Yes, human populations should be encouraged to grow exponentially and "unchecked"!
Originally posted by Idle Mind
<font color=red>They aren't going to harvest the last of the crop with no thought for tomorrow.</font>
Unfortunately, your scope is a bit limited, since this happens all the time in developing countries.
Then the people should be welcome to be born and to live, and all the effort go productively into accomodating population growth, and not hindering it, and welcoming people to accumulate wealth, so they can better plan ahead and have more options.
Originally posted by Idle Mind
<font color=red>In animal populations, or so the theory claims, an overabundance of food, somehow causes more reproduction.</font>
This is the cycle of predator/prey populations until the population reaches an equilibrium. If there is plenty to eat, then more offspring can be supported, which helps raise the population and provides better opportunity for survival, both of the genes of the individual, and for the species. However, an increase in prey population will cause an increase in predator population for the same reason, more food available. Eventually, the prey eat all their food, and die out, causing the predators to die out as well.
Do animals farm? Do animals do much to plan for and accomodate population growth? Or do they just multiply without thinking? Do animals take censuses? I don't see why animal biology is all that relevant to human population. And since the human population is still expanding, doesn't that suggest that we haven't reached whatever "equilibrium," and that there should be yet more people, or that more people could at least be accomodated?
Originally posted by Idle Mind
Humans are not too dumb for this. We may be better at providing food, but we are still reproducing at a high rate due to the plentiful food.
And this is a problem? I see nothing wrong with turning surplus food into people. If we can produce more food, why shouldn't there be more mouths to eat it? Why let the food go to waste?
Originally posted by Idle Mind
There are different types of population growth can occur. There is the ever popular exponential, or J-shaped plot, and the sigmoidal S-shaped plot. Both are similar to begin with, and both have an exponential portion to them, but S-shaped plots even out, and become an equilibrium. Exponential, however, crash when the population reaches a height that cannot be supported by the ecosystem. It is unknown as of yet which curve the human population will follow, as we are still in the exponential phase of growth. I say we crash and burn, for the benefit of the planet. Yet, we will likely do much irreversible damage to the planet in the process.
Well of course people should multiply on an exponential curve. The main hindrance to having more children born into the world, is the lack of parents to raise them. Once the number of married couples rises, there are more homes that can welcome children, so of course a nation's total birthrate should be welcome to rise along with the growing numbers of women of childbearing age. Humans alter the ecosystem to better accomodate humans, so why should growing human populations have to crash, based on inadequate biological theories about the animal kingdom that have little relevance to human populations? A growing pet population can't support itself without more human masters to adopt all the pets. So of course people who don't plan to breed their pets should get them "fixed," as pets neither need any sex, nor offspring, since they have us for their "families." And the lack of the mating distraction, helps them be better pets. But humans should not be treated as animals. We can have self-control, and can marry and work to support our growing families. So "birth control" is quite unnecessary for humans, as humans benefit from growing more numerous. How else could billions of people have been born? The billions of people who have already had opportunity to live, could never have come into existence had families had just enough children to "replace" themselves when they die. The human population would forever remain perilously small. Rather successive generations are supposed to grow larger and larger than previous generations, as the previous generations help prepare the world to receive the increased numbers of people in the jobs they do, building roads, houses, schools, dams, or whatever else all the people might need. I don't support any arbitrary cap on world population, as who is to say which people should be allowed to be born, and which shouldn't?
Originally posted by Idle Mind
<font color=red>But then why let good food go to waste if we could turn it into human bodies of far greater value?</font>
We are not of great value to anything but ourselves. We cause more damage to the planet that we look to for support than any other species, and we do more damage to the other species that share our planet than any other species does.
Huh? If people value themselves, shouldn't that alone be enough reason to welcome people to exist in large numbers? At least if humans claim to be able to make some population decision? If most people want to breed and have offspring, doesn't that suggest that maybe the billions of the people really do want the human population to grow larger? At least to accomodate their children? Or perhaps so many people are enjoying sex, that we have no choice but to grow in numbers? Humans don't have much any practical way to hinder their neighbors from having children. How arrogant we must be if we think that we can usurp control of that from God?
But then God imputes value to us, so it isn't just the mere opinion of humans that we ourselves are valuable.
And who's to say that human alternations are "damage," and not "improvements." Urbanization of the land is actually quite a positive change, as it becomes worth more, and benefits more people.
I have sometime thought about what the birds might think, if they could even think of such things: that humans live in such huge houses, and have so much stuff. Sometimes we do hoard too much stuff. But humans are special and should have a lot, even if we shouldn't be so eager to get it that we run ourselves into the debt trap.
