Overpopulation and Greed: Is There Any Future for Mankind?
Posted by CG54092@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 68 comments
Short excerpt from the article... "We are looking at a scenario where nations have the population of India and the per capita consumption of the U.S. Multiply these two, and what do you get? Utter tragedy. Unless there is this basic recognition, which you can call a spiritual awakening, that the good life doesn’t consist of conspicuous consumption, we are hurtling towards a great disaster. It is already upon us."
Please go through the full article for detailed understanding.
Lastbalmain@reddit
No. We need a full reset, if only to course correct our idiotic over consumption and greed. But our greed has reached such a level that I fear we're hellbent on destruction at any cost.
The sheer amount of "stuff" being produced, that is not a need, has become especially depressing. One only needs to look at the lines outside of stores when a new version of a previous item is released? Or a pop up shop? And it's all mass produced garbage.
"So long, and thanks for all the fish".
Wave_of_Anal_Fury@reddit
We need a full reset, if only to course correct our idiotic over consumption and greed. But our greed has reached such a level that I fear we're hellbent on destruction at any cost.
And it was six years ago this month that we saw that greed play out in real time, not only in the US but around the world.
When the pandemic lockdown happened, people rushed to buy as much stuff as they possibly could. The experts kept assuring people that the supply chain was solid, and that as long as people went shopping and bought their normal amount of stuff, there would be plenty to go around.
Yeah, sure. Fuck that. The supply chain crumbled in less than a week and took months to recover.
People love to talk about the greed of the billionaires, but when push came to shove, the masses were no different. They only thought about themselves and their hoarding ensured that a lot of people went without.
periwinklestar1@reddit
Funny part is toilet paper was locally made so there was no reason to rush the stores. People are sick and Shortsighted.
malcolmbishop@reddit
Misguided and selfish as they were, the masses just wanted food and toilet paper. Hardly comparable to a billionaire just really, really wanting a bigger yacht.
Z3r0sama2017@reddit
I mean their was plenty of food and toilet paper, however people wanted all the food and toilet paper, then lost their shit when stores started limiting purchases to 1 per customer.
Lastbalmain@reddit
You're right. But I was talking human greed/selfishness as a species, and how consumerism, itself a product of the neo capitalist ideology of the last century, has intertwined itself in our society. Our divisive political/leadership/ media with all their biases have created the perfect storm of greed/hoarding. Fear and self instead of compassion and social society.
Marx was wrong. Yes, the downtrodden working class does rise up and fight the yoke.....only to be smashed back down by the ruling class, and their working class greedy morons who'll do anything for their scraps. The 1% have almost destroyed us, and I'm not sure there are enough people left that understand it.
JrDot13@reddit
We’re all desperate. For normalcy, for something to look forward to. Been this way for a long time.
flriverlivin@reddit
Between 40-60 countries already have declining population.
RobertDewese@reddit
I’m so glad I chose not to have kids.
ansibleloop@reddit
Same, I'm getting the snip soon
Anyone who's aware of what the next 25 years look like should do the same
DiscountExtra2376@reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vasectomy/s/P0EG0zbVWk
It seems like $1,000 tops and it might be cheaper if you ask for the self pay option
ansibleloop@reddit
No cost for me - just a waiting list
For profit healthcare is disgusting
kirkoswald@reddit
How much does it cost / whats the recovery time?
ansibleloop@reddit
It doesn't cost anything - I live in a somewhat civilized country
Recovery time is a few weeks
kirkoswald@reddit
It literally cost me a divorce but Im also glad I didnt have kids.
Singnedupforthis@reddit
But you still consumes the resources 4 times more than the average person.
GurAcademic6997@reddit
Me too. Anti-natalism really helped me with my dread.
DoomBadaDoom@reddit
Anti-natalism is the antidote to all the idiotics and systematic clichés that support the natalist visions.
hang10shakabruh@reddit
Antinatalism is the stupidest fucking shit ever conceptualized on earth and beyond.
A position I will never back down from.
Antinatalism is anti-intellect.
Y'all don't see the glass half-empty, you push the glass off the table like bitches.
Elegant_Schedule4250@reddit
You do not have anything of substance to contribute, do you?
ansibleloop@reddit
You're right, we should all have kids and knowingly subject them to a horrible future
jez_shreds_hard@reddit
Same. I see so many oblivious people around me having children and I just wonder what’s it’s like to live in an alternate reality of positivity.
Z3r0sama2017@reddit
Yep. I look out back on my memories of the world as a kid, were I was full of dreams and hope, then think about now were it all looks closer to BNW/1984/Mad Max and am do glad I never listened to my ex when she wanted a kid, when she swore she was child free.
jez_shreds_hard@reddit
I definitely didn't think this was going to be the world I was living in, in my 40s, when I was a teenager in the late 1990s. I feel really sorry for young people that are only going to see the consistent collapse of the world around them.
ladymadonna4444@reddit
Same 😮💨
hauntedhullabaloo@reddit
I've been saying this a lot recently
Big_Confusion6957@reddit
Same feelings here..
--Digital-Viking--@reddit
I outline a new system that we should test in my book. Foundation: an experiment in building what comes next. Move to smaller self sufficient communities (15k people at most) that work in harmony with it environment and basic necessities are provided for everyone. Utilizing hemp as the material basis and building automated manufacturing that supports the community and the state they are in. whatcomesnext.eco
DeathofDivinity@reddit
Short answer no long answer probably not
Shoddy-Childhood-511@reddit
As the title sounded good, I read the article but almost no content here, just more lamentations and wishful thinking.
At their core, overpopulation and greed are ultimately similar from two+ perspectives. Firstly, humans pursue more of whatever they are culturally programmed to pursue. And secondly we'll apply this quote:
"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor." ― Voltaire
We might reverse population growth, but only if the powerful fail in their push for more population growth.
There is an excellent talk but Corey Bradshaw here: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/136-corey-bradshaw
"Only 25% of the increase in greenhouse-gas emissions globally is attributable to percapita increases in consumption, whereas 75% is due to population growth." (It's not discussing Afirca obviously)
We might reprogram society want fewer kids. We might reprogram society to stop eating meat, stop driving cars, stop flying planes, etc
We'll never afaik reprogram humans for balance though, aka to not want to much of whatever we're programmed to want. Yet, we do observe relative balance in natural ecosystems, thanks to predation.
All these wishful thinking articles like come predicated upon the idea that everybody should collaborate & get along, but what if global peace & collaboration is our whole problem?
We've built staggering global collaboration through trade, but what does it achieve? It's enables staggering exploitation. We slowly shrink our social rights in service of this collaboration. etc
We've ample evidence that inequality only declines much when either the workforce shrinks, or lots of capital gets destoryed, usually through conflict.
https://frompoverty.oxfam.org.uk/the-great-leveller-a-conversation-with-walter-scheidel-on-inequality-and-apocalypse/#comments
Check out The Sun is Also a Warrior by Leslie Fish
Anyways the question should be: How do we get along? Because "we get along" means we exploit nation more.
Instead, the question should be: How can we maintain the right sort of conflict? We'd want a cold war where different countries sabotage one another's oil refineries, poison one another's cattle, etc.
Singnedupforthis@reddit
The average vegetarian diet consumes 1.4kwh of fossil fuel energy per day. The average motorist in the us consumes 40kwh of fossil fuel energy per day. our cars consumes the resources of 40 people. The US could in theory sustain a population 40 times greater without automobiles.
LongTimeChinaTime@reddit
The oil discovery and high EROI 20th century expansion peaked in recent decades and now must contract.
The scale of human development and expansion was astronomical, and in kind, the thermodynamically necessary withdrawal from that expansion will not be super pleasant because we are entering a period where all of the bounty that men in the 1800s and 1900s had is inverted.
Scarcity of land, low EROI, damaged agricultural land, climate crises, demographic contraction…
All of this stacks up with the rapidly expanding global debt (which itself is a silent symptom of EROI decline)… for a tragically constrained 50 years ahead.
Z3r0sama2017@reddit
Yep. Previous generations stole the future twice. Once by squandering fossil fuels to pump up growth, instead of growing renewables like hydro. Then again lumbering everyone else by a horrendous debt burden, due to tax cuts and pampering boomers.
gnostic_savage@reddit
You and everyone who thinks like you, and there are a lot of you around, really needs to go back much farther in time. Previous generations stealing the future and squandering resources, as well as stealing other people's lands and resources to squander, is really, really old in our wealth seeking culture. It's been a full-on planetary rampage for five centuries now, with westerners invading and stealing from virtually every country outside of Europe with very few exceptions, maybe ten altogether, but I'd put it at fewer. Europe was environmentally damaged by the middle ages with undrinkable water in most cities (which is why they drank alcohol all the time), deforestation, toxic mining pollution, and loss of biodiversity. They had a "wood famine" and loss of fisheries production by the 1500s, and have lived off the bounty of other lands since then.
But we're out of planet to rape, pillage and plunder now. It took much longer than a century to do it. If you don't think so, you just aren't aware of how much damage was done in the century before that. I promise you, it was every bit as horrific as the 20th century. As was the century before that.
And no, not everyone has been like us. There have been sustainable societies. They used to exist all over the place. We have destroyed them all.
Collapse_is_underway@reddit
Yes with lowtechs and permaculture, regardless of how brutal the descent will be :o
adamsoutofideas@reddit
The realistic budget for a couple/family is a climate controlled space the size of a shipping container... well, a shipping container makes the most sense since they already exist.
Create communal cooking spaces that use solar collectors to heat steam jacketed cooking vessel.
Use the 100 mile diet + dry goods; share any energy intensive process and do what you can to make it passive or active solar; compost all waste to grow food; accept that eating insects is part of your future; purify water using the sun.
People can live very comfortable lives with very little energy consumption in small communities and be very safe from extreme weather if we work on building these communities NOW.
Im flabbergasted that this isn't an immediate anf global priority.
Heavy3Heart@reddit
There is no way I will agree to live like that while everyone else keeps reproducing to death. All the effort is wasted when someone brings another consumer to Earth.
adamsoutofideas@reddit
And you just summarize the failure of the global climate movement over the last 50 years. As long as the US is sitting out and poking holes in every methane pocket to get cheap fuel, what difference does it make for the rest of the world to cut back? Might as well be handing your country to the US on a plate... so we did nothing and chose extinction.
Eiswolf999@reddit
That’s a lot of words for “people need to change.” Existence determines consciousness.
“Too many people.” What is the conclusion here? Who is allowed to fuck, and who’s not? Mass murder?
I mean, the environment is already collapsing, and the five meters (16.4 Abraham Lincoln freedom steps) of earth our species depends on for survival is more or less dying. What’s the point here?
almodsz@reddit
If we do nothing about it, the conclusion will be over 4 billion deaths in the near future.
What we need is a coordinated program of radical austerity. This would entail forced urbanization into high-density megacities to minimize land use, nearly eliminating private consumption, enforcing a one-child policy worldwide, and providing subsistence-level nutrition based on low-impact food sources, such as algae or insect protein. We'd have to sustain that over several decades, until population drops by at least half. It would obviously be terrible, but it beats the alternative.
Eiswolf999@reddit
Not even the worst idea I've heard in the last two decades. How will you achieve that in an already dying environment, in the middle of the sixth mass extinction and an ever more destabilized climate?
almodsz@reddit
All I'm saying is that something on that scale would be necessary, not that it will actually happen. I'm quite aware that the likelihood of it happening is extremely low. Perhaps such proposals will become serious political options in the wake of mass-casualty events driven by climate change.
CG54092@reddit (OP)
Maybe that we need to take accountability and responsibility for this. we are the ones who are responsible for this chaos. There should be a mass awakening, a total change in consciousness by way of self enquiry. Knowing thyself.
HugsandHate@reddit
Of course. if by 'future' you mean a fucking awful one.
cr0ft@reddit
The answer is always "have we retired capitalism and created a money-less cooperation based society yet?" and as long as the answer is no, we're fucked. At some point, we run out of time to do that either and then we're turbo fucked.
NyriasNeo@reddit
"Greed: Is There Any Future for Mankind?"
Not really. You cannot really change human nature at a large scale.
BellaRyder2505@reddit
If I had the power and control I would stop every human in the world from reproducing and help the children and people who are already on this planet! I hope the human population goes down and down all over the world!!
E5VL@reddit
Earth isn't over populated.
CG54092@reddit (OP)
This post is suitable for "collapse" as it deals with one of the root causes human civilization fall. Overpopulation and consumption greed is an never ending loop feeding on itself and will never stop untill everything is gone. We have to look into our existing lifestyle before it's really too late.
Singnedupforthis@reddit
It isn't overpopulation. It is greedy capitalism driven overconsumptiinnthat is the problem. We could sustain a population ten times the current one if it wasn't for the overconsumption in transportation.
Dentarthurdent73@reddit
"Mankind". Never made it out of the 50s I guess.
jeffreycoley@reddit
No
UncleBaguette@reddit
There is. For lean, humble, planet-friendly manking building new life on the ruins of fallen monuments to the greed and hubris
Flaccidchadd@reddit
Spiritual awakening...are you joking, take a look around, the modern world is proof that humanity will never defeat the multipolar trap, we were given everything and everyone still chose to defect at every possible point of interaction. The only reason we had it good for awhile was excess resources, provided by the Faustian bargain of fossil fuel and industrialization. We wasted most of the fuel, failed to optimize industrial output and exploded the population. We collectively failed... this is the great filter. Either enjoy your time left or gnash your teeth, nobody else gives a single fuck beyond maximum utility.
chickey23@reddit
The author makes assumptions about population growth that are simply wrong. He needs to check if his models match historical data, which they won't. I don't think he used any math. I think he is just vibing.
That being said, future population will not doom the (human population of) Earth. Current population already has.
roytay@reddit
The "greed problem" is going to solve the "overpopulation problem". :(
Chiluzzar@reddit
future populations if they learn from us could fix our problems but i highly doubt it
chickey23@reddit
That hardly seems fair
CG54092@reddit (OP)
Atleast we agreed on the doom part.
chickey23@reddit
Are you the author?
More complex population models incorporate carrying capacity. They are typically iterative and incorporate population overshoot.
Once population overshoots carrying capacity, population will fall. Then we will make up reasons after the fact why it happened.
ElephantContent8835@reddit
Not in the ways we currently live.
Super-414@reddit
Is there any solution to Game Theory when one party is hellbent on using up all of the resources as quickly as possible?
Scoopie@reddit
"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not".
This unfortunately needs to be collective effort and judging by humanity's history to work together. Nothing is going to change until the knife is hilt deep in our hearts.
CG54092@reddit (OP)
Every collective effort starts with individual. Let's wake one another, all we can.
StatementBot@reddit
This thread addresses overpopulation, a fraught but important issue that attracts disruption and rule violations. In light of this we have lower tolerance for the following offenses:
Racism and other forms of essentialism targeted at particular identity groups people are born into.
Bad faith attacks insisting that to notice and name overpopulation of the human enterprise generally is inherently racist or fascist.
Instructing other users to harm themselves. We have reached consensus that a permaban for the first offense is an appropriate response to this, as mentioned in the sidebar.
This is an abbreviated summary of the mod team's statement on overpopulation, view the full statement available in the wiki.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/CG54092:
This post is suitable for "collapse" as it deals with one of the root causes for human civilization fall. Overpopulation and consumption greed is a never ending loop feeding on itself and will never stop untill everything is gone. We have to look into our existing lifestyle before it's really too late.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1s7zzin/overpopulation_and_greed_is_there_any_future_for/odd5dvj/
RobertDewese@reddit
Starship Troopers I’m doing my part meme.
Auxiliatorcelsus@reddit
Didn't read. Don't think I need to. I can answer your question anyway.
No, there is no future for mankind. The majority is too stupid. The inertia of a society of morons killing the planet is too big to course correct now.
In a few decades the world will be like 'the road'.
My only comfort is that I'm already old and will likely die in the first years of the collapse.
CG54092@reddit (OP)
I can see the reason in your take on it and it's right on point. Still I would request to just have glance through whole article and love to hear from you what's being conveyed in there.