this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
126 points (95.0% liked)
Asklemmy
47626 readers
1059 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
No one really seems to talk about overpopulation as a real problem and it kind of freaks me out. Climate change, micro plastics, war, economy is all bad, but the amount of people that keep multiplying with no bother in the world is crazy. Factory farms are already out of control and it's just gonna grow exponentially.
I think people are freaking out about very low reproduction rate and aging population in rich countries more than anything, since that's the demographic trend right now. Also factory farming is not like an inevitability of high population density, that's just profit and lobbying. (I put the usual land use per kcal graph at the end, it's not perfect because of the reality of arable land...etc, but still a very good reference)
Also to be fair, one country did try to handle overpopulation (and more broadly the risks of a sudden boom in population) and have been dragged through the mud for it for like 40 years.
Amazingly, the same countries who are at risk due to aging/decreasing populations are the ones now refusing as much entry of people from other countries as they can.
Cultural replacement fears and international bad actors who are happy to pour money to the right wing influences, because they are often nationalistic and against international unions that form power structures that are always against someones benefit.
That's because over population is only a problem relative to our systems of production and distribution, and focusing on overpopulation as the problem results in atrocities, violence, racism, and tyranny. There is some research out there that the actual carrying capacity of the planet is much higher than previously thought. Overpopulation isn't a problem.
any policy you can implement to address "overpopulation" is eugenics. so there is nothing (ethical) to do about it.
maybe start with not incentivizing the production of children with all the tax cuts and loans and whatnot. and revise the pension system so that it finally does not rely on working like cancer
id argue those incentive programs are, themselves, eugenics policies, but I also think ending them is complicated, as doing so in one jurisdiction and not in others is, you see, eugenics.