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[Serious] The Post-Technological World.
#57
RE: The Post-Technological World.
(March 30, 2019 at 6:04 pm)Smaug Wrote:
(March 30, 2019 at 5:13 pm)Yonadav Wrote: I think that not having too many children would be a natural part of living an environmentally responsible life. There is some cause for optimism on that front. There has been some evidence that people a sort of hardwired to want 2 to 3 surviving children. Throughout history, women who were able to survive it basically had as many children as they could. And despite having so many children, population growth was very, very slow. It took about a thousand years from 1 CE for the population of the world to double. Every woman who could survive it basically had to have as many children as she could, just to maintain global population, and create just a very slightly positive growth in population.

Evidence indicates that once a society has experienced a generation or two of a high survival rate among their children, then they naturally dial back the number of children that they have. We are more or less hardwired to want two or three surviving children. So in a sort of neo-luddite world like I described, where most people are just living pleasurable low carbon footprint lives which is basically their job, they would likely have an accompanying ideology about keeping it to two children or less.

I have frequently argued that people don't have reproductive rights. Despite believing that reproductive rights are an imaginary concept, I usually don't push the population angle very much in discussions about global warming. In fact, some of the people who have argued most vigorously for population reduction have then become very angry at me when I agreed that people don't have reproductive rights. As it turns out, most of these people want China and India to somehow reduce their populations because apparently the Chinese and Indians don't have reproductive rights, but when the matter of their own reproductive rights comes up they get sort of angry. And then it goes sideways even further when I point out that we would have to reduce the population by three average Chinese folks to reduce carbon emissions by the amount of one average American's emissions. So if we are going to eliminate carbon emissions by population reduction, then it is the American population that should be targeted most aggressively.

I get your point although I'm not sure it's correct to compare China and the U.S. head on in this respect. While China is one of the leading economies it still has much larger percentage of poor population with very low quality of life than the U. S. does. India is even poorer. I doubt that hardly anyone from Western world would want to live in Indian suburbs. It's not about excess but about basic commodities to live a healthy live - clear water, good nutrition etc.

In the more distant past the population growth was more limited by epidemics, lack of basic medicine and other such factors influence of which has since been reduced with the help of science and technology.

My point is that most people would naturally like to live longer and safer lives. I doubt that anyone who knows better would enjoy a life of a Medieval peasant where one could rather easily end up dead by catching a flu or having a light wound. But providing high-standard life conditions to ever-growing population would inevitably become a problem even if 95% lives 'eco-friendly' lives. Since 'natural' ways of population control are not an option it's only philosophy, ideology or legislation that is left. I wonder how this can be carried out without plunging into a dictatorial dystopia. Knowing that human societies tend to only learn from great catastrophes it's very interesting how handle all this in a reasonable way.

In a neo-luddite world like I am talking about, people wouldn't be living like medieval peasants. They wouldn't want for any of the necessities of life. They would have plenty of food, modern medicine, and they wouldn't live completely without technology. They would have access to digital libraries. They would have electric lights and refrigeration. And yes, there would be serious potential for it to become a dictatorial dystopia. It would have to be authoritarian. Probably not ruled by a single individual, but probably by a council that has a pretty firm grasp its objectives. They couldn't be elected officials. They would have to be chosen through some type of well regulated meritocracy.

Population can't increase that much from longer lives. If everyone is limited to two children, then there will be a gradual reduction in population once we pass through equilibrium and then deaths start to very slightly outnumber births. Here's an interesting TED lecture about why the population of the earth is unlikely to become greater than 11 billion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI

The thing is, with our current economic ideology being predicated on continuous economic growth, we develop more and more of the undeveloped world. With global warming being an imminent threat, we can't possibly have billions more people living the way that we do. But that's exactly what our economic model is pushing us to do. Since everyone can't live like us, we probably need to live more like them. We live lives that the rest of the world aspires to, but the world can't take that kind of growth in consumerism. But since we do set the standard that others aspire to, then we should live our lives in a way that would be possible for all.
We do not inherit the world from our parents. We borrow it from our children.
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Messages In This Thread
The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 13, 2019 at 2:27 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 13, 2019 at 2:35 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by FatAndFaithless - March 13, 2019 at 2:39 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 13, 2019 at 2:54 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Brian37 - March 13, 2019 at 3:03 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by AFTT47 - March 15, 2019 at 7:03 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by I_am_not_mafia - March 30, 2019 at 2:51 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 13, 2019 at 3:45 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by The Grand Nudger - March 13, 2019 at 4:31 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 13, 2019 at 5:05 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 13, 2019 at 5:37 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by The Grand Nudger - March 13, 2019 at 5:07 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 13, 2019 at 5:48 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Anomalocaris - March 13, 2019 at 6:54 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by The Grand Nudger - March 13, 2019 at 6:09 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 13, 2019 at 6:25 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 13, 2019 at 6:28 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 13, 2019 at 6:34 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Anomalocaris - March 13, 2019 at 6:50 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 13, 2019 at 6:52 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 13, 2019 at 6:58 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Anomalocaris - March 13, 2019 at 7:16 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by dyresand - March 13, 2019 at 7:06 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 13, 2019 at 7:19 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Anomalocaris - March 13, 2019 at 7:19 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 13, 2019 at 7:30 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by The Grand Nudger - March 13, 2019 at 7:28 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Rahn127 - March 15, 2019 at 3:23 am
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 15, 2019 at 6:58 am
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 15, 2019 at 7:37 am
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Anomalocaris - March 15, 2019 at 11:26 am
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 15, 2019 at 12:51 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 15, 2019 at 11:41 am
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Anomalocaris - March 15, 2019 at 1:19 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 15, 2019 at 1:36 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Anomalocaris - March 15, 2019 at 3:32 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by The Grand Nudger - March 15, 2019 at 12:07 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by The Grand Nudger - March 15, 2019 at 12:56 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 15, 2019 at 1:47 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 15, 2019 at 1:49 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 15, 2019 at 2:16 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by The Grand Nudger - March 15, 2019 at 2:27 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by The Grand Nudger - March 18, 2019 at 11:36 am
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 18, 2019 at 3:36 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 18, 2019 at 3:41 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by The Grand Nudger - March 18, 2019 at 3:42 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 18, 2019 at 4:09 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Peebo-Thuhlu - March 18, 2019 at 4:37 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 18, 2019 at 5:49 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Smaug - March 30, 2019 at 2:48 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 30, 2019 at 3:17 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Smaug - March 30, 2019 at 4:13 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 30, 2019 at 5:13 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Smaug - March 30, 2019 at 6:04 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 30, 2019 at 6:48 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Smaug - March 30, 2019 at 7:21 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 30, 2019 at 8:22 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by The Grand Nudger - March 30, 2019 at 5:19 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Gawdzilla Sama - March 30, 2019 at 5:43 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by The Grand Nudger - March 30, 2019 at 6:58 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 30, 2019 at 7:15 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by The Grand Nudger - March 30, 2019 at 7:19 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by Yonadav - March 30, 2019 at 7:34 pm
RE: The Post-Technological World. - by The Grand Nudger - March 30, 2019 at 7:48 pm

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