matrixmann: (Thinking)
matrixmann ([personal profile] matrixmann) wrote2017-06-27 08:50 am

World population - Things as they seem? ++ (Attention: Highly speculative content!)

(Attention: This is highly speculative content and shouldn't be taken with scientific correctness!
Further down, it also shouldn't be taken as hatespeech or as a base to reason artificial interferences to execute population policy.
At first, it's just thoughts considering and philosophizing about a subject and it's meant as nothing more than that.)




World population grows every year, mainly in Africa and Asia.
Although in those areas, at least Africa the most, the common health care accessible to the normal people is far away from being satisfying. Still a lot of people die in their child years.
But even though, of those who are born, still a higher number manages to survive to make the population grow.
Is that so?
Population growth in Europe and other areas in the world counted as "developed" these days, it happened the most as technological and scientific progress appeared. As the influence of the Christian churches slowly declined, compared to the Middle Ages.
The increase in what health care could provide from the scientific viewpoint, and even the more as the distribution to the normal populace with low and average income for the time episode started to take place (for the sake of taking the soil away from social democrats and early communists), this is what is considered as the main reason for the explosive population growth that appeared between the 19th and the 20th century.
In Asia, this is partly the case, if you take a look at China which keeps increasing its capacities for provision constantly. But compare it to India. India is rich in population, but still the caste system is intact and richness and the deepest poverty both exist in this country without ever seeing light at the end of the tunnel to ever change. The normal population can't have that access to proper health care, otherwise it couldn't be one of the main research countries for medication tests on humans.
So, how would this rule apply there? Health care increasing the chances of survival of the individual, while people still tend to have families with many children born because of social reasons?
Is the population in the "developing" countries really the problem, if distribution of health care to everyone, as a base for survival of the masses of people born, is no topic in those despite economy experiencing growth all the time?

Taking a look at Europe and the already "developed" areas.
Population numbers in those areas have never been higher than today. Today is the max for these ever in history.
If those wouldn't live from getting people from other areas of the world moving into their territory, population numbers would already be in a noticeable decline. (Except for US because reproductive rights are under constant threat of clerical conservatives of being abandoned or killed by lack of funding, and people from the lower classes, who bear the most children there, depend on social programs to provide this to them, as proper distribution of health care to people from all states of wealth doesn't exist there.)
In the developed nations, about 95% of the population born survives into old age. Predators in the 5%-quota are diseases, malformations, accidents, pollution, man-made violence and psychic diseases caused by circumstances habored in this way of civilization.
So, population numbers in those areas remain constant with a slight decline in the long term. They get actively tried to be kept on the max. Be it home-bred population or through immigration.
And this through all the times.
So... basically, where does the point of attention lie really when it comes down to population policy?
In the developing countries, where still the least of the humans born survives until they're adults, and they die in a young age because of diseases damaging their health, or in those areas where nearly every person born survives until approximately 60 at least? And the number of people achieving this is being kept relatively constant at all times?
It may be worth picking up this hard constrast "95% survival" vs. "high mortality" for a closer look.
While the times of boom economic growth are over in the developed world, everything's build up that needed to be build up, now it only suffers from wrong proportion of the distribution, population decline in harsher numbers would be the logical consequence - as, in the phase of building something up, it needs more resources than when only maintaining and keeping up the state of things as they are currently. Also, there is not a need for "more" resources to be used as ante in the process.
Not even to speak of when the next stage of the technoligical age becomes reality and some more machines replace the human labor in the productive sectors, which makes the part of the population being employed in that sector become out of work and for sure also a part of them "obsolete" in the terms of the employment market.
So to say, the high population numbers of the developed world, in the long term, progress into a state of all of its population that it habors isn't "needed" anymore. It's like only in a position of consuming and sucking up resources, in a position of being a "consumer". Unable to give back or be of relevance to the integrity of the system. Others would call it drastically "trash", that's what they are then. - "Trash" that would need to be administered until its death and not be renewed / replaced by another person, to be exact.
So... when an area tries to keep its population number up in a state like before the big industrial boom at the beginning of the 20th century that it actually doesn't need anymore, it raises the question towards "How healthy for the planet is this strategy?"? How good in population policy worldwide is this actually?
And how much does it distort the numbers?
How much is it a factor that's part of the overall problem?
How much does that overclocked number cause in damage because a part of the population already exists in needlessness, but still they consume resources like all other people who are needed by the system to function?
To state something very clearly: The people who this applies to, they aren't to blame for what they are. If they have worked through a respective way of education and even performing an occupation for an amount of time throughout their lives, then there's no talking about "self-caused circumstances". Those people aren't obsolete because they haven't had ambitions and therefore were lazy and spoiled since a very young age. They've become obsolete because the system they live in doesn't need them anymore. In a certain span of time they were needed indeed, but now no more. - In difference to people who didn't even try for a decent school education and stayed away from it to hang out with friends, drink beer and destroy window glasses.
Therefore, because they're not to blame, they should at no point of the story be treated like if they were.
The solution for these should just be, plain and simple, to not to replace them in the next generation. Their life remains untouched, but as there is no need to have another person regrow into that position, there better shouldn't exist one to respawn.

When these obsolete numbers are being kept and maintained constantly, how much does it distort the real needs and the real functionality of the system that humans build for themselves to live in?
How much is it also responsible for overpopulation - for population that is there, but without a need of human civilization for them to exist?
What happens - how do the numbers look if that population doesn't exist anymore? In the developed world, as well as when Africa, Asia, South America only has the population number that it needs (considered, the economy of the "developing" areas also makes it to a state of things comparable to the so-called "industrialized nations" measured by what their environment allows)?
What if there are not that many people around anymore whose only purpose is to be there as a consumer because there is no task for them in this world?
And, what would happen to the yearly growth numbers if socially the issues of "children as security that supplies you in bad times / old age" would be adequately solved, in combination with that?
What would happen if mankind only grows or stays the same in such masses that it also has tasks for in its differing societies?

At least upon further thought it doesn't seem like the developed world is totally not to blame for the problem of the overpopulation. They try to keep up a number within their territories that's unrealistically high compared to the possible employment rate that it's able to supply when everything is run under fair circumstances (opposed to the current strategy of part-time work and letting the developing countries produce their food and their consumer goods).
When 95% of all humans survive until old age, you don't need people to have 2 and 3 children or more anymore. Better you should be happy if some people can't or don't want to have children because of certain reasons. Because that's getting closer to a realistic number, not even to speak of the children who would suffer for their whole lives as adults if there is no purpose in society for them.
And not even getting started to speak of the impact on the environment if there's one big resources-consumer less in the world...

It would be a drastic restructuring of society as it was to adapt to these circumstances with less people exsting again. But that process would be inevitable, as human civilization always finds a way of making work and production more effective than before, and by the time, this comes at the cost of human labor. No matter which economical system or system of world views it has in a century.
It is like one and only constant thread that keeps unfolding in history.

If not for those processes in mankind, which one can regard from one or another thousand positions, just think about the extinction of animal species: Animals vanished, as humans claimed the living space and bred like rabbits. Where humans live, animals have to go as humans want to live alone or even need the space for themselves.
One doesn't need to wonder about that process, as the earth has only a limited amount of living space.

Environment topics - overpopulation - vanishing of animal species - economy - social problems - all these topics are interconnected with each other. Each brick - another little factor in the other issue.
And when humans want to live up to the high goals they set for themselves in their enthusiasm, then they need to show a willingness to do something for this and to also adapt their societies to the links of the circumstances that are right in front of them.
There is no washing without getting wet. And no-one said it would be comfortable. Who thinks it would be, he lives in the world of a little child... Fairytales and unicorns.

[identity profile] onb2017.livejournal.com 2017-06-27 03:04 pm (UTC)(link)
You wrote a lot this time. The only thing I will say, all this is an objective process. Nobody can affect it, there are plenty of circumstances in reality that control not a single individual with the greatest means can influence it. What they can do is to create an illusion that thing are this way or another through media etc. It may have some dent but cannot have a real effect. Well, after all humanity somehow made it to this point in history?

[identity profile] maadmike.livejournal.com 2017-06-27 09:45 pm (UTC)(link)
We Russians need more people cause we have many pensioners to feed and a lot of free land to maintain. Our authorities could easily to take more immigrants for work purposes but they don’t want to give everybody the citizenship as I know it cause if a man will not study Russian language for his life it would be difficult for him to assimilate and numbers of such immigrants will make their communities which will cause social tensions. So our government is undertaking a lot of mesuries to rise our population at the moment but youngsters are not rush to have children the reasons are simple – unemployment, low salaries, high prices on everything... So I can assume that the population of Russia without some cardinal measures will drop dramatically in next decades as it did it through last century I guess with all our war and revolutions.
What is about the grow of population of Africa and Asia – yes, I think, it is bothering in a way of global warming and pollution of our planet and I can assume that it would be right to restrict the people to have no more than at least three children, it maybe will not solve a problems but will be a first step on a way but most of all these countries have the religions which are demanding to have more children cause they were “given” through the times of constant wars and diseases and it was very needed to have more children to have the independent country and it is maybe not that necessary now. I like the move of China to restrict their people to have no more than one child to spend the money and government efforts on more proper education and industrialization but the restriction of birth solves some problems and causes other ones as the disproportion of men and women and others. If we look what China got with such measures – it got obviously the higher level of industrialization, education, health care, got done more complex social and state programs than India - its neighbor did through last decades. But again the problem of pensioners is still unsolved – who will work to feed the aging population after thirty years – it is a question. You could tell that it could be that we will not have a need in masses of people thanks to robotization but I somehow doubt that after some hurricane, earth quake or tsunami the robots will grow the vegetables to feed the old fellas as if nothing has happened – the need of people to serve the much more masses of old people will always exist on our planet I believe. It is a sweet dream that after common people will build everything the rich guys will be living alone and sucking recourses as they like.

[identity profile] maadmike.livejournal.com 2017-06-27 11:06 pm (UTC)(link)
I strongly believe as a man with engineering education that much more people could safely live on our planet but we should together solve many tasks and there is no unity around the world not now not in near perspective. The problem is that our science is paid by business and we don’t have certainty do we have a global warming or not – it is necessary to make some independent research on the matter. If we will have some certainty then the next question is how to force people which are poor living at the moment to live even poorer to invest their money into the eco technologies? For example average European man are spending ten times more money than some man from India and even if our incomes will be average it is much colder to live on the North than at the South and we people which are living on the North will be burning much more fuel and for example China could ask why we should reduce the use of fuel if you are/were using anyway much more? Plus they could ask the West to pay them for their loss of industrialization with all the ecology novation involvements.
To solve the global problems we need global actions and nowadays it is impossible even to think about it.
But anyway I am optimistic about the science and if together to think how without a loss of productivity of food and goods to raise the numbers of trees on our planet I am certain we could find an answer as to answer other questions as to reduce the amount of deserted lands, to use ten times more productively what we have and so on.