EPTEnding World Hunger - Page 4
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Biochemist
United States1008 Posts
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.risingdragoon
United States3021 Posts
Nothing. You really think that when people's most basic needs are not met, they care to be educated, or even has the strength to listen? Or "depletion of natural resources"... I don't even know where that came from. With modern seeds and farming techniques we're tens of times more efficient at harvesting crop from limited space. The biggest issue is advanced countries are able to subsidize and overproduce crops, in our case, corn. Then we flood the international marketplace with cheap food, thereby destroying the agricultural economies of the poor African countries. When their subsistence farming structure collapses, we go in there, take the land and plant cash crops for export back to us, paying their poor workers pennies, and then move on. | ||
TanGeng
Sanya12364 Posts
"There is scarcity." That was it. @risingdragoon I would have thought that the problem was agricultural subsidies. The direct foreign add in the form of food also hurts. I also don't know what you mean by trade. Usually in the underdeveloped nations, the foreign aid comes in the form of flooding the country with cheap food. How is that trade? | ||
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.risingdragoon
United States3021 Posts
Foreign aid is after the economy is destroyed and the people no longer able to support themselves. The flood of cheap food in these countries is when they still had an internal agricultural economy. When the cheap foreign food floods their marketplace, the peasant will obviously buy the cheaper good instead of their locally grown food - putting their farmers out of work. The rest is dominoes. | ||
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HiOT
Sweden1000 Posts
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baal
10708 Posts
On October 29 2009 02:48 Boonbag wrote: The definition of the third world is that they actually can't eat propely, that's why we provide them with food -- because otherwise populations would die =[ no that is not true, mexico is a 3rd world country and we are not provided with any kind of food by foreign countries. the definition of 3rd world country has nothing to do with its ability to feed its habitats. | ||
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integral
United States3161 Posts
On October 29 2009 08:50 Liquid`NonY wrote: Your attack is on the method of argument by induction. The conclusion being negative is irrelevant. And if you really want to say that arguments by induction aren't worthy of using the word 'proves' then I'm still thinking "Wtf?" with a dash of "whatever" And when arguing deductively, how about this: if A, then B not B Therefore, not A I've proven a negative statement! A = humans invent a means to end world hunger B = humans are rational Of course, humans are indeed rational, so my second premise isn't true. But if someone found a true statement that fits for B, then they could prove that humans do not invent a means to end world hunger. I suppose what you want to say now is that whatever anyone ever says fits for B, you will always doubt it. Yeah sure you can doubt anything, down to the idea that our perceptions are totally deceptive and we don't know anything, blah blah blah. But in argument, some things are accepted as true because it's useful and reasonable to do so. When all evidence relevant to a statement is reasonably considered, then it's appropriate to use the word "proves" when that statement logically entails another statement. I would welcome a true statement for B. But all evidence points otherwise, to the point that I consider it "proven" that humans are in overshoot and there will be a die-off. Yeah sure you can doubt anything, down to the idea that our perceptions are totally deceptive and we don't know anything, blah blah blah. I was responding to a dismissal of this nature when I mentioned proving a negative in the first place. Yeah sure you can say we don't know what's going to happen when Population X goes into overshoot, but every OTHER time a population has overshot there has been a die-off. I cannot be 100% certain that it will happen, but reasonably I cannot think it will not.The difference in paradigms that I keep referring to relates to this discussion -- what I refer to as the cornucopian paradigm looks at the history of what they refer to as "progress" and points out that "progress" has happened "consistently" throughout history. They look at a problem like overpopulation and say "technology fixed all these problems, technology will fix this problem too" and will call anyone stupid who doesn't agree, just because it's happened so many times before. Human population has been increasing so far, it must continue! But this cornucopian paradigm is not scientific or even grounded, it's merely self-serving bias with an unhealthy dose of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. There is no empirical basis for "progress", no falsifiable hypotheses, indeed no substance at all beyond anecdotal evidence. Progress is thus not a legitimate entity -- it is a myth, a self-congratulatory story. The ecological paradigm doesn't rely on fairy tales. Using populations, controlled variables and falsifiable hypotheses we have actually figured out how population works and what are the factors involved. This is real science, not TV science, not the science cornucopians hail as the beacon of progress. Using this science, there is no need to speculate what will happen when a species goes into overshoot, because we can prove it. From these experiments we can derive theorems and principles and terms, leading to the ability to make statements like "The composite carrying capacity of two environments is greater than or equal to the sum of the carrying capacities of each individual environment." or "We can break down the ways populations overshoot into four main categories: through ecological release, resource drawdown, feedback lag, and fluctuating carrying capacity." These two paradigms simply don't communicate very well with each other. For obvious reasons I privilege the latter, but there are many who privilege the former. For what it's worth, I also think believing in a god is ridiculous at best, so I'm used to the paradigmatic differences. Only when the paradigmatic differences are about such an important topic as overpopulation do I become incensed; even though I know it doesn't help to get mad, I still do. | ||
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integral
United States3161 Posts
On October 29 2009 10:01 TanGeng wrote: So anyways I read through integral's post and came away with one economic principle from all that text. "There is scarcity." That was it. If you had found more I would be worried. Population ecology has little to nothing to do with economics. | ||
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TanGeng
Sanya12364 Posts
On October 29 2009 10:08 .risingdragoon wrote: Chronology, tangeng, do you have it? Foreign aid is after the economy is destroyed and the people no longer able to support themselves. The flood of cheap food in these countries is when they still had an internal agricultural economy. When the cheap foreign food floods their marketplace, the peasant will obviously buy the cheaper good instead of their locally grown food - putting their farmers out of work. The rest is dominoes. So what seems to be the problem? It's either partially subsidized food that out competes the local agricultural industry or it's the completely subsidized food (free foreign aid!) that out competes the local agricultural industry. What can you do about that? You can either stop subsidizing food or you can a huge amount of money forbidding international trade of food. That means a far smaller variety in diet and possible starvation in some nations where the population is larger than the food production capacity. Is it really logical to point to the trade and call that the problem!? On October 29 2009 10:38 integral wrote: If you had found more I would be worried. Population ecology has little to nothing to do with economics. Your study of ecology makes one huge academic assumption, humans are stupid anti-social animals that don't make decisions with any foresight. Human decisions such as the decision to reproduce fall in the economic realm. It's not ecological science. | ||
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PobTheCad
Australia893 Posts
these plants could also probably grow in degraded 3rd world conditions.but it is no good continually giving these people food you must give them machinery and seeds and let them get on with their own lives. | ||
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integral
United States3161 Posts
On October 29 2009 09:52 .risingdragoon wrote: I combed 3 pages of verbage looking for one person to stand out and say "the biggest issue is international trade." Nothing. You really think that when people's most basic needs are not met, they care to be educated, or even has the strength to listen? Or "depletion of natural resources"... I don't even know where that came from. With modern seeds and farming techniques we're tens of times more efficient at harvesting crop from limited space. The biggest issue is advanced countries are able to subsidize and overproduce crops, in our case, corn. Then we flood the international marketplace with cheap food, thereby destroying the agricultural economies of the poor African countries. When their subsistence farming structure collapses, we go in there, take the land and plant cash crops for export back to us, paying their poor workers pennies, and then move on. The reason I don't talk about the socioeconomic factors involved in world hunger is that people talk about the starvation as if it were a problem that can be fixed by feeding people, rather than an outgrowth of resource drawdown and overshoot. If we were living within our means and there were still hungry people, I would of course be talking about trade and the distribution of resources -- the problem, and its solution, would be sociological. But if you were to address the sociological factors involved, and "solve" world hunger, you would merely exacerbate the real underlying problem of overpopulation by enabling continuing reproduction. This is why it's so important to understand the actual ecology of population, and not talk about human population as if it had no ecological basis. | ||
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integral
United States3161 Posts
On October 29 2009 10:41 TanGeng wrote: Your study of ecology makes one huge academic assumption, humans are animals. FTFY Next you'll be telling me humans aren't bound by the same laws of ecology that other species are because we have foresight and the ability to choose whether to reproduce or not based on economic factors. If you were to look at the behavior of individuals and not that of the entire species, you might be able to make this argument. But as a species, humans follow the same exact pattern every single other species follows. We live, we consume, we reproduce, we die. If we don't have enough food, we starve to death. If we exceed long-term carrying capacity, we die-off. Humans are not exempt from any of the biological constraints that other species are, though we're certainly a bit more creative in pushing those limits as far as we can. We have a composite carrying capacity almost to the scale of the entire earth, but it's been completely supported by nonrenewable resources, and that's called overshoot, and populations die when they go into overshoot. If you want to "fix" overshoot, you'd do well to understand the basic ecology involved, because then and only then you could apply economics to the task. | ||
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TanGeng
Sanya12364 Posts
So that explains use of contraception and negative population growth rates in Japan? Let me know when your ecological equations can figure that out. This is not even a problem if the politicians would just let the price of food rise. No one would even have to starve. Not sure what you are arguing about anyways. If all you were to point out is that there is some scarcity and newly introduced stupid non-sentient populations tend to overshoot the carrying capacity, all it does is discredit those that think that we should not treat food as a scarce resource and just provide it to everyone that needs to eat. | ||
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Tien
Russian Federation4447 Posts
Resource deficiency is a much much bigger problem. Consumation of Oil / Gas / Wood / Water is a much bigger issue than shortage of food. Food is renewable. These resources are not. Solving world hunger would only push the population of Earth to more exponential levels. Where are the resources to for all these people? There isn't enough. | ||
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Tien
Russian Federation4447 Posts
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integral
United States3161 Posts
On October 29 2009 10:57 TanGeng wrote: So that explains use of contraception and negative population growth rates in Japan? Let me know when your ecological equations can figure that out. This is not even a problem if the politicians would just let the price of food rise. No one would even have to starve. Not sure what you are arguing about anyways. If all you were to point out is that there is some scarcity and newly introduced stupid non-sentient populations tend to overshoot the carrying capacity, all it does is discredit those that think that we should not treat food as a scarce resource and just provide it to everyone that needs to eat. I responded to some of this pre-emptively in an edit -- birth control and negative population growth rates in one area of the global petri dish in which population is still growing does NOT lend credence to the argument that an entire population will stop growing. In fact, all that anecdote does is support the argument that there are limits to population growth BEYOND the hard limits imposed ecologically. But yeah your last point is exactly what this thread was talking about in the first place. Discrediting those who think we shouldn't treat food as a scarce resource and provide it to everyone that needs to eat is an unfortunate but necessary step if there were to ever be a non-catastrophic population reduction. Right now food aid programs and ever-increasing levels of food production are only making everything worse, enabling population to continue to increase despite already having massively overshot long-term carrying capacity. | ||
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WhiteNights
United States252 Posts
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Tien
Russian Federation4447 Posts
It is actually very enlightening as well as REALISTIC / REALITY. | ||
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integral
United States3161 Posts
On October 29 2009 11:14 WhiteNights wrote: integral are my posts too dumb and ill-informed for you to bother responding to them or did you miss them Already replied to one, just missed your latest two. | ||
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Adeeler
United Kingdom764 Posts
If we reduced the wasted food we'd also reduce our use of food dramatically. If need be we could always switch to hydroponics which yield far more then normal farming techniques. This is what we would do if we ever travel into space for extended times. | ||
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