In article <199412291655.KAA12151 at grunt.ksu.ksu.edu> dzolek at ksu.ksu.edu (D. Z. Skinner) writes:
>From: dzolek at ksu.ksu.edu (D. Z. Skinner)
>Subject: carrying capacity for humans
>Date: 29 Dec 1994 08:55:42 -0800
>...two relevant stats I recently read in the popular press. These are that
>35,000 people starve to death every _DAY_, and that of the approximately 6
>billion people on the planet today, 5.3 billion are desperately poor.
>Desperately poor is defined as not having food reserves, or access to food
>reserves, of more than one day's worth for much of the persons life. I am
>not a social scientist, so I'd like to know if anyone can verify these
>stats, and if they are true, let's pose the question, are we not already at
>or past carrying capacity of the human species? 35,000 people starving to
>death each day does not sound like a positive attribute of a meaningful
>society (in the sense that all of humankind is one society). Where do we
>go from here?
We produce enough on earth to supply the world populace, so carrying
capacity has nothing to do with the problem. There are so many variables that
no one can do this topic justice. For whatever reason, humans are inherently
lazy and greedy. This throws out most political-economic solutions, you need
to provide the necessities to the poor yet provide motivation to succeed, and
not just give handouts (the negative psychological reactions from the
successful/achieving). The first world nations of the earth have the greatest
technological resources which gives them the most economic and military power.
Unfortunately, less than 1% of the nations are first world, which may be the
stem of our problem, since they decide economic policy with the unfortunate,
(a lot of you scientists should be familiar with the unfair legislation by the
fact that a lot of your chemicals and genetic experiments are "dumped" on
third world countries.) Now the solution is obvious, free and open trade to
let technology and jobs to cross all the borders, and then we will only have a
poor workong class to deal with, but which country is going to give up it's
"sovereignty" in the international market? It is more an economic problem
than anything, because as the standard of living increases, the population
growth decreases, and eventually we will all be forced to reproduce to keep
our numbers high enough(this is a joke). Just do what I'm doing, study
genetics enough to create a creature not as pitiful as the human race, or now
create a positronic brain and let the robots run everything.
Another thing, in case this pops in your head, simply educating won't work,
look at the Phillipines. Over 20 years ago we trained numbers of them to be
doctors, what happened? "Brain drain." They all came to the U.S. to get the
better paying jobs and higher standard of living for themselves and their
families. Usually only rich children attend anyways, no solution there. An
auto factory does a lot more good, because even an idiot will demand a good
education for his/her kids when they are paying taxes; genetics I guess.
Bart Rossmann
all debates welcome c561027 at showme.missouri.edu
-"I always wanted to be a grown up until I realized that adults aren't any
more mature, just bigger."
