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[WealthyRadish]

We'd have already reached global starvation at around 3 billion if not for the windfall of the Haber process. Wanna gamble again?

Ending the use of grain fed livestock in the United States alone could be enough to feed around 800 million more people (i.e. the population of South America could double). I'm not sure I would count on it, though. It's not like that 800 million worth would be better used somewhere else right now...

[Frumple]

... wha. What the blazes does a post-scarcity society have to do with nixing wide scale poverty? And who the hell said anything about there no longer being poor people anywhere?

Just nixing wide spread stuff, even if it's just in destitute countries, would be a pretty bloody massive coup.

[mainiac]

@mainiac those development experts could be right, but 'widespread poverty will be gone' means something along the lines of 'no longer will entire countries be below the poverty line'

I find it strange that when confronted by new information you insist that I must not understand what I am talking about.

The number of people in poverty has been declining as a percentage of world population for a long time.  It recently started declining in absolute terms as the growing number of people escaping poverty outpaced the people born into poverty in less developed countries.  This trend is expected to accelerate as the percentage of people in poverty in poor countries continues to fall.  By 2050, widespread systematic poverty in the absolute sense should no longer exist.  I.E. there will not be entire regions with millions of people in them that are mostly living on $1.90/day.  Even in poor countries, poverty will be less common.  The trend should continue from there.

We'd have already reached global starvation at around 3 billion if not for the windfall of the Haber process. Wanna gamble again?

Ending the use of grain fed livestock in the United States alone could be enough to feed around 800 million more people (i.e. the population of South America could double). I'm not sure I would count on it, though. It's not like that 800 million worth would be better used somewhere else right now...

Many developing countries are starting to develop obesity problems.  The problem is not that the world is incapable of growing food.  The problem is giving people access to jobs that provide for a higher standard of living then poverty and other essential things like education and medicine.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The net externalities of rich nations on poor nations is massively, massively positive.  It took 200 years for England to develop from pre-industrial to a standard of I living similar to what China was at around the year 2000.  It took China 40 years.  Contact with a more advanced economy is an enormous massive boost.

The question of whether that's worth all the domestic unrest and permanent resentment towards the larger economy is a legitimate question, but not the one I'm concerned with. The question here is the externalities of all nations on the Earth. This well is not endless, and the backlash is real. Will those hundreds of years of advancement be fairly balanced when we pay in sea level rise, famine, mass extinction, and everything that results from those? Sounds like a losing deal to me.

We also don't have the right to destroy the world for our own selfishness, but I won't pretend anybody actually gives a shit about that, I know I wouldn't if I was a powerbroker.

Development experts are hopeful that by 2050 widespread poverty as we know it will be gone.  Take a moment to realize how utterly wonderful that is.  For all of human history poverty of many people was a fact of life.  In our lifetimes it will be a rapidly disappearing aberration brought about by local circumstances and soon to be fixed permanently.

Hah, that's about as real as the Kurzwelian AI Jesus bullshit. Our advancements in the QoL numbers aren't free, and I think all the suffering that we manage to find in the margins of even the most developed nations shows just how much good it does. Yeah, yeah, it's better to have an anxiety disorder than to starve every day for your entire life. I don't disagree.

But humanity will still kill for our ideologies, we will still torture children all over the world, and the weak will still be the victims of the strong. Can't wait to see the shit intelligence agencies cook up with 2050-level tech.

Population crises from inability to feed everyone solve themselves, MSH. In a rather horrible manner, perhaps, but they do. And rich countries are unlikely to be the first ones starving.

At least I've got you admitting the golden "do nothing" everybody loves these days doesn't not include mass death. And who's rich can change, don't doubt it.

I figure that a natural decline in population will occur after a while and then we'll hit be stable. Similar scale to climate change, too; literally decades and centuries for it to happen.

I can't find a good gif of Manfreid smashing his head against the courtroom wall, but I want you to imagine it here.

[mainiac]

Organizations like the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and World Bank believe that the improvement in poverty is real.  If you want to second guess them I would like to see more evidence then a cynical bromide.

Or you could just look up the picture of any city in the developing world that hasn't recently gone through a civil war and compare it to the same city a few decades ago.  Gonna believe your own eyes?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I told you I believe in advancements of quality of life. What I don't believe in is the idea that a QoL number is literally the key to utopia, which is how people treat it. We won't starve as much, the weapons of society will turn from guns to legal documents and guns held by cops, and we'll have more spending money for our consumerist ideology. That's it.

And also, we're probably going to see a resurgence in destructive war when the relative strengths of societies start to equalize.

[mainiac]

Do people treat it that way?  Well let me know if any of them show up.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Try anybody who had to read Peter Diamandis' Abundance and thought "this changes everything!", I'm sure we've got a few around here. Rolepgeek has said that the primary goal for the 21st century is literally inventing immortality, so, you know.

[mainiac]

Okay but you called what I said about people leaving poverty "Kurzwelian AI Jesus bullshit".  I was talking about people leaving poverty.  Why am I supposed to have to contextualize that within the technological singularity?  It's not Kurz-whatisface saying it.  It's rather hard nosed international development organizations.

[smjjames]

the weapons of society will turn from guns to legal documents and guns held by cops,

There will still be plenty of people in America who see guns as the weapon of society.

And also, we're probably going to see a resurgence in destructive war when the relative strengths of societies start to equalize.

Then why don't we see more war in Europe? And you seem to imply that there's a non-destructive war, whatever that means, unless you mean Cold War.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Okay but you called what I said about people leaving poverty "Kurzwelian AI Jesus bullshit".  I was talking about people leaving poverty.  Why am I supposed to have to contextualize that within the technological singularity?  It's not Kurz-whatisface saying it.  It's rather hard nosed international development organizations.

I think that leaving poverty is not overly wonderful, as you put it, on its own. That's a rather reduced view of things, what with all the risks and problems of the world's non-impoverished societies. If I am overly pushing the comparison to the technological singularity, then that is my way of asking you, "so what?".

We were, after all, discussing environmental collapse before. I figure the link to this we've gotten here is on a more fundamental disagreement, myself a malthusian, you a cornucopian. Sure, if we unfuck ourselves we'll probably see a continuing reduction in poverty.

We haven't unfucked ourselves. Eventually the positive forces of poverty reduction will be overwhelmed by everything I've described of collapse conditions, rendering such trends reversed.

[smjjames]

No, we were talking about population growth before. But yeah, we haven't unfucked ourselves (or totally fucked ourselves either yet) as far as climate change and potential environmental collapse and disaster conditions go yet.

Heck, some are saying that the entire Syrian conflict got sparked indirectly in part due to climate change. Obviously it's far more complex than that, but climate change is evidently already creating tension in some places and it'll only get worse from here on out if we don't prepare for it or handle it properly.

[WealthyRadish]

We'd have already reached global starvation at around 3 billion if not for the windfall of the Haber process. Wanna gamble again?

Ending the use of grain fed livestock in the United States alone could be enough to feed around 800 million more people (i.e. the population of South America could double). I'm not sure I would count on it, though. It's not like that 800 million worth would be better used somewhere else right now...

The problem is not that the world is incapable of growing food.

This was the main point of the post, that the growing population's needs could be met even on what we already have access to.

The problem is giving people access to jobs that provide for a higher standard of living then poverty and other essential things like education and medicine.

Sure, but how is this an argument against exporting more food? I can maybe understand lower prices harming farmers abroad, but I get the feeling that starvation is worse for economic development than low cost of living. Here we have the US government subsidizing Taco Bell beef burritos (generated at the cost of nonrenewable water from aquifers, incredible amounts of chemical fertilizer, and extreme biologic methane emissions), when we could improve our diet and produce a global surplus instead. But because the former is more economically beneficial for us, it'll be better for those starving people in the long run, right?

[mainiac]

myself a malthusian, you a cornucopian

Malthus is objectively wrong about industrial and post-industrial societies.  You currently have a computer in front of you.  That is a fantastical amount of wealth by Malthusian standards.  Which is not all that bad about Malthus, after all he was a historian and he was correct about the data he looked at.

I am unaware of an economic nor historian named Cornucop.

Eventually the positive forces of poverty reduction will be overwhelmed by everything I've described of collapse conditions, rendering such trends reversed.

This annoys me.  I gave you a very tangible statement.  You reply with a cynical bromide.

Do you really think that international development organizations aren't accounting for environmental degradation in their forecasts?

Sure, but how is this an argument against exporting more food?

It's not, it's just expressing frustration at the "cows are eating grain humans could eat" point.  I mean it's true but it's meaningless.

I think "cows are emitting greenhouse gasses" is a much more relevant point.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Malthus is objectively wrong about industrial and post-industrial societies.  You currently have a computer in front of you.  That is a fantastical amount of wealth by Malthusian standards.  Which is not all that bad about Malthus, after all he was a historian and he was correct about the data he looked at.

Malthus the man was objectively wrong due to unforeseen improvements in crop yields. Know that all the time taken to shitting on Malthus is a very intentional action by the current power structures of the world, to disregard anything under the greater idea of what has become known as malthusianism as some poison fruit. This is in spite of the very fucking obvious fact that resources are not infinite and thus a malthusian collapse is obviously possible whether it happens or not.

I am unaware of an economic nor historian named Cornucop.

Hilariously cherry-flavored as always.

This annoys me.  I gave you a very tangible statement.  You reply with a cynical bromide.

Do you really think that international development organizations aren't accounting for environmental degradation in their forecasts?

Do you really think even the most hard nosed macroeconomics professor-sourced organization possesses literal psychic powers able to violate all the known standards of prediction? The direction of a multi-actor group, such as human civilization, is well known to be impossible to chart accurately. What with all the supercomputers that have tried, and all.

They cannot include environmental degradation in their forecasts in a meaningful way because they, like the rest of us, are in the dark as to how bad climate change is going to be whether it's arrested or not. Every investment banker in the world has been hedging on the "it's an overblown threat" square for the past 40 years now, in spite of increasingly grim forecasts from every climate org in the world as we gained more and more recorded data instead of predictive data.

I don't think the UN can predict where the next failed state caused by economic insolvency caused by years of extreme drought is going to be ahead of time, and so their developmental standard is always going to be in jeopardy until, again, we unfuck ourselves.