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I think the bigger problem is that rich people aren't having enough children.
Europe, North America, and Japan have very low birth rates. This means we need to import people to clean our bathrooms, pick vegetables, and change bed pans in the increasingly crowded nursing homes. The influx of foreigners who don't speak the language or understand the culture they are surrounded by, causes tension and conflict. The Japanese are trying to remedy the problem by creating robots to do the jobs that Mexicans and Pakistanis do in other countries, but it's not a solution.
I think the bigger problem is that rich people aren't having enough children.
Europe, North America, and Japan have very low birth rates. This means we need to import people to clean our bathrooms, pick vegetables, and change bed pans in the increasingly crowded nursing homes. The influx of foreigners who don't speak the language or understand the culture they are surrounded by, causes tension and conflict. The Japanese are trying to remedy the problem by creating robots to do the jobs that Mexicans and Pakistanis do in other countries, but it's not a solution.
I don't think the kids of rich families would get stuck working menial jobs like those. I envision a future where menial work will be done mostly by robots. Only really intelligent people will be needed in the future. Everyone else will most likely be on welfare because there won't be any jobs for them to do.
We are seeing it already with driver less vehicles, kiosks taking cashier jobs, automated machines replacing thousands of workers in factories, etc.
I realize that a rich person can use many more resources than a poor person. However I would not say they burn all of those resources, since some part goes toward investment in human and physical capital which gets recycled into the economy. In terms of diet, housing, and other resource sinks yes rich people burn more.
However investing a lot of resources in one person is necessary now to be productive. You need years of education, often with expensive technology, to find a niche in the economy. The requirement of intensive human capital will only get stronger in the future. Subsistence farming, no matter how little the farmers consume, is still a resource sink because little investment in physical or human capital is occurring.
You also ignore the last point I made, that bringing a child into a world of poverty is not good for that child. You are letting your class consciousness override concern for the welfare of a child.
Huh? When a family practices subsistence farming in Sudan, Laos, or wherever they are treading very lightly on the Earth and anyone else. But they're not investing in physical or human capital? Gimme a break, sounds like you're stuck in some econ textbook of meaninglessness.
And bringing a child up in poverty does kinda suck in the US and Europe but it is the natural human way. Thru most of history humans were poor and it was part of what made the earth unquestionably sustainable. Nowadays, more people consuming more resources is leading to every threat we have (environmental degradation, unemployment, political stresses, competition for ever fewer resources, etc.)
I'm not picking on rich people because the middle class consumes more as well. As the poor have become middle class worldwide, stresses on the earth have become dramatic. Not only that, they are consuming more things that are bad for the earth: meat, electricity, petrol, Freon, plastic, sugar, etc.
If people only gave birth to children that they could afford, most of the world's problems would be solved in a couple of generations. These problems persist because poor people, mostly out of ignorance, continue to give birth to more people than their local economy can support.
It doesn't take long to see that I am saying rich people can responsibly raise more children than poor people. I do agree with that statement.
The immediate objection is that this is social darwinism. Again, I agree with that statement - it is. I imagine most of the arguments about this issue revolve around objections to the justice of social darwinism.
However, objections to social darwinism mostly ignore the fact that the children of poor parents bear the brunt of this class struggle which they had no say in joining. And when poor people are educated about the costs of child rearing and family planning options, birth rates fall. So being on the "losing" side of this class war isn't all that bad: you can enjoy a higher quality of life for yourself and any children you can responsibly raise. Ignorance is the real enemy of the poor here, not the rich.
Most of the world's current problems are caused by 1) ignorance, 2) the wrong people having power, 3) a disparity of resources, 4) belief systems based on illogical thinking, 5) overly rapid growth in certain areas.
Huh? When a family practices subsistence farming in Sudan, Laos, or wherever they are treading very lightly on the Earth and anyone else. But they're not investing in physical or human capital? Gimme a break, sounds like you're stuck in some econ textbook of meaninglessness.
And bringing a child up in poverty does kinda suck in the US and Europe but it is the natural human way. Thru most of history humans were poor and it was part of what made the earth unquestionably sustainable. Nowadays, more people consuming more resources is leading to every threat we have (environmental degradation, unemployment, political stresses, competition for ever fewer resources, etc.)
I'm not picking on rich people because the middle class consumes more as well. As the poor have become middle class worldwide, stresses on the earth have become dramatic. Not only that, they are consuming more things that are bad for the earth: meat, electricity, petrol, Freon, plastic, sugar, etc.
It's not econ mumbo jumbo. Productivity increases are achieved through investment in human and physical capital. Productivity increases create more wealth. Rich people consuming more resources to educate their children and build factories is the main reason they are rich - it's a virtuous cycle.
Wealth increasing as birth rates begin to fall is a well-known phenomenon called the demographic dividend.
I think it's easy for you to say that growing up in poverty is "natural" and therefore normatively desirable or acceptable (a logical fallacy), but I doubt anyone who is in that state is comforted by that. They want to live with more opportunities, nicer things, and more space like everyone else.
Wars and violence are usually caused by conflict over scarce resources.
Let's test that hypothesis:
WW I - started when the Archduke of Austria was assassinated by a Serb. Sides had been drawn long before by the royalty of Europe. It was as much about power politics of the rich as anything else.
WW II - started in Europe by a lunatic who envisioned his country as the master race and his neighbors as being weak and racially inferior. Yes, Hitler used "lebensraum" (living space) as his brand when he invaded the Ukraine but that was how he sold it to the German people. The war kicked off in the Pacific rim by Japan invading its neighbors. That was a resource grab but note that Japan has done fine economically since then with very little natural resources.
Korean War - Political squabble. Commies vs. Capitalists.
Vietnam War - Political squabble. Commies vs. Capitalists.
First Gulf War - Another Hitler-like mad man on the loose. Saddam vs. the rest of the world
Second Gulf war - Knee jerk reaction to 9-11 even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11.
Afghanistan - US gets sucked into a tribal conflict with religious overtones. Mostly a political squabble - Taliban theocracy vs. Democracy but also a fight over opium by local war lords.
I don't see that lowering the birth rate in any of the nations involved in the above list would have prevented any of those conflicts.
If people only gave birth to children that they could afford, most of the world's problems would be solved in a couple of generations. These problems persist because poor people, mostly out of ignorance, continue to give birth to more people than their local economy can support.
It doesn't take long to see that I am saying rich people can responsibly raise more children than poor people. I do agree with that statement.
The immediate objection is that this is social darwinism. Again, I agree with that statement - it is. I imagine most of the arguments about this issue revolve around objections to the justice of social darwinism.
However, objections to social darwinism mostly ignore the fact that the children of poor parents bear the brunt of this class struggle which they had no say in joining. And when poor people are educated about the costs of child rearing and family planning options, birth rates fall. So being on the "losing" side of this class war isn't all that bad: you can enjoy a higher quality of life for yourself and any children you can responsibly raise. Ignorance is the real enemy of the poor here, not the rich.
THe biggest problems have been directly caused by people who think they are God,
Hitler, Stalin , Pol Pot, Mao.
They all played God. They all thought they knew best how everyone should live.
Hitler loved social Darwinism.
I don't think the kids of rich families would get stuck working menial jobs like those. I envision a future where menial work will be done mostly by robots. Only really intelligent people will be needed in the future. Everyone else will most likely be on welfare because there won't be any jobs for them to do.
We are seeing it already with driver less vehicles, kiosks taking cashier jobs, automated machines replacing thousands of workers in factories, etc.
Yes, that is the future: learning how to have a successful economy with a decreasing or static population.
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