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[Starver]

There are never enough opinions about scarcity.

[McTraveller]

I think Marx had it backwards:  the cost of everything is tied to labor, but the value of things is not tied to labor at all.  Value is what you are willing to give up to get something, not how much effort it takes to make it.  You can try to get an aggregate picture of value, but value is an inherently personal thing.

And don't confuse value or cost with price, because that's often different, even though it correlates.  Price can track closely with value, since ultimately that is the only objective thing we have that represents something you have to give up to obtain something.  But sometimes (often?) people pay a price begrudgingly, because there are no other options.  So that is a "forced" price that is higher than the "actual" value, but the person has (esp. when related to necessities) no choice but to pay it.  This is how you get stratified society, when people are forced* to pay more for necessities than they are given in exchange for what they provide.

*By explicit (e.g., gangs or mafia or military) or implicit (e.g., redlining, biased laws, etc) force

[wierd]

I keep seeing this repeated--

"Malthus was WRONG! WROOOOOONNNGGGG!!!!" (flying spittle)

(and then using it as carte blanche to just ignore that there really are dire events on the horizon, and very real consequences to the green revolution.)


But he really wasn't.  Rather, his math did not pan out because we discovered artificial nitrogen fertilizer, and invented tractors.  That does not mean that those things are infinitely able to extend human footprint, which is what would be actually required for malthus to be "wrong."  Within the terms of his initial math, and the constraints that existed then, he would have been correct. When asserting his "wrongness", it is VERY important not to jump into that swimming pool full of "So we can just keep doing as we are forever, and his doom will never happen!" nonsense.  Instead, it is vitally important to stress that it was a prediction that was based on a status quo that shifted, in favor of new discoveries, which introduced new and different problems, which we are now having to deal with as a species.

As such, it is necessary to keep in mind that the current levels of production are NOT SUSTAINABLE, and have been known to be such since at least the 1940s.  Many studies were conducted on the loss of soil vitality after extensive use of nitrogen fertilizers, and it was quite apparent even then that the practice could not be sustained. Add to that, the vast majority of nitrogen fertilizer is produced using fossil fuel based feed stocks, which are a limited supply material. 

Don't mistake me for being some fangirl for malthus though.  The man had ... issues..   I will leave it at that.  That does not mean that the basic crux of the doom, "There is a finite carry capacity of the planet, as regards human population", has been proven wrong.  The parameters of the maximum capacity were just redefined, and were redefined in an unsustainable, and environmentally destructive fashion. That doom is still waiting to eat us.




The malthusian catastrophe merely had its parameters redefined. It did not go away.

[Maximum Spin]

Y'all, you know that Malthus was wrong, right? I keep seeing people say "but what about scarcity?".

Malthus was wrong at the time because the population he was writing about had several new continents with the natives freshly subjugated to disperse into, and shortly afterward, the green revolution happened and we had enough food for several times more people. We appear to be fresh out of continents and so far have not succeeded in multiplying crop yields by much more. Just because we didn't hit the limit when one person warned we could doesn't mean there isn't a limit.

If someone who has something wants to give it to you, then, by definition, you deserve it.

Just... no. Who on earth thinks this? There is pretty much no understanding of desert I can think of in which someone wanting to give you something of theirs means you deserve it. Unless you believe or bullshit like Rand.

Dictators give their friends and lovers things those people definitely don't deserve all the time. The European nobility frequently gave their children money and lands that were the profits of slavery - or indeed actual slaves. And idiotic rich kids are frequently given far more than they will ever deserve to have in their lives by their parents as rewards for medioce exam grades, or for nothing at all.

I really don't see how someone could come to believe that you deserve anything you're given. Let alone that it's true by definition - this really isn't in the definition of deserve, or a necessary consequence of it. I'm a bit horrified that someone could think this, to be honest.

I genuinely believe it, yes. I also believe that the only workable definition of "morally right" is "that which happens". You can shout that reality is wrong all you like, but it won't change anything. If you simply choose to believe that reality is right, then you will always find that everything is exactly the way it should be.

[wierd]

For the first part-- indeed.  Malthus's calculus was simply redefined, not "proven wrong."

See for instance, the major thrust of this article.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-its-time-to-stop-punishing-our-soils-with-fertilizers-and-chemicals

The use of nitrogen fertilizers has been known to cause radical loss of soil carbon (which is essential for soil microbiomes to continue functioning, without which, mass ecosystem collapses will occur), since at least the 1940s.  The loss of soil carbon has direct consequences for food crop production, because it reduces the capacity of the soil to hold on to soluble minerals necessary for proper plant growth, such as Mg, Mn, Na, and K-- In addition to all the environmental harm that the added nitrogen causes outside of our fields, where we spray it by the millions of gallons annually.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01048758

The green revolution did not prove malthus wrong.

DO keep that in mind.

[Eschar]

Y'all, you know that Malthus was wrong, right? I keep seeing people say "but what about scarcity?".

Malthus was wrong at the time because the population he was writing about had several new continents with the natives freshly subjugated to disperse into, and shortly afterward, the green revolution happened and we had enough food for several times more people. We appear to be fresh out of continents and so far have not succeeded in multiplying crop yields by much more. Just because we didn't hit the limit when one person warned we could doesn't mean there isn't a limit.

If someone who has something wants to give it to you, then, by definition, you deserve it.

Just... no. Who on earth thinks this? There is pretty much no understanding of desert I can think of in which someone wanting to give you something of theirs means you deserve it. Unless you believe or bullshit like Rand.

Dictators give their friends and lovers things those people definitely don't deserve all the time. The European nobility frequently gave their children money and lands that were the profits of slavery - or indeed actual slaves. And idiotic rich kids are frequently given far more than they will ever deserve to have in their lives by their parents as rewards for medioce exam grades, or for nothing at all.

I really don't see how someone could come to believe that you deserve anything you're given. Let alone that it's true by definition - this really isn't in the definition of deserve, or a necessary consequence of it. I'm a bit horrified that someone could think this, to be honest.

I genuinely believe it, yes. I also believe that the only workable definition of "morally right" is "that which happens". You can shout that reality is wrong all you like, but it won't change anything. If you simply choose to believe that reality is right, then you will always find that everything is exactly the way it should be.

Are you sure you're not equivocating on "right" with "morally right" and "factually accurate"?

[Maximum Spin]

Are you sure you're not equivocating on "right" with "morally right" and "factually accurate"?

Yes. I mean "right" and "wrong" in the moral senses in every instance in that sentence. If you like you can replace them with "moral" and "immoral".

[NJW2000]

I genuinely believe it, yes. I also believe that the only workable definition of "morally right" is "that which happens". You can shout that reality is wrong all you like, but it won't change anything. If you simply choose to believe that reality is right, then you will always find that everything is exactly the way it should be.

Ah, so you wholeheartedly believe that the leaders of the Khmer Rouge acted in a morally correct fasion? How fascinating. I've always wanted to meet someone who thought Ali Hassan al-Majid's use of mustard gas on Kurdish civilian populations was the right thing to do. I've never met someone who believed there were moral arguments in favour of pedophiles abducting children in unmarked vans.


Jokes aside, good trolling, I interacted with you, well done, now go back to the youtube comments section.

[Maximum Spin]

I genuinely believe it, yes. I also believe that the only workable definition of "morally right" is "that which happens". You can shout that reality is wrong all you like, but it won't change anything. If you simply choose to believe that reality is right, then you will always find that everything is exactly the way it should be.

Ah, so you wholeheartedly believe that the leaders of the Khmer Rouge acted in a morally correct fasion? How fascinating. I've always wanted to meet someone who thought Ali Hassan al-Majid's use of mustard gas on Kurdish civilian populations was the right thing to do. I've never met someone who believed there were moral arguments in favour of pedophiles abducting children in unmarked vans.


Jokes aside, good trolling, I interacted with you, well done, now go back to the youtube comments section.

I prefer to phrase it as "I have no moral opinions on those things in the abstract, but it was right that they happened".

ETA: I'm not offended by your smarm, but your total lack of theory of mind makes me sad. Let me be totally clear: I am a fatalist. I consider the current observed reality to be the morally necessary outcome, and therefore every single detail that went into making the world the way it is was morally right. You don't have to "like" it, but it was always going to be this way. Personally, getting upset that reality is the way it is sounds like an awful way to spend your time to me, but it's not my problem.

[dragdeler]

-Give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done!

[Starver]

All very interesting (YMMV), but well away from politics of the 'Merkin kind.

I'm fairly sure we've not run out of stupid things said by Trump(/Biden/whoever), which is far from a scarcity issue in all respects.

((I assume dragdeler is making the same point, slightly more obtusely, in that ninjaing.))

[Maximum Spin]

Oh, right, this is the Ameripol thread, isn't it.

This is why I usually try so hard not to let myself get baited into arguing about philosophy in these threads.

[Doomblade187]

In case you weren't aware, I'm a property owner. I'm not the one being lied to, I'm the one who gets to do the lying. I don't even work, except for myself, when I feel like it.


And yeah, I don't want you proles on my land. Obviously. But the truth is, Marx was wrong about a lot of things, the most important of which being the Malthusian collapse that makes "ownership divided up amongst the people" a perfect irrelevancy when there are not enough resources to spread out in the first place.

Billions of people are going to die, one way or another, and communism "as Marx intended" is never going to happen.

ETA: Well, actually, I would let you filthy proles specifically onto my land if you wanted to rent. I just mean filthy proles in general.

This is what I was responding to, Maximum. America, while facing ecological collapse, *does* produce more than enough for our own people. We export food to the world. There's not a scarcity of basic resources at this time. The ecological collapse that weird and others have brought up is an issue, but one that is exacerbated by cash crop farming and fertilizer overuse - we need government regulations to reign in capitalists. Another issue that poses a potential threat is the ongoing effort of make sterile seeds, crops that won't reproduce. It's literally existential threat for profit. Capitalism is not the way forward, and will more likely trigger a malthusian catastrophe than any brand of Marx.

[SalmonGod]

Heartwarming to see how my spotlight on the tethering of the value of human life to productivity quickly progressed to "filthy proles stay off my land!" after I went to bed.

The honesty is refreshing.

[Maximum Spin]

Another issue that poses a potential threat is the ongoing effort of make sterile seeds, crops that won't reproduce.

Ongoing effort? Hybrid crops have been in common use for nearly a hundred years now. They are preferred not because they are sterile, though they are, but because they yield very uniform product, have predictable genetics, and can therefore be made much more productive than traditional crops. The vast majority of the vegetable food eaten by humans in the past century has been from sterile crops.

(ETA: I suppose I should also clarify that I meant worldwide. Yes, America itself could easily be more or less fine.)

ETA2: Wait, I just realised you thought I meant that Marxism causes a Malthusian collapse. No, the Malthusian collapse is already inevitable. That's why I said, "billions of people are going to die, one way or another". It's happening.