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Is Population a Problem?

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Santa Cruz Sentinel, Letters to the Editor, Jan. 11, 2004

Stop breeding frenzyRegarding "Choose Life" (letters, Jan 4.) what if Hitler’s and Saddam’s mothers had abortions?

The right to choose belongs to the mother. It’s a baby when the woman decides, not some guy or brainwashed Barbie blathering about sacred zygotes.

Overpopulation is caused by idiotic male pride for doing what cockroaches do — procreate. Men inflate their tiny egos by producing many children (overpopulation). Meanwhile, 800 million people starve and the natural world is destroyed by humans’ breeding frenzy.

Under global male supremacy, men farm the uterus. Fetuses (and ex-fetuses) enrich their institutions of finance, technology and military, whether "harvested" before birth (stem cell labs, fertility clinics) or 18 years (obedient automatic weapons-soldiers).

Bush cut funding for contraception women’s reproductive rights in poor nations to ensure malnourished women’s unwilling manufacture of consumer/worker/breeder/soldier units.

Without reproductive rights, women are men’s factory farms. Men fear women’s right to choose — it would disrupt the economy. What if they ran out of soldiers? And cheap workers? Women must be treated as subhumans (farmed animals) since women’s primary job is to manufacture men (rent the video "Rain Without Thunder").

Women’s rights are inseparable from animals’ rights. Aristotle and the Catholic Church both claimed women (and animals) have no souls.

ELAINE CHARKOWSKI

SANTA CRUZ

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Human population dynamics show a very different pattern—or so it appears

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This is a result of development, better medical care, and reduced child mortality

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This also leads to particular country demographic profiles—number of people per age cohort

6Demographic profiles

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Global population growth rate is declining & population will stabilize at around 9 billion in 2050

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Population divided by territory = density

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Trends toward urbanization: more than half the world’s

people live in cities

6.5 billion total

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The World is Spiky: Population

Map by Tim Gulden, University of Maryland.From Richard Florida, “The World is Spiky,”The Atlantic Monthly, October 2005With permission.

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The World is Spiky: Light Emissions

Map by Tim Gulden, University of Maryland.From Richard Florida, “The World is Spiky,”The Atlantic Monthly, October 2005With permission.

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The World is Spiky: Patents

Map by Tim Gulden, University of Maryland.From Richard Florida, “The World is Spiky,”The Atlantic Monthly, October 2005With permission.

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The World is Spiky: Scientific Citations

Map by Tim Gulden, University of Maryland.From Richard Florida, “The World is Spiky,”The Atlantic Monthly, October 2005With permission.

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Rev. Thomas Malthus, c. 1798

“Population is a problem”

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The Core Principles of Malthusianism: 1. Food is necessary for human existence.

2. Human population tends to grow faster than the power in the earth to produce subsistence, and that

3. The effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal.

4. Since humans tend not to limit their population size voluntarily ("preventive checks" in Malthus's terminology); population reduction tends to be accomplished through the "positive" checks of famine, disease, poverty and war.

(5. The poor have little else to do besides procreation.)

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The numerous poor are the problem; they must not be sustained through assistance, since that

will only multiply their numbers

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GarrettHardin

Population dynamics in a typical ecosystem

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Growth in food production has kept up with growth in global population

21Production of grains has risen even as prices have fallen

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But malnourishment is widespread, even though there is enough food to feed the

world

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There is a lot of food moving around the world—why isn’t it produced where it is needed?

Greater profit.

24Mumbai Rio

Densely-populated, impoverished urban areas are of particular concern

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Feeding cities is not an easy matter

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Will this pattern of food production change in the future?

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“People are a resource”

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Principles of Simon’s thinking (“cornucopianism”)

• Growing population is not a problem—it is a stimulus to innovation and economic growth

• People solve problems, so that more people mean more problem solvers

• Scarcity induces innovation and substitution so that nothing will ever “run out”

• People are the “ultimate resource”

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Moore’s Law seems to bear Simon out

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Technological innovation

Substitution

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The Green Revolution had great impact on food production—but can it be sustained? Or supplemented by bioengineering?

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There are disturbing signs of diminishing returns

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Marx took a rather different approach

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Basic Marxian principles

• Labor is the sources of all value• Capital seeks to produce and sell goods

that embody labor value• The worker has only labor to sell to the

producer, who then owns that labor• The producer seeks to pay the lowest

wage possible, given the supply of labor• A “reserve army of labor” suppresses

wages

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Prior to late industrialization, high birth rates are due to high child mortality & need for family labor

• Small farmers need extra seasonal help on the land

• Can’t afford to hire wage labor

• Children who survive can provide the labor

• And when grown, they can find their own land

• But shrinking plots & consolidation make this difficult if not impossible

• So, people migrate to cities

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Surplus pool of labor result of capital intensification (automation, mechanization, consolidation)

Factory work is also scarce & casual labor is plentiful.

Lure of work & income in industrialized cities

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In Nigeria, the decline of agriculture contributed to migration to cities

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Hunger is usually due to lack of income to buy food

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Malnourishment is both a consequence of food

distribution and

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Low income due to lack of employment

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The problem is not people—it is economic structure & lack of economic opportunity

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Demographic transition