20 Jun, 2009, Lyanic wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
First of all, ignore the title. However prophetic it may end up becoming, it is intended as a joke.

I was having a discussion with a friend this morning, and he suggested the world would be a better place if we got rid of money. I asked if he intended us to go back to a bartering system instead - an idea which he heartily disfavored. Instead, he proceeded to describe a Utopian existence, wherein everyone performs a job, with all jobs considered equal, and everyone simply requests the resources they "need" to get by, which are distributed freely. Aside from the implied requisite of everyone in this system being perfectly honest about what they "need", there are still a few issues with it. First, I raised the issue of certain individuals having greater needs than others. He immediately dismissed it as certain people being greedy, but what of those with medical ailments who quite literally need more resources to survive than the average person? At its heart, his system is still one of bartering (perform a job to receive resources), though one that is slightly obfuscated. It also has the inherent assumption that there are enough resources in the world to evenly divide amongst its entire population. After all, what happens when you average in all the impoverished people in all the countries around the world that those of us who are better off, quite frequently refer to as citizens of the "third world"? This raised my second issue - his system may end up having him take a hit financially, or rather resource-wise, from where he is now (he's around the lower end of what's considered "middle class" in the U.S.). He refused to believe that was possible, stating that the few superbly wealthy individuals would average things out against the destitute many. I decided to do some quick math to check:

GDP of World / Global Population = Standard Financial Allotment Per Person

GDP of World = 54.62 trillion (based on 2007 estimate, represented in U.S. dollars)
Global Population = 6.7 billion (I used a 2007 estimate to balance against the older GDP figure)

Standard Financial Allotment Per Person = 54,620,000,000,000 / 6,700,000,000 = $8,152.24

I realize this math is far from conclusive or scientifically accurate, but it is a good means for estimation. If you assume a translation between financial means and the resources that could reasonably expected to be procured with those financial means, then it indicates that my friend's idealized Utopian society, where all resources are divided evenly amongst all individuals on the planet, would result in each person living on the equivalent of an $8.152.24 annual salary. This is well below the poverty line in all countries but those considered to be "third world". The moral of this story, and something we all already know: the Earth's population is too high. In fact, our species would have already surpassed the ecological carrying capacity of the planet if not for prior scientific advancements in genetic augmentation of crops and livestock. That is, without those scientific advancements, a couple billion people would have already starved to death. Right now, we seem to be stuck in a race of Science vs. Population. As much as anyone, I'm screaming "GO SCIENCE!" from the sidelines; but, how much longer can we keep that up?

Getting back to the revelation (not much of one) about my friend's Utopian society - it just wouldn't work, especially if population growth continues as projected. It seems that the current status quo, where some people have to die for others to thrive, is about as good as it gets with current conditions. What can be done about this, though? For starters, we need to stop population growth right now, if not decrease the global population. The question is, what would be the ideal method for accomplishing such a grandiose feat? Do we allow those who are currently without to starve? Do we take more drastic measures, to even include a culling of the population? Or do we simply enact policies regarding reproduction? For that last one, I'd obviously point to China's One Child policy. The problem is, there are too many people around the world who think that reproducing without end is their God given right (quite literally). Even China's policy has been met with great resistance, though perhaps because they've gone a bit too far with draconian enforcement of it. How do we approach this issue from an ethical standpoint, and on a global scale? Would it really be so difficult for couples around the world to be limited to two children? I think if we could just hold the population steady where it is now, and give science time to get a big lead, then quality of life would improve dramatically for everyone around the world.

Anyone have any thoughts on any of this? </wall_of_text>
20 Jun, 2009, Idealiad wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
There's one problem with this conclusion that I can see, which is that someone with 8,000 dollars per year in, say, Nigeria, would be doing pretty damn well. I think the threat of over-population is a chimera frankly, perpetuated by people who have no qualms about using way more resources than they're entitled to, and more insidiously by racists in first world countries (I'm no exception as far as using resources, I just don't believe that overpopulation is the problem).


eta: < /maximum drama inserted into post> ;D
20 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
Idealiad is correct. It doesn't make much sense to look at a sum of money per year and say "oh, that's worth 'x'" because the whole point of money is to be relative to what things are worth in a given place. In a world where there is no money and everything is distributed based on "need", money is an irrelevant concept.

Anyhow, this is all doomed to failure from the get-go; you hardly have to have a PhD in human psychology to know why.

Incidentally, this sounds a whole lot like communism, mm? And we all know how well the various implementations of communism have worked in terms of creating utopias.

It's not that the idea is "bad" from a policy standpoint – sure, give everybody what they need so we can all live happily – it's that it's completely unrealistic.

You asked two questions, though, really: one regarding the system and the other regarding overpopulation. Are you aware of what India and China do w.r.t. population? China in particular very much encourages limiting family size through (get this) incentives via tax breaks, tax punishments, etc. Of course, there's also relatively easy access to birth control of various forms, which obviously helps immensely.
20 Jun, 2009, flumpy wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Lyanic said:
Instead, he proceeded to describe a Utopian existence, wherein everyone performs a job, with all jobs considered equal, and everyone simply requests the resources they "need" to get by, which are distributed freely.


this is a form of communism..

all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others..
20 Jun, 2009, Lyanic wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Idealiad said:
There's one problem with this conclusion that I can see, which is that someone with 8,000 dollars per year in, say, Nigeria, would be doing pretty damn well.

DavidHaley said:
Idealiad is correct. It doesn't make much sense to look at a sum of money per year and say "oh, that's worth 'x'" because the whole point of money is to be relative to what things are worth in a given place.

You both missed the point. I was using that sum to represent the amount of resources it buys in the place where that is the currency (ie: U.S.) and extrapolating. I stated very clearly that it's not a perfectly accurate representation, but I don't exactly have a quantifiable value to represent actual resources, do I? It is still a decent tool for the purposes of estimation, though, as David was quick to point out - money is relative to what things are worth in a given place. The values factored into the GDP estimate are already normalized against U.S. currency, so the Nigerian argument does not fit. It would not be 8,000 U.S. dollars in Nigeria - it would be whatever the relative amount is for the same standard of living in Nigeria, in Nigerian currency. Yes, that would probably still be an upgrade from what they're accustomed to, but how much of one? Would it be enough to keep them from starving to death? Can a person in the U.S. keep from starving to death on $8,000 per year? That is the point. Furthermore, the point is: there aren't enough resources to support the global population if everyone were given equal access to all resources. This is one of the reasons why communism fails. The other reasons being consequences of human nature…
20 Jun, 2009, Iovan Drake wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
The world is not overpopulated. That it is happens to be an assumption made by people when they hear the number of people on the planet. Actually the world is capable of supporting a population several times the one it is currently supporting. The problems with starving people mainly come from poor use of land, political, religious, and societal issues in those countries and around the world.

Growing enough food for everyone also becomes a problem when certain segments of society criple efforts to grow the food because your clearing land kills off some of a species. People who prefer animals over humans and do everything in their power to enforce their wishes.

By the way, this doesn't mean that I am for a raze everything for our use mentality. Just pointing out some facts. The earth isn't overpopulated. It just is managed by retards. What can you do though?
20 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Lyanic, I know what you were doing, and I don't think it's correct regardless. It's not just that it's "not a perfectly accurate representation", it's that it's not even applicable. I don't think you can substitute any kind of money for resources whose worth is extremely location-dependent. In fact, the whole notion of "worth" becomes very funny in a system where worth disappears! :smile:
Better studies involve looking at actual measurable quantities such as the amount of food produced daily in terms of calories and the amount of calories the world population needs to survive healthily.

And Iovan is correct that one of the biggest problems is poor management of the resources we have, as well as pretty lousy world distribution coupled with rather amazing waste in countries that do have resources.
20 Jun, 2009, Lyanic wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Top 3 results on Google: "human carrying capacity of Earth"

http://www.iere.org/ILEA/leaf/richard200...

http://dieoff.org/page112.htm

http://dieoff.org/page13.htm

To anyone who is arguing that global population growth is not an issue, can you provide any source that justifies why it isn't?
20 Jun, 2009, Lyanic wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Lyanic, I know what you were doing, and I don't think it's correct regardless. It's not just that it's "not a perfectly accurate representation", it's that it's not even applicable. I don't think you can substitute any kind of money for resources whose worth is extremely location-dependent.

If the worth of goods is determined by the laws of supply and demand, and the value of money is determined to be relative to what goods in an area are worth, then how is it not applicable? The only issues would be flaws in application of those metrics and in the extrapolation of it from one area to all areas of the world. Perhaps someone could provide a better mean than the U.S. (which I'll quickly admit is not good as a "mean" for this purpose), but the principle is still relatively sound.
20 Jun, 2009, Iovan Drake wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
None of those listed take into account the vast amount of unused land, and the larger amount of misused land.

Can I give you peer reviewed scientific material to back up what I have said? No. I probably could find it, I just won't bother looking. It is something that can simply be understood when you look at population distribution, land size, and current land use. The world isn't overpopulated, it just is not being run well.

Do I think people are capable of running it well enough for several times the current population? No. If they were though the planet could support it. Take this into account, it is estimated this latest global crisis has increased the world hunger count by at least 100mil people. Was this because the food that fed them disappeared from existance? Was it because they no longer had the money to buy food or because the growing, production, and distribution problems caused by the economy made food more expensive?

The simple fact is the earth could support multiple times its current population. Would it be a fun place to live if there were 18 billion people living on earth? No. It could be done though.
20 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Supply and demand applies properly until it doesn't. Sometimes, prices are set artificially higher because people will pay anyhow, because they can, because a few dollars makes no difference to them. This is not at all representative of what the thing is actually "worth", although there is perhaps a philosophical point to be made that it is worth what people pay for it. But that has little to nothing to do with intrinsic value, which is what we must consider when talking about some kind of global redistribution. Regardless, this is simply an indication of purchasing power, and not at all indicative of what actually went in to producing and distributing this good. So when trying to evaluate how many resources are available to be redistributed, it doesn't really make sense to look at just money in this way because how far you can get with so much money is completely relative.
20 Jun, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Any social-economical system that doesn't take evolution into consideration is likely to fail in the long run.

China's one child policy is eugenic by the way, because intelligent people tend to delay child birth, so they decrease in numbers more slowly - assuming there is no difference in average fertility. Since civilization and 1st, 2nd, 3rd world status is pretty much a product of intelligence this is pretty important.

It's my view that if you want mankind to prosper you have to stop the stupid from reproducing or embrace genetic manipulation.
20 Jun, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Actually, it's not communism, it's socialism.

Socialism is an ideal form of government, if you live in a world where all humans behave themselves and all resources are equally accessible. The idea is that you do whatever you can, you use whatever you need, and you give whatever anyone asks. Sounds good, if everyone plays ball. :)

On Earth, that would work for about 30 seconds until someone realized they were sitting on the only source of <thing> for 100 miles, and started not giving it away on request, but instead bartered extra goods or services for limited access.

If you want to play games with imagining a society where material wealth isn't (supposed to be) a factor, look at the Star Trek universe. In a universe with matter replication, material wealth should be irrelevant since it's just a question of how much energy it takes to convert X to Y… yet even in that setting we see greed and supply/demand markets.
20 Jun, 2009, Iovan Drake wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Any social-economical system that doesn't take evolution into consideration is likely to fail in the long run.

China's one child policy is eugenic by the way, because intelligent people tend to delay child birth, so they decrease in numbers more slowly - assuming there is no difference in average fertility. Since civilization and 1st, 2nd, 3rd world status is pretty much a product of intelligence this is pretty important.

It's my view that if you want mankind to prosper you have to stop the stupid from reproducing or embrace genetic manipulation.


Eugenics are a failed methodolgy. The more you limit the genetic diversity(in this case eliminating the "stupids") the more you create genetic instability and genetic diseases. China's one child policy is out of number of mouths to feed, not some eugenics program.

As for taking evolution into account, this assumes that people can force evolution through manipulation of behavior(whether reproductive or otherwise). Is that the world you want to live in? You might be undesirable in such a scenario you realise? As unless your IQ is in the top 1% you are effectivly holding back "progress". Even that is flawed because passing on traits through reproduction doesn't work like that.
20 Jun, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Iovan Drake said:
Eugenics are a failed methodolgy. The more you limit the genetic diversity(in this case eliminating the "stupids") the more you create genetic instability and genetic diseases. China's one child policy is out of number of mouths to feed, not some eugenics program.

I said the policy is eugenic, not that it's a eugenics program. Any policy is either eugenic, neutral, or dysgenic. Regardless of policy you always have selective pressure decreasing genetic diversity. Nowadays intelligence isn't a good trait to have when it comes to reproduction, so the genetic diversity is decreasing as the number of people with above average intelligence boosting genes decreases each generation. Genetic diseases can increase due to selective pressure, but the current intervention by medicine is a much bigger promoter of genetic diseases and 'genetic instability'.

Iovan Drake said:
As for taking evolution into account, this assumes that people can force evolution through manipulation of behavior(whether reproductive or otherwise). Is that the world you want to live in? You might be undesirable in such a scenario you realise? As unless your IQ is in the top 1% you are effectivly holding back "progress".

Might be the top 1%, might be the top 95% - it depend in what kind of hurry a society is to improve the genetic quality. I think I'd see the future a lot brighter knowing that the genetic quality increases, even if very slowly, rather than seeing a rapid genetic decline.

Iovan Drake said:
Even that is flawed because passing on traits through reproduction doesn't work like that.

I see, you're one of those who believes you pass on traits through upbringing?
20 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
The only thing natural selection provides is a correlation of genetics that generations of reproduction from progenitor to descendant will have. And this correlation will be only measured by genes that successfully allow a progenitor to breed more times. For most species the most important determinate would be genetics that provide a correlation between genetics and survival, but that is only true because a dead animal reproduces less than an alive one at axiomatic face value. Furthermore, it is only guided as far as those genetics were correlated with successful reproduction. Ergo, evolution is unguided and unmeasured. The obvious corollary to this statement is that evolution is only guided or measured by the success of those evolutionary traits to help a species survive breed. Any other discourse as it relates to evolution is brought to the table with allusions and fable.

Ergo, survival of the fittest is a flawed thesis. Unfortunately with human beings we're now in a state of genetic regression. I don't support eugenics. However, when the poorest candidates as progenitors are the ones passing the most genetic code–It has an obvious end result. And maybe that's just as it should be.
20 Jun, 2009, Iovan Drake wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Iovan Drake said:
Even that is flawed because passing on traits through reproduction doesn't work like that.

I see, you're one of those who believes you pass on traits through upbringing?


No that is not what I believe. Traits are passed on through reproduction, but they can't be carefully sifted and aimed through a eugenics program. You can get certain genes to be expressed through selected breeding, but you can't control what traits are passed on or not passed on. You can't control what genese are switched on or dormant.

You can through genetic manipulation, but then you have a whole new can of worms to work through. As for my original point, selective breeding indeed does cause increased genetic disorders. The fewer genes you have being passed on the more mutations build up. That is why incest for example causes genetic mutations. If parent A has genetic mutation X and parent B has genetic mutation X, then there is a great chance child C will have X. So if you reduce a breeding population down you have increased amounts of similar mutations being passed on.
20 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Iovan Drake said:
If parent A has genetic mutation X and parent B has genetic mutation X, then there is a great chance child C will have X. So if you reduce a breeding population down you have increased amounts of similar mutations being passed on.


True for all recessive genes. Not all genetic problems are recessive, however.
21 Jun, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
The obvious corollary to this statement is that evolution is only guided or measured by the success of those evolutionary traits to help a species survive breed. Any other discourse as it relates to evolution is brought to the table with allusions and fable.

Short term evolution is a matter of the law of the least resistance (traits are passed on by those who breed the most), where as long term survival goes counter to the law of the least resistance, and the species with the strongest selection comes out on top at the end.

Runter said:
Ergo, survival of the fittest is a flawed thesis. Unfortunately with human beings we're now in a state of genetic regression. I don't support eugenics. However, when the poorest candidates as progenitors are the ones passing the most genetic code–It has an obvious end result. And maybe that's just as it should be.

The obvious end result is the collapse of civilization, selective pressure returns, intelligence increases again, civilization is brought back into existence, and genetic decline starts all over again.

The question is not so much whether to practice eugenics or not, but who will make the first effective effort, since the first nation with a successful eugenics program is likely to dominate given how 1st world status correlates with intelligence.
21 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Runter said:
Ergo, survival of the fittest is a flawed thesis. Unfortunately with human beings we're now in a state of genetic regression. I don't support eugenics. However, when the poorest candidates as progenitors are the ones passing the most genetic code–It has an obvious end result. And maybe that's just as it should be.

The obvious end result is the collapse of civilization, selective pressure returns, intelligence increases again, civilization is brought back into existence, and genetic decline starts all over again.

The question is not so much whether to practice eugenics or not, but who will make the first effective effort, since the first nation with a successful eugenics program is likely to dominate given how 1st world status correlates with intelligence.


There's a big debate to be had upon the speed at which the worst-case-scenario you describe could occur. One would hope people would become more wise over the years and eugenics wouldn't be required to advert some type of doomsday scenario created mostly by the social environment developing for the last 50-100 years.

With eugenics proponents often their argument breaks down to where they believe the ends justify the means.
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