One Degree wrote:@Wellsy
I have not given up on a solution, but my responses on the site are limited to what I believe the key points are. I am simply not a writer and I get lost in my own thoughts when trying to write a lengthy response that would fully explain what I mean. I also believe no one would want to read it, so this requires a lot of misinterpretation due to my brevity.
We seem to agree that Capitalism as excessive consumerism is the main culprit. The citizens of the major Capitalist countries have controlled their populations. The citizens of the major Capitalist countries have not even began to make the changes we need in production and consumption. So my choice of population control is made from pragmatism. It is the most likely method of receiving the support of Capitalist countries. Capitalist are in control and a solution requiring their removal from control will not happen in time to be a viable solution.
Our best chance of buying time for the other changes is in population control and reduced immigration to first world countries. Your changes will not come for a very long time and maybe never. Should we sit and wait or should we do what we can do. Yes, Capitalist will fight population reduction but they made the mistake of allowing it with their own citizens because they could use immigration. This provides the political loophole needed to support a solution.
Edit: The best way to defeat Capitalism is to deprive them of unlimited labor and ever growing population markets.
tl;dr answer: If one can achieve what you want, it's just as possible to achieve what I'm aiming at, because it still requires overcoming powers as they presently exist within our global capitalist economy. As such, might as well aim for a solution rather than a minimization. Not that neither of us are actively achieving this ourselves, but I think at least in theory, it makes for a sound point to forget about this population stuff as it doesn't hold much reason to be included beyond the minimial extent of saying it could play a part in minimizing. To which the issue seems beyond considerations of merely minimizing but removing entirely certain things at present.
Well with consumerism I was speaking to how with the rise of monopoly capitalism corporations are too big to rely on human want and thus stimulate want in the population in order to maintain stable demand rather than fluctuation which is merely to satisfy profit and not human needs as expected to capitalism. So it expands but its also incredibly wasteful in ways that need not be supported as we could more consciously directed human labour to satisfy human needs and wants more directly rather than treating market relations as a natural force upon us rather than being an alienation of human relations.
Consumerism is just a particular outcome of modern capitalism.
Indeed, there has been minuscule initiative from a lot of western developed countries on addressing the issues of their production, which I in a basic sense attribute to the influence of those that run the old industries such as coal and such being able to effectively lobby politicians to their interests.
Citizens in general won't change because their change needs to come in relation to a change in our production itself, which is why some middle class folk emphasis on individuals recycling, while nice, is ultimately insignificant comparatively to the problems that are derived from say a corporation like BP or Rio Tinto.
I think in your pragmatism you opt for something that I think is more utopian in that it doesn't appear to me concerned enough with the problem directly and at best aspires to minimize the issue indirectly via depopulation. Such pragmatism can in itself be Utopian in that, as you acknowledged, such an end is counter to the interests of capitalist production in having cheap labour, so if you could achieve your end, you arguably would have already achieved the means to restrain the power of capitalists. Which means one might as well advocate the 'unrealistic' end of radically changing our mode of production as much as we can and active work on developing improvements in it, something which some countries are currently pursuing and have already done.
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/08/germany-breaks-solar-record-gets-85-electricity-renewables/http://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/the-rapid-development-of-geothermal-energy-in-the-netherlands/http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-s-recycling-is-so-revolutionary-the-country-has-run-out-of-rubbish-a7462976.htmlThese are things that have developed within capitalism but are held back in countries like ours because of the influence of old industries that are too well established within lobbying politics.
These being but important steps which don't do away with many issues within capitalism but set the ground for better developments within it and hopefully beyond it.
And I don't see why depopulation would receive more support from capitalist countries beyond the extent of supporting birth control and such. But I don't believe this would divert the problem much at all and if anything, it might within a capitalist system raise concerns in which they crack down on reproduction in order to boost numbers, which they've been known to do, compelling women to pop out babies because the its seen as in the national interest.
And teh reduction of immigration from the third world, if you've been seeing some of the opinions of others on here, is unlikely because its a fundamental part of keeping labor cheap and insecure for the sake of capital. Though when one effectively bars such flow for cheap labor born out of desperation, this can lead to industrialization of the third world to some limited degree as we see in the severe exploitation in China with it's special economic zones which merely shifts the industrial labor from our countries to theirs. An issue which has been raised if whether developing countries should be supported in developing their infrastructure in a way that helps to skip the long term messy industrialization of our own country's history with coal and such and seek to provide technologies that are more immediately environmentally friendlier. Something which is a big concern for China for example which has industrialized and developed at such an intense rate that it's becoming quite polluted and in desperate need of environmental solutions.
If capitalists are going to be resistant to population reduction, I don't see why the struggle shouldn't just go directly to a struggle over the mode of production itself. I just don't see how this emphasis on the population plays a significant part, and that it's even considerably pragmatic, in that I think if one could achieve such an end then it's on par with achieving the more direct end of pressing for changes in our energy sources and such. I don't think it's a substantive position to treat a want of changing something our our level of waste, carbon emissions or what ever through different means and organizing against the old industries is somehow more Utopian and unrealistic than being able to depopulate. Which to me seems to be the task that would take a lot longer in which even if one effectively spread contraception and education and all that, it would only slowly taper the population rate, it wouldn't suddenly reduce it.
It's take time to initiate and implement the changes necessary in production, like alternative energy production and such, but that could be more quickly implemented than the slow decline in population.
http://www.earth-policy.org/book_bytes/2009/pb3ch07_ss3 In 2009, several years ago
Some 43 countries around the world now have populations that are either essentially stable or declining slowly. In countries with the lowest fertility rates, including Japan, Russia, Germany, and Italy, populations will likely decline somewhat over the next half-century. A larger group of countries has reduced fertility to the replacement level or just below. They are headed for population stability after large numbers of young people move through their reproductive years. Included in this group are China and the United States.
And again, you state explicitly that such an end is "Our best chance of buying time". Which I could accept that, if that's the desired end, simply to buy time which is my point that it's not a solution, it plays with the outcome but effectively leaves intact the problem that needs to be addressed. Which in my perspective relates to that which is claimed to lead to intense amounts of CO2 being released such as coal production for electricity for one example. Having fewer people would presumably diminish the demand somewhat, at least from what it might've been, but one would still be polluting the air with burning coal for electricity.
And as mentioned briefly with the earlier articles, it's not impossible to make some changes, and our present state of not making a change is not because of people themselves but because the influence of corporations whose interest is to maintain the profits of their current industries. Being able to disrupt their stranglehold would be a necessary step to leading things in the way of developing necessary changes. Which again, may not satisfy the expectations of what needs to be done, but again I think it at least focuses our attention on the problem in a appropriate way rather than what I feel is the very indirect method of changing population.
I just find the problematizing of human existence as effectively ignoring any possibility of addressing the source of the problem, because instead of saying our current mode of production is incredibly wasteful, toxic and such, we entirely ignore it to speak about humans existence as being the problem. But why is human existence a problem because they consume the products and services which are based in industries that are so destructive. When I turn on a light, I'm using electricity from coal power plants.
But if I could have an alternative source of power, magically that particular thing isn't an issue anymore yet I still do the same thing of turning on the light. I'm focusing in on energy as I'm not giving a comprehensive outline of how to minimize the impact of a humans existence in all its facets, but its to strongly point to the idea that the source of the problem doesn't lie within the person themselves. Because the problems can be done away in many creative ways if the way in which we lived was based on different things. It might even mean that society does radically change, because many things rely on certain materials that might inherently be harmful in obtaining. Which might me developing alternatives or forgoing certain things, but such isn't likely as long as the most economically viable means are already established industries and their products.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics
- By annatar1914
- By Tainari88