Is Overpopulation a Myth

[mozfonky]

I’m not buying it. I think the premise is that more lanes will attract more drivers and more possible delays. Yes but it’s more drivers on that street. This will still reduce the cities overall traffic density and therefore travel times. So the answer to reducing traffic cannot logically be to close lanes.

I think if people only drove when it was necessary we'd probably see a lot less traffic. I deliver and I often wonder just what anyone is doing out in the middle of the night or even on a slow sunday. Weekends are often the worse because people take all that week long pent up by a job restlessness and clog the shit out of everything. That's far from a necessity but that's how it works. Just fuckers everywhere for no real reason.

 

[Big Dawg]

One day humans will be forced into the ocean and grow fins and gills we are so overpopulated.

 

[Deleted member 499399]

I think if people only drove when it was necessary we'd probably see a lot less traffic. I deliver and I often wonder just what anyone is doing out in the middle of the night or even on a slow sunday. Weekends are often the worse because people take all that week long pent up by a job restlessness and clog the shit out of everything. That's far from a necessity but that's how it works. Just fuckers everywhere for no real reason.

Yep. Just way too many fuckers all dying to do something.

 

[Jack Reacheround]

I would say yes and no. Yes, we have enough space to pack in a bunch more people.

No, because do we really want all of our national parks, wetlands, and other natural habitats to just be used for apartment buildings, houses and strip malls? Do we really want that? I would hope not.

 

[rj144]

That's just crappy urban planning. Its well known that adding more lanes induces more demand and makes gridlock worse. Its called Braess's paradox and surprisingly the solution is to close lanes and roads, not add them.

Read your own reference. It's not more lanes, it's more roads. More lanes, obviously, parallelizes traffic flow.

 

[Two Crows]

We don’t even use it to grow shit to eat. Same link.



I found this illustration surprising (again from Bloomberg), showing the relatively small amount of cropland that is actually used to feed humans (ignoring the cropland that is dedicated to feeding livestock):

I remember an Econ study from class ~10 years back that showed CA produces enough to feed the entire US by itself.

Feed crops consume the majority of agricultural land in the U.S., even after accounting for exports.

 

[dildos]

this thread is from the same guy that asked is africa a country....

 

[ferrisjso]

Yes it is a myth. The issue with earth is capitalism and economic growth not how many humans there are, earths issues are caused by a very small group within humanity. That line of thought is basically lubricating future genocide by getting the idea into peoples head that hundreds of millions deaths would a good thing.

Most humans live on a very tiny portion of the earths land.

Now overpopulation COULD be a problem but population were to say double but population is set to level of near the end of the century. Due to climate change they'll probably be a much sharper curb. But even without climate change basically what happened to the early industrializing countries is going to happen in Asia and Africa.

Overpopulation is taking the crimes of the investor class and gaslighting and making the average person think it's their fault. Same as carbon footprint. It's just gaslighting.

 

[rj144]

I think if people only drove when it was necessary we'd probably see a lot less traffic. I deliver and I often wonder just what anyone is doing out in the middle of the night or even on a slow sunday. Weekends are often the worse because people take all that week long pent up by a job restlessness and clog the shit out of everything. That's far from a necessity but that's how it works. Just fuckers everywhere for no real reason.

90% of traffic jams on highways is because folks just travel at random speeds in each lane. If there was a gradient such that the slowest speeds were always to the right, the faster speeds were in the middle, and the left most lane was ALWAYS open for passing (no one riding in the left lane), there would be a LOT less traffic. (Which in turn would save a ton of gas and lower gas prices because the demand would be lower.)

Even on one lane roads people do stupid things. They create what's known as a soliton or stationary wave. For instance, if you're on a one lane road and everyone is on top of one another and someone stops to turn, all those cars stop and it creates a soliton. However, if the cars were spaced out, by the time the person turns, the car turning would be out of the way and no one would stop which "absorbs" the soliton. So, these solitons create perpetual traffic in the same spot. I (seriously) try to absorb as many solitons as I can on the road.

 

[Joe]

Well, the birth rate is dropping so that should make the climate alarmists happier. I've done my part.. so I'll just keep driving gas guzzlers lmao

No kid having mofos need a tax break for it like they give for evs

 

[TheTickG]

7 billion of anything is ridiculously huge amount.

And you compare that to other animals. I think we're the highest population.

There are 1.2 billion ants for every person...

 

[zapataxiv]

what about the oceans?
just a bunch of lazy ass fish in there
imagine how many people we could put in there just move the water on to where the land is now
boom we got way more land and farms
no sharks

 

[Hellowhosthat]

We should be maintaining these populations, allowing our societies to wither into old age is not good for the economy or human flourishing. It would mean raising the retirement age beyond the average life expectancy which is obviously not good.

.

That's just kicking the can down the road. Sustaining a habitable planet is far more important than any of the other factors. A generation is just going to have to suck it up and work till they die I think.


If we were looking at any other species populating and being an environmental hazard the way we are we'd say it's time for a cull.

 

[DoctorNick]

That's just kicking the can down the road. Sustaining a habitable planet is far more important than any of the other factors. A generation is just going to have to suck it up and work till they die I think.


If we were looking at any other species populating and being an environmental hazard the way we are we'd say it's time for a cull.

I hope we are heading towards a cull. I'm fine with inflation and cost of living multiplying a few more times if it means more space.

 

[jericksen5]

It’s absolutely a myth and not even debatable. It’s astonishing though how many people still not only believe this idea, but promote it. I blame Thanos/MCU partially for keeping it going.

 

[Nada.]

No TS is right, overpopulation is a myth. Climate change is driven by resource consumption which is largely driven by the more developed countries. The problem isn't the amount of people, its the Western development model that leads to massive per capita strain on the environment.

If anything developed countries have low birth rates so there's not enough people being born.

A lot of the empty land in the West are federally owned reserves and they're in very dry areas where it'd be hard to develop.

However we do waste land by having single use, single family zoning in suburbs around our cities when we could allow for more mixed use, high density urban development. Tokyo has a population that is 50% larger than that of the NYC metro area while taking up 1/4th of the land area so its 8x as dense. If all our major urban centers were like that we'd have a lot more available space and housing prices would be lower as well as having less obesity and smog related health problems

Yea, but people would have to live in 9 squaremeter rodentbox Apartments...

 

[Nada.]

Well, the birth rate is dropping so that should make the climate alarmists happier. I've done my part.. so I'll just keep driving gas guzzlers lmao

Hahaha, recycling going strong in that graph.

 

[Deleted member 110072]

Yes it is a myth. The issue with earth is capitalism and economic growth not how many humans there are, earths issues are caused by a very small group within humanity. That line of thought is basically lubricating future genocide by getting the idea into peoples head that hundreds of millions deaths would a good thing.

Most humans live on a very tiny portion of the earths land.

Now overpopulation COULD be a problem but population were to say double but population is set to level of near the end of the century. Due to climate change they'll probably be a much sharper curb. But even without climate change basically what happened to the early industrializing countries is going to happen in Asia and Africa.

Overpopulation is taking the crimes of the investor class and gaslighting and making the average person think it's their fault. Same as carbon footprint. It's just gaslighting.

I think an unexpected factor in the thinking of people like Marx has been underestimating the ability to drop the cost of living whilst maintaining massive wealth inequality. In the last 30-40 years especially really cheap food, consumer goods and power has become pretty much essential to support most western societies.

Its tempting to think the ultra rich's personal consumption is what causes the problem but really its moreso that much of the rest of society consumes stuff which has relatively low margins on it. Cheap food thats often grown with polluting fertiliser or on unsustainable land like slash and burn in the Amazon basin, cheap power that makes renewables harder to move towards, cheap consumables that depend on cheap foreign labour and end up being shipped half way across the world.

You share out the wealth more evenly and these people have the money to live without depending on cheap shortcuts that cause as much damage.

 

[gspieler]

It’s absolutely a myth and not even debatable. It’s astonishing though how many people still not only believe this idea, but promote it. I blame Thanos/MCU partially for keeping it going.

So you have irrefutable proof that overpopulation is a myth? Or was your post just hyperbole?

 

[Mike]

So you have irrefutable proof that overpopulation is a myth? Or was your post just hyperbole?

Well he's citing Thanos as a reason/source so...... yeah.