The BBC reports that sperm quality continues to drop. Specifically, researchers "found a 52.4% decline in sperm concentration, and a 59.3% decline in total sperm count in men from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand." While alarmist publications tout this as a 60% drop, the decline is accelerating and the researchers are concerned that inaction may lead to species extinction despite the effect not being observed in regions with high machismo, such as South America, Asia and Africa.
The study "aggregates 185 studies between 1973 and 2011, one of the largest ever undertaken." It supposedly overcomes selection bias occurring from patients attending fertility (virility?) clinics and selection bias of null results not being published in journals (churnals?). My intuition is that insights can be gained from studying transsexualism. Practitioners claim patients increase at the rate of 15% per year (doubling every five years), over many decades and with no end in sight. This is akin to Moore's law, Kryder's law, Butters' law, Hendy's law, Rider's law, Carlson's law or any other exponential halving or doubling. So, it doesn't take a genius to understand that it will become an increasingly widespread issue.
Regardless, masculine medical problems are vastly under-represented. By some estimates, spending on male medical problems is about 1/4 of spending on female medical problems. For example, when a man seeks help for a legitimate medical issue, such as declining testosterone, a patient at the lower end of the "normal" range may be denied treatment even if he is constantly exhausted.
Well, take care of yourself. Eat properly. Drink properly. Rest properly. Stay active. And if healthy food and exercise won't fix accumulated problems, consider hormone replacement. You may also want to watch two films which seem to be mentioned with increasing frequency and seem to predict our era with some accuracy: Children Of Men and Colossus: The Forbin Project. Children Of Men is the second bleakest film I've ever seen and the film I've seen most during its initial cinema release. It explores the scenario of global infertility leading to economic collapse. In addition to a nexus of cast and crew, the seamless plot and astounding compositing, the film is a fantastic example of mise-en-scène which is best explained by example.
Anyhow, enjoy the films and get your medical problems addressed.
Disclosure: People in my family are affected by virility and hormone problems. I have a professional interest in film, media encoding and art education.
Related Stories
When I visit a poorly electro-mechanical engineer, we often watch two episodes of a television series. Indeed, my friend often watches fiction in two episode chunks because this is similar to the duration of a short feature film. Previous visits included the first two episodes of Breaking Bad , the next two episodes of Breaking Bad, the first two episodes of Continuum and the first two episodes of Dark Matter . To indicate the quality of The Expanse , we watched four episodes in one sitting. This is unprecedented for us.
The Expanse, which airs on the SyFy channel in the US, is set in a future where most of the solar system is colonized with ethnically diverse people who retain their languages, customs and fashion. One character has a notably heavy Afrikaans accent. A Martian captain has a distinctly Chinese appearance. However, people remain tribal; mostly Earther, Martian or Belter. This is a future where your gravity well means more than your genes. Belters provide water and minerals. Mars has its own industrial base and technology. Unfortunately, like the Philip K. Dick story The Crystal Crypt, Earth and Mars are on the brink of war and any random event could be the catalyst. Mars is resentful of Earth's squandered resources. Earth tortures Luna dissidents. Terrorists and sympathisers are widely suspected.
[Continues...]
Higher education is generally a poor deal. A good course at a good institution will boost a career but the vast majority of higher education options are worthless or detrimental. Despite this, people are willing to get themselves into maybe US$100,000 of educational debt. Meanwhile, Ivy League faculty salary often exceeds US$150,000. What do students get for a lifetime of debt? Weed-out classes with a 50% failure rate then top grades awarded with abandon. An increasingly long-tail of third-tier academic journals which are full of bogus results. (A racket within a racket.) Deluxe gymnasiums and student accommodation with en-suite bathrooms. And, in some cases, pressure on staff to ignore plagurism; often due to financial or cultural reasons.
Yes, there's the social aspect and in-person interaction but why is online education seen like a poor substitute along with correspondence courses, vocational courses and community colleges? And here's a humdinger: Why don't the best educational establishments have ISO9000 certification? Are the inputs too variable or is the process too scattershot? Actually, how efficient is education? Are these guys with the US$150,000 salaries even 1% efficient at teaching? I doubt many of them care.
So, what's the Shannon channel capacity of education. Who knows? That's a really poor state of affairs. In the 1940s, telcos knew more about their operational efficiency than educators know now. So, how effective could an education be? How much can we accelerate learning? With CAL [Computer Aided Learning] running since the 1960s we should achieve small miracles. Well, it works brilliantly in limited domains, such as numeracy and vocabulary but the bulk of CAL, educational videos, are a sea of unending dross. So far, I've sat through 18 out of 42 hours of Buckminster Fuller and nine hours of Stanford cultural history. Computer history was the most enjoyable. There's no shortage of content. It ranges from whizzy edutainment to excruitiating virtual blackboards.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @03:34AM
Women and eunuchs will have sperm count of zero.
I heard cafebabe isn't a babe either. I bet he has the most sperm of all.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @03:45AM (20 children)
A good guess would be plasticizers. They are in nearly all soft plastic. BPA is famously bad, but the replacements are suspected to be even worse.
Other guesses include common ingredients in food, cosmetic products, fire retardants, cosmetics, wood preservatives, ink... there are an incredible number of possible culprits, and most likely there are multiple sources of the problems.
Research won't get you any love. You'll upset every company that profits from whatever is involved, and you'll upset a large portion of the population that wants to believe that LGBT stuff is genetic or a normal choice or an evil sin. Suddenly you turn all that into a class-action injury lawsuit for birth defects.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @03:59AM (2 children)
Wi-Fi microwaves are nuking my junk!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:33PM (1 child)
This one shouldn't have been modded offtopic. It may be a bit silly, wifi seems like a very unlikely culprit, but it is still talking about possible causes of infertility.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Saturday July 29 2017, @10:22PM
Given this has been going on longer than Wi-Fi has been around, it seems likely that there's some other cause, though Wi-Fi might be a contributor.
Though if you expand it a more general 2.4GHz radiation, it does seem to start about the time microwave ovens became commonplace.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:11AM (1 child)
Indeed, and referring to your '..common ingredients in food' another good guess would be phytoestrogens.
The problem is, as you state, '..there are an incredible number of possible culprits', this, compounded with the fact that there are an indeed an incredible number of powerful vested commercial interests associated with the continued usage of said culprits. Good luck trying to find out what 'They' know about it.
You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment...
(on a particularly tin foilish sort of day, I often wonder if somehow it's all planned, a means to get rid of the 'breeders'...)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Saturday July 29 2017, @03:43PM
Flaxseed has 3x the phytoestrogens of soy. Guess what "healthy" ingredient goes into a lot of kids' cereals!
My guess is not so much the soy protein products (not terribly prevalent anymore) as the switch in the 1960s from lard to soybean oil, which now pervades western cooking.
Phytoestrogen is also a thyroid inhibitor, and even a slight drop in thyroid efficiency can lead to persistent, uncontrollable weight gain (exercise and calorie control will NOT fix this).
As to the notion that orientals eat a lot of soy ... to my understanding, only as a condiment, not as a major ingredient.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 28 2017, @04:32AM (10 children)
Other causes:
Soy - phytoestrogen - debated.
Coca Cola - reduces sperm count by 30% [caffeineinformer.com] - coffee and tea do not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Friday July 28 2017, @08:33AM (8 children)
It's probably not just something we consume:
Asians consume soy 10 times more and don't show any symptoms.
Same with Coca Cola. Hugely popular in South America and the Middle East and no problems there. Also, Coca Cola keeps switching sweeteners and adjust their formulas so the continuous trend really doesn't make sense.
It's not a lack of exercise and obesity either. Plenty of those in South America and within African Americans.
Not antibiotics. Plenty of that all around.
I would have guessed lactose on account of Black and Asians being too intolerant to milk. But I think they consume plenty of dairy in the Middle East and India so I'm not too sure... Similarly, Alcohol has it's own exceptions.
Not a pesticide. Grain moves around the globe all the time.
Overall, for it to stay hidden for so long, it's probably a combination of Anglo-Saxon genetics with (aforementioned?) environmental conditions.
compiling...
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @12:40PM
You don't know how great their fertility would be if they didn't eat all that soy! ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @05:08PM (3 children)
Perhaps it is the corn syrup (now called "natural sweetener" in the US) used in so many products? Is this type of slow poison used worldwide?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @07:30PM (1 child)
Coca Cola diet doesn't has corn syrup.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @07:50PM
But the regular Coke does, as does every other major (and most minor) manufacturer of soda, candies, etc etc. Not to mention a shit-ton of other manufactured and processed foods. If you think drinking Diet Coke means you dodged a bullet then you are mistaken.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @04:28PM
No, it is mostly used in the US because of the government subsidies for corn growers there.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Friday July 28 2017, @07:05PM (2 children)
A friend thinks that industrial farming is the problem. Specifically, by volume, an increasing proportion of chicken, beef and pork is female. Males are usually killed before they grow to adults because they don't lay eggs, produce milk or have multiple pregnancies but do consume the same or more food. Historically, this wadn't an issue but farming has become industrial and very competitive. To counter the bias of xeno-estrogen and obtain a traditional mix of xeno-hormones, he eats veal on a regular basis.
Anyhow, it would be worthwhile to compare virility versus farming practices.
1702845791×2
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @07:32PM
Farming been industrialized in China for quite some time.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @08:59PM
I'm gonna call bullshit on part of that. Chicken produced for meat is overwhelmingly male -- not only are cockerels bigger at a given age, but also better feed conversion -- that is, they get bigger, and they eat more, but they get bigger by more than they eat more. It's possible (not sure) some specific products like chicken nuggets, or anything else with "mechanically separated chicken" in it, may skew female from using old laying hens in them, but actual chicken meat is basically all cockerels grown for the purpose.
The idea that chicken meat and chicken eggs come from the same flock hasn't been true, in terms of commercial operations, for half a century or more.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @08:36AM
It's "probably" also the fact we allow the weak and sick survive with all the fancy healthcare. Right-thinking Americans are only thinking of the greater good when they try to take it away from their fellow countrymen. Saving a nickel is just a side-benefit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @11:04AM
Try being a bit more nuanced with the statistics here because you've just averaged away the material differences between goods in many of the spaces you referred to! Yes, you can get better products! and .. .. .. High Income Families will likely buy and use higher end products .. which just happen to have fewer of those estrogenic chemicals in them. I'm not calling this 'a war against useless eaters' or others that don't travel via private planes, but it might as well be. American beers, on average, carry more estrogen than those in europe.
But yes, gayness and lgbt .. certainly related to this dietary/environmental poisoning. Depression and obesity.. you name it. But class-action law suits against one thing at a time won't help here as the assault on the west by the west happens on so many levels that you cant solve the problem by going against symptoms like that.
But do the stats thing and look at risk vs cost. It might be enlightening to discover alternatives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @11:18AM
Obama.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday July 28 2017, @04:46PM (1 child)
Considering that most violence is perpetrated by men, we'd honestly be better off with masculinity bred out of us.
The problem, of course, is reproduction, but that can be fixed with genetic engineering, IVF, etc. Give the technology another couple decades and this hysteria over low sperm counts should disappear: low (or even zero) sperm counts will be a positive, not a negative, since that'll mean few or no unplanned pregnancies. When people want to have kids, they can just do it artificially.
Of course, given that the #1 reason people have kids these days is "whoops!", this will mean a rapidly declining population which could cause problems. But that can be fixed too, if all this anti-aging research pans out and human lifespans are greatly increased. If we can look forward to 200-500 or more years of life, or possibly even biological immortality, then a low birthrate won't be such a problem because the death rate will also be very low, resulting in a stable population. When that happens, sperm counts will not be a problem at all.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @07:03PM
If I were to score and rank people on this, my measure would be roughly "defensive violence divided by offensive violence", with reasonable preemptive strikes counting as defense.
It takes violence to defend a person, family, or country.
Evolution made us violent because violence is required for survival. Even pacifists rely on it, taking advantage of the fact that others will intervene on their behalf with violence.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @03:59AM
That reads like a monty python skeet.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MostCynical on Friday July 28 2017, @04:01AM (3 children)
last scare was men becoming extinct in 5 million years; that was debunked: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-17127617 [bbc.com]
Any of these researchers have shares in fertility clinics?
Here: test yourself... http://www.fairhavenhealth.com/spermcheck-fertility.html [fairhavenhealth.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Friday July 28 2017, @12:45PM (2 children)
This scare comes up every couple years. It's usually over in a few days and people forget about it. I've read accounts about it here and there going back to the mid-1850s at least. If it turned out to go back even further it would not surprise me. I presume it's effective because many men panic at this sort of concern instinctively.
Anyway, so what if fertility drops 50%. You'll have to, what, try to have children 2 to 4 times as much? Probably a lot of guys totally fine with that. :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @03:46PM (1 child)
Yeah, I was actually a bit disappointed when we got pregnant the first month both times.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday July 28 2017, @04:51PM
Exactly. Personally, if I had the power to genetically re-engineer humans, one thing I'd tweak is the fertility rate. Along with eliminating aging, to prevent a population explosion I'd change humans so that they don't even start to become fertile until after 50 years old, or maybe more. Even then, I'd make it so that women can only get pregnant once a year, not once a month like now. Or maybe once every 5 years. Basically, in my version of a brave new world, contraception really wouldn't be necessary, as it'd be so difficult to reproduce. Of course, people could resort to artificial methods if they really wanted, but if they just wanted to let things happen "naturally", in my world pregnancies would be somewhat rare.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:14AM (14 children)
http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/australian-women-need-us-to-fertilise-them-halal-chief-slams-white-men-in-facebook-rant/news-story/ec80593236bd78ebdaeedfce2b1d65b6 [news.com.au]
"The head of the Halal Certification Authority says Australian women need Muslim men to fertilise them to “keep them surrounded by Muslim babies”, declaring that the “white race will be extinct” in 40 years.
Mohamed Elmouelhy made the comments on Facebook in response to a study by researchers from the Hebrew University, published in the journal Human Reproduction Update, which found declining fertility rates among men in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
“According to the Hebrew University, Australian men [sic] sperm count has declined by 52 per cent over the last 40 years so your men are a dying breed, Australian women need us to fertilise them and keep them surrounded by Muslim babies while beer swilling, cigarette smoking, drug injecting can only dream of what Muslim men are capable of,” Mr Elmouelhy wrote in a Facebook comment, which was first reported by The Daily Mail and has since been deleted.
“If the country is left to the bigots the white race will be extinct in another 40 years. Muslims have a duty to make your women happy because you are declining, better go chose [sic] a plot for yourself at your local cemetery. If you can’t afford it, commit suicide it is a cheaper alternative for bigots.”"
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:21AM (6 children)
How is it that muslims are not bigots?
From wikipedia:
Prejudice is an affective feeling toward a person or group member based solely on their group membership. The word is often used to refer to preconceived, usually unfavorable, feelings toward people or a person because of their sex, gender, beliefs, values, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race/ethnicity, language, nationality, beauty, occupation, education, criminality, sport team affiliation or other personal characteristics. In this case, it refers to a positive or negative evaluation of another person based on their perceived group membership
If this bigot hates Australian men so much why does he stay here?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:32AM (4 children)
It just isn't, stop inquiring into this line of thought, or else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:35AM (3 children)
Or else what?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:39AM (2 children)
Or else I'll fertilize you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @01:02PM (1 child)
You will shove your dick up my ass?
We call that rape here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:36PM
Nono, its ok see, he ISN'T muslim.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @04:41PM
Isn't implying that all muslims are bigots, itself a bigoted thing to do?
This one surely is, but don't go lumping them all together.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:46AM (2 children)
I like the Daily Mail's version [dailymail.co.uk] better. It's got 6 pictures! Go go Murdoch news!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @09:13AM (1 child)
6 pictures of what? I am too afraid to click on the link.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @01:22PM
Nothing NSFW. The offensive facebook post. The picture of the person quoted.
The article shows how racist this person is against "white" people
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @01:04PM
How is this trolling? Click the link. This is directly quoted from the head of halal certification authority who was responding to this article about sperm count.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @02:27PM
the “white race will be extinct” in 40 years.
I fully expected it to be extinct by the end of January.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday July 28 2017, @05:05PM (1 child)
This is the same guy who said Yassmin Abdel-Magied should be given a medal. She's fired! She should be deported. And he said Israel has apartheid. He's making a fool of himself on social media. A complete fool. What a loser! Very sad! He tried to friend me, he was bleeding very badly. I told him no!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @03:20PM
Too late. She deported herself.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Friday July 28 2017, @05:41AM (44 children)
Face it, 90% of the problems we have are due to too many people. Get rid of 1/3 of the people on the planet and a lot of things will self correct soonish.
My karma is gonna take a hit but fuck it. We need to stop basing our economies on population growth and realize too many people is kinda like an algae bloom. The algae love the free food and abundant sex, but the fish and the fishermen and the fish eaters suffer.
I'm not saying we need to kill one out of three people alive, and I'm not saying China's 1 child policy was good, but, well, yeah, I guess I'm saying we need a global 1 child policy for a couple generations.
Jeez, I must be drunk for not posting as an AC.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @05:50AM (4 children)
It's simple why you're stupid.
Dropping sperm count means men's bodies are being poisoned. That has FAR MORE reaching implications than simply just the number of babies being born. (Even more so when you consider men who want to have babies will try more times regardless of sperm count until they get a baby, and men who don't will use protection.)
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @07:51AM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @09:20AM
Here, you can have some of mine, if your count is low.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:38PM (1 child)
Terrible modding going on in this thread!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @10:43PM
For some time I have been noticing that the mod count on SN has been dropping! Is this an indication that SoylentNews will some day become extinct? (Somebody please mod the parent down, off-topic, redundant, troll, or flame, it is a very weak post, and will not make it to the Ovum.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @06:44AM (1 child)
You, sir, are worse than Hitler.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday July 28 2017, @11:54AM
No. Hitler actually did something to earn his shame. The GP is just venting crazy.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday July 28 2017, @08:04AM (1 child)
The problem is not solely too many people. It's too many people living a very wasteful lifestyle.
There is the macho kind of living in which men show off their fitness by deliberately being wasteful, for instance by driving a Hummer. A nasty joke I heard to put down men who drive a Prius: "what sound does a Prius make when it accelerates? 'I'm gaaaay'" Many women wouldn't be caught dead dating a man who drives an econobox such as a Metro. Walking is right out. Only homeless bums travel by foot! But everyone should jog frequently, to stay physically fit.
Most people play "keeping up with the Joneses", which involves consuming much more than needed, to show the world they have high social status. I've been wondering when "keeping down" will suddenly become cool. I noticed a change of attitude when gas spiked at $4/gallon in the US during the Great Recession. My econobox car went from an object of scorn to kind of cool, just like that. People didn't cut me off any more. Now that gas prices are down again, hovering around $2/gallon, people are mostly back to driving monster SUVs, and cutting in front of me but not quite as often as before.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Friday July 28 2017, @02:51PM
I live in Canada and bought a new Honda Fit just as fuel prices hit their peak in mid-2008 (i.e. before the economic crash). Some visitors from Utah stopped by in the parking lot to admire it, and told me there were waiting lists 2 months long where they were from. *Used* Fits were selling for higher than dealerships could charge (which was already about $2000 USD over sticker), which blew my mind since I wrangled a pretty good discount off sticker price on mine.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 28 2017, @08:10AM (34 children)
Who really is doing that? I don't buy that any economy is based on population growth. There are economies where the actors operate on the assumption that there will be population growth. If population growth stopped, they'd simply shuffle around resources until they were operating on the different assumption.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @11:46AM (1 child)
The economies of state pensions?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 28 2017, @03:07PM
Well, that is a good point. But my take on those is that they are more based on lies than on population growth, particularly since some of the promises require a population growth rate that the society wasn't achieving at the time (US Medicare, for a notorious example). It's far easier to insincerely promise something in a distant tomorrow after you are dead than it is to deliver something today.
Second, these systems function just fine in a non-growth environment, if you cut the benefits.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 28 2017, @11:11PM (31 children)
The current "actors in power" of the western economies (US, Australia, NZ, South Korea, to a lesser degree Europe, Japan, etc.) are profiting significantly on models that are population growth dependent, and they drive policies that perpetuate population growth in their countries.
Why, at this point in time, does the US and so many other countries still have tax policies that encourage having children?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 29 2017, @01:04PM (30 children)
What policies that perpetuate population growth? Sorry, I'm not seeing it. If they were serious about encouraging population growth, the first thing would be to take women out of the workplace and to reduce the cost of housing and renting so that a single worker family could readily afford it. And maybe more schools that aren't crap since there's not much profit in making more poor, uneducated people (given that there are already billions of them in the world).
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 30 2017, @03:03AM (29 children)
There's lots of profit in making more poor, under-educated people, people just good enough to work in factories, construction, cleaning services, retail and distribution, farms, restaurants, services, staff luxury spas, etc. All those low-end middle class hardworking people are good to have around, and they drive massive profits into things like the entertainment and healthcare industries.
Our public schools are just good enough to propel the average kid all the way up to janitor, maid, masseuse, lawn care technician, and the handy ones can make it all the way to plumber, without any scholarships or outside financial assistance.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 30 2017, @01:04PM (28 children)
Rather than automate or employ in developing world countries? It's a great story, but maybe you need to come up with a better one.
Aren't poor and under-educated.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 30 2017, @05:28PM (27 children)
Thinking of a plumber I know, has a wife and two kids, lives in a 60 year old 1100 square foot home located about 1/4 mile from a major airport runway, jet fuel fumes inundate the local neighborhood a couple of times a month. Wife also works administrative assistant jobs as she can, they have the plumbing truck and one family car that they've had for the last 16 years.
They can afford cable TV, food, air conditioning, and furniture, so, I guess that's not poor? They don't have enough education to get better jobs, but I suppose since they're not "poor" they're also not under-educated?
Plumbing and personal services aren't being automated or offshored anytime soon, neither is home construction, cleaning services, (better) restaurants, or luxury spa personnel.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 31 2017, @01:43AM (26 children)
Yes [nytimes.com].
Now, maybe this guy is as poor as you think he is. But he fits a lot of the characteristics of self-made millionaires.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 31 2017, @09:35PM (25 children)
Like I said, we know the family (wife better than the plumber, but we know them all fairly well). The day that man has $1M net worth, will be the day that an 1100 square foot home in a crappy neighborhood sells for $2M. He has trouble finding profitable work, a lot of the time he's bidding on jobs that barely turn a profit because there's nothing better available.
And, thank you for the most straight forward misleading statement I've read in a long time: "self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires."
Read another way: less than 3% of Americans are millionaires. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/24/a-record-number-of-americans-are-now-millionaires-new-study-shows.html [cnbc.com] though, the number is increasing as inflation degrades the quality of life that a millionaire can afford.
Since one in five millionaires are retired, that leaves only 8.6M "working" millionaires, of which 2.9M are not self employed, and 5.7M are self employed.
To risk mixing statistics from disparate sources, there are 127.3M "working" Americans https://www.statista.com/statistics/192361/unadjusted-monthly-number-of-full-time-employees-in-the-us/ [statista.com] of whom, 6.76% are millionaires, and 13.24% are non-millionaire self-employed.
So, it would seem simple, just be self-employed and you're in great company - work your way to the top 1/3 of that crowd and you're a millionaire.
What's lacking is the history of those 5.7M "self-employed" millionaires, how many of them made their first million while self-employed? without family assistance? without an incredible stroke of luck?
I'm not self-employed, haven't been for 90% of my working life, but for 80% of my working life, I worked in situations that could have propelled me to $1M+ net worth in a short time. Didn't happen, but if it did - I probably would then have made the switch to full-time self-employed.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 01 2017, @02:42AM (24 children)
My link provided some perspective on that. But even if we accept uncritically your point, somehow we've come up with a society where 6 million people can get that lucky. That's a huge improvement over the past.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 01 2017, @03:01AM (23 children)
6 million is 1.7%, not really a huge improvement over Medieval Feudalism - would not be surprising for 2% of an estate to be enjoying the benefit of the King's residence. In some ways, we all have it "better" now, with technology, medicine, easy food, cheap shelter, fast travel, etc. In other ways, if you're not part of the top 5% or so, you have it so much worse today with increased population densities, lack of free space to migrate to, etc. Enjoy the air conditioning, electronic entertainment, and packaged foods, even if they are a weak/fragile substitute for having 100 productive acres on which to provide for your family.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 01 2017, @03:51AM (22 children)
It's better than 0% when you're tied to the land and have zero opportunity to become one of the landed nobles.
I have to wonder. Do you really believe the shit you're shoveling? Yes, we haven't strictly improved in every conceivable parameter possible, but that's not as bad as presented. For example, Medieval Feudalism wouldn't achieve the high population densities we routinely enjoy because there would be mass die-offs first due both to their inability to support those levels of population and the poor hygiene and sanitation they had. I'd rather have the difficult population problem than the even more difficult repetitive die-offs problem.
As to "lack of free space", there's more "free space" now than then. If you were a serf, you were tied to a plot of land. So much for the free space.
Productive is relative. I estimate conventional agriculture can feed several dozen to several hundred people on 100 acres of farmland (depending on crop and quality of the land) and probably a somewhat lesser amount on animals grazing on pasture. Apparently, hydroponics can crudely triple that yield from farmland. Meanwhile you're speaking of barely feeding a family on 100 "productive" acres. As to "weak/fragile", I think people greatly underestimate the sturdiness of a modern civilization (at least one which does more than obsess over wealth inequality, let's say).
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 01 2017, @11:35AM (21 children)
There, precisely there, you identify the core of the "shit I'm shoveling." Who, exactly, enjoys a high population density? What population density is ideal? If we could cram 7 trillion "living" homo-sapiens onto the earth, is that preferable to what we have today?
The "shit I'm shoveling" is that a population density of 700 million would be more enjoyable for those present than the current 7 billion, especially if it can be achieved without losing the good sides of modern technology. The primary benefactor of fewer h. sapiens on the planet (besides the living h. sapiens themselves who would be enjoying 10x the natural resource) would be the ecosystem that could do something besides serve a crushing load of waste recycling / food production.
Take your miracles of hydroponics and conquer space with them, they're great, wonderful, highly productive in the developed dimension, but not robust the way that a thriving natural ecosystem is. If we could use hydroponics to significantly reduce our ecological footprint, then great- but we don't seem to be anywhere close to doing that before 95%+ of the forests and other convertible wild spaces have been converted to croplands. Because they're "more expensive" hydroponics are more of a method of last resort, modern civilization prefers to exploit the wild spaces first - and I don't think that business people even come close to understanding the value they are destroying when they utilize these "cheaper natural resources."
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 01 2017, @12:37PM (20 children)
And I went on to describe the die-offs that happened to maintain the population at that low level. Further, the many inefficiencies of feudalism and its technologies (not to mention the higher population growth rate!) mean that 700 million people have a larger footprint than they would in an advanced society. Let us also keep in mind here that high population growth via birth is a feature exclusively of the poorest parts of the world not the most technologically advanced.
They don't need to be robust locally. Like most such agricultural technologies, they are very distributed which provides a degree of robustness. It's also something you can stick in a city (eg, the top floor or two of a building, for example).
What good sides are we speaking of? I recall you scare quoted the vast majority of modern civilization as "better".
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 01 2017, @01:03PM (19 children)
So, if you want to get to the ideals I would strive for, they've all been outlined before by some popular philosophers: "love one another, turn the other cheek", "Government should be set up so that no man need be afraid of another.", "Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them." etc.
So, modern civilization _seems_ to have made some progress toward those aims, in some limited pockets, although if you consider the whole of human population I'm not so sure that there really has been progress per-capita... sure, more people are living in good conditions, but is a larger percentage of the total population really living in better conditions than before? Maybe, but if you switch focus back to total numbers, are there more or less people living in unacceptable, suffering conditions than before? Simply by population growth, there are so many more people today, and a fraction of them are indeed suffering by whatever definition of suffering, just by the growth of population that suffering population must be larger than the whole of human population at some point in the past.
As to good sides of modern technology: communication, transport and travel, medicine, reduction of labor to produce food and shelter, improvements in shelter - all good things, may we never lose them. However, "with great power comes great responsibility" and I don't think that we, as a species, are doing so well on that front - we are using the power we have to over-strip natural resources, more and more often beyond the ability to recover within decades, or longer.
I'm not advocating a return to Medieval technology and lifestyle as a means to control population, but a return to Medieval population levels wouldn't be a bad thing, and would yield rewards that most people today have lost sight of. So, how do we get there? Maybe if we would obsess over wealth inequality just long enough to elevate the bottom of the wealth pyramid out of fear of suffering, that might be enough to slow the birthrate - I doubt it is enough by itself, but it's a good start.
Keep the pointy top wealth pyramid, but if you're going to give all people in the pyramid the rights and power of h. sapiens to dominate the earth, you'll need to give them more than the right to procreate as accessible means to strive toward that domination.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 01 2017, @11:26PM (18 children)
What's the point of asking questions you're not interested in answering? To answer your question, a larger percentage of the total population is living in better conditions than 1950 which is a nadir IMHO for recent humanity. Maybe they aren't living as well as they were in say 1800 or 1000 AD or 20,000 BC or whatever, but you have yet to make an argument for why some past time is better aside from a raw population count.
Second, what's the point of comparing current civilization to some civilization with far fewer people? We're not magically getting rid of 90% or more of our currently alive people. In other words, you are comparing a real world situation to an imaginary situation only attainable in the near future with a massive human die-off. And that brings up the obvious question, why should I bother to defend modern civilization against your accusations when the problem is instead something that wouldn't be immediately dealt with by any nondestructive change in civilization (and for which modern civilization would still stand out as superior)? Don't we have better things to worry about?
For example, a genuine apples to apples comparison for your feudalism example would be modern civilization with 700 million people versus a feudalistic society with 700 million people. Take a wild guess which one is going to shine. It's not going to be the "100 productive acres" one.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 02 2017, @02:50AM (17 children)
See, modern civilization with 700 million people can still have 100 productive acres per family unit, like Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre city writ 100x larger.
If you're only interested in talking about things that you might see in your lifetime, we may as well get wrapped up in Donald T drama - that's what's here and now.
If you're talking long-term, your points about wealth, poverty and population growth are very much on-point. The starving countries in Africa had huge numbers of children per family, and basic human behavior is indeed prompted to larger families in, and around times of stress and uncertainty, so that's my point about raising the bottom of the wealth pyramid out of the fear of starvation, suffering, etc. to bring about at least a reduction in the population growth rates naturally - we'll probably need to do more to start a population decline, including some economic model shifts that will be painful for some of the people currently dwelling at the tops of some of the pointy-er wealth pyramids - not that the point is to "hurt the people at the top," just that any significant changes are going to cause some reshuffling and will blunt some of the pointy-er pyramids, while sharpening others - and that leads to all kinds of political dramas as people struggle to stay "on point."
Speaking hypothetically ideally, how fast should we return to 700 million (not a magic number, just one of many good ones, better than 7B by far) population? For minimum pain of the existing populations, it should be slow, like a steady -0.23% annual decline for 1000 years, but that would be nearly impossible to engineer in the current sociopolitical landscape with competing superpowers and hundreds of sovereign states. If you're interested in "saving the planet" it might be better to "start with a bang" and drop faster at first, like 1 child per couple fast until we're back to 2B or so, note that China's population still grew under their 1 child "policy" - effective implementation is key, and that's a big part of where taking the economic fear out of people's lives is important.
Or, we could just de-regulate sperm poisoning industries and "allow nature to take its course" that way, but as long as people can still breed, their desire to breed has more effect on the population rates than their raw ability to breed based on sperm counts.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 02 2017, @05:25AM (16 children)
Well, that and the massive improvement of the majority of humanity on Earth through a variety of things that aren't supposed to do that, like capitalism, globalism, and free trade, to name a few bugbears that people keep speaking of. My prediction is about half to two thirds of the world's population will be considered developed world in 2050. That includes the typical negative population growth common to native populations of developed world countries.
There's too much of the world that is improving too fast. China is the obvious example, but it's far from the only country out there getting better rapidly.
I don't believe 2050 is very far away. Moving on, I believe by 2100, less than 10% of the world's population will live in countries that have a standard of living worse than the best today, Norway (better wealth, health, and education). And they'll get that way through the processes you've discounted so far.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 02 2017, @11:17AM (15 children)
Calling China and India 50% "developed" by 2050 is optimistic, maybe possible if all you need for "developed" is running water and electricity - but there have been plenty of false starts with fast-track development of large populations, the first thing coming to mind being the poisoning of massive tracts of farmland in India by the powered pumping of arsenic rich groundwater out of boreholes.
If you're including villages in Africa that have an internet hut with a solar powered satellite connection to the net as "developed," sure, we'll probably get to 50% before 2050. Tech like cell phones and internet access are spreading like fire, and are probably more beneficial than fire was when it was introduced; and with fewer downsides for what's left of the natural ecosystems.
Will this all lead to a "soft landing" where we don't need disease, wars and starvation to stabilize the population? Barring some Kurzweilian singularity that somehow uploads my consciousness to a computer, I think I'll be out of the physical awareness arena by approximately 2070, and I think we're in for some bigger shit-shows between now and then - the mass extinction event shows no signs of slowing, and capitalism, globalism, and free trade aren't helping much at all on that front. I don't personally believe there will be any population reductions before 2070, and as we squeeze harder on the natural resources, things like economically imposed vegetarianism for 50%+ of the population seem inevitable. I lived in Texas, and I can tell you that all 27 million of 'em would rather watch the world burn than give up their BBQ, and they're not alone.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 02 2017, @12:30PM (14 children)
No, I think they'll be much higher than 50%. Let us keep in mind too that every current developed world country has both backwards and poor populations. That's not what makes them developed world. Massive infrastructure, legal systems, and high per capita net wealth is what makes the developed world what it is.
I'm not speaking of false starts, but rather economic development similar to how the US, Europe, and Japan did it. These countries are fundamentally changing due to global trade and their growth will in turn fuel economic growth in other countries that trade with them.
Unless, of course, all that new infrastructure that will be built over the next 33 years means they don't have to do that.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 02 2017, @02:48PM (13 children)
India, and to a lesser but still significant degree China, have "bright spots" of development intermingled with huge populations of underdeveloped infrastructure. Where you draw the line is important if you're going to hit any particular goal. Ability to travel to an international airport and get a flight to (insert arbitrary major city: London, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Shanghai, Tokyo, etc.) within 24 hours might be one definition of "developed" that gets to be hard to meet if you require the people to do it with their own resources. Sure, with a month of prep time and unlimited funds, most of the world is accessible by that measure, but if you ask someone in rural China to get themselves to Sydney using nothing but the resources they command, and less than their annual disposable income, a whole lot less of the world is capable of that.
but without the massive depletion of natural resources and dependence on cheap foreign labor, because: when everybody is developed, there's no underdeveloped world to "offer wonderful opportunities" of exploitation to.
And, no amount of infrastructure development in the next 33 years will be able to provide beef brisket sandwiches for lunch, daily, to 10 billion people, not on this planet.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 03 2017, @12:26AM (12 children)
I believe this will become the golden age of human labor similar to the US's situation in 1950 and 1960.
Which is patently false. What is "beef", for example? It's a food, not flesh of a dead cow raised in a particular way. We can grow artificial beef and skip the moderate inefficiency of pasture-based cattle agriculture.
But even if we decided that we have to grow real cows and everyone has to have that beef brisket sandwich every day, there's ways to do that more efficiently than present. For example, cows could be grown under the cities with both the waste food stream from human food and hydroponic based agriculture. Cows aren't that inefficient. That would get past land use constraints, at least for 10 billion people. At some point, it would of course be more economic to switch mostly to protein sources with a smaller land footprint, but to outright claim that we couldn't restructure our societies to consume vastly more beef than we currently do, ignores that we can optimize a lot further along those lines than we currently do. It just costs to do so.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 03 2017, @02:43AM (11 children)
First, 26.99M out of 27M Texans will NOT accept vat grown protein as beef, regardless of how convincing it might become.
Second, industrial farming of poultry and pork is already so revolting that large portions of the population that can afford to get non-factory-grown eggs, chicken and pork are electing to do so with their wallets. Same for slime-pond-grown fish. Sure, you _could_ scale that idea up and grow cattle underground, but, are you actually calling that positive progress? My favorite quote from a factory chicken farmer: "that's the smell of money." If you've never smelled a chicken factory in person you should, just for a little perspective of how that kind of money gets made.
Finally, why beef brisket sandwiches? By the 1970s, the hamburger was the worldwide sign of prosperity - of American wealth and largess, and back then the 1/4 pounder was the "big" burger. By the late 1990s, the 1/4 pounder became the smallest burger on most menus, and what people have really wanted all along is sliced beef, not ground and homogenized like some vat grown stuff - maybe we can't all afford it every day yet, but if we're going to continue on this illusory wheel of progress that's what's coming next: open range, grass fed, prime cut beef as often as you can afford it, and if you're not eating it at least 3 times a week, well son, you're just not living in the first world, are you?
1/4lb per day is roughly 100lbs per year, per person. With modern application of hormones, etc. you can grow about 320lbs of beef per year per acre on good pasture land, so, per capita, just the beef of that "modest" by current standards daily 4oz hamburger for lunch requires about 1/3 of an acre of dedicated good pastureland, plus processing, packaging, transport and preparation - which is using copious quantities of fossil fuels in today's implementation of the global marketplace. Say population peaks around 12B, that means we'll need 4B acres of pastureland, just for lunchmeat, if we're all going to live like rich 1980s non-vegetarian Californians. Sound high? We're already grazing almost double that amount of land (mostly due to low quality forage growth), and there's not enough productive grazing land on the earth to double that again: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1209_051209_crops_map.html [nationalgeographic.com]
The primary technology that "proved" Malthus "wrong" was phosphate fertilizer, like what's coming from this https://goo.gl/maps/SELTofqKwRG2 [goo.gl] area of strip mining that presently supplies about 1/4 of all phosphate for fertilizer worldwide. Phosphate has its limitations, and undesirable side effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_zone_(ecology) [wikipedia.org] , and it's not opening huge productivity increases the way it did in the 1700s through the 1900s when mining it became cheap. Even if you move the cows into (absolutely disgusting to even imagine) underground pens, they've got to be fed from something that grows on solar power, maybe vats of algae would be more productive than grass, but, again, who really wants to go there?
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 03 2017, @04:07AM
And 27 million Second, industrial farming of poultry and pork is already so revolting that large portions of the population that can afford to get non-factory-grown eggs, chicken and pork are electing to do so with their wallets. Same for slime-pond-grown fish. Sure, you _could_ scale that idea up and grow cattle underground, but, are you actually calling that positive progress? My favorite quote from a factory chicken farmer: "that's the smell of money." If you've never smelled a chicken factory in person you should, just for a little perspective of how that kind of money gets made.
A lot of jobs are revolting. We manage to get them done anyway.
I'll note a few things here. First, your last question is just a classic example of moving the goalposts. A similar thing goes on when people in the recent past claimed that one couldn't have a developed world lifestyle without the carbon footprint of a US resident (which I think we all can agree is on the high side for the developed world). It's one thing to note that high quality food is a sign of developed world status, and another to deliberately pick food with an unusually high ecological footprint as a sign of developed world status. You also did this with the "100 productive acres" thing a while back.
No, the primary technology that proves Malthus wrong is women's emancipation. When women had choices other than merely raising children, it turns out enough of them wanted to do those other things to end positive growth rate in modern societies from reproduction.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 03 2017, @04:27AM (9 children)
And 27 million is much less than 10 billion. So unless we're suddenly up to our eyeballs in Texans, I think we're safe.
A lot of jobs are revolting. We manage to get them done anyway.
I'll note a few things here. First, your last question is just a classic example of moving the goalposts. A similar thing goes on when people in the recent past claimed that one couldn't have a developed world lifestyle without the carbon footprint of a US resident (which I think we all can agree is on the high side for the developed world). It's one thing to note that high quality food is a sign of developed world status, and another to deliberately pick food with an unusually high ecological footprint as a sign of developed world status. You also did this with the "100 productive acres" thing a while back.
No, the primary technology that proves Malthus wrong is women's emancipation. When women had choices other than merely raising children, it turns out enough of them wanted to do those other things to end positive growth rate in modern societies from reproduction.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 03 2017, @04:27PM (8 children)
I took Malthus' main point to be that there's a cap on how much population the world can support (and discovery of the "New World" was a big blow to his initial calculations) - I suppose if you want to get to the inevitability of disaster side of things, the lack of effective birth control back then was another major factor.
As for moving goal posts - when in history have the goal posts not moved? Moving goal posts is at the core of human happiness. I know a (Texan) family with net worth in the hundreds of millions, the stress in their lifestyles is entirely self-imposed. They're not satisfied when they're working, they're not content when they're not working - they have had multiple suicides in the past 20 years, in part due to classic manic-depression, and in part due to the human condition: no matter how good you have it, happiness comes from relative improvement, and unhappiness comes from feelings of helplessness to do what you want to do. Regardless of resources, political power, etc. there are always things that people are unable to achieve.
I stick by the 100 productive acres thing. If you're choosing to live in the desert, you may need more, but if we reduced the human population to one family - say 3.5 generations of 2 children per couple, so ~7 people, per 100 acres of "good" forest or farmland, we'd have high enough population to maintain academic and technological progress. Some people would stay in cities, but for any that wanted to move out onto the land, there would be plenty of land to move out onto. With continuing progress, we're not far from automated small farms, which - with low population density - would mean freedom to choose whether you wanted to hormone pump your meat animals for the productivity/efficiency increases, or let them grow more naturally, because it's not a resource constrained choice where the natural option just isn't economically feasible. The whole 100 family acres wouldn't need to be put into optimized production just to feed h. sapiens, there would be enough left over for a healthy, relatively un-managed bio-diverse nature.
Or, we can bio-engineer monoculture crops for maximum productivity, feed them to animals kept at 1000x natural densities, reeking of filth, but productive enough to feed a larger population, etc. etc. etc.
Either way, the population growth will need to stop and eventually stabilize - and we're not talking cosmic time scales - 2000 years of continued growth at the rate of the last 50 will lead to a completely unsustainable human population by any method except perhaps fusion powered underground farms and continent sized multi-level cities.
To me, since population stabilization has to happen somewhere, it's a question of what level should it be targeted at, and, clearly, I think we've already passed the ideal level and need to plan for a way to scale back. Quality over quantity. Just because we're going to peak over 10B doesn't mean that we should aim to stabilize there.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 03 2017, @10:17PM (7 children)
Birth control is another aspect of the emancipation of women that I already described. The key assumption, Malthus had was that exponential population growth was inevitable in the absence of extreme human behavior regulation or constraints of resources. That assumption is broken not by your fertilizer example or by wheat that produces two crops a year (the beginning of the "green revolution"), but by negative population growth in native populations throughout the developed world. The former merely increases the food supply, the latter changes the game in a light weight way.
Which is why development is not described in terms of happiness.
Which is increasingly irrelevant because population growth has greatly declined universally over the past 50 years.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 04 2017, @12:59AM (6 children)
I'm sorry, what statistics have you been reading that say that population growth has been slowing? Not slowing in some think-tank future, but actually slowing? The rate of growth increase may be tapering slightly today, but growth itself marches on.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3a/Human_population_growth_from_1800_to_2000.png [wikimedia.org]
I'm not talking about "in Russia," or "in the USA and Europe without considering immigration," I'm talking about world population, because that's what's going to drive cell-phone and T-shirt sales, need for food, wood for fires http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/ [who.int] , eventual desire for hamburgers, etc. And until ALL the world's people come up to food/shelter/economic security AND make some other gains, the population isn't going to stop, or even appreciably slow growing. The happy medium and low graphs shown here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population [wikipedia.org] have been predicted for decades, but as the decades roll by, total world population has continued to follow the high predictions. Scroll on down to the World population milestones in billions chart - we're still at 12 years between each additional billion in population, that number has never slowed down, the slowings on the chart are future predictions. Maybe you might argue that our % annual increase is slowing because the population has grown so large, as long as we're adding another billion people every 12 years or less, I don't call that slowing at all. 1200 years of that and we've got 107 billion people on the planet - I have a hard time believing that we'll manage that kind of number with (pleasant, desirable) technological breakthroughs - that course seems destined for some measure of control by disease, famine, lack of fresh water, and straight up lebensraum, all of which lead to wars when they strike populations that control an army of any size.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 04 2017, @03:46AM (5 children)
I'll note that the graph you linked to shows the slowing of the growth rate.
That was my thinking as well.
I do call that slowing because it is. Population growth is exponential. A linear rate like that actually indicates a substantial decline in population growth rate.
Only if humanity continues to have positive population growth. The above substantial decline in global population growth rate combined with both the developed world populations (excluding immigrants) having negative population growth rate and the rest of the world progressing to developed world status, indicates we aren't going that way.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 04 2017, @01:21PM (4 children)
I still call 7B too high, too stressful on the ecosystem, and until we actually start a decline, not just predict one 20 years from now (now being another moving goal post), it's still growth, even if we're "beating" the exponential trend, the natural systems that were in place for millions of years before us managed to reach an approximate equilibrium long enough to make a home for us, not by slowing growth from exponential to linear, but by finding actual equilibrium, with many many examples of not so great things happening when they didn't.
Stress on the ecosystem is a complicated combination of technology, lifestyle and sheer population numbers. I won't pretend to predict how that plays out even 10 years from now for technology or lifestyle. Historically, advances in technology and lifestyle have made the eco-stress-per-capita worse, not better. It hasn't been until the last decade or so that technological advances have really started (on a global scale) to hint at a true reduction in eco-stress-per-capita. Then, your (valid) argument that advances in lifestyle will bring down population growth numbers would seem to be balanced, or even outstripped by historical trends of eco-stress-per-capita as standards of living increase. Technology may, or may not, help to alleviate that any time soon - it's still far more chaotic than the observed trend in birth rate reductions correlating with lower economic stress. All this adds up, for me, to a population that won't peak under, or even near 10B, and will likely be stressing the ecosystem more like 15-20B+ people living today would.
The current mass extinction event isn't something that can be shrugged off, and it is still accelerating. Until humanity gets a handle on that, I'd say the population is still too high.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 04 2017, @04:23PM (3 children)
Nobody is predicting a population decline 20 years from now. That would happen somewhere in the 2050-2100 time frame. And we don't have a means in the near future to change that without killing people.
So what? Most of us realize that ecosystems will continue to be stressed for some time to come.
I strongly disagree. The developed world countries without exception has far lower pollution per capita than the developing world. That combined with the low fertility and the setting aside of wild spaces, means that advances in lifestyle have already reduced the stress on the ecosystem.
We will see what happens. I think it will be educational for you, should you choose to pay attention.
With most of the large animal extinctions happening 10k years ago, let us note. And I'm not going to collectively take blame for conditions beyond my control, such as the overpopulation issue in Africa and Asia.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 04 2017, @11:18PM (2 children)
What most of us don't realize is what the long term impact of that stress will be. It's not just about the dodo bird and carrier pigeon, it's about a crash in bio-diversity and the instability and vulnerability to plagues that brings.
is indeed a noble pursuit, but is progressing far too slowly to head off major extinction problems. I think this guy: https://eowilsonfoundation.org/half-earth-our-planet-s-fight-for-life/ [eowilsonfoundation.org] is beating the right drum, but not enough people who matter are listening.
All depends on what pollution you are looking at. From the polar bears' perspective, you're all wet.
Your confidence in your crystal ball will be your undoing.
Blame is not at issue, viable solutions for the whole planet are. Ignoring what is going on in Asia is even more dangerous than ignoring an approaching asteroid on a collision course, and we certainly wouldn't be "to blame" for that event, either.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 05 2017, @12:30AM (1 child)
Remember me talking about Pascal's wager? I already noted several actions that supposedly reduced the stress, but probably had the opposite effect.
Since the global warming myths are about polar bears drowning, I'd have to say they apparently are the ones who are all wet.
I don't make predictions willy nilly nor do I expect them to be perfectly accurate. It is remarkable how dismissive people are of modern civilization despite several centuries of remarkable progress which, due to modern globalization, has now been experienced by everyone except the completely isolated. Even the poorest have better access to knowledge, health care, wealth opportunities, and technology that their forebears. And the worst problems, overpopulation, habitat and arable land destruction, societal corruption, etc has been significantly addressed by our best societies.
Immediate population reduction is not viable. Making the world so free and wealthy that it naturally has a negative population growth rate is viable.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 05 2017, @04:23AM
The really remarkable progress seems to have come in the last 100 years, fueled by non-renewable resources. It will be remarkable how unpleasant the end of cheap energy will be.
Too slowly to save the Titanic from a fatal gash in the hull.
Keep wishing, I hope I'm wrong and you're right - I see no evidence in the historical record, even up through yesterday, only rosy predictions from people with vested interests in maintaining the status quo.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @05:46AM (1 child)
It'll probably stabilize, provided people are comfortable leaving their partners due to infertility and don't try to stay together via adoption. In that case, they'll be some weird shit happening, where certain populations are valued as breeding stock.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @04:51PM
If there are still plenty of children to be adopted, there isn't a problem. It is likely the genetic parents of the adopted child have no fertility issues.
There is another option that, in the case of male infertility the woman could get pregnant from a sperm doner, who would likely have been screened by the sperm bank and not have fertility issues.
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Friday July 28 2017, @06:05AM (1 child)
I'm unhealthy. Overweight, eat bad food, don't get enough exercise, sedentary office job. Spent my whole childhood chewing on plastic and bioaccumulating all sorts of shit.
So far knocked wife up once for twins, and just knocked her up again. Both times within a month of her going off of birth control.
Interesting that it is only affecting white developed nations. We have pretty similar lifestyles tech wise to Japan and Korea, food is different. So caused by junk food? We sit more so maybe our junk is getting overheated?
I guess this works though, the government has been telling us to have less kids because its a drain, then will turn around and tell us we have to accept immigrants because we didn't have enough kids. So as long as the rich get what they want. Maybe test the levels based on how much people make.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @08:41AM
Sure their your kids?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @08:52AM (9 children)
Another bullshit article... serious bullshit.
We have well over 7 BILLION individuals on the planet. The population is going to get past 10 BILLION soon. How are we going to be extinct if not via our own devices? Certainly, fertility is NOT one of the problems we, as a society, are having. This is beyond alarmist. They might as well start talking about black holes eating up the planet.
There are species that we are driving to extinction because of number of humans on this planet. When their numbers are over 1000, then they are OK. Under 100, then there is genetic issues. But we are 7,000,000,000. There is 7,000,000 for every single animal in a population of 1000 that is close to extinction. This means if everyone wanted to see an example of such a 1000 individual species, and they had 1 minute to look at it, it would take 5000 years. Most of the people would not have a chance to even see such an animal because of OUR numbers.
So WTF? Whoever wrote this opinion needs a kick in the nuts.
(Score: 3, Funny) by lx on Friday July 28 2017, @01:40PM (4 children)
You don't understand. This is nothing less than an attack on our precious bodily fluids.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday July 28 2017, @02:03PM (1 child)
We should retreat to the mineshafts . A few hundred thousand of us should be enough, lets say at a 10:1 female to male ratio so we can repopulate and once again make the western world great?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 28 2017, @11:08PM
Mr. President: we cannot allow a MINE SHAFT GAP!
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @02:40PM
"Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake. ...but I do deny them my essence."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:45PM
Are you by chance a boy who is not able satisfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Sulla on Friday July 28 2017, @02:24PM
If you are concerned about animals in this planet going extinct you should be worried about the decline of western culture. We fail at a lot of things and are slow to react to emergencies but we do eventually react. We have a self sustaining african elephant santuary here in the US where they can roam semi-free and continue to grow, our citizens donate more than most countries to helping africa/elsewhere (I presume a bunch goes into conservation), and we work through zoos/whatevers to attempt to bring species back from the brink.
Yeah we fail, but we also aren't eating whale, giant chinese salimander, killing off a whole dolphin species because we are so dirty, etc.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 28 2017, @11:01PM (2 children)
So, say 4,999 / 5,000 men are sperm-count-deficient, but one, somewhere, somehow, retains his virility. To achieve replacement birth rates, women need to have 2.1 babies in their lifetime - so this one guy could "service" about 1500 women per decade, keeping them at or above replacement birth rates via whatever insemination methods are deemed socially acceptable. If he stays fertile for ~35 years and everybody signs on for the surrogate father thing, there's no decline in population whatsoever.
Stranger things have happened, though I think the article is puffing up the story just to sell some scare copies.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Saturday July 29 2017, @10:36PM (1 child)
The big problem with that scenario would be the generations after that. If most of the humans in the world have the same fathers (or grandfathers, etc.) then genetic diversity would take a pretty big hit, and soon everyone would essentially be inbred. So we'd have another problem on our hands which might threaten our extinction after a few more generations.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 30 2017, @03:05AM
Worked O.K. for Genghis Khan - not saying that inbreeding is good, or should go on indefinitely, but sooner or later we'll be editing our children's genes before they're conceived, right?
🌻🌻 [google.com]