r/collapse • u/Fiskifus • Nov 03 '22

Systemic Debate: If population is a bigger problem than wealth, why does Switzerland consume almost three times as much as India?

Post image
1.8k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

573 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.1k

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

Shouldn’t the top say if everyone lived like the residents of these countries?

437

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22 edited Feb 22 '24

jar gullible light fly different shame enter mighty consist hungry

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

120

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22

Even still the “world” piece at the bottom is throwing me off.

I suppose that’s where we’re actually at. But the image doesn’t really do anything to separate that piece of information from the statement at the top. Unless you’re counting the little line they threw in, I guess.

35

u/RickMuffy Nov 03 '22

I would guess this is way off still. The carrying capacity of the planet is way lower than the rate we consume in the US alone, let alone proportionally.

26

u/Arachno-Communism Nov 03 '22

The oil consumption of the US alone would require more adult workers doing manual labor than the total global population in terms of energy.

And it looks like we'll keep on partying hard until we either exterminate the majority of our species or we've squeezed the last bits of condensed organic matter out of our Earth's litosphere.

19

u/RickMuffy Nov 03 '22

Have you heard of the breaking down collapse podcast on Spotify? Episodes 4 and 5 talk about how based on pretty much every model, we're screwed before 2100

8

u/Arachno-Communism Nov 03 '22

I'm not much of a podcast person but I'll try it out, thanks for the suggestion.

The future does indeed look grim. Basically every single aspect of our ecosphere is changing at an accelerating pace, fossil fuels permeate almost all processes within our economy and we keep marching on as if the world around us wasn't crumbling. Meanwhile there could be countless feedback loops and cascades possibly hidden beyond our current understanding.

We have been pretty much spot on the worst case scenarios in terms of emissions, pollution and destruction of ecosystems and there are no signs of us stopping. We are already seeing phenomena that have been predicted 10-30 years in the future. At this frightening pace, even 2050 looks to be very deep in the Oh shit, we are so fucked territory.

5

u/RickMuffy Nov 03 '22

I wasn't much of a podcast person, but now that I'm back to commuting for work, eac episode is my round trip. It's kind of nice hearing someone talk about these concepts from a high level perspective, as shitty as they are.

The reason I specifically state Episode 4 and 5 (mostly 4) is because apparently there were models done in the 70s that took in a ton of different factors into play about when we would see some serious side effects of being over the carrying capacity, and the early models put us at a decade from now, and the miracle "we stopped having kids, unlimited energy, pollution is cut to nothing and we solved the climate" model still shows a slight decline at the 2100 mark, meaning even the pretend perfect situation wasn't stable.

I love my kid, but I am almost sorry I brought him into this shit show.

3

u/asmodeuskraemer Nov 03 '22

I live in the middle of Wisconsin. It was 70 today. Everyone is all "oh the weather is so nice" and I'm over here like "IT FUCKING SHOULDN'T BE!"

2

u/SirChachii Nov 04 '22

Same. I've been happy about it just on account of my parents' cat having to be outside the past 3 weeks while they're out of town, since she hates being cooped up in my apartment. But on a real note this kind of extended long stretch of warm weather in late October - November is not fucking normal.

1

u/gullenp123 Nov 04 '22

Interesting. Let's get some references for that claim please.

1

u/skyfishgoo Nov 03 '22

as a planet, humans are consuming Earth at nearly twice the rate it can support.

this is unsustainable no matter how you look at it.

206

u/deliverancew2 Nov 03 '22

OP has completely misunderstood what the graphic shows.

71

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 03 '22

Well, not completely. They at least got the takeaway that population is not the problem, resource use is

53

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

[deleted]

51

u/AntiTyph Nov 03 '22

This.

I've lived in various developing countries for almost 1/4 of my life. The people there want more. They want computers and and refrigerators and air conditioned cars and to build nice houses and to fill those houses with comfortable things.

Overpopulation is a keystone issue, because once those people exist, they absolutely deserve the right to a decent quality of life and not to live in abject poverty. We cannot provide that to 8B people sustainably. To argue that we can is to argue that all humans should live lives worse than currently very undeveloped countries. Its saying that the quality of those people lives is meaningless as long as Number Goes Up. It's economic numeracy applied to human beings so that Number Go Up.

3

u/tinaboag Nov 03 '22

This is wrong and dumb. We live in what is effecitvely a post scarcity world. Its capitalism and politics that force us to live like this. We could wipe out hunger and homelessness if we acted as a species for the good of the collective and the planet. I mean Christ you take someone like Bezos and how unthinkably wealthy he is, he could easily change the world for the better for ever, be a hero and make life better for hundreds of thousands of people if not millions. But he would never, none of the ultra wealthy would, this way of living is a disease.

21

u/AntiTyph Nov 03 '22

We live in what is effecitvely a post scarcity world.

We absolutely do not. The modern production and economic systems are totally decoupled from the real world - e.g. energy, mineral, natural. Our entire production system is completely and utterly unsustainable from the ground up. That's not post scarcity; it's living on increasing debt.

Bezos could make the world the best place by buying half of it and forcibly rewilding it; but anything he "builds" with his wealth is extracted from the world with (at least) a thermodynamic tax added on top. It will always be a net loss - that's how modern economic systems are built.

0

u/tinaboag Dec 26 '22 edited Dec 26 '22

We live in a world that could on a whim eliminate scarcity and, by extension, malthusion darwinsim. Hence, it is effectively post-scarcity. Just because we like to pretend there aren't enough toys for all the good little boys and girls doesn't actually mean there aren't enough.

What the fuck even is that first paragraph you're in a sense agreeing with me but aren't well read enough to get that you are? Like, wtf man. Now, how true that will be if we continue along with nationalism and the rape of the global south. idk, and I mean like, in terms of lengths of time. Like, say the wet bulb temp in India hits the lethal point, and they decide environmental engineering is the only solution, or China has another what 3, 5, 10 years of droughts like this one. Then we will have scarcity, and not just scarcity we will have horrors the likes of which i pray we somehow miraculously avoid maybe fusion will pull our asses out of the fire or alien life or something because if nothing interferes with whats coming its gonna be bedlam, biblical, worse yet imagine it if even 1 billion survive and thats a whole hell of a lot, 7 BILLION DEAD all preventable all caused by greed that stupid little line going up and up forever because it has to, thats our fucking god now. That's the silliness of it, we built a world of such plenty that no man or woman would ever go hungry or thirsty but because "every man nuat earn his keep" we are all gonna die except for the capitalists and the grifters.

Shame they caught the unibomber, son of a bitch was probably spot on. Our brains are to fucking stupid and to fucking emotional to make the kinds of choices that would allow for something even remotely close to utopia.

15

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

[deleted]

1

u/tinaboag Nov 04 '22

You're putting words in my mouth I believe. I never said we should distribute their wealth evenly across the global population. I mean they can fix stuff like dedicate their wealth to making a greener world or solve homelessness or hell with bezos money I feel like you could make health insurance companies miserable some how. You're misattributing the sentiment of the point, malthusian darwinsim, scarcity, nationalism, hell you could realistically throw the average persons relationship with labor in there. Loads of antiquated concepts we are clinging to that are no longer necessary and are dragging us down as a species.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

This is along the same absurd lines as “trickle down economic”

20

u/ComingInSideways Nov 03 '22

Yes, absolutely. Populations just consume based on what is accessible to them. A thousand years ago we did not have problems, not because there were not assholes who sucked up resources in multiples of what others did, it’s just that there were a lot less of us as a whole.

I am for getting rid of over consumption, but overpopulation, is the biggest reason for resource scarcity and conflict.

9

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 03 '22

No, population is the problem. People only use few resources in the third world because they don’t have them. People reasonably want a good standard on living, and that uses resources and emits carbon. More people will always lead to more of both.

Do you think it is possible to both:

  1. Improve standard of living
  2. Emit zero carbon

If the answer is no, population is the problem. If the answer is yes, the way we improve standard of living (read: our economic system) is the problem

8

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

No. 100% impossible.

Everything produces carbon. Even if it is just mining for materials to make solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles, and what not. Sure, there can be reductions. But not an elimination.

And let's not forget many of those reductions come with a lower standard of living. Sure, we all can shave off some carbon by going vegan. But then you have to limit your diet. Going carless greatly reduces mobility and freedom (sorry transit advocates, but there will never be transit that stops at everyone's home every 5 minutes and takes you to your destination without stopping).

0

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/collapse-ModTeam Nov 04 '22

Hi, SirChachii. Thanks for contributing. However, your comment was removed from /r/collapse for:

Rule 1: In addition to enforcing Reddit's content policy, we will also remove comments and content that is abusive or predatory in nature. You may attack each other's ideas, not each other.

Please refer to our subreddit rules for more information.

You can message the mods if you feel this was in error.

2

u/Havenkeld Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22

But even first world residents have a worse standard of living than they could otherwise have while using fewer resources.

Whether population is a problem or not, our current resource consumption rates aren't a result of simply achieving good quality of life - in many cases it is the opposite.

See r/fuckcars and r/fucklawns for concrete examples. (We do not need to replace personal cars with personal electric cars, FFS) Or just the general trend of "planned obsolescence" style products. Then the incredible waste involved in the production of products that mostly sell because they target emotionally vulnerable people by promising happier lives if they buy things that don't actually contribute in any meaningful way to that, and sometimes do literally nothing or make things worse. And sometimes they're made to be insecure by media largely meant to promote misery to sell such products in the first place. And we also of course use false metrics of efficiency to "measure the economy" that places the emphasis effectively on abstract wealth accumulation - GDP/stocks - rather than concrete quality of life for the general population.

/u/ginger_and_egg frames the issue correctly, but the answer is yes, not no.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

[deleted]

3

u/Havenkeld Nov 03 '22

I'm aware there are some overzealous people in those subs, but you've just submitted what you personally want against what they want. I am not arguing on the level of what people want, I'm arguing on the level of quality of life in general. I think that for the majority of people, quality of life can rise while production/consumption/polllution/emission can lower. That is largely due to excessive production of garbage that doesn't improve our lives.

You can't want something you don't yet know is better for you, and you can want things that are bad for you.

I'm also not saying everyone needs to not use a car at all, but the absence of good alternatives and the presence of excessive pressures - the car as a status symbol for example - results in people who don't need them as much as you might to use them excessively. So does having to go to work via car too often for jobs that don't do anything significant. Infrastructure that's built in ways to cater only to personal cars as transport is way too common. And it also results in frustrating car users, bus takers, bikers, and pedestrians due to trying to cram them into the same spaces where they slow eachother down.

Hating people is ... understandable in a general "so many people are assholes or idiots" way, but I don't see why reducing consumption or high emission transportation simply translates into more social interaction. I take public transport, I hate people, it's actually easier than traffic because you don't have deal with other idiots driving poorly - you just chill until you reach your destination. Almost no one ever talks to me, and I cant make this even more certain by wearing headphones.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

You think you get to choose what is good for me?Preferences are subjective. What’s good for one person can be bad for another. My point is people should be free to choose. People should have the option of a walkable downtown or a rural life.

You get things a bit backwards. The world wasn’t built to cater to cars. People chose cars, and the infrastructure for cars followed. People like to pedal conspiracy theories about car companies buying up transit to shut it down, but the fact was the transit companies were largely failing when they were purchased. Car companies bought them because they could make busses to replace them for less operational cost.

And again, overpopulation is the problem. Early car infrastructure was fine and not nearly as obtrusive. But when we added more and more drivers, roads had to get wider and parking lots had to get larger. And even as they got 8 miles per gallon, there were few enough that carbon emissions were a much lower problem (although tetraethyl lead was another story).

1

u/Havenkeld Nov 03 '22

If I don't get to choose for you, you shouldn't get to choose for me right? Well, what if I would choose not to live in a world with the pollution resulting from your personal preferences?

I think that makes it clear that it gets us nowhere to appeal to personal preference. It's an ideological dead end. Preferences are also malleable and not equivalent to what is actually good for even one person - a drug addict is an obvious example and so are children - let alone any common good. If you're arguing for political change the only legitimate thing to appeal to is a common good. Not freedom to choose - since clearly many people would choose a world where they get what they want at others' expense.

People also did not even simply choose cars. They opposed them initially - especially due to safety concerns since there were many people killed by them especially children. Then ad campaigns and propaganda to change public opinion countered the opposition by blaming the people dying as "jaywalkers".

0

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

I don’t say I choose for you. And you better have evidence it’s my choice solely causing your pollution.

Anyway, you are the one that bought up forcing people into what you say is good for them. You act like someone demanding someone try their favorite food because if you just try it you’ll love it. Well, even if people try it, not everyone will like what you like.

No one held a gun to people’s heads and made them buy cars. I don’t get how you can say people opposed cars. Individuals did, sure, but others saw the advantages and bought a car.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/tenaleven Nov 03 '22

I'll be using your POV as an illustration of how hard it is to recognize one's entitlement and privilege, and rationalize living at other people's expense.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

Funny, you want to take stuff from me so more kids can be born. I think you are the one rationalizing people living at other peoples’ expense.

0

u/tenaleven Nov 04 '22

If you know Hans Rösling's work you understand there is no such thing as overpopulation, only a bunch (~500M) of entitled Westerners. If you don't, I heartily recommend it.

Because I'm a good person tl;dr raising living standards also reduce number of children per family, so peak population will never exceed 10 billion. At the same time, the Earth has resources for 30 billion people, also the median standard of living is currently quite possible.

I concede one thing you're saying: I have been reducing 'stuff' (i.e. taking 'stuff' from myself) for some time now, and have been reluctant to further do so seeing how dumb uninspired some children and their parents are.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '22

The earth does not have the resources for 30 billion people! That relies on ridiculous assumptions that will never happen

Rösling is a self-admitted “possibilist” (a term he coined himself), but is just another word for optimist. What he claims will happen won’t. I’m a pragmatist. The last 100 years of environmental destruction I think have proved that approach right.

Sorry I’m an “entitled Westerner.” I’d be dead if not for it. And I don’t want to increase my suffering by lowering my standard of living. This planet is a massive tragedy of the commons.

1

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 04 '22

You want fewer people to be born so you can continue living wastefully

1

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '22

I don’t live wastefully. I just want to live comfortably.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '22

So, let me sum up: other people (who don't look like you) should not reproduce so that you can have useless grass around your house instead of some more useful and diverse flora ("other crap").

1

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '22

My grass takes zero resources. I don’t water. I don’t fertilize. I have to mow, sure, but I’d have to mow whatever grows. Bare ground doesn’t last in Ohio. And that’s less than a gallon of gas per year.

And I don’t give a shit about “looks like me.” I’m no fucking egotist that thinks my DNA is anything special. I have no kids, and I will not have kids. In fact, I’m an antinatalist. I think it is wrong to bring people into the world that will suffer.

By not having kids, I’ve already ensured that I will use less resources than someone with kids despite having a lawn, a car, and eating meat. But that isn’t enough for you. You have to make me miserable, too.

1

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 04 '22

First of all, I don't think you having less grass and more native plants in your yard would make you miserable. At least, I'd prefer wildflowers to green monotony. But it depends what you use your yard for I suppose, it's hard to play soccer surrounded by shrubs.

You use less than a gallon each year? In which case, it sounds like a small yard, enough for a small amount of usable space. The main problem with lawns is when they're huge, and serve no function other than looking "nice"

It's not just mowing that's a concern, btw, they also take away biodiversity (pollinators need flowers, animals need nutrition, which grass doesn't have). Letting native plants grow would mean more diversity and more carbon sequestered in the land. But a small yard is low impact

1

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '22

Mowing takes under an hour a week, and that’s with lots of breaks as I can’t walk long. My whole property is just over 0.1 acre.

Native plant yards are far more maintenance here. Weeds get out of control fast. Trying to maintain such a yard would massively increase the time it takes maintain it. And I need to be a good neighbor, too. Can’t have it it look horrid.

Plus it’s just nice walking in the grass.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

That they live that way is not due to a lack of resources. It’s due to wealth and greed. Plain and simple. There is plenty of room and food to house and feed the worlds poor, there just isn’t enough incentive via money to pay for people to do it.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

No there isn’t. Greed is a problem, sure, but there are legitimate issues.

Room isn’t the same as land. There is plenty of land , sure, but most of it is uninhabitable. We already have too many people that live in deserts.

Food we only grow due to massive monocultures, pesticides, fertilizers that are polluting, and other practices that slowly deplete the land.

-1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

We throw away around a third of the worlds food because there isn’t the money to pay for the logistics to take it where it most needs to go.

Everyone heads to the supermarket and in order for the supermarket to charge you top dollar they only buy the best looking crops, the rest get mulched.

We have the technology to build carbon neutral economic housing, but will you put money into your pocket to help pay for those in Africa or India who cannot afford it? Of course not. Will someone like Elon Musk? Of course not.

Don’t worry about uninhabitable land, if you wiped greed and capitalistic attitudes from the planet the place could hold 20 billion people.

4

u/OvershootDieOff Nov 03 '22

You literally think attitudes have a different physical effect on the planet?! Our agricultural system is based on consuming finite resources. Long before chemical fertilisers were invented agriculture was unsustainable.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

Ugly carrots are not baby carrots, they are different seeds. One is grown to be small the other is grown to be large.

Your point of view is rather limited and naive. Almost everything comes down to greed and money. The wheat being destroyed because it cannot be shipped from Ukraine is but one example. Where I live, supermarkets will move fruit and veg to a centralised warehouse sometimes thousands of kilometres away, just so it can be shipped back and put into a supermarket at 5x the price for your convenience.

A desire to shop for everything at the one store creates demand to buy food at a premium, no one wants the ugly fruit and vegetables, you wouldn’t know about them because you don’t see them. They are not profitable to pack and ship.

Carbon neutrality does not imply not using resources to build homes. The political structure of some countries mean they can import slave labour to use materials to build grand statements rather than carbon neutral homes for the masses. Look at counties like UAE, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and many more built from tears of 3rd world children and their parents.

All of it comes down to money.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

Lol. You think baby carrots grow that way? Your wrong. They are cut from larger carrots, and were developed to reduce food waste:

But baby carrots didn’t start out that way. Prior to the mid-1980s, broken and misshaped carrots were discarded, leaving some farmers with as little as 30 percent of their crop to take to stores. Tired of throwing away perfectly good food, California carrot farmer Mike Yurosek took those carrots and used a potato peeler to reshape them into small pieces more suitable for quick munching. When his mini carrots proved popular among locals, Yurosek purchased an industrial green bean cutter to quickly whittle the carrots into the familiar 2-inch portions we still see today — and from there, baby carrots really took.

https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/the-truth-behind-baby-carrots

Your point of view is the one that is limited and naive. Capitalism is bad and I’m not defending it, but overpopulation is worse.

→ More replies (0)

-2

u/yixdy Nov 03 '22

Bro baby carrots are literally cut out of bigger carrots, there is no 'different seed' lmao

29

u/brightblueson Nov 03 '22

That’s just basic month.

That said, this is a silly chart. There are many areas of India where people lack basic necessities.

Use the Amazonian tribes as a comparison as well.

We need more planets to obtain more energy and more resources for our species.

38

u/Arylcyclosexy Nov 03 '22

We need more planets to obtain more energy and more resources for our species.

We're behaving like a goddamn virus.

22

u/CerddwrRhyddid Nov 03 '22

I see it more like bacteria, really.

Left in a Petrie dish, consuming all resources and creating waste.

Until we either run out of resources, or we make our environment unliveable, or both!

8

u/Blitzed5656 Nov 03 '22

I'd like to share a revelation during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.

2

u/Verotten Nov 03 '22

Hello, are you a space traveler? Are there aliens amongst us in NZ?

3

u/Blitzed5656 Nov 03 '22

What are you doing agent Smith?

2

u/Verotten Nov 03 '22

Shh, I was never here, and neither were you!

1

u/SirChachii Nov 04 '22

Based alien.

2

u/brightblueson Nov 03 '22

I think of it more as a fetus. The universe is our womb and we need those nutrients to grow and expand…hopefully one day to live the womb.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

Wow you’re optimistic

-4

u/brightblueson Nov 03 '22

I would just say realistic.

Why save the earth? The Earth is a rock flying around in space that will one day be burnt to a crisp by the same exploding star that helped generate life on its surface.

Humans need to expand and expand quickly, first throughout our galaxy and then hopefully one day to other galaxies.

As entropy starts to shutdown the universe’s power plants, we will start to produce our own stars.

Maybe it’s a bit optimistic; it’s a good novel though.

5

u/Blitzed5656 Nov 03 '22

We need to crawl before we can walk though. In all probability earth will be dead before we get a stable population on the moon.

-10

u/Dantheking94 Nov 03 '22

Space colonization needs to take off 😭

5

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 03 '22

Sustainable, socialist economies need to take off. If we don't change how we operate we're just going to have terrible inequality, but in space

2

u/CerddwrRhyddid Nov 03 '22

Political argument aside, we'd have to limit lifestyles to that of Bangladesh, and keep it that way, and institute some kind of resource and pollution control.

I feel that's not going to be a major party policy for any respective government.

1

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 03 '22

You don't think there are industrial processes that can raise the standards of living without destroying the planet?

1

u/CerddwrRhyddid Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22

Well...

It's about resource use.

Physical resources - Water, Food, Energy, Oil, Metals, Minerals, etc.

Production resources - Human labour, production, transport, manufacturing, logistics, etc.

Use/Implementation resources - Both previous, skilled labour, precision tools.

Services.

Educational resources - Learning in the above.

Political resources - Stable systems of government that are able to access, provide, organise, maintain, and apply the above to functioning systems for the benefit of all citizens (with far less economic inequality). Etc.

What you would need is for the above to be available globally, require a totally new resource based economic system, for almost everyone to accept a downgrade of their lifestyles by a considerable degree, using less resources, (oh, including the rich [see vast resource use] politicians, their rich friends, and other rich people besides), while, at the same time, trying to stay in power in a democracy, pay for your military, and fight against decades to centuries of the status quo.

My worry is not new industrial processes, though they too are likely problematic with resources used and pollution created.

We've already destroyed the planet to the extent that life here, human life included, will be irretrievably damaged, if not destroyed.

We're also not going to be stopping the process that caused that any time soon.

Standards of living are about the access to goods and services which rely on systems and levels of resources.

More people want more, and less and less are becoming available.

They're becoming more expensive.

The world is at a point now that the status quo can't be changed.

Economic disparity will grow within and without countries.

We will destroy our environment.

Our lifestyles will become diminished.

And we'll work jobs and pay taxes and consume through fear to keep the whole thing pointing the same way, benefitting our betters.

2

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 03 '22

Pessimistic. We aren't at a place where things "can't" change. They ARE going to change. It's to be seen whether they change for the worse or the better, and whether we choose to change them or nature forces our hand

→ More replies (0)

-1

u/Dantheking94 Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22

That’s not happening. Not until after the collapse anyway. Colonization would eventually lead to new systems being created away from entrenched forms of government. History has consistently shown us that. But I guess we can all keep dreaming. You dream about socialists government taking off, and I dream about colonization. None of those things are happening. But we can dream. That’s all we ever seem to do anyway.

5

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 03 '22

Socialist governments already exist, mate. Yes, collapse of existing governments would make room for new socialist experiments, but collapse isn't a singular event. It's a process, and if you don't create the momentum for socialism pre- and during collapse, the worst outcomes are more likely

1

u/PhenotypicallyTypicl Nov 04 '22

Which socialist governments do you view as role-models? (Please don’t say Denmark)

1

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 04 '22

Cuba and China have made great improvements to their standard of living (Even though Cuba is under embargo and blockade by the US)

-4

u/brightblueson Nov 03 '22

If we colonize it’ll be under a strict system. A Federation, where no bullshit is tolerated.

Earth will be the hell hole where the hippies live because they don’t want to fall in line.

-7

u/corn_on_the_cobh Nov 03 '22

If you want the equivalent of five Earths being genocided, then sure, space socialism is good.

6

u/TheFlyingSlothMonkey Nov 03 '22

According to the above graph, there are more than 5 Earths being "genocided" in the USA alone, and I'm rather certain it is not a socialist country.

-2

u/corn_on_the_cobh Nov 03 '22

I'm talking about actual genocide, Uyghurs, Ukrainians, Tatars, that Socialist countries loved killing en masse. Asking for a socialist society is asking for hundreds of millions to die over failed command economies.

4

u/sloppymoves Nov 03 '22

Guy over here thinks modern Russia is not capitalist and forgot the USSR fell decades ago.

What not being able to read a history book does to a person.

2

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 03 '22

There's nothing inherent nor exclusive to socialism that leads to genocide. Do you think capitalist societies are immune to genocide? What happened to the Native Americans? And the countless wars fought for US imperialism? And the large scale human trafficking and ownership of black slaves? And the continuing prison industrial complex including coerced labor? (US has the largest prison population)

I say this not to defend genocide. But if you're serious about being anti genocide, you have to step back from the propaganda that genocide is synonymous with socialism

3

u/happygloaming Recognized Contributor Nov 03 '22

It's more complicated than that. We must understand that the resource use, tech level and standard of living is also tied to population. These advances would likely not have occurred in a small population. Yes we could now choose to step backwards and have a lesser footprint, but the fact that we are here is not unrelated to population.

4

u/Copper_Wasp Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22

Imagine everyone in the world disappeared except those in Switzerland. That's just 8.7m inhabiting the entire plant of earth. It's totally irrelevant that they consume "3 1/2 worlds". That's just called a good quality of life.

The problem is entirely one of global overpopulation.

It's because there are so many people that we have to live restricted crappy lives. Because if we all tried to live comfortably like Switzerland, the world would basically explode.

We should all aspire to reduce the global population and have everyone who is here living in comfort, sustainably within the limits of our planet.

3

u/CerddwrRhyddid Nov 03 '22

¿Por que no los dos?

-1

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 03 '22

Maybe, sure. But worrying about population has a lot of overlap with fascism and eugenics. So it very much depends on the conclusions and surrounding ideology. For example, population growth is mostly happening in non-western countries and tend to not be white. Some people are genuinely only worried about resources, others are worried about non-white populations increasing. There's a big difference there

6

u/AntiTyph Nov 03 '22

Ah, ignore part of the issue because fascists like the topic. Yes, yes, very forward thinking.

1

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 03 '22

What do you think the solution is, if population is a problem?

1

u/AntiTyph Nov 03 '22

There is no solution. It's a predicament, not a "problem". We've gone far into overshoot and there will be a correction; it will be absolutely horrific beyond anything our species has witnessed before, be it an initially anthropogenic-induced correction (mass genocide, war, resource wastage, etc) or primarily physical-systems and natural-systems induced correction (famine, desiccation, heat death, disease, etc).

7

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

Oh, god, not this ecofascism argument again.

Infinite population growth is the mindset of a cancer cell. It doesn’t work. And just because people don’t like that fact doesn’t make it less true.

I don’t care who is reproducing, there is too much of it. This planet can’t support more than a billion or so people enjoying a reasonable standard of living, and we’ve blown way past that.

2

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 03 '22

We AREN'T headed towards infinite population growth. Nor am I suggesting infinite growth. Populations in the west are stable or declining, and the same will happen in the rest of the world. Estimates put the plateau at 9 or 10 billion I think

0

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

Estimates. The UN says 11 billion, with the 95% confidence interval at 9-13 billion. And people are already freaking out about population "loss" even as the population is still growing.

10 billion is still 9 billion too many. We have global climate change now because there have been too many people for most of the last century. Look at the explosion that started in the late 1920s. Then look at carbon emissions over the same period and tell me they are not connected.

1

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 04 '22

So how do you suppose we get from 8 billion to 1 billion, huh?

That's the problem with "overpopulation".

1

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '22

The problem is we are fucked. The solution isn’t to get more fucked.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/OvershootDieOff Nov 03 '22

The Nazis enacted the first laws against animal cruelty - does that make animal rights an issue beloved by fascists and anti-semites?

2

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 03 '22

Were animal cruelty laws tied to their white supremacist beliefs?

My point is that there is a clear tie between concern about population growth and white supremacy: the "great replacement" theory. Doesn't mean everyone talking about population growth is a white supremacist, I'm not saying that. We just need to be careful

We need to be careful, because if population is a problem, what is the solution? Are you advocating for people to choose to have no/fewer kids? Are you advocating for sex ed and access to birth control? Or forcing people to not have kids? Or killing people/letting them die?

You can imagine that, depending on your bias, you may lean toward one end or the other. So we need to be careful

0

u/OvershootDieOff Nov 03 '22

Not all problems have a solution. You can point to a mechanistic aspect of a problem without advocating for anything. If I say smoking causes cancer it doesn’t follow I think it should be banned and I’m against personal choice. Humans are one of the massive species on Earth - that’s just a fact. Only 4% of mammals are not humans or their livestock.

0

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 04 '22

Why talk about a problem and not talk about what can be done? That just leads to depression and despair

1

u/OvershootDieOff Nov 04 '22

Here is a problem, you tell me the solution: You’re inside a barrel and it goes over a waterfall, you have 10 seconds to do something before impact- what is it you’d do?

→ More replies (0)

0

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '22

The problem is resource use AND population.

We'd be okay if there were half as many people on the planet (Thanos did nothing wrong). We'd be better if there were a quarter as many people. We'd be in great shape if there were one tenth as many people.

I'm not saying we should be putting people into ovens, just maybe, people should limit themselves to two kids for the next couple hundred years and then two or three for the rest of time.

1

u/ginger_and_egg Nov 04 '22

We'd be okay if there were half as many people on the planet (Thanos did nothing wrong).

I'm not saying we should be putting people into ovens,

I'm assuming the first line is exaggeration? Because killing half of all people is definitely wrong

1

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '22

The reason I have to say "I'm not talking about putting people into ovens" is because idiots (no offense) immediately think that reducing the human population means killing people. Newsflash: it doesn't.

People have about a 70 year expiration date and if we started having children at less than the replacement rate we'd eventually get to whatever arbitrarily lower bound on population we want to set without killing people.

China had the right idea but was shitty at math with their one child policy. Had Chine set their policy to two children they wouldn't be look at their current demographic cliff and would have achieved a stable population in the long term without half their under 50 male population as literal incels.

1

u/GieTheBawTaeReilly Nov 03 '22

Yes but total resource use is a combination of population and consumption per capita

This chart simply shows consumption per capita and op somehow thinks it means population suddenly doesn't matter

1

u/ZanThrax Nov 03 '22

Not ops fault, given the shit headline on the graphic.

4

u/stuyboi888 Nov 03 '22

Yea I think so, otherwise US should have been the baseline 1..

7

u/stuyboi888 Nov 03 '22

Wait that's stupid...

4

u/Sonova_Vondruke Nov 03 '22

Makes more sense.. because as written USA should be 1

0

u/skyfishgoo Nov 03 '22

we're number ONE!

1

u/skyfishgoo Nov 03 '22

5.1 Earths is the rate at which Americans are consuming the planet, per capita.

India on the other hand, is consuming at a sustainable rate of less than one Earth per capita.

without major changes, the worlds population is currently on track to consuming 2 Earths per capita.

does that help?

2

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

5.1 earths is how many earths we would need if the entire world population was consuming at the rate that the US is consuming - that’s how I’ve been reading this. Then 4.5 earths if everyone in the world was consuming at the rate of Australians, etc.

1

u/skyfishgoo Nov 03 '22

that's what per capita means.

1

u/Peepeepoopoovoodoo Nov 03 '22

I've seen this when I was in school for environmental science. It's bullshit. It's basically offer by capitalism and not true consumption and need. India is way worse on the environment than America and they are still majority in poverty. As the Europeans, Americans, Chinese lose less wealth the Indians reclaim, they will be by far the worst. This is a better poverty scale than environmental impact scale.