Like, where does this come from? Even people that aren’t particularly conservative seem to think that less people = good. Maybe the problem isn’t the amount of people but how their needs are met? Yes, the world is finite, but pretending that hunger, homelessness, wars and diseases are in anyway caused by the amount of people on Earth rather than how we deal with those things is as insane as denying climate change.
To clarify: I’m not in favour of malthusian solutions.
It’s true that the true problem is capitalism but let’s not pretend like infinite population growth is good either. Yes, we can fix world hunger even with 10 billion but what if we grow past that? And we need to take into account that even if we can feed ourselves, is there enough for other species? I don’t think that overpopulation is something we necessarily need to solve but I do think we need to stop thinking about population growth as something necessary, especially because in capitalism population growth is tied by the ruling class to economic growth.
Population growth is likely to slow or be virtually inexistent in a society where people are allowed to choose if they want children and how many they want.
it’s actually a sure thing. replacement birthrate is 2.1 kids. that’s simply not happening in a world where women are actually free.
True, that’s why I don’t don’t believe it’s the biggest problem we have
the answer is always white cope
whites caused 95% of all the enviro destruction in the world, so they must fraudulently point at 3rd world countries where they export all their pollution, and convince people those countries are the SOURCE of said pollution, instead of whiteistan.
This is also why whites are allergic to the phrase “per capita”
Like, where does this come from?
Because they never hear anything else in the topic. Mainstream media are full of casual neomalthusian takes because any real answer to the question is anticapitalist and we can’t have this.
I think part of it is that for a westerner to confront the fact that overpopulation isn’t an inherent issue, we have abundant resources to handle a huge population, then they’re forced to confront that it’s an issue of resource allocation. And when that happens westerners are programmed to start screaming about commies the same way that they imagine dirty peasants used to scream about witches. So for the last god knows how many years anytime western media has a narrative that needs to confront the issue of resource allocation they skirt the problem by saying there are too many people and that’s the real issue. That and the implied racism of saying the problem is overpopulation is killing two birds with one stone, so it’s a narrative that stuck around in western media and became a convenient misdirection.
I can say, personally and perhaps anecdotally, that a lot of the problems I experience are in contexts where I feel crowded and in competition with other people. At least in Amerikkka most people spend a significant part of their lives trapped in an enormous steel line surrounded by too many cars unable to go anywhere, waiting in lines for limited quantities of necessary goods, and fighting to have space to yourself in the decreasing number of public spaces available without having to pay to enter.
I know better than to blame the people around me for these conditions, but I think a lot of people tie those frustrated feelings to the people around them instead of to the systems that create the jams.
I’m not saying this fully accounts for it, but I think people get a strong vibe that things would go smoother without all these people around.
i think its directly related to their metaphysical worldview, they see things as immutable and completely separated so when the though of more people arises, they imagine exactly the same world but with more people so if we had 100 apples for 300 people, now we have 100 apples for 500 people so their logical conclusion is that its a worse situation.
its the same thing with how when a neolib investor or bank buys off a company and immediately start cutting down their workforce thinking they can produce the same output and they inevitably start doing worse output.
Their philosophical framework is the same.
its the same thing with how when a neolib investor or bank buys off a company and immediately start cutting down their workforce thinking they can produce the same output and they inevitably start doing worse output.
A lot of the time—perhaps most—these people have no such intent, despite their words. They’re not dumb, they’re strip-miners & flippers.
it’s absorbed through osmosis by people living in capitalism and being surrounded by bourgeois media of all types .that and not being taught to think critically or creatively about anything. so people think population increase = more people within their personal space and possibly taking their resources.
the main referent is immigration and you know how that 's spoken about. unfortunately people would rather imagine themselves being a little fascist than imagine themselves challenging their hoarding employer / landlord / utility company / etc
