Myths Of Our Economy: Overpopulation

In this series I will try to debunk all the nonsense we are made to believe on behalf of our failing economy; this could turn out to be a very long series indeed...

In this first part I will erase from your mind any notion of our Earth being overpopulated. It's easy to believe the lies when you live in a city of any significant size, as most of us internet users do; there's no horizon in sight and even the stars are invisible at night due to an overdose of the city's artificial lights. There's no "gazing into the distance" and it's therefore too easy to fall for all this talk about overpopulation and there not being enough room on the planet.

But what about food? Surely the planet doesn't have enough resources to feed every human mouth on earth, why else would there be so much hunger in the world? This one is also easily debunked, especially when combined with the first mistake about there not being enough room. Just remember this: with a population of 7 billion people, if we made all these people stand shoulder to shoulder, they would all fit on the isle of Zanzibar... Now you must decide if you believe if the rest of the planet wouldn't be able to feed all mouths in Zanzibar (the island is about 85 kilometers (53 mi) long and 39 kilometers (24 mi) wide, with an area of 1,464 km2 (565 sq mi).)

Furthermore, if we take our western and very wasteful consumption habits as the standard, we still produce enough food to feed 10 to 12 billion people each year. We produce far too much food for the number of mouths there are to feed. And where there's too much food, populations will grow, this is simply how nature works; in an area where there's too much prey, predator population will grow. Then more pray will get eaten, so their population shrinks, creating a food shortage for the predators. Then the predator's population shrinks and the cycle starts over, thus maintaining a balance, a natural equilibrium in population sizes.

And what about water? Other than saying that 70% of the planet is covered with water, I'll just quote from Debunking the Myth of Overpopulation:

Water, although plentiful, can be difficult to move to those who need it, hence local water scarcity. As Karen Bakker (2003) states: “Water is one of the heaviest substances mobilized by human beings in their daily search for subsistence….Water is expensive to transport relative to value per unit volume, requiring large-scale capital investments in infrastructure networks which act as an effective barrier.” In other words, we need more dams, canals, and pipelines, not more abortion, contraception and sterilizations.

We don't learn at school (at least I didn't) that the explosive growth of human population began here, in the West, the First World. Europe to be more specific; here "civilization" as we know it was born. We were the first to overproduce food with the British Agricultural Revolution and the several Industrial Revolutions, while simultaneously developing better medicine, hygiene and better education through public and private schools. It was our population that first exploded and spread rapidly across the planet: we westerners are everywhere and rule everywhere. And as in nature it was the abundance of food that made this possible.

From Wikipedia:

The British Agricultural Revolution, or Second Agricultural Revolution, was the unprecedented increase in agricultural production in Britain due to increases in labour and land productivity between the mid-17th and late 19th centuries. Agricultural output grew faster than the population over the century to 1770, and thereafter productivity remained among the highest in the world. This increase in the food supply contributed to the rapid growth of population in England and Wales, from 5.5 million in 1700 to over 9 million by 1801, though domestic production gave way increasingly to food imports in the nineteenth century as population more than tripled to over 32 million.

And here's where our economy ruins the whole deal and spreads lies in our collective subconsciousness: capitalism can not function when there's abundance. Capitalism only works with scarce products. When we see those poor Third World people die of hunger on our tv's and pc's, we do not see the result of overpopulation, but the result of manufactured scarcity. If we produce enough milk for 12 billion people, and we would all that milk enter the market, milk wouldn't be worth scratch. Sand is everywhere, so sand costs nothing, diamonds are scarce and difficult to obtain, so diamonds are expensive. That's the dogma by which we lead our lives. So we destroy what we overproduce. We waste enormous amounts of food and water just so they keep making us money.

It is true that now population growth is mainly caused in poor countries; they don't have pension plans, so they make sure to have enough children to take care of them when they're old and can't work themselves anymore. So the simplest way to reduce those birth figures is to make them less poor, make them less dependent on having lots of children. In Europe we have only 1.5 kids per family, and our population is growing older; that's just because we were the first; right after us Amerika will become old, after them the Chinese are up, it's all a question of when you are wealthy enough as a society to have the luxury to think about something else than survival. All countries in the world will eventually evolve through the stages of Demographic transition.

From Wikipedia:

the transition from high birth and death rates to lower birth and death rates as a country or region develops from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economic system. The theory was proposed in 1929 by the American demographer Warren Thompson, who observed changes, or transitions, in birth and death rates in industrialized societies over the previous 200 years. Most developed countries have completed the demographic transition and have low birth rates; most developing countries are in the process of this transition. The major (relative) exceptions are some poor countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and some Middle Eastern countries, which are poor or affected by government policy or civil strife, notably, Pakistan, Palestinian territories, Yemen, and Afghanistan.

Overpopulation is but one of many, many lies we believe to be true, just so this economy can survive another day. We truly believe, for example, that if the stock markets do well, the economy does well; a blatant lie. We also believe that if the economy does well, the population in that economy does well; another blatant lie. What bothers me is why we keep believing these apparent untruths when they are really easy to refute, if you just think two seconds about it. Why do we keep voting in politicians who promise to make the economy grow better and harder, when since 1980 all economic growth has landed in the hands of the top 10% richest people?

This is why I will debunk as much lies as I can think of, starting here and now. So if you are interested in learning more blatant lies hidden in our economy, keep an eye on this space and the next installment of Myths Of Our Economy!

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