Thought this was interesting from the BBC. Hopefully the Soap Box is the right place for it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15391515

The first page gives you an approximation of what number person you are for all time and for who is alive today. The second page gives statistics on population growth for each country.

For the US, "Every Hour, There Are: 484 Births, 288 Deaths, +113 Immigrants". 0.9% Yearly growth.
For Mexico, "Every Hour, There Are: 259 Births, 59 Deaths, -41 Immigrants". 1.3% Yearly growth.
For Canada, "Every Hour, There Are: 42 Births, 28 Deaths, +25 Immigrants". 1.0% Yearly growth.

Just for shits and grins...
For China, "Every Hour, There Are: 1908 Births, 1095 Deaths, -43 Immigrants". 0.5% Yearly growth.
For the UK, "Every Hour, There Are: 85 Births, 66 Deaths, +23 Immigrants". 0.6% Yearly growth.

There are some neat factoids at the end of the article (or whatever you want to call it):

Quote :

""What's next? The global population will continue to increase during your lifetime, reaching 10 billion by 2083. However, the rate of growth is expected to slow. Little of the current growth is happening in developed countries like yours. Young people: The world's population is young, like you. Under-25s make up 43% of the global population, but they make up 60% of the world's least-developed countries. Some 97 out of every 100 new births are in countries classified as less developed than yours. Battle for resources: It is estimated that your group of the richest countries consumes double the resources used by the rest of the world. The UN estimates that if current population and consumption trends continue, by the 2030s we will need the equivalent of two Earths to support us. Did you know? People in your area have, on average, more than one mobile phone subscription per person."

11/15/2011 10:20:34 AM

Quote :

"Did you know? People in your area have, on average, more than one mobile phone subscription per person."

What?

11/15/2011 10:25:03 AM

I need more elbow room!!!

11/15/2011 10:25:41 AM

^^In other words, there are more cell phone subscriptions in the US than people. Think in terms of personal cell phones and corporate cell phones.

11/15/2011 10:35:04 AM

^^^ Not too hard to believe. I've got two (my personal cell phone and the work-issued BlackBerry).

[Edited on November 15, 2011 at 10:36 AM. Reason : .]

11/15/2011 10:35:50 AM

^ 3 here, personal iphone, work blackberry and work nextel.

Can't wait til blackberry disappears

11/15/2011 12:50:04 PM

Quote :

"For Mexico, "Every Hour, There Are: 259 Births, 59 Deaths, -41 Immigrants""

-41 damn

you'd think with our 'wall street' issue we'd have this same problem


oh wait lol.

11/15/2011 2:19:48 PM

Less humans, more trees imo.

11/15/2011 2:48:20 PM

^ + 'mr president we need to rethink this middle east "peace" plan'
'i think we should call it the middle east erradication plan'

= mission accomplished

[Edited on November 15, 2011 at 3:02 PM. Reason : ,]

11/15/2011 3:02:13 PM

Quote :

"Less humans, more trees imo."

.......alright..... so what's your plan?

11/15/2011 3:45:28 PM

- Work to eliminate the mindset that we are entitled to cheap, finite resources.
- Relearn the importance of living in balance with our environment.
- Acknowledge the intrinsic value of non-human species.
- Overcome the dogmatic notion that humans have some sort of divine directive to become perpetual baby factories.
- Realize that our capabilities as humans give us a responsibility of stewardship as opposed to an excuse for dominion.

Those are just a few things that come to mind. A lot of it is changing a pervasive cultural mentality which can take a long time.

11/15/2011 4:23:27 PM

none of those are plans.

they're end goals themselves.

11/15/2011 4:31:22 PM

Fair enough. But since no one has said, "HockeyRoman, you have the power to implement this idea, what's your plan?" I haven't given it much thought other than to live a reasonably sustainable, yet rewarding life and encourage values of responsibility in others.

11/15/2011 4:41:50 PM

I'd say over population is probably the greatest threat to Earth and humankind.

11/15/2011 4:55:41 PM

I'd say under-population is probably the greatest threat to Earth and humankind. As population growth slows, so does technological development, and so grows the government.

11/15/2011 5:54:30 PM

I'd like to hear how less humans is somehow bad for the Earth...

11/15/2011 6:07:47 PM

A civilization with fewer members is a poorer civilization. Nothing destroys the environment like poverty.

11/15/2011 6:42:50 PM

And you're prepared to follow this more humans = good chain of thought to some sort of conclusion? Paint that picture for us. . .

11/15/2011 6:54:31 PM

In conclusion, people should have more children?

11/15/2011 7:05:44 PM

Some people should have more children. Some people should have no children.

Reproduction is only good if parents can provide their children with a solid upbringing. If they can't, then we're just more and more fucked as time goes on.

[Edited on November 15, 2011 at 7:52 PM. Reason : ]

11/15/2011 7:52:07 PM

LoneSnark's hopes and aspirations for the future... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXRjmyJFzrU

11/15/2011 8:05:16 PM

^ omg I love that movie. It is truly one of my favorites. And yes, it is one of the reasons for my belief structure in favor of reproduction.

^^Not at all. This is why we have such things as adoption and, if needed, orphanages.

11/15/2011 10:59:15 PM

Come on guys, we all know about the big problem of US brain drain with our best and brightest moving to Niger or East Timor to seek a higher standard of living and be part of their vibrant tech start-ups.

11/15/2011 11:02:25 PM

Quote :

"A civilization with fewer members is a poorer civilization. Nothing destroys the environment like poverty."

Absurdly vague and terrible show. Unfortunately, I have leanings to agree with a version of this.

We are dependent on the fruits of the industrial revolution, and any more, the computer revolution. These are two very different things and while the former was a requisite for the later, the computer revolution was not an inevitability of industrialization or the oil age. Furthermore, we may see another breakthrough of equal scale of these things. We could see an artificial life revolution.

The Petri dish in which world-changing ideas can grow is as big as the number of educated, creative, and connected minds we have on this Earth.

In a sense, humanity may be like a car approaching a canyon with a ramp on the near side. Either slamming on the breaks or flooring the gas may lead us to safety, but something in the middle will lead us to disaster.

However much Idiocracy-like evolution may matter in the future, the narrative that matters for our century is the flux of humans born in the country and poor areas, who move to the cities. We must educate people and lift them out of poverty faster than the resources run out. More prosperity leads to more innovation, value creation, and a bigger pie to go around. Failure, however, is an option.

11/15/2011 11:06:03 PM

I'd like some politicians to actually speak out some about trying to keep growth neutral or as close to it to being optimal for the economy, I'm not too enthused reading about how we'll have 500 mil to maybe 750 mil by 2100 or whatever

11/17/2011 3:33:13 PM

The optimal size of the economy is far larger than it currently is. We need to throw off enough surplus to colonize the solar system, after-all.

11/17/2011 4:51:40 PM

In the vast majority of the developed world, population is in decline. The USA is the only exception, and we're just maintaining.

Its Africa, Southeast Asia, Central America and the Middle East where the populations are exploding. This is mainly due to strong gender roles (men earn money and women keep the home) and other cultural facets that promote large families.

I'm not terribly worried about over-population. I think the increasing standard-of-living in these regions will be a bigger concern. These societies will continue to improve, and their citizens will continue to demand greater amounts of resources to support their richer lifestyle. The world can only support one USA, maybe two after plundering the last of its environmental sanctuaries. The world's growing "per-capita-consumption" is the true threat.

11/18/2011 2:01:08 AM

Honestly, the more wealth, the more pressure on the price of material goods we have, and then the less people will consume.

Quote :

"The world can only support one USA"

Maybe the world can only support one USA, but it can support dozens of areas competing to be like the turn-of-the-century USA. Why? Because they will fall short of that goal due to the competition. Their consumption will then entail fewer materials/resources.

This could rule out Li batteries for cars, but it won't rule out advances in electronics in general. The market is the only thing that knows how to intelligently adapt to the situation we're talking about.

Only problem is the inequality will literally kill people. Luxury consumption can compete with basic consumption. People who don't have enough money to survive will either die or behead their rulers.

11/18/2011 10:51:56 AM

I think a lot of this is relative to what define as 'essential'. If I want to buy a car, that doesn't stop a village in Nigeria from growing food or building shelter. In that regard, the competition of industrialized nations towards 3rd world countries is not nearly as profound.

Where it becomes an issue is when 1st world solutions are needed to counter and issue. The typical dooms-day population models basically say we'll either kill each other off or disease/starvation will limit the population. 3rd world countries will only be harmed by 1st world's consumption is we start having to import food which we currently do not (not for essential consumption, anyway). We don't really have any interest in killing off overpopulating 3rd world countries and they aren't going to rise up against many of the developed countries, so that leaves disease. This is the only place that the 1st world could hurt the 3rd world. Due to the globalization of business and trade, diseases travel more easily than in generations past. If a disease were to spread to less developed countries, there is a very real scenario where the US (and others) are able to develop medicines and vaccines while the less developed countries must endure epidemics.

11/18/2011 11:05:25 AM

Quote :

"Maybe the world can only support one USA, but it can support dozens of areas competing to be like the turn-of-the-century USA. Why? Because they will fall short of that goal due to the competition. Their consumption will then entail fewer materials/resources."

So limited resources will curtail their consumption? I think that's the disaster that's at stake here - the world running out of resources and everyone scrambling/killing to claim the crumbs.

11/18/2011 11:38:48 AM

Quote :

"If I want to buy a car, that doesn't stop a village in Nigeria from growing food or building shelter"

It can. And plus, you're doing it wrong. It's not about stopping them from growing food. They can grow food and then have that food taken from them to make biodiesel for the rich guy's car, and they can't do much about it since they don't own the land or much of anything themselves. PLUS, their labor isn't in high demand. Labor prices will eventually have a floor set which is the minimal price in order to buy food to live. People making less than that will die - thus a price floor. The rich people who have control over the fields have plenty of options to both increase yields with technology and replace labor with capital.

Food is energy, and it competes with other forms of energy and water. Water is not energy, but it is low entropy, and energy is ultimately about entropy. As our global economy increases in size and complexity, the links between these will strengthen, because commodification is the natural direction of markets. This is a good thing. It will allow us to use those resources more effectively, as a collective whole. However, every link that we create to make tradeoffs (between energy and fresh water, between wheat and oil, and so on) will transfer economic pressures from the competition for high-value goods from nations like China to the poor villages Africa.

This is all a good thing, but it is a terrible thing if those poor people are deprived of their natural assets and suckered into debt burdens (which they already are, although on a national level). If they do not have access to the economic opportunities, tools, and wealth that we do, and if the demand for their labor is insufficient, they will die. Of course, in reality they just become a "conflict region" and they story plays out differently, often resulting in largely withdrawing from the global economic community, thereby invalidating most of the assumptions I've established. This cycle will end though. If the consumption pressure from the rest of the world is great enough, a nation like Somalia is very unlikely to remain mostly lawless because it will be too valuable to the rest of the world. That transition will happen, and it's entirely possible that the benefactors of the transition will see no value in 99.9% of the people living there.

Quote :

"So limited resources will curtail their consumption? I think that's the disaster that's at stake here - the world running out of resources and everyone scrambling/killing to claim the crumbs."

But if you lost the battle for a higher standard of living then you've only "lost" in the sense that you downgrade lifestyle from you objective or your prior standard. There is a "scrambling" here, so I agree with everything you said aside from a sudden unexplained appearance of the word "killing".

[Edited on November 18, 2011 at 11:45 AM. Reason : ]

11/18/2011 11:43:36 AM

Quote :

"If I want to buy a car, that doesn't stop a village in Nigeria from growing food or building shelter"

Interesting example. Just google the Niger Delta and Shell oil.

[Edited on November 18, 2011 at 12:00 PM. Reason : Nigeria's recent history basically jives with almost everything ^ says in his post]

11/18/2011 11:59:00 AM

Oh, God, more population terrors.

Calm down, children, we're fine.

Quote :

"- Overcome the dogmatic notion that humans have some sort of divine directive to become perpetual baby factories. - Realize that our capabilities as humans give us a responsibility of stewardship as opposed to an excuse for dominion. "

Here's how this reads:

"We're not special! But we are special!"

Human beings are subject to the same basic biological imperative as other species. We like to fuck. Hell, we even like to pass on our genes. That doesn't make us special or imply that we think we have a directive. It means what we're doing every extant species has done, to the best of its ability, for as long as it has been around.

OK, let's accept the intrinsic value of non-human species. Hell, let's say they're every bit as valuable as us. But until they're more valuable, why does a bonobo of the right to make any more babies than I do?

Quote :

"Some people should have more children. Some people should have no children. Reproduction is only good if parents can provide their children with a solid upbringing."

Thank God we have people like you who can see the future and tell which parents are which. Steve Jobs' parents couldn't take care of him. Put him up for adoption. And clearly that man has brought American technology to its knees. If only we'd sterilized his parents.

---

The Idiocracy references are tired and erroneous. Even the most slack-jawed yokel has to be familiar with devices, procedures, and other complexities that would have made heads spin not long ago. Also, it turns out that having idiot parents is far from a guarantee that you will grow up to be an idiot. If that were the case, we'd all still be monkeys throwing shit it each other on the Savannah.

The talk about resources is as old as Malthus, and it's been proven to be fallacious ever since his writings. It turns out that being intelligent critters, we keep finding new resources, substitutes, or methods that keep us from suddenly running out of key materials or, incidentally, destroying the planet Earth.

---

Whenever you see a problem and attribute it to population, odds are good that the problem is really something else, probably related to government incompetence or corruption.

The modern world's restrictions on free trade and migration spring to mind. There are specific areas of the world that are unnecessarily and perhaps dangerously crowded, but they don't have to be. Plenty of people would be living more spacious lives (and having fewer kids) if they could move out of their shit-hole countries without getting multiple PhD's or getting rich. There's also more than a few farmers who would have a little extra money to spend on education, birth control, and generally not having to feel like they need to breed their own workforce, if only their crops could compete with subsidized Western ones.

---

I'm not above quoting myself, at length:

Quote :

"1) We make enough food to feed ourselves. We currently have enough fresh water to drink. If people aren't getting these things, it may be the result of corruption, underdevelopment, or them simply living in the wrong spot -- not because of general human overpopulation. 2) Cary, North Carolina has a population density of 2,246 people per square mile. I hope we can agree that Cary is not a teeming morass of humanity. It turns out that all mankind could live with a Cary level of spaciousness in an area smaller than that of Brazil. Even after you take out mountains, deserts, and tundras -- that's a lot of space left over. I'll quote wikipedia here, because I least trust them not to make up the Earth's land area: Quote : "If Antarctica[and water area] is also excluded, then population density rises to 50 people per km² (129.28 per sq. mile). Considering that over half of the Earth's land mass consists of areas inhospitable to human inhabitation, such as deserts and high mountains, and that population tends to cluster around seaports and fresh water sources, this number by itself does not give any meaningful measurement of human population density." OK, so we'll double the density figure to take into account the inhospitable areas, leaving us with a density of 258. That's about the same as Austria, that notorious population bomb. Of course, the quote plays down the significance of this figure -- but let's take into account that a lot of Austria isn't inhabitable, either. Besides, the issue here isn't population distribution. I'll grant that some areas, taken in a vacuum, are overpopulated. (Fortunately no place exists in vacuum!) The issue is whether or not there are too many people overall, and quite simply there are not."

11/18/2011 12:19:17 PM

You want to reduce population growth? Improve the standard of living for the average person. When people actually have education and careers to be engaged in, they tend to put off having kids into the future, and have fewer when they do.

11/18/2011 12:29:58 PM

disappointed it took 32 posts to be mentioned

11/18/2011 12:37:17 PM

Quote :

"Food is energy"

There is an assumption built into your entire argument: that one day we will rely on food sources for energy. Your first paragraph supposes that "the rich guy" requires biodiesel. That is an awefully big assumption, especially since modern bio-diesel research doesn't require "food".

Quote :

"Just google the Niger Delta and Shell oil."

1) You're assuming that production of a car requires oil and that as the population increases, society will not make breakthrows into other renewable sources of energy.

2) Manufacturing a car has nothing to do with the pumping of oil, which developing countries consume as well (not just 1st world nations).

2) I don't think this is a far argument to what manufacturing of a luxury car, in the US does to a third world country. Show me where the purchase of unvulcanized latex is harming a 3rd world country's ability to survive and we'll have a more 1:1 discussion.

[Edited on November 18, 2011 at 12:45 PM. Reason : More assumptions...]

11/18/2011 12:37:38 PM

That the poor are poor has nothing to do with the non-poor.

If God wiped the rest of the planet away tomorrow and therefore we didn't buy another car, poor Nigerians would not be better off. In fact, they would be far worse off, as some of them certainly had families working in the oil sector which now have no jobs as the rest of the world no longer exists to buy the oil.

In fact, for this narrow example the oil consumption of Nigerians themselves would fall were this to occur, because I don't believe Nigeria has any oil refineries. As such, take the rest of the world away and they would be forced to abandon their own resources without any way of using them.

11/18/2011 1:10:00 PM

Quote :

"In the vast majority of the developed world, population is in decline. The USA is the only exception, and we're just maintaining."

I'm not sure that 0.9% yearly growth corresponds with "maintaining".

11/18/2011 1:25:43 PM

Quote :

"1) You're assuming that production of a car requires oil and that as the population increases, society will not make breakthrows into other renewable sources of energy."

This is diverging. Who was talking about the production of a car? What link are you referring to? People can't tell anymore.

The link (or lack thereof) I would prefer to focus on would be transportation fuels and supply of food and water to the poor. Transportation fuels represent a very respectable portion of world GDP, and they are one of the export heavyweights. They are also important because they represent an even larger fraction of the export flows from poor nations because geographic distribution of oil is fairly random relative to where people live and the borders that establish nations.

11/18/2011 2:10:59 PM

Quote :

"The link (or lack thereof) I would prefer to focus on would be transportation fuels and supply of food and water to the poor. "

...that's nice. Have fun talking about that link. That's not the link I was talking about. You said "what link are you referring to", so I'll quote my original post in case you forgot.

Quote :

"If I want to buy a car, that doesn't stop a village in Nigeria from growing food or building shelter."

...a link that I still stand by. If I want to buy a luxury car, consumption of the resources in producing that vehicle does not inhibit a developing nation from growing food. My luxury consumption is not denying a developing nation of their ability to independently develop their sources for food and shelter. I'm kind of confused why you think this is diverging... I thought I made this point pretty clear the first time.

11/18/2011 2:28:46 PM

Quote :

"The talk about resources is as old as Malthus, and it's been proven to be fallacious ever since his writings. It turns out that being intelligent critters, we keep finding new resources, substitutes, or methods that keep us from suddenly running out of key materials or, incidentally, destroying the planet Earth. "

Malthus has been proven correct countless times when we look at the natural world. You made the argument that humans are no different from animals a few sentences above this quote, so you atleast have to accept that even though we are intellegent and can think our way out of tight spots, there still exists a possibility that he will ultimately be proven correct.

The crux of the "technology will save us" argument is energy. We have made huge leaps in technology (I'm specifically thinking over the 200 years when we have also seen the greatest leaps in population) that have allowed us to grow the carrying capacity of the earth. Most of those technological improvements have been dependant on increasingly cheap and abundant energy (ie green revolution). Its still pretty controverisal at this point to say that energy is only going to become more expensive, I realize and accept that, although I think in the next 10 years we will have a better idea. Again, you have to admit there is a possibility though. With more expensive energy it will become increasingly uneconimical to use the technologies we rely on now or to build off them (most technology builds on itself) which would rapidly increase the scarcity in the world.

Quote :

"2) Cary, North Carolina has a population density of 2,246 people per square mile. I hope we can agree that Cary is not a teeming morass of humanity. It turns out that all mankind could live with a Cary level of spaciousness in an area smaller than that of Brazil. Even after you take out mountains, deserts, and tundras -- that's a lot of space left over. "

Does this in anyway include the cropland required to feed the people of earth, or the other natural resources (mines, fuel sources, forests for lumber, etc) they use to fuel their wealth in Cary? That would all fit into Brazil? Or is it just 7 billion people could fit into Brazil given the population density of Cary?

Quote :

"You're assuming that production of a car requires oil and that as the population increases, society will not make breakthrows into other renewable sources of energy. "

I thought we were discussing the present day when you said building a car doesn't keep a Nigerian from plowing fields, if you were discussing some theoretical point in the future then I apologize, and you can disregard the rest of my post. At present electric cars still need oil for lubrication and rare earth metals for batteries (shifts the situation in the Niger Delta to some other third world hell hole). Given our current technology in renewables I still don't think we would be able to replace oil (given the number of miles Americans drive) with renewable forms of electricity.

Quote :

"Manufacturing a car has nothing to do with the pumping of oil, which developing countries consume as well (not just 1st world nations). "

At this point in time manufacturing cars depends on a steady supply of oil. Without oil, a majority of american cars (I guess diesels might have some alternatives) are worth less than the sum of their parts, so I would say car manufacturing does depend Oil production (and vice versa). Developing countries also need Oil but it is a drop in the bucket compared to develped countries, with an exception of a few of the larger developing countries (China, India, Brazil)

Quote :

"Show me where the purchase of unvulcanized latex is harming a 3rd world country's ability to survive and we'll have a more 1:1 discussion. "

?

can you expound on this?

Quote :

"In fact, they would be far worse off, as some of them certainly had families working in the oil sector which now have no jobs as the rest of the world no longer exists to buy the oil. "

A majority of the Nigerians that inhabit the Niger Delta are ethnic minorities, and are less educated and possibly more discriminated against than other Nigerians. As such they are far less likely to be employed in the oil sector. While the people of the Niger Delta were likely poor before Oil was being extracted there they could atleast live in a subsistence manner (fishing, hunting, and subsistence farming). If some were ambitious they could have pooled their land (one of the resources they were rich in even if it wasn't being translated to money) and started a Cassava plantation or something like that. Instead their land and water is basically useless due to oil production, most of the wealth extracted from the region is being exported to Shell and Exxon shareholders, their life expectancy has dropped (both due to conflict and oil related disease), and when the oil dries up the companies will leave and the niger delta peoples will be left with nothing.

Quote :

"In fact, for this narrow example the oil consumption of Nigerians themselves would fall were this to occur, because I don't believe Nigeria has any oil refineries. As such, take the rest of the world away and they would be forced to abandon their own resources without any way of using them. "

A majority of nigerians can't afford to buy a car or oil as it is. We are talking about people that are more worried about where lunch comes from tomorrow and the next week than if they can drive across the country or if they should get a sedan or coupe. Arable land is another natural resource and as a hypothetical alternative they could have created a permaculture or large fishing industry (as opposed to oil extraction) that could have lasted lifetimes if done correctly.







[Edited on November 18, 2011 at 3:57 PM. Reason : Won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?, down by the Green River where Paradise lay.]

11/18/2011 3:33:02 PM

Quote :

"so I'll quote my original post in case you forgot. Quote : "If I want to buy a car, that doesn't stop a village in Nigeria from growing food or building shelter." ...a link that I still stand by. If I want to buy a luxury car, consumption of the resources in producing that vehicle does not inhibit a developing nation from growing food. My luxury consumption is not denying a developing nation of their ability to independently develop their sources for food and shelter. I'm kind of confused why you think this is diverging... I thought I made this point pretty clear the first time."

Let's say that you showed that the purchase of a luxury car (not the operation) has no bearing on the ability of the poor in developing nations to grow food.

It wouldn't have any bearing on any point I've made, or any point I can remember anyone else making. So... okay!

11/18/2011 4:06:14 PM

Quote :

"It wouldn't have any bearing on any point I've made, or any point I can remember anyone else making. So... okay!"

From your own post...

Quote :

"Luxury consumption can compete with basic consumption."

So the purchase of my luxury good... a car... holds no competition with the 3rd world country's ability to grow food.

Maybe what you said is just not what you meant?

11/18/2011 4:25:47 PM

Quote :

"if you were discussing some theoretical point in the future then I apologize, and you can disregard the rest of my post."

That's exactly what I was doing. The discussion being about the threat of over-population beyond the earth's ability to support us, I assumed we were talking about a timeframe similar to what the article suggests "when it would take two earths to support the US's consumption".

[Edited on November 18, 2011 at 4:27 PM. Reason : typo]

11/18/2011 4:27:28 PM

Quote :

"So the purchase of my luxury good... a car... holds no competition with the 3rd world country's ability to grow food. Maybe what you said is just not what you meant?"

Do I need to do anything other than point out the fact that a hummer's gas consumption is a luxury expense to get the discussion back to the prior points?

I don't mean to say that "luxury" was the best word choice - it wasn't. I was comparing populations that compete for a Western standard of living to those that could face deprivation of basic needs of life if price inflation outpaces income inflation. The per capita differential between those two (which is what I should have said) does not all fall within the definition of luxury. My point was that consumption ex- the basic needs competes for overlapping economic inputs with the basic needs.

[Edited on November 18, 2011 at 5:05 PM. Reason : ]

11/18/2011 5:03:45 PM

Quote :

"A majority of nigerians can't afford to buy a car or oil as it is. We are talking about people that are more worried about where lunch comes from tomorrow and the next week than if they can drive"

So, if Nigeria was as modern and developed as Norway not even you would consider the oil a problem. However, because the Nigerians decide to make and keep the region in poverty (punish the ethnic minorities, perhaps) their lives are going to suck regardless of whether or not oil is being produced in their region. For all we know the oil and therefore outside influence of western oil companies eager to avoid bad press has kept the local government from doing more than just impoverishing them, perhaps displacing them to starve to death in the wilderness.

I will say it again. Africa's problems are only indirectly linked to the west. Yes, if we banned oil from Nigeria things would be different, but they damn sure would not be much better.

Quote :

"could face deprivation of basic needs of life if price inflation outpaces income inflation"

As the most common profession among the poorest is subsistence agriculture, the price of their food always matches their income, because all they produce with their labor is food.

[Edited on November 18, 2011 at 6:22 PM. Reason : .,.]

11/18/2011 6:17:56 PM

Quote :

"So, if Nigeria was as modern and developed as Norway not even you would consider the oil a problem."

Shit I wouldn't consider it a problem if they a)properly compensated locals whoms land they were depleting and b) actually tried to keep spills to an absolute minimum. Thats what they do in Norway, where they have a government powerful enough and well meaning enough to advocate for its citizens. Instead its in the active interest of both the multinational corporations, and perhaps the West to keep Nigeria poor and uneducated, (and out of the news)

Quote :

"For all we know the oil and therefore outside influence of western oil companies eager to avoid bad press has kept the local government from doing more than just impoverishing them, perhaps displacing them to starve to death in the wilderness. "

A nice idea but you'd be wrong. Shell actively pays the Nigerian government to suppress the peoples of the Niger Delta to suppress any of their opposition to their operations. A small price to pay for the profits they make in the region:

http://sweetcrudereports.com/2011/10/04/how-shell-paid-nigerian-military-crush-protests-in-ogoniland/

The fact is they are actively supressed, pushed off their native lands (for private, foreign companies profit) and thats what forces them into the "wilderness." There is obviously some blame that lies with the Nigerian government but Shell is just as much to blame.

[Edited on November 18, 2011 at 6:45 PM. Reason : .]

[Edited on November 18, 2011 at 6:50 PM. Reason : epic grammar mistakes on my part are becoming typical lately]

11/18/2011 6:42:34 PM

^^ As long as that is the case, food price inflation won't outpace income inflation.

But that has an implicit assumption that they own all the means of production of farming. Also, in Africa's case, the demographic distribution is strongly skewed toward the young. That means that future farmers will effectively have less land to work with. I have no doubt that they can increase yields to compensate. But that would make it more like American food production.

You can ask American farmers about the problems with not owning all of the means of production. This was a common theme in documentaries such as Food Inc. This clip is directly to that point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRDWabqAXvU

[Edited on November 18, 2011 at 6:49 PM. Reason : ]

11/18/2011 6:49:14 PM

^^ She shell paid the Nigerian government to avoid bad press from protestors. How does that disprove my theory that shell would pay the Nigerian government to avoid bad press from further persecuting the ethnic minority locals?

Corporations must operate under the regime they find themselves. Corporations across America are buying land the government took through eminent domain. Corporations in Russia are bribing government officials to engage in legal activity. The Nigerian government was persecuting and impoverishing its own citizens long before Shell arrived. Oil production is not a bad thing, and that is all Shell wants to do. It is not their fault the Nigerians corrupt everything into unmitigated human suffering. In effect, you are outraged at the corner grocer for selling fruit to gangsters.

You don't need to change shell to make the problems go away. I'm sure the managers of shell wish Nigeria was a better regime than it is. But it isn't. Preventing shell from doing business will not make the problem go away. After-all, shell didn't pick Nigeria. Nigeria picked shell. And if shell leaves the Nigerian regime will just seize everything and replace them with some Chinese or Russian oil services company which might not care about bad press while the bodies pile up.

^ They do own all the means of production of farming, because the poor don't have access to anything else. I do doubt they can increase yields because poor countries are poor. If they could utilize modern means of production then they wouldn't be poor. Although I must confess I have heard good things out of Africa lately, so this may be changing.

[Edited on November 19, 2011 at 10:26 AM. Reason : ,.,]

11/19/2011 10:25:21 AM

Quote :

"You made the argument that humans are no different from animals a few sentences above this quote, so you atleast have to accept that even though we are intellegent and can think our way out of tight spots, there still exists a possibility that he will ultimately be proven correct. "

Theoretically, yes. There Earth is finite. Assuming human population growth will do nothing but increase dramatically (and be limited to Earth), we'll eventually be fucked. But no current trend seems to support that assumption. Birth rates are slowing all over the place. We'll peak out and then probably drop some, but it won't be because the world suddenly thinks it can't make any more food.

Quote :

"Does this in anyway include the cropland required to feed the people of earth, or the other natural resources (mines, fuel sources, forests for lumber, etc) they use to fuel their wealth in Cary? That would all fit into Brazil? Or is it just 7 billion people could fit into Brazil given the population density of Cary?"

I don't see why the two have to be separated. Putting everyone into, say, Brazil leaves the vast majority of the world's arable land and forests available to be harvested, since nobody's building houses on them. Fuel sources and mines are the areas where I am just about certain we'll see technological innovation to keep us running.

The resources we mine that aren't energy sources (uranium, coal, etc.) haven't disappeared. They may have been used in ways that will make reclaiming them difficult, but it isn't impossible. Aside from a handful of probes sent into outer space, we've got the same amount of iron, gold, and bauxite as ever.

11/19/2011 10:45:54 AM