clv101 wrote:Layla wrote:Fred Pearce's new book 'Peoplequake' is worth a read.
Basically it explains that the Earth could adequately meet the needs of a bigger population, as long as natural resources are shared more equally, and that the problems caused by overpopulation can be solved if we tackle over-consumption by the rich instead of fretting about the poor having children.
Indeed. This link illustrates the problem:
http://www.rustylime.com/show_article.php?id=1497
The problem we face are mostly allocative rather than of fundamental resources.
I think the problems runs deeper than that. I think if we tried to allocate things differently (i.e. "proper" communism) that we would just run into a different set of "unsolvable" problems. I say they are unsolvable because of the way human nature is. I think that human beings can only function as an equal-unity, if you get my drift, when they are in groups of less than 200. We can work that way if we are a real tribe. Our psychology is programmed by evolution to work in a social setup like that, and because they will actually know all 200 of those people and they understand the consequences of upsetting the equilibrium of the tribe. I think that this stops working when the numbers in a "tribe" get bigger, and that it stops working completely when you get up into the hundreds of thousands.
So...the fact that we have organised ourselves into giant nation states means that we are always going to be fighting against our natural psychology. It is VERY hard to overcome these things in an ethical way. Two typical approaches are nationalist extremism, which attempts to use patriotism (and fear) to bond people together, and religion, which attempts to use metaphysical sticks and carrots like heaven and hell to get people to behave better. Whilst these system do actually have positive effects on the way some people behave, they also have negative effects which I doubt I need to spell out.
