If you think the earth is dying because poor people are having too many babies, that's about three logical steps away from ecofascism.

      • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        This is a shitty and unproductive response to a thoughtful comment. As someone else said in this thread, leftists for some reason think it's OK to totally misrepresent what someone's saying on this topic if it isn't "infinite population growth is possible on a finite planet."

    • GlacialTurtle [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Malthusianism is a basic scientific reality and is why evolution by natural selection happens in the first place

      No it's not. In literally no field is malthusianism remotely taken seriously.

        • GlacialTurtle [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          The most basic realities of evolution by natural selection are malthusian in the sense that leftists are referring to it here:

          No they are not. You have no fucking clue what malthusian is or means. You are literally not grasping the conversation actually being had.

          That there is a carrying capacity and an exponential rate of population increase and that these eventually butt heads. Both of these are dynamic, but their fundamental properties of increase (if carrying capacity even does increase at a given time) makes their meeting inevitable.

          Skipping over the very important part there of the social system by which we produce and then distribute that produce and the means by which the products are made both of which are significant factors in the carrying capacity of a given system as they relate to the efficiency by which parts of the system are transformed into means for others to live.

          This also applies to the entire field of ecology. When humans clear-cut a forest, they have reduced its marginal carrying capacity massively and the ecosystem is massively disrupted - through death. We could point out that rewilding will restore the carrying capacity, but it doesn’t change the fact that a given amount of the previous population, already at or near carrying capacity, will now die.

          That's not what malthusian or mathulsianism is. You are substituting a specific discussion on the means by which we produce how we live and the how the results are distributed for a much more general topic about total abstract carrying capacity (which is also variable according to both those factors I just mentioned).

          The real battle is with context and marginal action. The fact that these concepts validly undergird entire fields of biology does not mean you can draw simplistic, dehumanizing conclusions about current circumstances.

          The real battle is a specific social system which arranges society in such a fashion that it obscures our relationship to nature, encourages means of producing and distributing goods that are inefficient and whose benefits are most significantly accrued to a small group who burn and waste significantly more than most of the population.

            • GlacialTurtle [none/use name]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Yes, they are, and I explained why here and elsewhere.

              No, you reduced malthusianism to a banal statement about total carrying capacity. That's not malthusianism.

              Overall, you’re missing opportunities to provide displacing knowledge. If these basic underpinnings of biology aren’t malthusian and I’ve stated why they are, what’s wrong with my narrative? If I’m not discussing “malthusian” like leftists are, then in what sense are leftists (unlike all of the ones I see here) talking about? What is “the conversation” that I’m missing?

              Jerkoff motion

              Yes, it is. It’s how malthusian thought entered and remained in biological sciences and it’s how leftists here keep referring to it in incredibly simplistic ways

              No.

              Yes, it is. It’s how malthusian thought entered and remained in biological sciences and it’s how leftists here keep referring to it in incredibly simplistic ways. I see no teardowns of eco-fascists in this thread, just dismissals of the concept that population growth matters and focusing exclusively on the fact that we can increase carrying capacity through changes in consumption and the organization of production - what amounts to a statement that carrying capacity could be higher so we don’t need to worry about it re: population.

              Because it's the correct take. Malthus was wrong on population growth. Fundamentally wrong. Populations stabilise as their material conditions improve. A number of countries now have declining populations. Even as populations declined, poverty rates stayed the same or got worse. Malthus' claim was that poverty as it already existed was an outcome of population growth, which was and remains wrong. He displaced understanding the social system and how it produces poverty by claiming it as a natural outcome of factors not related to how society was organised. You're attempting to do the same in fixating the discussion on population growth. Even worse when population growth i.e. having large numbers of children is in fact an outcome of poverty. Reducing poverty reduces the tendency for population growth.

              I don’t understand how I can be substituting that discussion when I’m making a top-level comment responding to several narratives being used in this thread. Maybe that “specific discussion” is just the one that you’d rather be having?

              You didn't respond to anything. You did a "well ackshually" and reduced malthusianism to something it isn't. And are now denying you did that.

          • thefunkycomitatus [he/him,they/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            You are substituting a specific discussion on the means by which we produce how we live and the how the results are distributed for a much more general topic about total abstract carrying capacity (which is also variable according to both those factors I just mentioned).

            Yeah I feel like this convo is people agreeing phlogiston isn't real then one person saying it's kinda real because combustion is essentially phlogiston if you squint just right because they both involve fuel.

    • CarlTheRedditor [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      rejected by every person that’s taken intro biology

      Oh hell yeah, let's fuckin goooooooo