How severe is overpopulation?

In high school, I recall my economics textbook using human population as an example of "law of diminishing returns." Basically, the idea was that as population increased, the available natural resources per human being decreased, thus even if the number of people producing increased proportionally to the number of consumers, that could only do so much since one cannot "produce" natural resources.

Of course, since then I've learned things that make me realize it's not so simple. We CAN alter the environment with genetically modified foods and the like, so we CAN "produce" natural resources in a vague sense. However, even that can't necessarily be relied upon to work, or at least to not backfire.

This begs the question; if it's so clearly so much more practical to have a smaller population, why do we reproduce as much as we do?

Of course, the conventional answer is "emotional satisfaction" and this is what I assumed it was all about in high school. But when I got to college, I did a couple of geography courses, and learned that there is a practical benefit to society for reproduction; by having more young people brought into the world, a lower proportion of society is made of old people who need support. However, this is a short-term solution, not a long-term one, for if the alternative is to bite the bullet by having a high proportion of the elderly for a while and the human population decreases in the long run, that means there are more natural resources per human being "in the long run."

Well, this ultimately raises the question of to what extent we should support our elderly, at least if we keep bringing children into the world (causing environmental damage as a result) just as a means of helping us do so.

After all, if it's supposedly about emotional satisfaction and having younger people to help the elderly, to what extent does that justify the environmental implications of this?

edited 10th Jan '11 9:49:50 PM by neoYTPism

I'm a little confused at how overpopulation went into the elderly, but anyway...

Overpopulation actually isn't much of an issue in developed countries, where to use your econ terms we start having a very large opportunity cost for having a kid, compared to the various recreation and jobs we could be doing instead. Some are even getting such low birth rates that they're starting to see some major problems with diminishing labor forces (Japan, Germany, etc. — we would be approaching that if it weren't for immigration).

It's mostly in Africa and continental Asia that you start seeing ridiculous crap like 5 kids per family or something, and there are a lot of cultural, economic, and education problems that are exacerbating that. For instance.

edited 10th Jan '11 10:59:37 PM by Pykrete

That's not really producing natural resources, just increasing the efficiency of resource gathering. Natural resources in a Malthusian sense is more like the healthiness of ocean life or forests (which together produce the oxygen we need, as an obvious example).

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

While some areas may be way overpopulated, it generally isn't that bad. It's not like we're crammed shoulder to shoulder in the city streets, except on New Years Eve.

♥♥II'GSJQGDvhhMKOmXunSrogZliLHGKVMhGVmNhBzGUPiXLYki'GRQhBITqQrrOIJKNWiXKO♥♥

A city is designed to hold a lot of people. It would be really bad, if farmland were that densely populated, though...

Really cool advert for National Geographic discussing the matter:

What's precedent ever done for us?

I suppose it would depend on how you define resources. If you define it in the raw "we have two tons of aluminum" sense, it's limited but, if you define it in usability, then it can change quite a bit. For instance, I could make a 1 gig flash drive or I could use the same material  ^*

to make a 12 gig drive, the only difference being how useful it is.

Fight smart, not fair.

You're asking this question as though society as a whole were completely rational/always acted in its own best interests-which it clearly does not.

Evolution has programmed us to want to reproduce, and often, because those that didn't have this programming died out. But evolution is slow. Sure it might not be as beneficial as a whole to have as many kids now, but that state of being has been around for an extremely short period of time relative to our existence. Maybe if overpopulation becomes bad enough, in time we'll develop a system like the lemmings, or just die out.

As far as where the problems are, it's true that it's mostly in developing nations-developed nations have far lower birthrates (and good thing too, since developed nations consume far more resources per person). Last time I checked the worst offenders were India and some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, somewhere around 4% a year-which doesn't sound like much until you realize that India already has a population of 1.2 billion.

Why do developing nations have this problem? Lack of knowledge about or access to contraceptives, or both. Needing as many children as possible to ensure some of them live. Needing as many children as possible to help on their subsistence farm. Even faiths/religious sects that promote having as many children as possible, and denounce the use of contraceptives.

Finally, resources. It's not at all a matter of there being enough, it's a matter of them being easily/cheaply usable. Think about it this way-everything is made of atoms (or subatomic particles, or quarks, etc.), and we have no shortage of those. The damn things are everywhere, and in theory you could start with a bunch of subatomic particles and produce anything you like. But it's totally impractical for actual production.

Or to put it another way, aluminum was one of the most expensive metals on Earth (despite being one of the most common), until we discovered how to cheaply pull it out of aluminum oxide. It's never been a question of a shortage of resources, just a question of whether we can use them easily enough.

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

To be honest, isn't the problem less with overpopulation but the potential of a lot more people who are too old to be useful and a lot less people coming in to replace them?

For developed nations, yes. Demographic pyramids are starting to get skewed pretty badly in some places. Still, as long as it happens relatively slowly we probably need to get around to that eventually, and immigration is the control lever to that.

Longer lifespans, decreased infant mortality all add up to an increase in population growth. Also, we grow more food today than we could have dreamed of a hundred years ago. Using fossile fuels we can produce herbacides, pesticides, fertilizers and whatever else to help produce the food, and fuel to ship it wherever we wish.

So I think as long as we can support the population growth, we're okay. As soon as we can no longer sustain the growth, we'll stagnate. And as soon as we can't even maintain a flat population level, then we're in trouble.

Which is why Peak Oil fits nicely into the Bad Things category, if/when it shows up.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

That's what robots are for.

Fight smart, not fair.

And robots don't need to eat, so there.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

Further proof of robotic superiority.

Fight smart, not fair.

I'm not convinced that peak oil is a problem we'll inevitably have to face-there's more than enough energy on the planet (or even just striking the planet) for all our current needs, for thousands of years to come. It's just that none of these other forms can be harnessed efficiently, which is to say cheaply, enough to replace oil.

Now, we will have problems if we can't replace increasingly inefficient oil-based energy use with something cheaper. We'll never run out of oil, but only because it'll be too expensive to drill whatever's left.

& But robots require both creation and maintenance, so again all you're talking about is an increase in efficiency. Which is good, but still requires human resources.

Unless you want to have robots making/maintaining robots, but I think we've all seen enough sci-fi to hold off on that one for a while.

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

Once robots do everything we'll finally achieve our dream society where we do nothing but artistic enterprises all day long. Then overpopulation won't be much of a concern as we slowly build up a dyson sphere.

Robots building robots isn't that uncommon. It's not like manufacturing arms are hand-tooled, after all.

Maintenance is trickier because it takes a lot more mobility, plus the abilities to notice and diagnose problems, in addition to being able to fix them in the first place.

/offtopic.

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

I think I sorta meant robots designing & making robots & robot making factories, and then maintaining them, i.e. removing the human elements from production entirely, but that was still relatively poor wording on my part.

Oh crap, OTC. Ummm...the robots are too populous, their population is draining valuable resources such as oil and energy that people need for their own uses!

Crap, that wasn't on topic either...

edited 11th Jan '11 2:01:20 PM by deathjavu

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

Overpopulation in third world countries isn't that big an issue. Our world can support a lot of third world citizens. It's not like we're approaching a ceiling on how many humans we can feasibly fit on the planet, the major issue is the resources consumed and the systems impacted by the human species. The world could support several times more people than it's already got, if they all lived at a third world standard, whereas without further technological development it can only support the number of people currently living on it at the present standards for a very limited time.

Industrialization of third world countries is often looked to as a solution to overpopulation, because it would drive down their birthrates, but in fact it's one of the most effective ways to exacerbate the problem.

...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.

That's why we need to get them to post-industrial status as quickly as possible. Granted, that doesn't appear to be happening right now, as China, India, Russia etc. grapple with "West Envy" and their right to consume and pollute just as much as we do, but eventually renewable resources will become more profitable than the non-renewable ones and then the issue will regulate itself, especially in places with little infrastructure investment yet.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

There are just so many things wrong with the OP

First, stop reading economics textbooks. Those things will warp your perspective on the world for decades.

Second, linking to the first point. You assume that people are rational actors. Precisely the level of denial that goes into this viewpoint is subject to debate, but clearly, there is evidence of delusion

Third point about stable demographics. The notion of demographic pyramids as ideal is deeply rooted in pre-industrial demographics, when everyone had seventeen babies, half of whom didn't survive to adulthood/parenting. we are currently in a complicated position where the demographic pyramid is less 'pyramid' and more 'buttplug' shaped. This is only a 'real and pressing' problem from the economic perspective of liberal democracies with ponzi scheme welfare provisions. the real consequences of this demographic arrangement will be sen over the next 50 years. Strap yourself in

Also, with regards to your 'resources' nattering, if everyone lives like a third world peasant (fourier complex), then the planet can happily support 50bil. if we want to all live like wealthy first worlders, then we can support about 4bil.

The terrible downside to multiple identities: multiple tax returns

"First, stop reading economics textbooks. Those things will warp your perspective on the world for decades." - pathfinder

Why? o.o

partially, because their relationship to the real world is rather tenuous

the standard economic model makes an enormous number of assumptions, which you have to study the topic in depth to understand. whereas if you limit yourself to introductory textbooks, you don't end up with a firm grasp of economics (ie you're still economically illiterate, you're just labouring under the delusion you're economically literate)

For example, answer the following questions

1. What is the link between minimum wages and unemployment levels?

2. Which theorem promotes greater efficiency: spontaneous order and the invisible hand, or guarenteed property/exhange/contract and the second best theorem: which is more realistic?

3. does the general equilibrium model have any validity as a tool for evaluating the market as a efficiency-promoting mechanism?

4. which produces more wealth in an economy: government or the private sector? which consumes more wealth?

5. is competitve advantage more or less importants than comparative advantage?

If you can answer these questions (more might follow), I might accept that you are economically literate. but if you've only been exposed to elementary and grossly oversimplified economics, you won't be able to

The terrible downside to multiple identities: multiple tax returns

okay, that makes me sound a bit cuntish

apologies

but try and answer them if you can

The terrible downside to multiple identities: multiple tax returns

The problem isn't IMHO so much that there's more people, but that we ought to do more to make the land more useful or to find more resources. Also that much of the wealth in developing countries is unequally distributed, especially vis-a-vis land. What is needed in a lot of these cases is investment in infrastructure such as roads and rail, land reform (so peasants have enough to support themselves and make a little profit on the side), and literacy prograams.