Comments by "Trazyn" (@Trazynn) on "" video.

  1. I'm going to pre-empt the usual comment about 'what about overpopulation' found on videos like this:   http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth In chaotic, developing societies, children are a parent's pension plan. The more children you raise, the more secure your future when you're too old to take care of yourself.  Reducing child mortality and allowing children to develop in a healthy way increases the stability of a society. Once a society becomes more stable, the birth rates drop drastically. Women get careers and get fewer kids and at a later age. And most importantly of all, a developed society is able to take care of elderly so that large families are no longer required for that purpose.  All in all, the type of aid the Gates foundation is delivering revolves around bringing our global population to a more stable and manageable size by curbing the growth on the long term. 
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  2. Then again, it's pretty difficult to start an economy without food and clothes.
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  3. Sticking political labels on yourself or on other people never really improves a discussion. 
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  4. cminmd0041 Our living standard has only been truly improving fairly recently. For example, the living standard of a farmer in the  5th century  and the living standard of a farmer in the 15th century are about the same. Only after the industrial revolution can you see noticeable changes.  As a society modernises into the information age, that's when people stop having lots of kids. Not every country is at that stage yet, but they're heading rapidly towards that.
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  5. Adam White Our population growth curve is pretty cut and dry. Other than a massive epidemic or nuclear war there isn't much we can do about it. Other than further stimulating stability across the globe of course.   What does have a massive impact is our ecological footprint.  Population x individual footprint = environmental pressure. Once that exceeds our planet's carrying capacity (and we are exceeding it) we start building  an ecological deficit and trigger a collapse. In this discussion however, the ecological footprint of each person is a much more  controllable factor and has a far more drastic impact on our future. And this is where we have to start pointing less towards the population and more towards the behaviour of the affluent. Not because rich people suck and need to be bullied, but because they're the ones that use resources for comfort rather than survival. They're the ones that  can actually make a meaningful difference. And this is  where I feel that focusing on population is a little bit too convenient for people whose lifestyle puts more pressure on our planet and that would most likely be people like you and me. 
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  6. http://www.solar-aid.org highly effective charity
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  7. West Kagle Only on the short term as we can see it tapers off really fast over the next generations. Despite their social setbacks they inherit, the daughters of immigrants get an actual education and career opportunities. This immediately manifests in less kids and at a later age.    The bottom line remains, give people security and  career prospects and suddenly generating offspring becomes a much lower priority in life.
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  8. Adam White Agreed, absolutely. And the distribution of this living standard then also becomes a feedback loop on the population itself. This  What's regrettable though is that once we discuss distributing global resources, immediately political ideals, left or right, start playing a role.    What most politically inclined people fail to understand is that  it's not just about fairness. Having living standard suppress the population at a certain  level means that there's such a thing as an optimal distribution of resources.  That's means that there's neither Marx nor Rand are  right about this. There's an engineer's solution, an objective answer to how optimally approach this issue. People can disagree on the goal but they can't disagree on the means.. Maybe people aren't interested in making the planet as habitable as possible for everyone, including themselves and their kids. But once they admit that this is in fact what we all should be aspiring towards, then any subjective ideological approach has become obsolete.
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