Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the paper: "[I]n-groups controlling abundance have increasingly chosen to produce non-necessary goods, rather than produce services to distribute necessary goods to regions with less abundance of necessary goods" This claim seems, to say the least, highly implausible given the amount of aid and charity that developed countries give to less developed countries. The chief obstacle to that aid having more of an eff…
I think you’re confusing my argument. I don’t suggest a solution I’m pointing out that the individual desire to increase personal happiness beyond basic needs for reproduction, significantly outweighs their desire to end that same extreme poverty condition for others. This might be a “duh” but the point is that my hypothesis is that this is a learned/taught perspective, and based on a foundational idea that is no lon…
The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)
91–100 of 164 posts
Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)
#92Excited to answer any questions and happily surprised to see it on the front page. Thank you. I noted elsewhere that this is undergoing major revisions ahead of submissions to IJPS[1]. Riane Eisler read it and asked that I submit. I started working with a co-author a few months ago and he is a published anthropologist so my hope is to have a version done just focusing on the core claims this year. [1] https://pubs.li…
From the paper: "[I]n-groups controlling abundance have increasingly chosen to produce non-necessary goods, rather than produce services to distribute necessary goods to regions with less abundance of necessary goods" This claim seems, to say the least, highly implausible given the amount of aid and charity that developed countries give to less developed countries. The chief obstacle to that aid having more of an eff…
Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)
#93According to the rules of capitalism, many people are not productive and valuable enough to have access to resources, even if the pandemic, for example, has shown that this value judgement has huge flaws.
It is impossible to change this because it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Currently used" and "required" are two different things. It's not going to happen overnight, but we have the ability to transition a lot of current agriculture toward more sustainable practices, and that's only going to improve as we learn more. I'm not talking about pie-in-the-sky stuff like vertical farming either, I'm talking about more about more proven techniques like soil restoration and permaculture.
Soil restoration requires fallow acreage cycles that are unsupportable given the acreage of idle land required when compared against the total of available arable land at present. Permaculture is little more than a product of the instagram-homesteader industrial complex intended to sell books and land speaking engagements. It produces at absolute max a third of the calories per acre of industrialized monocrop agricul…
Fallow doesn't mean idle. Notably, raising animals on land that isn't producing crops is actively conducive to soil restoration and speeds the process, requiring less fallow time. Animals are already being raised on arable land, so a lot of this could be done without any more arable land--it just requires that instead of crops and animals being farmed in separate monocultures, they be intermingled cyclically or otherwise.
Some schools of thought note that animals are a less-efficient way of producing calories, but I'll note that reducing nutrition needs to "calories" is a hopelessly insufficient measure. If we consider the protein needs of the population, which are likely higher than most people are consuming, animals are a much more efficient means of obtaining protein. Animal farming is also criticized for its greenhouse gas emissions, but different animals have very different greenhouse gas emissions (i.e. poultry emit far less than cattle) and healthy soil sequesters carbon. The reduction of fertilizer use would also significantly reduce carbon emissions.
> Permaculture is little more than a product of the instagram-homesteader industrial complex intended to sell books and land speaking engagements.
I won't deny that Instagram overhypes permaculture, but there's plenty of hard scientific research being done on it as well.
> It produces at absolute max a third of the calories per acre of industrialized monocrop agriculture.
I am not sure where you're getting that number, but even if it's right, "at absolute max" discounts the inevitability of continued innovation. I agree the numbers aren't currently equal, but as I said before, nobody is saying these changes happen overnight.
> Where to source 200% more arable acres to make that transition is conveniently left as an exercise by it's proponents
As noted above, a lot of arable land is used to raise animals, and intermingling those animals with crops means the land you're claiming is "idle" is not. Further, when soil becomes healthier both become more efficient.
Also notable is that for permaculture purposes, a lot more land can be considered arable than would be considered arable for monoculture crops. The traditional rows of crops are actually pretty terrible for certain very reliable crops, such as potatoes, which benefit from more water retention--which happens when rocks and roots of other plants block water flow. Blueberries benefit from acidic soil, such as soil with pine needles in it--from pine forest which can in turn be treated as timber land.
> as is how to handle the massive increase in labor required to harvest from permaculture lands.
I'm hearing you talk about job creation like it's a bad thing.
Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love swimming and direct access to "nature". You left out child and health care, too. I do not see how any of these are prestige goals.
Both of those desires can be fulfilled in a myriad of ways more accessible to the average person than "living on a lake".
Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)
#96So when I think “every important thing in my life is scarce”, that is just incorrect imagination? 11 billion people can live on a lake with perfect child and health care?
Is an 8-acre lake ok? https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=world+water+area+%2F+wo...
Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also worth thinking about in this context is the so-called “repugnant conclusion”: I disagree, elaborate ponderings in the absence of non-hypothetical evidence are not worth talking about. I mean, read the section, "Arriving at the Repugnant Conclusion" with any critical eye at all and it becomes clear that it's total nonsense. They're treating "postponing a pregnancy" (not even aborting an existing pregnancy to ha…
If you don't have much interest in philosophy and don't care for thinking deeply about problems, why engage at all? Move over the comment in silence and leave it for people that are willing to think more about a topic. I assure you, Parfit and the other philosophers mentioned are not "stupid" and have thought about this far, far longer than your 3 minutes of read-and-dismiss. This "hostile anti-intellectualism" is so…
So ultimately there's not an actionable idea here, because the true morality of the situation ends up depending on physical constraints that are hard to predict in advance.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(betting_system)
[3] Not literally infinite, but more than can be obtained by the civilization you're applying this to. As a trivial example, what if the population required is so large that there's not enough water in the earth's oceans to constitute their bodies?
Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I cannot think of an audience more primed to ignore every word of this than Hacker News. See also: the lakehouse guy upthread.
Sure, but I think there's hope. People learn and change. I've been speaking pretty openly about how shitty the effects are of the pro-corporate, anti-human ideology that's prevalent on HN for a few years now. I've noticed more people joining me in speaking out, and less push-back. I made an aside comment a few days back about corporations being willing to murder for profit, and someone else linked a bunch of examples…
Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is more a consequence of consumerism and the media-nature of modern society and not directly from increased populations. It just seems that way because science allowing for larger food crops, less child mortality, etc. coincided with the rise of media technology.
The thing that lowers childbirths is education of women, in particular education about birth control. That plus economic opportunities for women. Nothing to do with consumerist media, just letting women know how to prevent 5th child.
This is a consequence of our economic and cultural systems, not because women working somehow become incapable of having children.
Re: The Myth of Scarcity and Its Threats to Human Society [pdf] (2023)
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't have much interest in philosophy and don't care for thinking deeply about problems, why engage at all? Move over the comment in silence and leave it for people that are willing to think more about a topic. I assure you, Parfit and the other philosophers mentioned are not "stupid" and have thought about this far, far longer than your 3 minutes of read-and-dismiss. This "hostile anti-intellectualism" is so…
It's interesting in the "spherical cow"[1] kind of way like many abstract ideas, but it quickly falls apart as soon as you try to use apply it to any real context. In particular it suffers from a problem similar to the one that plagues the Martingale betting strategy[2], where you might need an infinite[3] amount of resources to achieve a population large enough to make up for the loss in quality of life. So ultimate…