On Mon, 12 May 2008 07:36:04 -0500, Mark M. wrote:
> 2.7182818284590... wrote:
>> Do you think that rising food prices will lead to Malthusian famines?
>> I am beginning to think that the effects of our high human population
>> is rising food prices. Of course, gas prices are also to blame, but it
>> shouldn't be the only factor.
>>
>> Unfortunately, I'm sure that the people who would bear the brunt of
>> the rising food prices are subsistence farmers in famined areas.
>
> Poverty is generally a man-made problem that can be alleviated through a
> change in man-made institutions. Poverty is not the inevitable result
of
> population growth.
Most certainly "relative poverty", or poverty amid prosperity is not
caused by population growth.
> Malthus was wrong.
Partially.
> Human beings don't breed to the point of starvation.
They are sentient. End of absolutes.
> Rather, as population increases, humans invent ways to get more food for
> less labor and less land. Among communities that enjoy increased
standard
> of living, population growth slows.
Bingo. They learn. Imagine that. But when Republicans and religious
nut cases do all they can to prevent the learning and the PROGRESS then
the Malthusian effect does take hold. It is a question of degree.
> The solution to the problem of poverty is not population control but the
> opening up of natural op****tunity to use land. Also, government must
> protect producers from money changers and other economic parasites.
Enlightenment and education and equal access to that which nature has
provided. That constant LIBERAL drumbeat.
--
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers
of society but the people themselves; and
if we think them not enlightened enough to
exercise their control with a wholesome
discretion, the remedy is not to take it from
them, but to inform their discretion by
education." - Thomas Jefferson
http://GreaterVoice.org/extend
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