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This is the story of Dr. Norman Borlaug who was trying to breed wheat, in 1945, which could resist stem rust, a disease that ruined many crops.
In, 1968, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich and his wife Anne (who is uncredited) published an explosive book. In The Population Bomb, they noted that in poor countries such as India and Pakistan, populations were growing more quickly than food supplies. In the 1970s, they predicted: "Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death".
Thankfully, Ehrlich was wrong, because he didn't know what Norman Borlaug had been doing. Borlaug would later be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the years he had spent shuttling between Mexico City and the Yaqui Valley, growing thousands upon thousands of kinds of wheat, and carefully noting their traits: this kind resisted one type of stem rust, but not another; this kind produced good yields, but made bad bread; and so on.
[...] Borlaug produced new kinds of "dwarf" wheat that resisted rust, yielded well, and - crucially - had short stems, so they didn't topple over in the wind. By the 1960s, Borlaug was travelling the world to spread the news. It wasn't easy.
[...] Progress has slowed, and problems are mounting: climate change, water shortages, pollution from fertilisers and pesticides. These are problems the green revolution itself has made worse. Some say it even perpetuated the poverty that keeps the population growing: fertilisers and irrigation cost money which many peasant farmers can't get. Paul Ehrlich, now in his 80s, maintains that he wasn't so much wrong, as ahead of his time. Perhaps if Malthus were still alive, in his 250s, he'd say the same. But could more human ingenuity be the answer?
[...] Since genetic modification became possible, it's mostly been about resistance to diseases, insects and herbicides. While that does increase yields, it hasn't been the direct aim. That's starting to change. And agronomists are only just beginning to explore the gene editing tool CRISPR, which can do what Norman Borlaug did much more quickly. As for Borlaug, he saw that his work had caused problems that weren't handled well, but asked a simple question - would you rather have imperfect ways to grow more food, or let people starve? It's a question we may have to keep asking in the decades to come.
The man who helped feed the world
[Related]: An Essay on the Principle of Population
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:18PM (21 children)
"Fixed" is a matter of perspective. Have we improved poverty since 1960? That depends on how you look at things, there are more people in poverty (living on less than $2.50 per day) today than were alive, total, in 1960. Ask those 3 billion people how well we've fixed things so far.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:30PM (15 children)
All those people would have been better off having never been born, then? Sure, there are now more people living most available lifestyles then, but to explicitly opt out of normalizing your data makes your conclusions much less useful than otherwise.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:50PM (8 children)
If you keep normalizing for total population, you have to account for the fact that the Earth is shrinking - in relative terms.
Poverty is a very poor measure of quality of life, and still it's probably the best (least distortable by those quoting the figures) we've got. I'd assume that many of those billions in poverty are quite happy with their lives, particularly if they're not constantly bombarded with delusions of magical healthcare, unlimited food, and opulent shelter via mass media.
Of course, if you follow "your side" of the argument to its logical conclusion, you end up here [youtube.com].
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 13 2019, @04:20AM
Ha ha those ignorant fools dreaming of shelter and food! lol
The iShiny X on the other hand is going to ABSOLUTELY be the shit.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday June 13 2019, @06:02PM (6 children)
How about 'arable land per capita'? That seems like a good place to start, as overpopulation discussions often center around food supplies. Overall, if we want to know what population growth changes for people, you need to look at the effects on a person. Maybe it's the median person in a category, or the bottom quintile. But knowing that there are more poor people now than there were people then doesn't give me any insight into whether it's more likely for a random person to be poor today than 60 years ago.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 13 2019, @08:24PM (5 children)
A traditionally squishy metric... is that with or without phosphate fertilizer (the variable that screwed Malthus' calculations). Powered irrigation? GMOs? Vertical farms? Is your population Vegetarian, or Texan?
Again, is that the right question? Do we care more about average suffering, or total suffering? If every life is sacred, isn't every suffering life important?
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(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday June 13 2019, @11:28PM (4 children)
That's why it's interesting; technology changes the definition of arable land, along with the yield. Diet determines the food requirements. Maybe a cyclone destroyed the local crops while global production was bountiful. Such a problem could lead to an increase in suffering but not be reflected in global totals.
Maybe every suffering life is important if you want to shed a tear over their pain. But if you want to do something about it, poverty is solved in groups. The people of North Korea are famously poor, but fixing that problem is going to require nationwide economic reforms. China is alleviating poverty via commerce and urbanization (they have plenty of other problems, too, and I'm sure some of those are persistent). Several Central American countries are impoverished because of corrupt governments and crime.
The causes of poverty don't scale with population; they are attached to countries, regions, or cities. Detroit has poverty because their auto industry moved away and because they are an American city (this is not a root cause analysis, but a common symptom of US cities). It's not because they have so many poor people.
I don't have answers to these problems that I've described in vague terms, but knowing the progression of the global population of impoverished people won't get me any.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 14 2019, @12:05AM (3 children)
Think about that for half a second and consider whether you still believe it.
Which is worse, murder or a lifetime of suffering? The US criminal justice system seems to mostly think that lifetime imprisonment is a harsher punishment and worth the extremely elevated cost as compared to capital punishment (of course this is a complex issue...)
If you can agree that a lifetime of suffering is worse than being killed outright, that would make unending grinding poverty for large swaths of the population worse than genocide...
I have plenty of answers to these problems, but no power to implement them, and no desire to even approach the level of power required to do so - I value my quality of life and would not want the burdens that accompany that level of power. I also enjoy too much doing other things rather than political campaigning for dubious impacts. Far easier and more enjoyable to grumble impotently and council my children to not have children themselves, lest they bring more suffering lives into the dark future that we appear to be headed for. Whether or not my children listen is up to them and well beyond my control - unless you think that parental sterilization is O.K., which I don't.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 15 2019, @06:33AM (2 children)
Unless, of course, there's more to genocide than merely killing people. And what level of wealth is better than genocide? Even the billionaires suffer for a lifetime after all.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 15 2019, @12:53PM (1 child)
I'd put it instead: what level of wealth is worse than genocide? That level of wealth where you're trapped in conditions equivalent to a refugee camp: not really adequate protection from weather or vermin, unreliable sources of food and medical care, essentially for a lifetime. When multiple generations are stuck in these conditions, and want to get to a better place but are unable to buy or work their way out but cannot because they don't have the money to buy their way into "the system."
Like everything, there's a lot of relativity to it - if the whole human race is brought back to these conditions, then nobody is in a position to make it better. But, when the means are readily available, but our system of laws and economics force people into those conditions due to their lack of wealth, and hold them there for lifetimes... just because they're not being obviously directly exploited by "owners" doesn't mean they've got a life better than slaves.
And, you're right - even billionaires suffer for a lifetime, it's part of existence. I'm not sure we're all up to the Llama's purpose of using our lives and possessions to help other people, but the part about "at least try to not hurt them" should be exercised by those in power (including the possession of wealth) whenever possible.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Saturday June 15 2019, @02:10PM
Then it's good news that such levels of poverty are decreasing, right? Or does the narrative not depend on what's actually going on in the world?
That works against you as well. If you have the wealth to get adequate protection from weather and vermin, reliable food and medical care, etc, then you're not at the above level of poverty no matter how much you spin relative privation. And the developed world is a great example of how systems of laws and economics can free people rather than force them into such conditions.
Unless, of course, the parts where the "trying" hurts those poor worse than not trying.
My take, of course, is that we are currently in the greatest elevation of people out of poverty and ignorance in out thousands of years of human history. It wasn't because some do-gooders made the world better, but because of the systems of laws and economics you decry together with massive technology development and the empowerment of women. What is remarkable throughout this discussion is how many people believe they are entitled to an ever improving world, combined with a near blind view of what that improvement should entail - and yet often combine this utopian expectation with an incredibly pessimistic view of the world that ignores the many positive things we've already done and will do.
Well, Virginia, if the world sucks as much as you claim, then no wonder it doesn't meet your expectations!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jasassin on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:57PM (2 children)
If you were a homeless child on the streets of India taken in by a street thug to pour hot metal into your eyes to blind you so you can make more money for them begging, then yes they are better off dead (IMO).
Perhaps you'd rather be born in India, blinded and fed just enough to live a nightmare.
Not everyone is born in a the 90210 USA. (IMO) You have a myopic perspective.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 13 2019, @07:08AM
I thought they heated spoons to press against the eyes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 13 2019, @12:34PM
Opinion, that's the key, and if you just take this child away from the street thug and put them in an orphanage with rats, roaches, poor food, wooden pallets for bedding, a leaky thatched roof, and indifferent caretakers - that child would be happy and grateful for their life, for a while at least until they adjusted to their new baseline. At times, being blind might feel like a blessing to them.
Meanwhile, I worked for a CEO who drove his Ferrari to work (when he bothered to show up), parked it on his own floor of the parking structure, had detailers clean it while he was in meetings swinging his big dick - hiring or firing hundreds of people at his whim (saw him do both within 18 months), would jet off to New York for CNBC interviews and the like, and disappeared for weeks, sometimes months, to go on adventures like race driving in the IMSA circuit, hanging out in the Caribbean, or whatever the hell else his virtually unlimited money lifestyle indulged his ego with. He came from a family of money who all ruled their lives like that. Wife, kid, and risk of suicidal depression - his grandfather actually went through with suicide, and he appeared to be at risk a couple of times a year. So, apparently, that family also feels they are better off dead - at times.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday June 13 2019, @01:07AM (1 child)
Non-existence is neither good nor bad -- it is morally neutral. So it makes little sense to ask a question like whether someone would have been "better off never having been born." Existence is also neither good nor bad universally. Some people "opt out" by committing suicide, but suicides seem to often be more of a problem in decadent developed nations where people have enough money to at least be able to sit around and worry about "how much better their lives could be, so maybe they should just end it..." (Even more bizarrely, countries with higher reported "happiness" also tend to have higher suicide rates.) Actual poor people in poor nations rarely have time to develop such anxieties, as they are too busy actually living.
Anyhow, point being -- few people choose to "opt out" of life even in horrid conditions. So it's difficult to conclude that they'd be better off never having been born, as they choose to continue in an imperfect existence.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 13 2019, @12:36PM
Check any Facebook feed - reported "happiness" has very little to do with people's actual lives, or feelings of contentedness, satisfaction, or true inner joy in life.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 13 2019, @02:14AM
>All those people would have been better off having never been born, then?
Correct
https://aeon.co/essays/having-children-is-not-life-affirming-its-immoral [aeon.co]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 13 2019, @03:10AM (4 children)
A slightly lower poverty threshold ($1.90 per day) saw a factor of three [ourworldindata.org] decline in the absolute number of people earning that amount or less between 1970 and the near past (from just over 2 billion people to 700 million people), adjusted for inflation.
Keep in mind when the population is growing, there is always an income level that is greater than the population of the Earth at some past point with less people. It doesn't tell you anything about how the world is changing. It's just another game with "Heads I win. Tails you lose." rules.
What's missing from this analysis is that the income threshold of such poverty at such numbers is rising significantly over the course of the decades. I imagine the same arguments will be employed in 50-100 years when the poorest portion is only earning $25 a day, adjusted for inflation. It won't matter that they have an order of magnitude more wealth. They're still poor (particularly when poverty is measured relatively), and the "poor people > 1960 population" bit is still conveniently set.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 13 2019, @03:31AM (1 child)
Right. Lies, damn' lies and statistics.
Why would one expect anything else from khallow?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 13 2019, @11:50AM
Point is when our population is much greater than it is in 1960, and mostly poor, then there will always be a low number for wages and such associated with the poorest number of people who happen to match the population of the Earth in 1960. It tells us nothing about whether things are getting better or worse. But it sounds bad which is why someone bothered to find that number.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 13 2019, @01:00PM (1 child)
Hey, because $694 per year is totally adequate to provide food, shelter, and the occasional medical care, all over the world.
Last I checked, my non-management track corporate drone cube dwelling daily grind compensates me (in total) somewhere slightly above $694 per day, and I get pissed when I ask contractors for quotes to do stuff like cleaning the roof of my house and they ask for a bit over $694 per hour to do it ($3000 to pressure-wash a metal roof on a 2000 sq ft house? In your dreams, EZ clean.)
1960 was chosen because there are plenty of people alive, and even still in the active workforce, today who were born then, or before. A few of their parents are even still alive, and 3B is a nice round number.
Poverty is not suffering, and suffering is more relative than absolute so it's a virtually impossible statistic to collect, however - even though money cannot buy happiness (sorry, Paul, I do believe it can buy love, or at least rent it), the poverty statistic is the closest thing to an impartial measure which approximates human suffering: lack of food and shelter correlate pretty well with lack of wealth - whether that be land to work or cash income, and as we all migrate into the cities cash has become king.
My personal moral compass would never point toward killing the living - though crushing poverty effectively does that (which is a big part of why I find it... undesirable to perpetuate). I do think that birth prevention is a morally acceptable, even superior, alternative to intentional genocide, and implicit genocide via wars and death by poverty.
100 years ago, many communities that I have lived in since were divided between a few hundred wealthy homes on the desirable real-estate, and a few thousand poor homes on the nearby less desirable real-estate where the wealthy's servants lived. As servitude fell out of fashion, the rich/poor real-estate mostly did not move and that wealth disparity was the source of a lot of violence and fear, on both sides, even through the 1990s.
Gentrification of those servants' quarters has ensued in the last 20 years, and the lack of wealth disparity in close proximity has contributed to a lot more confidence walking the streets at night, lower crime statistics, and a general blossoming of the communities so gentrified.
The problem with gentrification is the displacement of the poor to other poor places, said displacement often disrupting social support networks and generally making a hard life harder. The world is shrinking, ever faster throughout my life (started in the 1960s) - it's getting ever harder to displace the poor out of sight, out of mind. Just giving them bread to eat isn't helping much.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 15 2019, @05:22AM
Well, Sherlock, that level apparently was chosen at some point in the past because it represented a lot of extremely poor people, a bit over 2 billion in 1970, not because it somehow represented an ideal level of income. Only about a third of that, maybe less, are that poor now.
So what? 3B is less than 7B, meaning the statistical games I describe can go on.
So when are you going to measure poverty rather than merely quote bullshit statistics? You have yet to touch on "the poverty statistic".
So what of the morality of viewpoints that don't illuminate the problems of our world?
Aside from such things as the massive shift of US population to the suburbs.
Gentrification has been going on for more than a century. You just noticed it because it affected some neighborhoods near you. Florida was notorious for being a late comer to the gentrification party. It didn't start until electricity and AC became widespread in the state. The more recent gentrification is due to the shift in so many peoples' wealth to home ownership over the past seventy years. It results in natural, but self-serving decisions on preserving property values.
Fortunately, you can help by employing social policies that are known to make the problem worse, right? I'll just note that despite our many feeble or even harmful efforts to make the poor less so, they have managed to not only survive, but grow wealthier, all the way down to the squatters in shanty towns. Maybe it's time to pay attention to what works rather than quote bad statistics that don't say anything.