Population Growth

you're question doesn't make sense

Why can't people just make their own minds about their reproductive capacities?

I think you're on the wrong boards.

We're not liberals, politicians, nor philosophers. And there is no science to "overpopulation." There is pseudo-science, racism, anti-working class ideology, real attacks on the poor and vulnerable.

Any government would have to impose reproduction laws? Yeah, well that's where liberalism gets you-- another police force.

You want to have a serious mature discussion about this? Then explain this: Claims of overpopulation, or of imminent overpopulation have been continuously argued since the 18th c. If all such previous claims have been proven false, what evidence, what basis is there for believing any further claims for imminent overpopulation in the future?

Is the "science" about overpopulation any better now than the so-called "science" and "scientists" of 40 years ago arguing that overpopulation was already producing catastrophe?

He doesn't give a shit, he's a nihilist, remember.

NIHILIST wrote -

Bollocks, man. The world can take more people than it has now - which is the largest population the earth has ever had. It's a matter of organising to support those levels.
I'm not saying an endless growth in numbers is what everyone should be aiming at, I'm just saying you're tackling problems from the wrong angle. Look at the problems around under-production, waste, distribution, meat based diets - all of these and more, before you suggest there are too many of us clinging to a sinking life raft.

Malthus's claims about population where completely unscientific.

Globe warming is not cause by population, it is caused by burning fossil fuels, not matter what the population this will cause climate change.

At the current time more food is produced every year that is needed to feed everyone, most countries undergoing famines have exported food while the famine was going on.

If you refuse to economic causes and solutions and instead talk about population you dont actual care about solving these problems at all

No is talking about a political doctrine as a solution. They are talking about practical solutions. The abolition of the economy and the creation of a society driven by conscious human desire is a practical solution.

Two words: demographic transition. I suggest you read up on it Nihilist, it explains a lot and the theory is based on empirical evidence. The short of it is that there is no population problem, but a poverty problem. There is a population problem today, but that is of an ageing population, not that we're too many.

@NIHILIST could you like try to write your posts so its more obvious what your trying to say?

Malthus, despite holding some reactionary views, was a scientific spokesman for the bourgeoisie and its system of capitalism. Marx said that he discovered the "beautiful trinity of overpopulation, overproduction and overconsumption". Malthus's idea of overpopulation were in relation to the needs of capitalism for a reserve army of labour. Marx quotes Malthus in the Grundrisse for his acute analysis about the limits of capitalism and the fact that the latter can never pay back the proletariat for what it produces.

Marx overturned Malthus politically, Darwin and Wallace overturned him socially over "the survival of the fittest" and the escape from natural selection.

Capitalism has to overproduce everything including population - the increase in population also being a factor coming from social instability and near-permanent war. A communist society presupposes an organic self-regulation in the population one would think.

NIHILIST - try using the quote key to the right hand of people's posts, you can then comment once this has copied and pasted.
Alternatively, try typing @ then the posters name, @plasmatelly, then your reply.

Obviously you have no clue what the model is about and that it is based on empirical evidence from a lot of societies. It is not speculative, but a hypothesization based on past and current data. Of course, if poverty isn't reduced there will be no reduction in the rate of population growth in some countries, but that says that it is an issue of resource distribution rather that the absolute bollocks you are peddling.

you call that science? nihilist means non-believer - so why do you believe this? "just look around" doesnt suffice, i look around and i see lots of room for more people.

Check out the population statistics for Japan, Russia, Ukraine and a few of the Eastern countries of the EU. You'll find the population is shrinking. In a few years, the population of South Korea will start shrinking and, in a decade or two, China. That's right - China, the most populous country in the world.

It all comes down the the Total Fertility Rate, which is the average number of people born to each woman. It has been falling consistently since the invention of the contraceptive pill. The CIA World Factbook* has many useful statistics on economic and social topics, and the TFR is one of the figures accessible in its Country Comparisons. It lists 224 countries or jurisdictions, and of these, the TFR is below 2.0 in 95 of them. Here are some of them (and note how many are highly populous):

Azerbaijan 1.92
Qatar 1.92
UK 1.90
Vietnam 1.87
Iran 1.86
Brazil 1.81
Australia 1.77
Thailand 1.66
Russia 1.61
China 1.55
Spain 1.48
Germany 1.42
Japan 1.39
South Korea 1.24
Singapore 0.79

Many of these countries have falling populations. Others are ones where any natural increase in population is because of past high fertility, though immigration can of course affect the bottom line. From the world's perspective, however, this is a non-issue, since there are no Martians arriving.

The world's population is already predicted to be on the way to levelling out, since the global TFR is still falling. The best estimate I have seen is a figure of 9 billion or a bit more, around 2050, or a bit later.

An equal distribution of wealth is only the first and most obvious change that would come about from the abolition of capitalism. More important is that the human race would then be able to take conscious control of the economy (and therefore, in a sense, abolishing "the economy" as a category distinct from society). We would then be able to cease socially or environmentally destructive activities like pollution. We would also be able to direct production to the satisfaction of real human needs, rather than meeting the artificially generated needs of consumer capitalism (i.e. "keeping up with the Joneses"). And finally, by producing goods to last, we would be able to improve living standards while simultaneously reducing production.

Nobody has been putting forward a position advocating perpetual population increase. Rather, they have been:

(a) Criticising State population control measures; and

(b) Saying that it is impossible at present to know what a rational maximum human population is, because the symptoms of "over-population" that are advanced by believers in that concept are actually symptoms of capitalism. It will not be until we establish communism that we will be able to determine what the maximum human population, compatible with civilised life, is. It should go without saying, but it is still probably necessary to say it, that a civilised life includes living in a way that doesn't result in mass extinctions and destruction of natural habitat for other species.

It is necessary, I think, to conclude with two things.

1. Firstly, all surveys show that if women had the number of children they want, the outcome would be around 2.0 per woman. If the actual birth rate is different today, it is due to social factors that make high birth rates necessary in some countries (high infant mortality, lack of an age pension) and impose low birth rates in others (e.g. the need to buy a home and pay off student debt before having children). If, as a future communist society, therefore, we decided that population needed to decrease (or even, at some future date, increase), there would be no shortage of women willing to volunteer to have one less or one more, so as to change society's TFR to 1.9 or 2.1.

2. Secondly, the economic changes I have set out above are not, in themselves, a guarantee of environmental sustainability. For this, we would need to establish production processes which are sustainable in perpetuity. Sooner or later, we will need to stop using non-renewable energy sources and shift to using only renewable energy. Sooner of later, we will run out of mineral deposits at feasible grades, so we will have to operate on closed loop manufacturing and 100% recycling. Provided we get rid of capitalism in a reasonable period of time, we will have a long period, probably centuries, to make the transition to sustainability. This includes any population reduction which turns out to be necessary.

* This site is easily findable by using a Famous Web Search Engine which I won't name here.