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If you were really trying to engage in a thought experiment with me honestly, I don't think starting with a mischaracterization and inventing a fallacy ("appeal to hypocrisy") to tear it down is a good place to start. That also seems, to me, lazy. > Overpopulation is something that, if real, will have an impact regardless of the motivation for people's concern "If real", that is the key, and I am glad you pointed it out. For the sake of argument, we would first have to define why overpopulation real. It seems to me most people start off with the assumption that it is real. Who is defining overpopulation? What is the criteria? Not enough food? Well that's not true at all, we know that the US for example wastes more food daily that could feed the entire continent of Africa with 1/3rd of a pound of food. Not enough land for people to expand to? Well even a 5 year old knows that one is false. Is it not enough natural resources? Despite the fearmongering about water and energy resources drying up, we seem to be doing just fine. Capitalists reaping the country to sell to a nation of consumers? This is the most insidious form of the argument, but again, very wrong. Plus it assumes greedy capitalists somehow wouldn't exist with 5 billion people, or 3, or 2, or even 1, that wouldn't cause some kind of destruction to natural resources. The final one is one made more by hard left academics in favor of socialism. They need an easy explanation for why socialism always sounds so great in theory and never works in practice, so they point to overpopulation. If we simply had less people, then socialism would work!. Except, as we now know, this was in part one of the rationales behind the gulags and gas chambers. So what is the criteria? Not comfortable enough for you and me -- that seems to be the essence of the arguments left after eliminating the ones above. Plus, even if the above were remotely true, why rule out technological solutions? Seems to me pretty crazy people on a technology focused board would rule this one out (not singling you out, "overpopulation is a problem" is an opinion expressed here often, unfortunately), especially since it was technology that has allowed us to easily achieve our current population levels at the exploding standard of living the globe is currently undergoing. People who think overpopulation is an issue by just pointing to some things "drying up" or some places "crowding" is by definition engaging in a lazy form of argument. So to me, until there some hard facts and figures on what overpopulation means, please excuse me if I take it for a hypocritical statement, as the great Carlin said, made by bourgeois liberals that have never experienced actual hardships and live in such an advanced society they have nothing better to do than ponder the scenarios where their cushy lifestyles could be threatened. When you don't have any actual enemies to fight, you have to invent some in your head to keep you busy. |