Why Overpopulation Fears Are Irrational

There are more than 8 billion people living on our planet. According to a recent UN report, the most commonly held view across eight countries is that global population is too high. A separate, equally massive 10-nation study found that half of 16 to 25-year-olds believe that humanity is doomed. Nearly 40% of them say this fear has made them reluctant to have kids. So, is humanity headed toward extinction? Are we really at the tipping point for civilization?
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Dad Saves America is a channel dedicated to celebrating heroic fatherhood while teaching the next generation of fathers strategies they can utilize in parenting their children. We believe strong children come from a strong family. We’ve had many experts in the studio, including Jonathan Haidt, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Troy Kotsur, John Mackey, Ben Askren, and Adam Carolla.
#overpopulation #environment #naturalresources

[@ickster23]

99% of fears are unfounded. We love to live in fear.

[@sdrc92126]

Dopamine is the most powerful drug

[@Belzediel]

I'm afraid you're right.

[@anomilumiimulimona2924]

I dont

[@richardfranklinmorse]

I’m not sure if it’s us who love it, more likely those who profit or benefit from the masses being afraid.

[@ickster23]

@@richardfranklinmorse I think people like it. Look at Covid. It gives people something to have in common. They can talk about it and bond over the shared experience, even if that experience is fear.

[@jonathanstensberg]

Correction: Malthus’s math was *not* wrong. His mistake was the assumptions that went into choosing which mathematical models to apply.

[@dr.wesbeavi]

Dad saves America is an absolute joy to watch. In a very pessimistic world…you bring such inspiration. And your film skills, narration, and personality are equally as uplifting. Thank you!

[@DadSavesAmerica]

Wow, thank you! This made my week.

[@homeagain9692]

Yes, well put together truth bombs are refreshing. Than you

[@DragonRider3879]

No one can afford a simple life that people could easily afford 20 to 40 years ago

[@DadSavesAmerica]

I don’t think it’s all bad, but you can definitely thank horrendous increases in government regulation on housing construction, massive inflation of healthcare costs by government waste, and hyper-inflation of education costs due to subsidies. We’ve got a lot of work to do to reverse the screw-job hunger games economic policy.

[@sdrc92126]

Sure they can if they lived like they did 20 to 40 years ago

[@purplep6070]

​@@sdrc92126What do you mean?

[@sdrc92126]

@@purplep6070 No credit cards/debt, living within your means (however low that might be)

[@purplep6070]

@@sdrc92126 Ok. But, you do understand that currently, high inflation and stagnate wages are a problem that needs addressed correct?

[@armandoacevedo6978]

Malthus’ predictions have survived the test of time. It lives in every climate change crazy!

[@carldavid1558]

When I was growing up the Earths population was less than 3 billion people. More than any amount of people born in the total history of man. The idea was that that figure was not sustainable. The richer people are, the less children they have. So we should be trying to make poor people richer. You can’t do that without affordable power.

[@DadSavesAmerica]

Bingo. You know the score. Of course, there’s no reason to believe that we’re anywhere close to the limits of healthy max human population on earth. This issue is kinda the canary in the coal mine of anti-factual fears. Put another way, passionate ignorance appears to be epidemic on this one.

[@wilmoney4619]

This channel is amazing

[@winniethepoohandeeyore2]

Populations in NUMEROUS countries have been DECREASING.

[@sdrc92126]

Everything can be explained with and predicted by a single religious belief.

[@winniethepoohandeeyore2]

@@sdrc92126 I don't believe in that foolishness

[@sdrc92126]

@@winniethepoohandeeyore2 I don't think you know what I am talking about. And you don't have to believe in things to understand them

[@mattwa33186]

Unfortunately they are all countries where there is plenty of food. Countries where people go hungry keep growing. Humans are the most perverse animals.

[@winniethepoohandeeyore2]

@@sdrc92126 I don't believe in any religious belief system

[@daliborzak2485]

These young people are not affraid of climate change. What they are really affraid? That one day, they will have to find a real job.

[@charleshoffman5894]

Yes the older generation that's taking care of them someday will be gone

[@antonchilinski9729]

You have just as much of a childish view of the world as they do if you genuinely believe that.

[@MarkTrades__]

yall remember when greta said the world was gonna end by 2024 and it didn't so she just deleted her tweet? LOL. And good on these people or not wanting to have kids, maybe we can right the ship here in a generation or two

[@dks13827]

still have until Dec 31 for everyone to expire !!!!!!!

[@MarkTrades__]

@@dks13827 I had to look it up lol She said "a top climate scientist says the world will end in the next 5 years" in 2018. So i guess she had until the end of 2023 lol.

[@Woahlookitthemoon]

I needed to hear this thank you

[@IG88AAA]

Louis CK dropping some real wisdom on late night TV. I forgot about him, but his words about that have stuck with me since I first heard them.

[@michaelashby9654]

This is a materialist argument. And materialism is an absurd ideology. But this is essentially the foundation of this argument which I find strange that this is being presented as "the" argument. I feel we are very much beyond this at this point. Beyond extremes of poverty and wealth, there's little difference that materialism makes in one's happiness or expressions of vitality. Depression, alienation, and other conditions are on the rise along with materialism. Yet during catastrophic events such as during wartime. we see depression and mental illness decrease. People find meaning in these times of conflict perhaps. A crisis of meaning seems more salient to our current malaise. Second, all civilizations end. We have numerous examples from human history of civilization collapse. And its generally at the peak of material wealth that we see decadence take hold of elites and vitality (fertility, social cohesion, family) start its decline. Culture is downstream of elites and elite policy. The West today is very similar to late western empire Rome. They were the wealthiest society in human history at that point, they were Roman centric during their rise but became globally focused near the end, started to believe in diversity and inclusion, and had essentially an open borders policy. Rome soon after ended with whimper not a roar. Near the end of Rome it was fashionable to be globalist, (they started to admire the Greeks and near east cults), the Roman Gods (and thus Roman values) were shunned in favor of new religions (ie Christianity) from the near east. The Roman military was no longer Roman. Near the end, the native Romans essentially stood by and watched the Germanic tribes pour in. Some likely cheered them on. When the vitality of a society is lost, there is nothing left to defend. Materialism didn't save Rome. On the contrary, materialism made Rome's elite decadent and weak. In the West today, fertility rates are collapsing. Social cohesion has collapsed. The West has lost confidence in itself. The Western canon isn't the center of a Western education. Family formation is in decline. "The center cannot hold" as that old poem goes. What strikes me most about this video essay is how boomer it is. These are all old and tired strawman arguments. Though I suppose there are still some who honesty debate Malthusian or materialist arguments. I haven't heard this honestly debated since the 1990s. The great march through the institutions of "critical theory" had, I felt, moved us beyond that.

[@mikhailkill]

Love this comment. 👍

[@IG88AAA]

I largely agree with your comment. That materialism and decadence is a cause of many of our woes. But I think it misses the point of this video. It was an argument specifically against the idea of Malthusian overpopulation. The idea that our growth in population will cause famine and poverty. That idea has 12:17 been completely disproven. But the idea is still being pushed and causes many people to despair and believe we are overpopulated. A direct result of this is a political prescription for abortion, contraception, and euthanasia.

[@boatman222345]

Total ignorance about the current state of America's farmlands certainly helps one sustain a naive belief in the sustainability of a country and an economy totally based upon ever increasing consumption. And yet I can not help but wonder if a modern day Marie Antoinette might say "Let them eat nothing, there ain't no food left!"

[@NOYFB982]

42 years since 1982 and your picture of Miami Beach was beautiful…!!

[@karlwheatley1244]

But Miami is spending hundreds of millions to raise their streets and sidewalks 2-3 feet.

[@NOYFB982]

@@karlwheatley1244 That’s an interesting point. So has the world changed (were the climate-change people just premature), or have the people who plan changed.

[@karlwheatley1244]

@@NOYFB982 Thanks for your reply. No, if you look at the predictions from the 1980s and 1990s of the majority of experts in each field, global warming, climate disruption, global ice melt, sea level rise, the deteriorating health of ecosystems, and the loss of biodiversity are all happening as faster or faster than they predicted back then. But Al Gore--not a scientist--showed those maps of what coastlines WILL look like when sea level rises 20 feet (which really is coming) but then like a kid exaggerating on a playground, he said that will happen soon. It won't. Sea level rise HAS accelerated due to our burning of fossil fuels, but it's only 1/5th of an inch now or two inches in a decade. That's not gonna' endanger the Obama's house or anything.... but the long-term implication of the sea level rise we have set in motion are really ugly and expensive. However, the real risks this century are intensifying climate disasters and the worsening breakdown of our food supply, thus triggering potentially hundreds of millions of climate refugees, and of course horrible famines and political unrest (and increasing extinctions of species). Take care.

[@boatman222345]

I tried to watch this entire video but it just became so painful that I was only able to make it halfway through. Let me guess, this guy is a card carrying member of America's upper middle class 1%ers. And before someone says you have to be a billionaire to be a member of that club I'll point out that the billionaires belong to the .0000000000000000000000001%. Doctors, lawyers, movie makers, podcast hosts, and even some plumbers make more than enough to qualify for the 1% club. For those within this income bracket life is good. For the rest of us the only way we can gain even limited access to the high quality material based existence he crows about is through the use of a half dozen maxed out credit cards. As one presidential candidate is fond of pointing out the "average" Joe Blow American today has a hard time putting his hands on enough cash to pay for a semi complicated car repair. As to the BS about agricultural abundance why do I have a feeling that this guy knows next to nothing about farming or agriculture in general. While today's industrial agriculture has leveraged machinery, chemicals, and mono crops to the point where there is enough food for those who can afford it the quality of that food has devolved to the point where serious health problems have resulted. I can't recall the exact figure but recently a talking head on a news show stated that the number of Americans suffering chronic illness has skyrocketed in just the last few decades. Type 2 diabetes is now dangerously common among children and the average life expectancy in America is dropping. Then we come to the inconvenient matter the ever increasing rate of resource depletion. I am 78 years old, have driven, motorcycled, and hitch hiked through nearly every state in the USA. And I have lived in 6 of them. It once took me 39 rides to hitch from San Francisco to Boston in the middle of the winter and I had ample time to check out the countryside along the way. It will probably come as a surprise to East and West Coast elites but a very large proportion of this immense country is waste land incapable of supporting an agricultural base sufficient to sustain even a modest local human population. Those areas that are agriculturally productive are running out of water and contain soil that has been so depleted of nutrients that excessive amounts of fertilizer must be applied to sustain profitable crop production. I could go on and on and on pin pricking the ballon of this pro growth, not to worry please, BS but I will spare the readers and cut to the chase. The only real difference between the true believers in religion and the true believers in science and technology is the former wears a white collar and the later a white lab coat. Both bathe in the glow of certainty in a world in which the only thing certain is death. Wanting to know and being able to know are quite different things. While this character is quite correct in pointing out that earlier doomsayers were not accurate in their predictions what he apparently fails to recognize is that things speed up when the glass half empty/half full scenario shifts to the glass is 7/8 empty/1/8 full. The old comforting adage "The only constant is change" tends to ignore the fact that the rate at which change occurs speeds up radically in a technologically sophisticated society. It took WW 1 approximately 4 years to kill 20 million people. Today 1 nuclear bomb can kill 20 million people in a few minutes. Maybe that's why this character is so keen on an ever increasing number of people...he thinks we are going to need extras!

[@laurabutler7498]

What about the chemicals used on our food and how we treat our meat whilst alive? GMOs?

[@kaycholly326]

Guess th ats the balance because it keeps death rate up

[@nemurerumaboroshi]

No. Exponential growth cannot last forever. It simply cannot. It is obvious. The only question is where it stops and what will be the limiting factor. And what is even the point of trying to get more people? Even in rich countries most people now struggle. With unavoidable globalization people have nothing to do. They have nothing to offer to the system. They live meaningless lives extorting resources from others, while tiny fraction of the population should work super hard to feed them. Shouldn't we aim for the quality over quantity? I would certainly prefer to see the world in which there are 10x less people, but everyone is happy and well provided, and can be successful, and live rich, meaningful life.

[@mikhailkill]

BOOM 💥👏🎊

[@IG88AAA]

Did you watch the video?

[@IG88AAA]

I would rather live in a world in which abortion and euthanasia are banned, and be poorer.

[@nemurerumaboroshi]

@@IG88AAA It devastates me how people talk about euthanasia, like that it is such an unequivocally bad thing. They've never seen people banging their head against a wall for hours, kids not being able to walk and communicate trivial needs, and families forever condemned to endless nightmare. Immature, entitled, narrow-minded people, who haven't seen real suffering once in their life think that they know how to make the world right.

[@IG88AAA]

@@nemurerumaboroshi Killing the undesirables. What an evil idea.

[@kimlatta4053]

🙏🙏🙏

[@Belzediel]

Yeah, I reckon the issue isn't the number of people, it's the density of population in cities.

[@scillyautomatic]

Thank you for this post! Overpopulation is one of those Zombie Stories that was long ago debunked, dead and buried but it keeps coming back. Some feardoctor will bring it back up and millions of people fall for it all over again. Thank you!

[@MarkTrades__]

I think one of the hardest things for humans to deal with, is things that affect them in ways they are afraid of. But that they can't figure out how to do anything about no matter how hard they try.. But you'd have to assume that some of these things exist. I wonder how much of an IMMEDIATE impact thinking "humanity is doomed" has for these 16-25 year olds, while they continue to wake up everyday, unable to do anything about it really, while forgetting to enjoy the life around them they still currently have. As a society, I think we need LESS information available to us. Perhaps we need to even begin to avoid it & focus only on local, physically tangible sources of information. I wonder how much that could help people enjoy the time they have. Imagine the dinosaurs freaking out about if there will be enough food for them "oh there just isn't enough prey to go around!!!", then on a random tuesday they all began their descent into extinction anyways & it had nothing to do with their concerns, or efforts to address them. What a waste their behavior was to attempt to address their own demise. Appreciate you if you read all that.

[@odieodencrantz4832]

I like your dinosaur analogy. Your message is similar to Gandalf's .... the whole "it's about what you do with the time you have" sorta thing. Very wise. However, at least for now, I want MORE information simply because I still need to protect myself mentally from this mind virus that's messing with people. My only protection for now is to be informed.

[@MarkTrades__]

@@odieodencrantz4832 appreciate you reading my thoughts & sharing yours! I suppose I only have that wisdom from my turbulent upbringing, and at times its more harm than good, but as you say, we can always TRY to improve our standing in our current situation, and yeah trying to search for REAL information in today's world SATURATED with falsities is a challenging, yet likely valuable pursuit. Thought provoking. Thanks for sharing 🍻

[@karlwheatley1244]

There is a great deal we can do to soften the coming collapse and save lots of people and species.

[@HimerosTeviot]

There is next to zero empiricism in the method by which the eight billion value is assessed.

[@tdevry]

The sky is falling....the end is nigh.....no, not really.

[@TheDoctor394]

This might seem a bit redundant in the light of all the evidence presented here, but I was watching a (very boring) 1954 B-film (Roger Corman's first as producer), "Monster From The Ocean Floor" last night. In it, two marine biologists express their concern about over-population, and how the Earth is pretty much doomed if they don't do something about it, like growing food in the ocean. This view has just kept going on and on and on.

[@johnmarks227]

The world population clock is still rising, so no, there is a population problem, just not in a lot of western countries. People are confusing reproduction with population, they are not the same.

[@kennorthunder2428]

Because of the rates of death?

[@johnmarks227]

@@kennorthunder2428 If 1000 die per month in North America and 2000 are born per month in Africa the population rises. The reason you see a lot of this is because of birth rates vs death rates in individual countries like Japan.

[@PhilJonesIII]

@@johnmarks227 As people rise out of poverty, the birth rates drop. And poverty absolutely is diminishing. We have seen, over the past 60 years or so, significant health advancements that have resulted in people living a lot longer. This has resulted in an overlap that has largely hidden the dramatic fall in birth rates. No Western country is producing enough children to maintain its population. Japan, we all know about. China has been losing 1000 a day since 2022. By 2023, China will have more retirees than workers.

[@johnmarks227]

@@PhilJonesIII But the global population is still rising.

[@PhilJonesIII]

@@johnmarks227 Yes, it is. Likely to reach around 10 billion before it drops precipitously. Remember, average life expectancy has been significantly increased. Child survival rates have also increased significantly. There is an overlap there. The issue: We have not been producing enough to even maintain those figures.

[@Aminal92]

People have no idea what nightmare we will go through as elders. By the time I end up retiring, the majority of jobs will be held by grey hairs that can never retire. And there won’t be any social systems left because there won’t be enough young people paying into them.

[@bearowen5480]

Your post is a perfect example of what will not happen....doomsday!

[@Aminal92]

@@bearowen5480 not being able to retire isn’t doomsday. It’s the reality of today already for millions. It’s just going to get worse. Specially since our life expectancy is higher.

[@bm1588]

Yeah, I mean you can’t spend money you don’t have. And if you get your money through taxation, you can’t get money if there aren’t enough people to Tax.

[@jasminegenovesi]

It's over population in dense areas. Have you ever been to a city with 30 million people in it? It's not overpopulation of the world... It's areas that can't sustain it's high density of residence. Like can't keep up with clean water, proper waste management or food supply.

[@grizzleyadams2101]

The reason why cities are denser is that's where the jobs and services are. Cities are a major economic driver for the economy and as a result businesses locate near these areas where they can make profit.

[@Tenebarum]

Vanilla Ice is not cringe.

[@dfinma]

The problem is we've detached ourselves from Mother Nature's mangement. She always wins.

[@tdevry]

If climate activists have their way, we will experience the middle ages again.

[@antonchilinski9729]

If you actually want to conserve your way of life for future generations then you have to ACT RESPONSIBLY, and continuously attend to it. Otherwise, all external forces will inevitably erode what you have. If you believe more people should be able to afford a freestanding house or land of their own to tend to, that wilderness should exist for all to enjoy, that food should be quality and plentiful, then you *require* population to be reduced because population will inevitably become the single greatest pressure on each of these issues. You just want to have your cake and eat it too. And lucky you, you'll die long before these issues you dismiss come to a head, so nobody can ever shove your face in it like a dog that peed on the carpet.

[@mattwa33186]

Someone read Factfulness. Which is a tragedy. The $2 a day number is approaching its 30th birthday. It was an arbitrary number to start with, and it has never been adjusted for inflation. Using this methodology we could eliminate global poverty by lunch time today by moving the bar to $1, or 50 cents, or whatever it takes. Any number we choose would be as useful as one picked out of the air during the Clinton administration. Feeding 8 billion people with 2% of the population is the problem. It isn't sustainable in the long term, because it relies entirely on man-made chemical fertilizers that in turn are reliant on the refining of crude oil. They run off into our water supply, wreaking all kinds of havoc. They destroy our topsoil, resulting in land that is only arable if we keep using those fertilizers, and it takes years to recover that land. Can we keep this up for 50 years? Probably 100? Maybe. 200? Almost certainly not. Is GMO the answer? Maybe. But since no GMO food has ever undergone long term dietary studies we really don't know what their impact on human health is going to be. And since no GMO food has ever solved a human hunger problem (the drought resistant maize that has saved tens or hundreds of millions since 2012 is a hybrid, not GMO - the GMO version wasn't developed until 2016, was supposed to start testing before Bayer bought Monsanto but was put on hold then and may still not be in use) any prediction in that regard would be pure speculation. When population becomes a problem, that problem will be solved. Worrying about it now, recognizing that we can't keep doing what we're doing forever and working towards more sustainable approaches, gives us control over what the solution is. Failing to do those things creates a lot of victims some number of years in the future.

[@karlwheatley1244]

Great points. And if you go on the World Bank's poverty calculator and move the bar up to the US poverty line for an individual or a person living in a family of six, you find that the number of people living under what Americans consider the poverty line is 5.5-6.5 billion people.

[@Sean_Plays_Guitar]

Thanks for the good news man.

[@antonchilinski9729]

Opium is often euphoric...

[@tebitt]

Thankyou for an excellent summary.

[@rayraytub1000]

This is another doozy... Was it all about creativity? How were we able to build and operate all all these machines that Malthus couldn't predict? Are there limits?

[@fszarka]

Fossil fuels, mined fertilizers, and fossil aquifers have enabled global population to reach these levels but those are finite resources that are rapidly depleting. This is exacerbated by agricultural land being lost to urbanization and pollution. We can only sustain 8 billion people on the planet for a limited period of time. I suspect we will eventually return to about 1930 level of global population, or 2 billion people when agriculture was done with human labour and draft animals. The migration crisis is pretty clear evidence that we are in overshoot, as people in large numbers are fleeing their countries due to pollution and resource insecurity. They are pouring by the millions into the small fraction of countries that still have adequate food and water resources (for now).

[@Belzediel]

XD

[@IG88AAA]

“Peak oil” has not panned out yet for anyone that touted it. A reason for migration is political. Countries such as the US and ones in the EU banning good energy development and subsidizing bad energy development is a cause. I can’t remember the details, but it was part of Jordan Peterson’s podcast episode titled “killing the poor to not save the planet.” They spoke of a south American country that was given a subsidized loan for solar energy, when a large majority of the popular don’t even have access to electricity. The development is being out in the wrong place.

[@PhilJonesIII]

The continent of Africa currently has enough available arable land to feed 9 billion alone. Yet the continent remains a net importer of food. I would suggest that, outside those African countries that have got their act together, there is a need to get the others up to speed. Africa, just as an example, should have no need to import food, at all. Yet, the majority of the world's poor people live there. Yes, there is a lot to be said about governments that don't care but also a lot to be said about cultures/religions that prohibit growing more than is needed, save for the following year.

[@karlwheatley1244]

@@IG88AAA "“Peak oil” has not panned out yet for anyone that touted it." The US passed peak extraction of conventional oil back in the 1970s. Petroleum engineers are predicting that we will hit peak net production of conventional oil (barrels extracted minus energy used to extract them) next year. "Oil production" has mostly continued to increase as it did because natural gas and shale oil got added to the category. We have to stop emitting CO2 from burning fossil fuels or worsening ecological and societal breakdown is inevitable. Climate change is already starting to unravel the web of life and it's only one of four major ways we are destroying the web of life.

[@justdoingitjim7095]

When addressing this subject, you have to ask...At What Cost? When the population increases past the holding point of the land they occupy, the land is no longer able to produce what is needed to sustain them. Yes, we can now import all of the things we need to live, but the very land on which we stand is still barren! Countries with extremely large populations have huge areas of land completely devoid of trees and vegetation, because they've been removed for use and to make room for expansion. Without imports those areas would now be completely uninhabitable! There has been and always will be delays and complete stops to imports for lots of reasons. This causes those in uninhabitable lands to suffer! Climates will shift and change the holding capacity of land areas, yet people will remain because goods and relief aid are imported. But, they are still suffering from malnutrition and disease, despite the continuous flow of aid! It's better to restrict the number of people on a given location, to remain well within the holding capacity of the land they occupy! But, that's just my own opinion!

[@odieodencrantz4832]

What are you asking "at what cost" to ?

[@cyan1616]

I'm terrified that no one is willing to build ANY affordable housing and are purposely creating and maintaining a housing shortage in order to create record profits. I'm now having to decide if I want to eat or pay rent. I can no longer do both. It's a freaking housing nightmare out there, and no one in any state or federal government position will do a damn thing about it. They're all making money too.

[@DadSavesAmerica]

You are partly right. Many people are willing… but they’re sabotaged by politics. We have a crisis of NIMBY protectionism that’s produced a legal environment completely opposed to expanding housing supply and lowing costs. It’s a moral TRAVESTY of our politics. Deregulate housing construction NOW!!!

[@liz9284]

If you’re in the US, starter homes are going to house the illegal immigrants as well. This isn’t a political statement I’m making, it’s a factual one (in case anyone is super offended by what I said). For example, Chicago residents were given 1000 dollars to move out of their rental homes (mostly in poor black communities). Why would the landlords want this to happen? Bc illegal immigrants are being given 9000 dollars towards housing fees. This isn’t the only issue of course, but it IS a huge part of the housing shortage in the starter home range. It’s why college grads can’t find houses in many areas. Covid was a series of stupid too, of course. Construction in my area stopped and builders went bankrupt. It’s picking back up now, but we aren’t getting single family structures on decent lots, we’re getting apartments and townhomes mostly which, as a former realtor, is problematic for a number of reasons (higher crime rates being one of them). It’s all just so messed up. But there’s one common denominator-POLITICS. What’s hurting you and others the most isn’t “the pandemic”, it isn’t “builders are greedy”, it’s POLITICS. Coming from a construction and real estate background myself, no builder is going to stop building starter homes out of greed. It just doesn’t work that way. They usually make more from starter homes bc costs are lower and buyers are more abundant. Loans are easier to secure. If there’s any “greed” at play here, it’s the government’s.

[@liz9284]

I’ll say one more thing-the government doesn’t need to do ANYTHING other than get out of the way. If the free market was dictating the housing and construction industry as it should be (along with everything else), these issues would work themselves out. And quickly. It’s the government “doing something about it” that got us into this mess in the first place.

[@cyan1616]

@@DadSavesAmerica Dude... I love your channel, I love the discussions.

[@williampiel5030]

"Dad" here is only partly right but also Malthus was partly right. Malthus and Ehrlich projected the growth of population and the growth of production (using technology known to them) and showed that population would exceed production and thereby cause great hardship. In Malthus' day, Britain was already so overcrowded that disease killed about 30% of kids in even the richest families. So why didn't Malthus and Ehrlich anticipate a huge acceleration in technology and productivity? Well, because nobody can predict the future. And "Dad" can't predict the future either. The combine harvester, pesticides, and fertilizer greatly boosted productivity so that every acre of land can produce more food for less money. But who can say whether we can double that production in the future? Nobody can say that. Science advances in spurts, and it can easily reach a limit of how many tons of crop you can get from one acre of land. Malthus and Ehrlich would have been irresponsible to assume that greater productivity was right around the corner because nobody can make that assumption with confidence. Every so often the earth's magnetic poles reverse, and as part of that process the magnetic field becomes weak. Currently the earth's field is weakening at an alarming rate. As it last did in 1859, a weak field will allow solar radiation and cosmic rays to kill every electronic thing on earth -- every computer, every car, every washing machine, every transformer, etc. In an instant, humans will return to farming the way we did in Malthus' day -- i.e. everything grown locally using oxen, horses, and manual labour. So how do you think 8 billion people will hold up? We will have a starvation catastrophe and "Dad" here will have to admit that Malthus was right and there are too many mouths to feed given the enormous labour cost of growing food when every electric machine is dead. Had we only listened to Malthus, we would have had a small population that could have easily been sustained with only local manual food production. Even without a solar knock-out disaster, the world still has plenty of instability that can create serious headaches. If Greenland's ice melts, sea level rise will exceed seven feet, and that's bad news for Miami-Dade and Broward counties, which will sink underwater -- where will all those people move? Presently, Egypt has about 100 million people packed in a tiny area around the Nile. The government is always on the brink of collapse, and that could happen any minute. At least 50 million Egyptians will be trying to enter Europe. This will be an extreme headache, and every European will have wished that Egyptians had not been so fertile. Every European will wish that the Egyptians had followed Malthus' advice. "Dad" is right that it's stupid and counterproductive for young people to decide not to have children in the interest of saving the planet. These kids are actually planting the seeds for their own suffering, if nothing else because of a future collapse of the pension systems. And it's not just pensions. Investment in innovation only happens because overall people anticipate getting a net return from the stock market. And the stock market as a whole only grows larger because it anticipates that future aggregate demand will grow. And growth in aggregate demand presumes, to some degree, that the world population continues to grow. A shrinking world population therefore signals a shrinking aggregate demand, an anticipated long term shrinking in the world stock market, and therefore a loss of any incentive to invest in productivity and technology. The result is that every pension system, whether public or private, will collapse, and nothing will hold its value, and all innovation will come to a halt -- like some never-ending stagflation. This will be a disaster for everyone.

[@IG88AAA]

So basically your point seems to be, if we keep growing in population we might collapse, and if we decline in population we might collapse. You are still assuming incorrectly, as Malthus and Ehrlich did, that we will not be able to sustain a growing population. You will likely also be proven wrong, as they have been.

[@karlwheatley1244]

@@IG88AAA We are already in the process of ecological and societal breakdown/unraveling right now, and unless we shrink the population, shrink and largely de-industrialize the economy, and adopt simpler agrarian lifestyles, catastrophic collapse is inevitable. Shrinking the population does create real challenges for things like the safety net, but they are nothing like creating massive food shortages and a major extinction event.

[@IG88AAA]

@@karlwheatley1244 If there was going to be major food shortages, how is obesity the problem? And food waste? You are not dealing in facts, only specious theories.

[@karlwheatley1244]

@@IG88AAA The food shortages haven't hit yet, but leading experts are predicting a worsening unraveling of our food supply in the coming decades. You and I are already paying higher prices for food and other items due to climate change. After higher prices come a growing number of empty spaces on shelves. It will likely unfold slowly, but to stop the really bad dominoes from falling eventually, we have to take action now. Take care.

[@IG88AAA]

@@karlwheatley1244 What sort of action do we need to take now? Who are these so called“leading experts” and why should I believe them? Do you just believe whatever the “experts” say? How are we going to go from a surplus to a scarcity? Why should I believe the higher prices are due to climate change and not poor public policy?

[@alejandroavendano7988]

Here thereis no info about the planets degradation, and the concentration of wealth on top.

[@odieodencrantz4832]

Many people worry right now that we are in a birth crisis. I pose a challenge to that: For people who do NOT want to have kids ..... THEY have a birth crisis. For people that want to keep having kids ..... they do NOT have this same crisis. When you split people into these two groups, we no longer have an OVERALL lower birth rate. In other words. people that do not want to have kids will kill themselves off from the pool, leaving only those folks that do. The way I see it, humanity will reseed itself after this mind virus wipes out just the non-birthers. Am I wrong here? Isn't this just a temporary thing given the above?

[@IG88AAA]

Great point. It seems you are saying someone like me with 3 kids and one on the way will raise them to want kids, thereby growing the population in the long run. A problem with your idea, if I understand it correctly, is the people that want a lower population have a lot of political and social power. Teachers, media, and politicians will speak against my values and may convert my kids.

[@odieodencrantz4832]

@@IG88AAA Thank you. You are exactly correct about what I was pointing out. You are part of the solution. Think of it the same way the market corrects itself. The graph has a down-bump in it, but then keeps climbing later on after some repair. You are right that current politicians and such still have time to poison them, but all we have to do is hold out as they die off and keep pushing our values in defiance. We will win the long game.

[@IG88AAA]

@@odieodencrantz4832 There is a lot of reason for hope.

[@odieodencrantz4832]

@@IG88AAA Things will get better, but it will take some time and patience.

[@karlwheatley1244]

Not having children is not a "mind virus," it is a rational, caring, and adaptive response to the fact that the planet already has too many humans and our ecological impacts overshoot Earth's carrying capacity by ~75% and are pushing the web of life toward collapse.

[@est8793]

The world's population could survive within the USA. We would have the entire rest of the world to use for food and other supplies.

[@karlwheatley1244]

"The world's population could survive within the USA. We would have the entire rest of the world to use for food and other supplies." The science tells an entirely different story. Because of our vast consumption and wastes (75% greater per year than Earth's sustainable carrying capacity), we are already pushing Earth's ecosystems and thus our food supply and societies towards collapse. We have to shrink the global economy by ~50% to get out of overshoot.

[@antonchilinski9729]

Your solution is to live like sardines? To pave over every inch of greenspace? You are a bugman.

[@ianyoung6881]

The population of England is less than 56 million not 67 million. You’re quoting the historic population of England and comparing it to the population of the United Kingdom, so of course it’s going to be larger. That’s like saying that last year the population of Scotland was 5.5 million and in just one year it has increased twelvefold to over 67 million. I didn’t continue to watch beyond that. Your ignorance is astounding and what’s worse is despite your ignorance you have the confidence to believe you bring intelligence and insight to these KZbin Videos.

[@antonchilinski9729]

You are beyond incorrect. Due to SEVERE illegal immigration and undocumented births, Britain's population is far greater than officially documented. Tesco, a grocery chain, has done their own estimates of the British population, because they're the one that *feeds* that many people. So too have those responsible for sewage systems in the UK done their own population estimates, which are again far higher than official documentation.

[@ianyoung6881]

@@antonchilinski9729 You are misreading what I wrote and making the same mistake as the maker of this video. The population of England will always be less than the population of Britain, so comparing the historical population of England with the present population of Britain is not comparing like with like.

[@gregflock380]

this video is dumb....wrong....and just a waste of time........we are in overshoot and we are in trouble...this video is full of un truths....

[@followyournature]

Selfish BS. There is no debating that the earth is far over a healthy carrying capacity. One only has to think if we had never discovered oil. More humans are not a good thing. In fact, our eventual demise will be great for the planet.

[@carlos_takeshi]

You first.

[@DadSavesAmerica]

Do you think “the planet” has a mind or cares about anything or anyone? I’m honestly not sure what that means. It’s not clear that any other creatures have an inner life where meaning itself is a concern. A planet without humans is… every other planet in the universe. Who cares? I’m genuinely curious why you care about a planet without humans. There’s billions of them.

[@sdrc92126]

Fine, but I'll debate that. Oxfam says that 0.1% of the population uses twice the resources of 4 billion. I've done the math, but I don't remember all of the results, but something like we could add 4 billion more people with no affect if we got rid of 80 million. It's not over population, but over consumption. The real debate is, do you want to live like the Amish or Marc Zuckerberg? You could have 20 bbillion of the former, but not latter.

[@Belzediel]

Really? You first.

[@Tenebarum]

​@@sdrc92126No middle ground?