Augustus
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Yes, and it has been in the past with the Roman Empire/Germanic tribes, etc.
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Can overpopulation be the source of war?
- Thread starter danieldemol
- Start date
Yes, and it has been in the past with the Roman Empire/Germanic tribes, etc.
Seems to me that if war was due to overpopulation, the fight would be over food, and not much else. When's the last time we heard of a war for food?
I do know that famine and drought have caused death, and continue to, but that's always localised, and with better food distribution, could be avoided.
Maybe in the future though, if regions where people are encouraged to multiply go for it, over extended periods of time.
Samantha Rinne
Resident Genderfluid Writer/Artist
I am going to refer you to this website.
overpopulationisamyth.com
The reason we think of the world as overpopulated is because most of us live in cities. However, if you are to get outside the city you will notice that the country has plenty of ppl (no sorry the last election was not rigged) but they are spaced out over a comfortable area.
So why do resoueces seem so scarce? Well, it has to do with mismanagement. If people were actually to address the real problem, a couplw of senators and governors and congressmen would suddenly get ousted from their jobs.
But you'll notice most university professors are paid by the state, so instead of students learning "It's your own governors fault for spending all of her money on her cat and massively large swimming pool" they learn that it's the fault of all those people. And no, this is not something limited to Western governments. Middle Eastern states blame infidels for their poverty and suffering (when signs would otherwise point to their fabulously wealthy leaders), North Koreans probably blame random ppl who don't worship Little Kim.
But when you stop pointing fingers you'd realize that every city could grow fruit trees, every small town, and even in the country. Instead, our commerce decides to charge a minimum of $0.75 for anything in any store. Anyone who thinks inflation is great, I want you to try being unemployed on day, and see how easy it is to scrape together enough for an apple with found money. No, the actual purpose of overpopulation is to get you to blame yourself, then kill yourself, or more likely your offspring.
RoaringSilence
Active Member
we need 4 planets to support the consumption of 8 billion human beings ...idk how it will reduce - via war or epidemic but it has to. the planet cannot sustain anymore population ..that is certain.
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PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
And there will always be 50 years.
When we no longer need oil for fuel there will still be oil.
Some "old guy" back in 1975 told me there is no oil crisis,
there will always be oil. I was young, smart and didn't need
any old man telling me what was obvious - the end of oil
was at hand.
Now oil is selling at, what, $60 a barrel? There's a glut of
the stuff.
Wish I could apologize to him now.
I think you're taking "cut down" a little too literally.
People die naturally; no-one need be killed. The point is to encourage people to have fewer children and use fewer resources.
Why three? If social prosperity were achieved with such a birthrate the population would continue to grow.
I'd favor working for both prosperity and decreased resource usage.
sooda
Veteran Member
Hubert's Peak Oil was a political essay to justify importing cheap oil from OPEC. It was a joke in the late 1950s.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
In a Machivellian sense, but there were millennia of war for other reasons when the population was far less.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Two problems with this:
1 - life extension is here, 2019, with about four different technologies being tried
2 - which people should have "fewer children" ?
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Indeed, the death toll for young males in hunter gatherer societies, from Europe to
Australia to the Americas was about 25-30% due to battle injuries.
But the low prices come with environmentally hazardous technology. You can no longer simply stick a pin in a map of Texas and find oil.
No need to apologize for your pro-environmental stance.
Big Oil can read the writing on the wall, and is well aware that development of alternative energy sources would undercut their prices and seriously impact profits.
Thus, they are desperately working/legislating to squeeze the last profits out of the current system, before the whole thing goes tits up.
Health care and prosperity undercut the checks and balances that kept human numbers low through most of our species' history.
All people who can afford to should have fewer children, ie: those who don't depend on procreation as an old age insurance policy or family defense force.
I think that has been demonstrated quite convincingly by anthropologists and others for quite a while now.
Wars are a quick remedy to demographic pressures that involve limited resources and unrestrained population growth. For most of human history, they were the main, even the only effective remedy.
It may well be that we have refused to learn better.
Indeed. There were checks and balances. But today, with improved health care, intertribal co-operation and social safety nets the human population has soared -- beyond the carrying capacity of the planet; hence the environmental collapse we currently find ourselves facing.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
So Europeans and Japanese, for instance, with their populations heading into
what some call the "death spiral" need to curb their children even more. To the
point where you have senile old societies - and Africans, for instance, who need
those kids, can keep having a bunch more.
Don't you think that people wage wars for access to the sea, for land, for strategic positions, or for a perception of a need to protect their way of life?
There is more to it than just food, though stealing from neighbors has always been a popular route to tribal prosperity.
There's also territory and resource access, like tin, lumber or spices. There's also the fact that humans like conflict, it's exciting and a social binder.
"Localized" problems in today's world tend to ramify far afield. A drought in the middle East can lead to right-wing governments in Europe and massacres in Norway.
Absolutely. Overpopulation leads to less resources and the drive to attain those resources, often by force, be they food, land, etc.
I think you're overestimating our capacity for co-operation. We've never been good at that. We're an aggressive, exploitative, tribal species. Yes, we could fit 8B into a system of high-tech mega cities, but as long as there is Lebensraum and resources outside these, people will attempt to exploit them.
I think you're focusing too much on a single species' prosperity. Our impact on the ecosystem should also be taken into consideration.
Our species prosperity lies in keeping to the carrying capacity of our regions, and our primary concern should be maintaining the biodiversity that upholds the ecosystem that supports us.