[badname]

Even if it is so (and we can talk for hours on the validity of this or that data) how do you find the fact that there are enough damned means of production to feed everyone and it's been so for decades now? Also how do you like the fact that there are now about 50-60 MILLION people in US that get food stamps. Or the fact that the wages for most of the western world are falling for 30 years now? ... Whatever.

[evincarofautumn]

Unfortunately, it is a basic ecological principle that an increase in food results in an increase in population, and humans are not exempt from that. Yes, we have enough food to feed everybody. We have (usually) had enough, not just for decades, but for ten thousand years—ever since agriculture took off, and even more so since the industrial revolution and the Haber process.

However, food production is not enough to eliminate starvation. If you simply transport food to people in an area that can’t support a population increase, all you’re doing is ensuring that there will be more people there to starve in the next generation, and continually increasing costs of transporting food there.

You need to establish local economy and agriculture, or it’s not sustainable. And if such infrastructure can’t be put in place, you need to get people out of there.

Of course, I don’t know how to do that, nor do I know how to solve the economic problems you mention, but that is what needs to be done.

[ajuc]

1. Food production IS more than enough. Logistics and storage is not there.

2. Growth of population declines as countries get more developed, while the food availibility increases. That was true in Europe, USA, Japan, China.

I don't see a reason why this shouldn't work the same for remaining undeveloped countries.

So I don't think your ecological principle works on human.

[evincarofautumn]

When I said “food production is not enough to eliminate starvation” I did not mean “we don’t produce enough food to eliminate starvation”, I meant “producing more food is not enough to eliminate starvation”. So yes, I agree and already stated that the problems are economic.

Suppose this principle did not hold. Then how would the human population of Earth continue to grow? In other words, what would all the new people be made of?

[ajuc]

Population won't grow forever, not because of lack of food, but because (most) people would have better things to do than care for 6 kids, and 6 kids won't have positive effect on their wealth (it's already the case in the developed world - check out natural growth in Europe or Japan).

So more food = more people is not true.

[userulluipeste]

People may indeed limit themselves to having only two, one, or even no children at all, but that will only lead to extinction of such self-limiting groups. Besides these, there also are people that see nothing more important (but not necessarily better) than leaving behind their own kind as offspring. Unless some effect kicks in, like a social drive that instill in the masses the idea of breeding less as it's in western culture, or a government-enforced program to artificially control the demographic dynamic as in China, these kind of people will prevail in the long run. And that's a good thing, I think.

[ajuc]

> People may indeed limit themselves to having only two, one, or even no children at all, but that will only lead to extinction of such self-limiting groups.

This is not "if" this is "when".

But it will take centuries, a lot things can change in the meantime, so we don't know what will happen in the end, but assuming constant growth when the growth in devleoped countries is over already is weird.

Prognoses for world population already show the growth stopping in next few decades.

[kaybe]

Before we cut space missions, can we please stop paying so much for warfare and spam first?

[maccard]

> can we please stop paying so much for warfare

an awful lot of research for space has been done with defense budgets