this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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"Overpopulation" is a right-wing myth.
Are you suggesting that there's no limit to how many people the resources we have available to us can support?
Oh, there probably is. All things being equal (and that's the important factor) there is next-to-no chance of us ever reaching such a bizarre amount of people - you could triple the amount of people on earth, and, all things being equal, we still wouldn't be "overpopulated."
However, things are not equal - which means we are already existing way beyond that which our ecology can support. And it's all thanks to capitalist parasites - a very small group of people sucking everything dry at the expense of everyone and everything else.
What standard of living do you consider "all things being equal"?
I don't consider "standards of living" - period.
I consider this.
That's literally an article about how they don't have enough water. Yes, the rich are using twice as much as the poor and it would go further if it was distributed more evenly but the fact remains that there's a finite amount that is not sustainable beyond a certain population.
This...
...just went completely over your head, didn't it?
No? The article says rich people are using 2x as much water as poor people - 50% vs 23% and they are already having water problems. Assuming the water consumption was evened out this leaves the population room to go up no more than 4x what it is now even with equal consumption. That's hardly out of the realm of possibility considering the population already has gone up 8x since 1950
FTFY. That's just household use, Clyde. We haven't even started with the water usage that makes the rich rich - ie, the private ownership of industry and commerce (which, of course, externalizes the destruction of water resources).
That kind of population growth is a thing of the past. The only way to successfully reverse that would be by design - such as the measures taken by certain aspects of the US political establishment to enforce patriarchal norms through institutionalized violence (ie, the criminalization of women's healthcare).
Water used for industry is still going to be used regardless of who controls that industry. Poor people can be just as greedy as rich ones, they just don't have a means to act on it.
Population growth has slowed but it has not stopped. Even at 1 or 2 % per year it will be only a few generations before it becomes an issue. 1% of 6,000,000 people is a lot more than 1% of 600,000.
Absolutely not. Pretending that capitalism doesn't work the way capitalism works is a certain dead-end for your argument.
That is one piss-poor justification for the status quo.
The people at the top aren't worried about population growth these days, Clyde - they are worried about population reversal. You wanna know why?
Wtf does that even mean?. The point is there will still be a demand for goods whether it's produced by a farm/factory owned by one individual or a collective of workers. They'll still be consuming the water.
I'm not justifying anything. All I'm trying to do is explain to you that resources are finite and too many people will burn through them. If you don't think poor people can be greedy and wasteful then I encourage you to get out more.
The only reason I ever hear for that is from racists because it's the white people that slowed down the most. Population projections for the world do not show a decline. Unless of course you take the lack of resources into account...
Pretending that production for profit and production for need is the same thing is fallacious - end of story.
You still haven't managed to justify the right-wing trope of "overpopulation" - pretending that the vast majority's consumption is (somehow) the problem isn't proving it, merely regurgitating it.
Sooo... you have figured out that in a capitalist society access to women's healthcare is merely another commodity - and, thanks to colonialist pillaging and repression, white people do tend to have more access to that commmodity?
You don't say.
No... it shows a trend towards stabilization - which, just by itself, demoslishes the entire concept of "overpopulation."
What lack of resources. Resources being hoarded by a capitalist elite was as true in 1950 as it was in 2023 - so how does that affect the trope you are trying to justify?
Malthus and Erlich, right wingers?
I don't see many right wing people on this list. Thoughts?
Whether Malthus himself was a right-winger or not isn't really important... it doesn't change how the trope of overpopulation has been used to protect power and privilege (ie, the whole point of right-wing ideology). For instance, there is a very good reason why white supremacists support the criminalization of women's health care in (supposedly) "white" countries while demonizing 3rd world countries for their (supposedly) "explosive population growth."
It's a very old trope that flattens human consumption and therefore camouflages the reality that certain classes of people consume resources at astronomical rates in comparison with the rest. It's utility in shielding class hierarchies from scrutiny should be perfectly obvious.
What?
You read that correctly.
I was hoping I didn't.
Well now you did.
So now what?
I'm afraid that's it.
You do you.