over-population, again

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Dec 6 07:28:07 PST 2002



> "...As I see it, terrorism is product of three factors:
> overpopulation in central Asia and Middle east (i.e. the
> supply of large numbers of people
>
> who are economically marginalized)..,"
>
> umm...does the economic system that marginalizes them have
> anything to do with this?...duh?
>
> we are really lucky that the people of central asia and the
> middle east don't have the power to be as murderous as we
> are, or we'd all be dead...

The US economic system also marginalizes a lot of people - but the ratio of population to the available resources is quite high, to th epoint that even those marginalized have few other choices to becoming mercenarioes for organized crime or terror organizations. The key to this equation is the population growth, not just the economy.

I do not understand why so many lefties have such an aversion to accept the simple fact that population growth can put strain on economic resources. Is it because of its religious belief that human life is sacred or at least special? In the animal world, overpopulation vis a vis is not only quite common, but one of the main forces regulating eco-systems and, yes, producing evolutionary change. For a scientific mind (which renounces all that religious anthropocentric nonsense) humans in that respect are no different than other animals - they face starvation and eventually extinction if they do not have sufficient resources.

In the past overpopulation was the major force affecting human population e.g. in Europe - causing perpetula out-migrations, first to Eastern Europe and then to the New World before the population growth stablized. Of the developing countries today, only China was able to implement policies that effectively halt population growth. Elsewhere, population pressure forced people off the land to the cities where they are forced to compete for scarce resources.

I can hear the sanctimonious horus crying that if we, the first world, somehow "share" our abundant resurces with those starving people, everything would be just fine. This is yet another example of naïve idealism rooted in the religious notion of compassion and charity. First, any form of such "sharing" would result in a major drop of the standards of living - mainly among the working/ lower middle class people - and thus produce reactionary pressure of monumental proportion. Second, such "sharing" would produce only a temporary solution, because it woul dnot stop the population growth.

Without containing population growth, any effort to reduce poverty and its correlates - out-migration, crime and conflict - are doomed.

Wojtek



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list