| > have you lived in the US? there are lots of different kinds of suburbs. my suburbs have shops Well, good - that's not the type of suburb I was taking issue with, as I would hope was apparent. > I want low-density accommodations. I want everybody to have acres of land and I want to go days without seeing other people. That's not possible. If everybody were to live in that kind of isolation, nothing would get done. > Take Japan, or any other country with negative rate of change in population. Without immigrants, how do you imagine their population will change? That doesn't change the population level globally. It's just shifting people between borders. > Why so cryptic? Because its just an impression and people tend to take suggestions that they have eco-fascist inclinations pretty badly. Talking about population control and low-education immigrants isn't definitive but it certainly smells bad. > I want to be a hermit so I never have to see other human beings unless I have to go into town to buy groceries I'm not against that, if it can be done in such a way where everybody gets what they want. I'm only really against hording of resources to the detriment of others. > but in your hive world, there are no countrysides or suburbs left, just sprawling concrete scars on the landscape where people go to rooftop mini-parks and think they're experiencing nature Nice 40k reference, but you have a strange impression of what I've said. I want a world where people's personal preferences are maximised, which includes living arrangements; we just have to do it sustainably so the biosphere doesn't collapse. I love nature too, see - I live just on the edge of the countryside myself. |
If you want unbounded human population growth and unbounded immigration, that smells pretty bad, just not to you.
> I'm not against that, if it can be done in such a way where everybody gets what they want. I'm only really against hording of resources to the detriment of others
Then this is the closest point we have to common ground. I don't want to force anyone to live in the countryside, and in fact I would rather nobody did so I could live there alone, but I want people to have the option to, just like you want people to have the option to live in cities. However there's a limit to how much livable space we have and that means we can't just keep expanding cities forever. We do differ though on our view of property, it seems. Where you seem to view resources as inherently collective, I see property as a human right and reject the premise that we should take from those with plenty just because others have little. I'm all for taxes though,
> we just have to do it sustainably so the biosphere doesn't collapse.
IMO, that inherently means keeping urban development and population growth contained. I think the evidence speaks for itself: just look at how many animal species have died, how many biospheres have already collapsed, how much pollution and other climate damage has been done, just in the past century, when many countries were still developing and the population was much smaller. Now you're suggesting that with the current population continuing to grow freely, and urban development continuing freely, we'll somehow manage to both ensure everyone can live according to their preferred lifestyle and preserve nature? Sorry, but I think that's fantastically utopian. At the end of the day there's nothing I can do about it, but I do wish we were heading a different direction.