liberals are always interested in population control. that's why they support birth control, contraception pills, abortions, euthanasia, and in the past things like eugenics. they think it's "good for the environment"?

so why do they support all of this health care? Obamacare? Medicare? All just keep evolution from taking its course, and they believe evolution is so important and absolutely true.

They should support repeal of all mandatory health programs in order to allow for natural selection and evolution to take control.

There is no rational for them if you are a liberal who wants population control, clean environment, and believe in evolution.

3/29/2012 4:26:10 PM

natural HOOPSlection

3/29/2012 4:31:05 PM

Population control is now a necessity thanks to all the welfare programs. Used to be that if you fucked up good chance you would die. Not really the case anymore

3/29/2012 4:47:47 PM

conservatives are interested in population control. that's why they support abstinence, gun ownership, the military industrial complex, the patriot act, wars, and in the past things like slavery.

so why don't they support all of this health care? Obamacare? Medicare? All just death panels designed to kill people faster and expand the scope of the government.

There is no rational for them if you are a conservative who wants population control, free market, and believe in God.

3/29/2012 5:04:54 PM

Liberals are in favor of population control through birth rate decline.

Conservatives are in favor of population control through gun ownership.

3/29/2012 5:23:46 PM

We're all joking, which is good, because population control (and the need for it) is a joke as well.

3/30/2012 12:36:28 AM

Yeah the US could probably support double our current population at least.

3/30/2012 1:09:07 AM

HOOPS

i'm impressed. you've connected 2 very interesting dots


why would the liberal establishment support those 'human population control' initiatives, yet want to break the bank here at home with a huge "free" healthcare system that extends the polluting ability and lifetimes of the current population?


let's think about that....

3/30/2012 9:25:31 AM

Personally I think the best population control is to simply let the natural course run. If our population gets too large to support itself, we can just have a massive global die-off. That's the way God intended.

3/30/2012 9:41:14 AM

^you're doing that perfectly in Syria. So great job.

3/30/2012 10:08:40 AM

What are you talking about?

I was talking facetiously about just letting people starve and die of treatable diseases.

3/30/2012 10:53:39 AM

i'm saying that your 'facetious' take on it is a complete reality

3/30/2012 11:00:42 AM

The publicized recent deaths in Syria are not due to natural causes.

3/30/2012 11:03:08 AM

I am what used to be called Liberal but is not Liberal any more. Todays Liberals are more like fascist progressives, or national socialists. Liberals are supposed to oppose government and support liberal ideas. Getting rid of these health care programs would help relegalize the free market and allow for "evolution"

3/30/2012 11:07:34 AM

^^being human, and intelligent, and evolved to form a government, and be a dickass dictator who controls a group of people


isn't natural


nothing is natural on earth anymore is it str8foolish? since humans arent natural are they? and nothing they produce is 'natural' even though they themselves from 'nature' evolved from the earth.


lol. evolution is hovering above your dumb genetically inferior ass and laughing its ass off at you.

[Edited on March 30, 2012 at 11:14 AM. Reason : ,]

3/30/2012 11:13:55 AM

"liberal" margaret sanger supported population controls because she believed that people not like her (non whites) were inferior. she would have opposed this because it might get to be used by "incorrect" people.

we need to all oppose this, for womens rights and envirnomentalism

3/30/2012 2:14:25 PM

What's ironic is that the people who believe in Creationism support survival of the fittest through free market solutions.

3/30/2012 2:37:37 PM

lol you dont have a clue, do you?

3/30/2012 2:50:12 PM

Quote :

" Next Great Depression? MIT researchers predict ‘global economic collapse’ by 2030 A new study from researchers at Jay W. Forrester's institute at MIT says that the world could suffer from "global economic collapse" and "precipitous population decline" if people continue to consume the world's resources at the current pace. Smithsonian Magazine writes that Australian physicist Graham Turner says "the world is on track for disaster" and that current evidence coincides with a famous, and in some quarters, infamous, academic report from 1972 entitled, "The Limits to Growth." Produced for a group called The Club of Rome, the study's researchers created a computing model to forecast different scenarios based on the current models of population growth and global resource consumption. The study also took into account different levels of agricultural productivity, birth control and environmental protection efforts. Twelve million copies of the report were produced and distributed in 37 different languages. Most of the computer scenarios found population and economic growth continuing at a steady rate until about 2030. But without "drastic measures for environmental protection," the scenarios predict the likelihood of a population and economic crash. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/next-great-depression-mit-researchers-predict-global-economic-190352944.html"

I agree.

[Edited on April 4, 2012 at 11:16 PM. Reason : .]

4/4/2012 11:15:52 PM

^seems possible, minus that "environmental" reason thrown in at the end purely b/c it's en vogue.

4/9/2012 8:34:32 AM

Do you even know what the fuck that means? It's talking about soil degradation in agricultural regions, heavy pollution of vital water supplies, species loss, very poor air quality, and other things of this nature. Just because you don't believe in global warming does not mean it's the only issue that needs to be dealt with you stupid ignorant fuck. As a global community, we have been neglecting environmental issues for as long as we've been aware of them. Open a fucking book before you open your dumbass mouth.

4/9/2012 8:55:36 AM

Yeah, you have to be a waterheaded retard not to realize that we're fucking up fisheries, soil, and water something fierce, climate change or no.

4/9/2012 9:25:12 AM

Well, there is somewhat of a point that the offending systems that are causing our environmental problems will the the least affected by them.

An industrial farm only cares if that it doesn't rain if it depletes its aquifers. If anyone paid attention to the arguments of global warming scientists (like Hansen), they would know that the argument isn't the precipitation will decrease, but rather become more sporadic. Industry will have less of a problem dealing with that.

From a systems view, environmental collapse necessarily precedes the impact on humans. The first to suffer will be species that are keystone and vulnerable. The more robust species. Then domesticated species. Then, finally, humans.

I agree, however, that saying "environmental" is vague. There are lot of environmental problems that really don't matter to our survivability, but many others remain off-the-radar but could be major disruptions to the life-sustaining functions of the Earth. Others, we just don't know about.

Colony collapse of the honeybees is a great example of humans tempting death. We really don't know what the impact of losing the vast majority of pollination ability would be. We only really know that it's like poking a sleeping, angry, dragon. What bad thing, exactly, would come of this?

I really don't know. I guess I look forward to finding out, like how I look forward to finding out how I'll die. At some point I imagine the "oh shit" alarm is going to go off in people's heads. But I don't know. Maybe these environmentalists and conservative hacks that cause the current impasse will just look at the situation there and say "eh, told you so, now all of you people right here have to die".

4/9/2012 10:02:18 AM

That bee problem scares the ever living shit out of me.

4/9/2012 10:06:31 AM

Well, to be fair, your fear is vague, no?

4/9/2012 11:53:54 AM

Huh? Sarcasm? I honestly have no idea what you're trying to mean.

4/9/2012 11:55:56 AM

the whole world could live in texas AND each family could have a yard. Don't believe me? do the math...

4/9/2012 12:29:02 PM

Did you seriously just post that? What an incredibly idiotic and naive statement to make. You are literally a retard.

[Edited on April 9, 2012 at 12:37 PM. Reason : ]

4/9/2012 12:37:18 PM

268 581 (miles^2) = 6.95621597 × 10^11 m^2

divided by 9 billion is 77 m^2, or a square 8.7 m on the side.

For 3000 calories per day you need 1 million calories per year.

http://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/Calories_per_acre_for_various_foods/
Potatoes (yum) can get you 17 M Calories per acre per year.

But 1 acre is 4046 m^2, or a square 63 m on the side.

Divide up with your 17 friends and you need 238 m^2 to grow your potatoes. Or 3 Texases.

If you want soybean derived products (because hey, we can make anything out of those), you'll be looking at the entire United States.

If you want the variety that the world eats today, you will wind up consuming >40% of the land area with farm and pasture land. This is the world today.

4/9/2012 12:57:57 PM

9 billion?

4/9/2012 1:19:09 PM

it'll max out at 9 billion-ish

Or Africa will become a genocide buffet.

4/9/2012 1:22:33 PM

Are you implying that 40% of the world's land area is used for farming? Because that's not remotely accurate.

4/9/2012 1:23:08 PM

Farming and pasture. That's what I said.

And yes, 40% today, much much higher in the future.

4/9/2012 1:28:24 PM

You have any evidence, besides wikipedia?

4/9/2012 1:30:21 PM

Even taking into account the Wikipedia article you likely got your stat from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_land

It says this is the land area "suitable for agricultural production, both crops and livestock." It doesn't specify land being used, and it certainly doesn't take into account efficiency. Some dude with 3 goats on 50 acres of African grassland counts the same as 50 acres of well fertilized grain fields in the US or China.

4/9/2012 1:40:33 PM

I didn't say anything about growing food. Everyone lives in Texas and food is grown in the rest of the surrounding area. The area for food would take up much more space though. We could also advance synthetic food products and make them instead of growing so much food.

4/9/2012 1:46:29 PM

Quote :

"Even taking into account the Wikipedia article you likely got your stat from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_land"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJhgGbRA6Hk&t=4m06s

at 4 min and 6 seconds, although I already linked to that time for you. 40% of the land surface area - again, this is for our current consumption with our current practices. You can argue that Africa uses rangeland less efficiently, but I can argue they'll increase their agricultural burden by eating more meat in the future.

And please don't ignore the take-away point: we are out of land if we don't want to screw up what's left of land eco systems.

Cropland takes up an area the size of South America and pasture the size of Africa, which is all the good stuff. Farming in the desert isn't easy, even though we already do it in many cases. Plus, the entire story of the 21st century is about energy, water, and climate change. Which of these factors is supposed to help us? Oh that's right, they're all hell-bent on screwing us.

Certainly, we all agree that technology is one of few things working in our favor to accommodate this burgeoning world population. It's the ace in our pocket. But using technology effectively require coherency on our part, regardless of how libertarian or statist you are. I would argue that whatever your political ideology is, you are still left with difficult choices and a very tough challenge that you need to address as an individual.

There are lots of good tech possibilities out there, and in addition to that, there are cultural and thinking shifts that can help soften this blow. I totally agree with that.

Or we could all not fix it and kill each other. There's always that option.

4/9/2012 2:48:37 PM

Quote :

"I didn't say anything about growing food. Everyone lives in Texas and food is grown in the rest of the surrounding area. The area for food would take up much more space though. We could also advance synthetic food products and make them instead of growing so much food."

You're right. You didn't say anything about food. Unfortunately, food is a requirement for living. I assumed you were implying this. On top of food, you have to produce raw materials for consumption. Flying halfway around the world to work 8 hours pumping oil doesn't sound very efficient. An adequate supply of copper couldn't be found in Texas to accommodate 7 billion people. There wouldn't be enough water within a week for everyone to survive. Or are all these things not part of "living?"

Your point is totally invalid and you are still a literal retard.

4/9/2012 3:18:28 PM

4/9/2012 3:35:43 PM

distillation desalinazation plants could operate off of water from the gulf of mexico. the scaleof these plants would make the more cost effective. unlimited water and nuclear energy from the same plants. Raw materials could be constantly shipped in. people already drill oil in remote areas without "living there" so it wouldn't be much different.

I'm not saying this would be practical I'm just pointing out its hypothetical possibility to show that we don't have a population problem, not even close. We have a resource allocation problem where 4% of the worlds people hog 95% of the worlds resources and those 4% want more so they create this problem and say hey 96%, stop having babies so we can hog even more resources.

4/9/2012 4:51:06 PM

Yeah, I thought that was your point. Maybe you should have said that instead of "hey, you could fit everyone in Texas, you know?"



Still, given our resource allocation and distribution problems is it really that terrible to suggest that maybe people should cut back on the baby making?

We'd essentially have to dissolve all sovereignty to resolve the allocation problems so they're probably effectively permament.

4/9/2012 4:55:51 PM

I think it'd be a lot easier to establish a new world order than to convince people to stop fucking.

4/9/2012 4:57:43 PM

Well the thing is that most of the first world doesn't really need to cut down on the baby making. The places that do need to cut down on it very quickly (specifically India and Africa, China is already trying to do so) aren't likely to listen to us about it.

4/9/2012 5:00:49 PM

Quote :

"distillation desalinazation plants could operate off of water from the gulf of mexico. the scaleof these plants would make the more cost effective. unlimited water and nuclear energy from the same plants."

This could be a great idea for China after Bill Gates develops his sustainable reactor design there because the regulators in this country drug their feet.

No really, I wish I was making this up.

Quote :

"The places that do need to cut down on it very quickly (specifically India and Africa, China is already trying to do so) aren't likely to listen to us about it."

What are we going to do? Call their cell phones?

Quote :

"Well the thing is that most of the first world doesn't really need to cut down on the baby making. "

I was just thinking about this, and really, Japan has a rate of 1.27 children per woman. If you just think about that for a second, it's downright wacky. These are the people who have some of the greatest means to take care of children. It is the pinnacle of anti-evolutionary behavior.

How is education ever going to improve against such a treadmill? Sub-Sahara Africa isn't exactly the best educational system in the world. It's a cycle of suffering. Development could fix our problems, but the question is always if it's fast enough.

More importantly, the population and demographic imbalance prevents solutions. If the African/Asian birth rate held at the rates of the developed world, then by 2050 would could probably say fuck it and open our borders to the entire world. But we can't. The worse this imbalance gets, the harder borders will become. That is a sad, sad picture.

4/10/2012 1:35:21 AM

Quote :

"I was just thinking about this, and really, Japan has a rate of 1.27 children per woman. If you just think about that for a second, it's downright wacky. These are the people who have some of the greatest means to take care of children. It is the pinnacle of anti-evolutionary behavior."

Japan is a tiny island. I bet if they had a bigger landmass they wouldn't be having this problem. If only we could go back in time and help them get a foothold on mainland china.

4/10/2012 1:47:32 AM

Quote :

"And please don't ignore the take-away point: we are out of land if we don't want to screw up what's left of land eco systems. Cropland takes up an area the size of South America and pasture the size of Africa, which is all the good stuff. Farming in the desert isn't easy, even though we already do it in many cases. Plus, the entire story of the 21st century is about energy, water, and climate change. Which of these factors is supposed to help us? Oh that's right, they're all hell-bent on screwing us. Certainly, we all agree that technology is one of few things working in our favor to accommodate this burgeoning world population. It's the ace in our pocket. But using technology effectively require coherency on our part, regardless of how libertarian or statist you are. I would argue that whatever your political ideology is, you are still left with difficult choices and a very tough challenge that you need to address as an individual. There are lots of good tech possibilities out there, and in addition to that, there are cultural and thinking shifts that can help soften this blow. I totally agree with that. Or we could all not fix it and kill each other. There's always that option."

To me, this post demonstrates pretty clearly why "just let the free market take care of it" is a lazy, naive, un-nuanced response to the problems we face, and increasingly will face.

4/10/2012 1:52:45 AM

Quote :

"Japan is a tiny island. I bet if they had a bigger landmass they wouldn't be having this problem. If only we could go back in time and help them get a foothold on mainland china."

This seems to be in-line with a previous argument that had some powerful language.

ok, can't find it, but was supposed to be that population increased because we increased food production. That is, just reversing the causality.

I think the reality, however, is even less romantic than this. Japan started allowing abortions in like 1952 I think. At that point, birth rates almost halved. We're not talking about small change here. If you held everything else constant and didn't allow abortion starting at that time, Japan could be as large as the United States.

There is no land constraint that kept Japan's population from growing - I know this because the food self-sufficiency point was passed long ago. They supply something like 33% of their food domestically, and this is with crushing tariffs. That does work to another point, that the cost of living in Japan prevents the birthing of more children - which is mildly consistent with other developed world examples.

But it's a fantasy that the Japan ever was sustainable without globalization post WWII. So the population could have kept growing. Abortion stopped it, not food availability. When would have food availability stopped it? Oh dear God I have no idea.

It's a funny example, because Japan is thought to have held a constant population throughout the Tokugawa period, when they didn't have abortion or even birth control. That's a task more difficult than it sounds. They were also peaceful. I mean holy crap none of this makes any sense. In that time, however, population was limited by food production. No seriously, they couldn't make any more.

Some historians argue that the Japanese exercised foresight, and killed infants to keep the population in check - so on balance there is a tolerable rate of famine and they'll kill as many as needed to maintain that. I find this hard to believe because I don't think people are that smart or controlled. Maybe it was culture, I really don't know.

4/10/2012 3:04:21 AM

Quote :

"so why do they support all of this health care? Obamacare? Medicare? "

Gotta find some way to burn money.

4/10/2012 9:19:03 AM

South Korea went from a birth rate of 6.3 in 1960 to about 1.6 in 1980. This was driven by strong economic growth, widespread availability (and push by the government for the use) of birth control, reduced infant and childhood mortality rates, the growing cost of raising children and women beginning to work, so there was less and less incentive to have larger families. Think Japan did something similar in their growth.

In general, it's been well established that improving standard of living (including Hoops much maligned health care) and economic growth tends to slow birth rates.

Unfortunately, most of the developing world isn't experiencing said rapid industrialization and economic growth, have access to birth control, etc. and therefore, their populations continue to boom.

4/10/2012 10:50:34 AM

Is it really a matter of standard of living? I mean, these arguments seem to boil down to the claim that young people:

a.) have something to do
b.) have an expectation placed on them to do it

We have an expectation of going to college, and college girls tend not to get knocked up unexpectedly. South Korea even has mandatory military service.

Not to mention, the number of concerns on someone's mind in the developed world honestly is probably greater. The issue with Japan and SK is that they have too much to worry about. The standard of living effect isn't really about that at all, it's about the expectation of living. I mean, if you took 200 foster kids in high school and just threw a bunch of money at them, I don't think it would decrease their birth rate. Just sayin.

4/10/2012 3:08:54 PM