Besides, never in my life have I thought 'shit I can't make my rent, well if only there were less people in China all my problems would be solved'. Also 93% of people are dead and I doubt that the cause of death for a single one of them was 'overpopulation'.
Science has not increased fertility significantly, all it's done is increase the chances of living to adulthood. Last time I heard, the birth rate had leveled out, so population will increase to a new stable at about 11 billion. Assuming climate change or wars don't knock off a few billion here or there.
Well I get it that every country has its own resources. So the statement or the premise as they said "is wrong" but it will be ludicrous to say that overall countries tend to not increase in their population across time. Be it third world countries benefiting from modern health systems, or first world countries having birth rates or even taking in immigrants. Overall in the big picture, that's how it seems.
I don't see why it would be considering the continents that provided the most technological advances also have the lowest population. North Amerca and Europe barely make around 15% of the worlds population.
In fact, the countries that breed like crazy are those that aren't particulary wealthy, but get our help to decrease their infant mortality rate and thus increase in total population.
Oh you mean the third world. I don't have a detailed separate statistics for each country. So I don't know how part of the world is doing relative to another. Generally speaking no one is immune from chaos.
Personally, I think that there are a lot of ways to deal with overpopulation so it isn’t that big of a deal. Although it is still important to acknowledge the negative impacts.
I think so. And actually our birthrates are falling stupid fast. They are currently the lowest ever in modern history all over the world, below replacement.
So our population will he shrinking in the next 5 to 10 years. It sucks that we're the ones not having kids, though.
Species tend to get wiped out by a very tiny group of people, so small that it doesn't even make up 0.0001% of the human population.
For example most people never hunted a fox in their life, then you have that one guy who hunted about 200 in a very short timeframe and posted it online.
Rhinos are going extinct because of a few dozen poachers, not because of human population growth.
Poaching and hunting is more popular in very rural areas with less people in them.
Cities house lots of people, but the issue isn't the space they take up, it's that we don't build them with wildlife co-habitation in mind (dirt roads, wildlife bridges and tunnels for road crossing, trees, shrubs, grasses, ferns, etc.)
The argument you proprose is more appropriate for 10,000 years ago. Before we really started to make heavy use of global agriculture, trade, technology, etc. Human's create too many resources now (and use far less resources) to have that same dynamic.
No longer do we kill whales to light a lamp, or kill elephants to make a piano, or cats to make a violin, no longer do we need to feed horses just to travel long distances, or spend gasoline sending someone a message (since we have texting and e-mail). We have gone up in number, but our resource use went down.
no, anxiety is caused by dissonance. Animal farm does a great job about of how power corrupts. If we want to not have fear of other people, people need to be predictable and coherent. Over population only adds to the unpredictability.
I am sure there are many neurotic anxious anti social narcissistic people who blame others for their anxiety but really anxiety is related to a persons diet and lifestyle choices. But victim in oh ye victims of everything but what you’re doing to your own self
I live on a small island that everyone wants to come and live on (it seems) so yes, it's very stressful. American viewers will understand when they sit on the freeway trying to get somewhere.
The word "Island" seemed to me more bragging than the word "great". Well God bless u guys... Just next century don't want to come and live everywhere 🤭 stay in the great island.
Do you hate me because I live on an island or because I'm British? by the way Great Britain is an island. I didn't invent the English language, I just use it.
No its probably causes by too many materialistic things, living in a pop pilling culture as in giving pills for just about every mental problem there is out there including ADHD. If I remember correctly about 70% of Americans suffer from some sort of mental disorder or illness. Also that's probably due to misdiagnosing those conditions as well.
Yea you just need to reword it. It's all good. I mean over population is only one factor of what causes failed society. There is so many other issues at hand.
No such thing as (world) overpopulation. God will once again send His Son before that ever happens... and before the Earth gets destroyed by anything (including the myth of so-called climate change)
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