Too Many People is Still a Problem
I had an on-line conversation recently with a long-time friend. He told me of a consulting job he had taken on recently.
He had been to a country in Africa to see if he could be successful in a way others before him had not. The country had millions of people who continued to stream into its largest city. They set up swatter neighborhoods with narrow mud streets and huts close together. The human waste was uncontrolled, lots of it right in the streets where people walked. The water became contaminated so bottled water was used. Bottles are thrown in the streets. The bottles plug up the drainage patterns making the living conditions even more contaminated. Many were sick, especially children.
There was not room to run sewer pipes to a treatment plant even if there had been money to install it. All of this is caused by too many people. Every time a baby is born there is a contribution to the conditions that cause adults to die. Preventing an abortion does not mean a "life" is saved.
I've been pointing out to anti abortion activists for some decades now that a birth caused by preventing an abortion is not a net addition to the number of live humans. Probably every baby born does not cause one death of an adult, but every few births certainly does. Mostly those who oppose abortion try to avoid thinking or talking about the implications of populations to large for the area where people live.
Anti abortion is a relatively new political and religious concept. In relatively recent times there have been societies who regulated population size in order for their clan or tribe to survive. Some Eskimos could predict quite accurately how much food they would have available in the future. They killed babies in order for the larger group to survive. Older people committed suicide to serve the same objective.
Simplistic views about life and death need to be revisited from time to time to see that they reflect reality.
Your side now has people advocating eating babies to stop the so-called climate crisis, which will irreversibly destroy the earth in 3 months. I couldn't have made this up in my wildest dreams/nightmares. And here I thought 16-year-old Greta Thunberg was insane/mentally ill. Do you ever wonder how insane the Democrat party has become?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epwUTVUwB7A
Your post today emphasizes to me how unglued you have become in both defending and promoting abortion.
Defending abortion rights just requires knowledge of arithmetic. How many women are there who are the sole or an important contributor to their family's income? How much food can be produced compared to how many people there are in the world? How much human waste and pollution by humans can the earth absorb without reducing the ability for humans to live on it? Once one master's the important questions the ability to support abortion rights becomes easy.
DeleteThe unintended consequences of the green revolution?
Delete"The unintended consequences of the green revolution?" Certainly that is part of it, fewer died of starvation. I suppose antibiotics played a role, even in the poorest areas. When you think about it, the problem of population size versus the ability of economies and environments to support it is the reason many of us are here in the U.S. today. In my case, rural Sweden had large families because each child worked the fields and helped feed the family. There were a lot of infant deaths so to have enough hands the number of babies had to be large. Sweden was early in medical and hygiene advances so the number children who survived grew. There was not enough land for all to stay in their rural communities so they left. Huge numbers came to the Midwest and here I am.
DeleteMatt wrote, “Your side now has people advocating eating babies to stop the so-called climate crisis, which will irreversibly destroy the earth in 3 months. Do you ever wonder how insane the Democrat party has become?” Come on Matt slow your roll. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/larouche-pac-ocasio-cortez-baby-eating_n_5d9753c8e4b0f5bf79739966
DeleteArby B---Matt's response follows a well worn pattern here. When it is pointed out the earth does not have unlimited resources and that is cannot support infinite increases in population the response is never to argue with those points. There is no way to argue with them. So, the response is always about "eating babies" or "raking babies out of the womb." When I first started these public debates decades ago the response was, "The Lord will provide." Then it became obvious the Lord is not and will not provide. So, it's eating babies.
DeleteArdy 10:39 am, I have 2 responses. The first response assumes your huffpost.com link is accurate. The second response assumes it is not accurate.
DeleteIf accurate, then please explain why no one at the town hall, or AOC herself, showed any interested in silencing this fake? They all seemed to have that look of, 'yeah, that makes sense, let's listen quietly', which they did. Only after the fake took up too much time did the mic handler take the mic back. A room full of people not disgusted by the thought of killing and eating babies is more chilling than one person having that through. That was the point so cleverly made by the Larouche PAC.
If not accurate, then the liberal Huffington Post was trying to do damage control for AOC.
Sadly, even Breitbart.com has printed a story about this, identifying Larouche as a frequent candidate for the Democrat nomination for President.
As for Jon's 11:22 am, he better explain the economics of rich women getting abortions despite their ability to raise dozens, if not hundreds of children to adulthood. Not to mention that single mothers often choose to be single mothers
old Jon has gotten so far off the edge that I feel that I must break my resolution and jump in. the "baby" remark was indeed made, whether in jest (like Swift's famous Modest Proposal) or for real. For my part, I think that it was a satirical remark intended to get the crazies to face up to the implications of their craziness. And then there is Jon (Malthus) with his talk about "infinite" population growth and
Delete"finite" resources. I'm sure that if Jon had lived in England in the late 1700s he would have been singing the same tune then as he is now. Bad ideas certainly have a way of living on. Bottom line, even satire, however" does nothing to shake the convictions of fanatic Ideologues. Keep trying tho'. At least any sane person who might stop by this blog know that it is possible to challenge the "ideas" of the goofballs who have come nigh on to dominating today's political discourse. Too harsh? If the boot fits, wear it.
Unknown--"any sane person who might stop by this blog knows that it is possible to challenge the ideas of the goofballs..."
DeleteI wish you would do just that. In addition to the regular diet of "eating babies" and "raking out babies" is the one, "..predictions made earlier have not come to pass..." This failure to do arithmetic is the fatal flaws in anti abortion politics
Unknown 1:53 pm. Thanks for bringing up Malthus and his debunked theory of infinite population growth with limited resources. Mathematically, a subject Jon seems to think supports his abortion and eugenics claims, Malthus claimed to observe population growing geometrically (2, 4, 8, 16, 32 ...) while food grew linearly (2, 4, 6, 8, 10 ...). If true, the human species or any species would be doomed. That was more than 230 years ago and population and food supply are doing just fine, thank you.
DeleteThe Scientific American sees no reason to believe Malthus - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-malthus-is-still-wrong/
So, again, Jon's view of unborn human life is SUBTRACTION, i.e. killing.
Matt "Malthus and his debunked theory of infinite populations..." Here we are recycling what unknown said, and has said repeatedly, if one dire prediction did not come along, it means there is not limit to the size of population the earth can accommodate. Now we are at 9 billion. Because Malthus was wrong, it means the earth can accommodate 18 billion. Oh, make that 27 billion. The earth can accommodate infinite populations because Malthus was wrong. Resources are infinite.
DeleteJon Lindgren, "Defending abortion rights just requires knowledge of arithmetic."
ReplyDeleteYes, we understand you prefer the arithmetic of subtraction; not addition or multiplication.
The pro-life position is one of human rights and the dignity of all people from conception to natural death.
Matt: "The pro-life position is one of human right and the dignity of all people from conception to natural death." That is my position also, except I leave out "from conception". The phrase "people from conception" is internally a contradiction.
ReplyDeleteMatt @ 12:11 PM: Look Matt I am not going to waste my time sorting out your ifs, ands, and buts about an outrageous assertion some democrat tacitly approves eating babies to avert a climate crises. If that is what you believe you see, I can’t reason it away. It’s just not my cross to bear.
ReplyDelete