lemur

This is an interesting issue, but I'm not sure why you're raising it in this thread. I suppose it has to do with the problem of electrons acting on each other without direct contact? But what basis is there for electrons or matter generally to "make contact" except through force-interactions between interacting fields? What is matter except atoms consisting of nuclear particles and electrons that attract and repel each other? How can you call it "action at a distance" when the electrons of two particles collide, bounce off each other, and transfer momentum? This reminds me of another thought I had relating to this thread, which is whether the shape of electrons in different levels could allow them to transfer angular momentum? For example, if an electron is "ballooned out" on either side of the nucleus, wouldn't its angular momentum propel the sides of the "dumbbell" like hammers that would transfer that momentum to other "hammer shaped" electrons by more direct collision?

The point of the OP title is to create an alternative to the habit of thinking of population in terms of growth toward limits. Considering that humans have developed elaborate multi-level forms of governance, I think you can also address this issue in terms of ideals and reasons for idealizing them. Once people decide that they want the Earth to have a target population of a certain amount of people, and they know what kinds of cultural parameters they want to see in that world, they can begin thinking about ethical means to pursue their ideals. Yes, this is social engineering, but in what sense don't all individuals engage in some level of social-engineering over their everyday choices about not only reproduction but every other aspect of how they live? Isn't it social-engineering every time an individual chooses whether to drive, bike, or walk, how to set the thermostat, or what to eat for a meal? That is logical, but it could still skew analysis of the ultimate causes of resource-utilization. For example, imagine that investors living on a nice beach somewhere figure out that by investing in SUVs and oil-refineries, they can maintain profit levels that allow them to maintain and grow their wealth as they sip pina coladas and walk between the beach and hotel eating locally-grown food. The eco-footprint of their consumption could be small, but their investments would be stimulating consumption patterns among others that render their footprints much larger. Obviously investment can't directly or totally determine people's cultural choices, but if you analyze the choices made by people with large consumption footprints, they will often attribute their choices to a sense of economic or other determinism, saying for instance that they have to drive a lot for their jobs, and that they need to keep their jobs to pay their bills, etc. etc. So it may make sense to investigate the footprint-contribution of various investment and other business-practices instead of only focussing on consumption. If someone gave me a choice between dying in a natural disaster, dying in a war, and dying in an extermination camp, I would question how these got to be my range of choices in the first place and why someone would have the power to determine what I may or may not choose. Personally, I would choose for conservation and maximum reduction of all forms of deadly and oppressive violence, including war, other extermination, or vulnerability to natural disaster. I think the point of human progress is to overcome natural population control, not replace it with artificial variations. I think some people have already shifted from struggling to overcome natural population controls to overcoming social population controls.

I was thinking about the fact that magnets express polarized electrostatic force (or it seems at least analogous to electrostatic force anyway) and that this may be somewhat analogous to ionization where atoms/molecules become positively or negatively charged in order to electrostatically form chemical bonds. Then I was thinking about the way that magnets can be held in a position that prevents them from aligning their poles and coming together, and that when released from such a fixed position, the magnets will express kinetic energy by rotating and accelerating toward each other and colliding. So then I wondered if chemical reactions such as the burning of hydrocarbons could be analogized to this. I.e. as the bonds between constituent fragments of the hydrocarbon chain are broken, do they become ionized in a way that causes them to shift position and accelerate toward each other leading to collisions that release more energy than was invested in breaking the bonds in the first place? So I guess my two concrete questions about this are: 1) is it valid to think of chemical bonding and reactions in this way, i.e. as reconfiguration of microscopic magnet-like particles that can be separated by energy and caused/allowed to bond again according to ionic attraction? 2) how significant is angular momentum in the transfer of energy between ionized particles as they break away from larger molecules? i.e. is there some way to estimate how much heat released in a chemical reaction (burning) is due to angular-momentum transfers between the re-combining ions and new molecules and how much is transferred through linear motion?

Who said anything about refuting action at a distance? How else would electrons and protons interact with each other? Far from seeking refutation, I am trying to better understand it by asking question that may turn out to be ludicrous, but at least have the potential to enlighten me as to what exactly makes them ludicrous. I'm thinking this question may boil down to the dynamics of electron-repulsion in terms of spin-to-spin. It seems that magnetism results in alignment of new iron electrons because of some asymmetry in the rotating field. Then it would also seem like this asymmetry doesn't so much allow for some kind of traction where angular momentum is transferred mechanically as it allows the contours of varying attraction and repulsion to harmonize vis-a-vis one another. Am I off in a wrong direction with this? If this is somewhat sensible, my question becomes whether the spins would have to harmonize in a way that compliment each other, i.e. by positive-strong areas in the field attracting to negative-strong areas in the field and then spinning in a way that minimizes same-charge repulsion. Meaning that the poles of the axis of rotations correspond to positive and negative magnetic poles, such as how the Earth's magnetic poles roughly correspond to its axis of rotation? I think my wording was taken as some kind of insistence that something must be so because it "seems logical that . . ." The only reason I mentioned this was to contextualize the question of why or why not angular momentum at the atomic level can or can't transfer its momentum in the form of work. The "seeming logical" comment was as much a set-up for falsifying my application of logic as it was an invitation to consider the logic of momentum transfer in the context of angular momentum in terms of magnetism. How can there not be ANY energy? There must be SOME, however minute. Admittedly, if the electrons are already a circulating wave and then that pattern of circulation is spinning, which is what I understand by spin, then it would be odd to say that the total energy of the wave is greater because it is circulating in a slightly different macro-pattern. However, if momentum-transfer can happen as electric current goes through a wire, and perform work as a result, why wouldn't a current circulating at the level of the atom also have the potential to do work? Or maybe that is what photon-emission is. I'm going to start a related thread because I have been thinking about another angle comparing magnetic polarity and ionization, but I don't want to convolute this thread more than it already is.

I was thinking more in terms of all the complaints you hear about manufacturing jobs all being "out-sourced" to China. Many people seem to be advocating "in-sourcing" of such industries and jobs, but my question is whether it would be more efficient to move the jobs to N America and/or Europe or to move people to the jobs. My concern would be that, as with most working class cultures, there is an ideology of job-scarcity among workers in China that would bloom into anti-migration sentiments with the belief that "THEY are taking OUR jobs." This is typically how workers end up in conflicts over ethnicity and other identity-issues, I think. Although, if Chinese economics somehow has a magical means of providing sufficient jobs and compensation to satisfy people's desire for manufacturing jobs, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to investigate normalizing labor-migration to Asia.

Both interactive calculators begin with location. How can you assume anything about an individual's consumption based on where they live except by formulation general patterns based on statistical averages?

Brushing before eating could reduce the presence of harmful bacteria prior to the introduction of sugars that stimulate those bacteria's activity. Brushing after eating removes whatever sugars are left from eating and applies fluoride, which I think creates a thin protective layer that prevents residual bacteria and sugar from penetrating. I would do both, if possible, and if you would choose just one, I would choose to brush after. Some toothpaste ads, however, seem to recommend brushing once with their paste to protect the teeth for hours. In that case, you might want to brush before eating and then just rinse with water to remove anything remaining to prevent bacterial activity. Still, I think brushing after eating has the benefit of removing food residues from spots that would escape rinsing with water.

Interesting development, but I don't see how it approaches the narrowness, rigidness, and frictionlessness that give train wheel/rail contact its efficiency.

I read it but it's hard to tell. I think the biggest obstacle comes from correlating hectare-usage with regional averages instead of simply listing the number of hectares used for various goods and services and letting individuals tally up their own footprint. Modeling usage by region leaves too much room for generalizations based on assumptions about regional culture that ignore individual differences.

If they could do that, why couldn't they also have bi-sectional tires with a retractable steel belt in between that slightly separates the tire from the road and reduces rolling friction to the amount of a train? In fact, cars could actually engage separate retractable wheels that could be slotted into rails embedded in the road for the majority of long-distance travel.

You can explore the possibility of open relationships, but you are risking the potential of your monogamous bond to endure. The problem with open relationships is that it requires you to either regard partners as fundamentally unequal, in that none may be treated with as much respect as your primary partner OR you have to deal with the emotional bonding and responsibilities that develop as a result of the physical connections. I have listened with fascination to Muslim Imams on youtube who discuss the philosophy of polygamy. I think it makes sense to take responsibility for your sexual partners by marrying (all of) them, but it also makes you think twice about having multiple partners, imo. Recently I heard someone claim that Mohammed's limitation of wives to 4 from the unlimited harems that preceded him is primitive by modern standards of monogamy, but I wonder if modern western men would be truly limited to a maximum of 4 sexual partners in a lifetime, how many would succeed? You can accept and glorify human nature all you want, but the question is whether you are willing to be on the losing end of it.

Do these footprints reflect the total supply-chains of consumer-consumption in the given regions or do they attribute production-footprints to the region of production regardless of where end-consumption occurs? My impression is that some regions host more production and others host more consumption of imports. If this difference isn't controlled for in the data, it could create the appearance that heavily import-dependent regions have a smaller footprint than their consumption actually causes. Still, the focus should ultimately be on consumption and production practices that create the smallest footprint and if/whether/how consumers in these regions are achieving well-being and happiness with such minimal levels of resource-depletion.

bmews, you have tapped into some psychological truth about at least some people's experience of sexuality. Yet you avoid the thought of really combining generic heterosexual attraction with monogamy, for example by recognizing a difference between non-sexual and sexual interaction. You can have the potential to desire attractive women without actually orienting to them in that way, the same way you can see an attractive image in the media without thinking that you need to find, meet, and engage that woman sexually. The biggest hurdle you will find in heterosexual relationality, imo, is to be able to totally admit any and all feelings you have regarding other women to your partner, and to have your partner be honest and open enough to feel comfortable with telling you about any feelings of desire she has for other people as well. Some people will tell you that this is neither necessary or good to discuss with your partner, but I don't see why two people who really love each other shouldn't be able to open up about such things. Sure, it can bruise egos, but isn't love ultimately about overcoming the ego? Needless to say, I think that people (some at least) do long to transcend the biological compulsions of private sexuality and have a partner to truly share their outward AND inner life with. At that point, I think the biological/physical desires become like a source of inspiration for the more fulfilling interactions with a true partner whose companionship is more meaningful than beauty or pleasure alone could ever be.

Would it ever be possible for the Chinese economy to integrate new language-learners as a means of facilitating multi-ethnic economic integration? I often wonder this when people are complaining that so many jobs have been moved to China. Could China simply allow migration/integration so that people globally could seek work and cultural enrichment by living and acculturating in Chinese cities? Or are these cities already abundantly globally multi-ethnic, and I'm just making naive assumptions about ethnic homogeneity?

Still, it was not a bad description of the phenomenon, was it? I wish I could write as good of a description of the resistance you gain with age by being able to see through the superficial physical appearance to recognize the often weak soul inside the body that is simultaneously enshrouded and empowered by the physical beauty of the exterior. Hopefully you will find the ideal mate whose physical beauty slowly gives way to a spiritual side that impresses you even more than the physical and gradually leads you to look beyond the exterior. Only at the same time be careful to protect yourself against the shock that you may never be as moved by any external impression as much as you were by your own youthful reaction to beauty. In other words, you may be inescapably imprisoned in the worship of feminine beauty. A general burka requirement for all women may be your only hope.

You overlook explicit statements I make about voluntary reproductive choices on the basis of sincere beliefs being legitimate. The problem is when people start trying to force others to conform to their assumptions. What if, for example, someone had told you that you shouldn't/musn't have a second child because it was necessary to reduce global population? Would you have gladly conceded your own view that each parent can be legitimately replaced? If you would have resisted, and you were called "stupid" and "stubborn" for doing so, how would you have felt about that? Some people may have other reasons for choosing to have more than two children. Some may be concerned that they could lose one or more children to war, drugs, or other hazards. Some people may expect that human infrastructure can and will continue to expand in various ways. Without knowing the future, how can anyone definitely assert that anyone else is wrong in their forecast? Personally, I think that it makes sense to procreate carefully, just because each child is an individual who can benefit from all the attention they can get. I don't think it's ethical to treat children or anyone else as merely a part of a larger population. Each individual is responsible for their own resource-utilization and conservation. Overpopulation doesn't happen collectively by numbers, but individually by deeds, imo.

If every couple had only one child, how long would it take to go from a population of 7 billion to 1 billion? The problem is that it's not ethical to insist to people that they MUST limit their reproduction when they don't agree with your analysis and reasoning. I think you're making assumptions without putting them up for discussion. E.g. you write, "a population size that doesn't require any special solutions, such that all waste is handled by natural processes, would be appropriate," which implies in passing that handling waste by natural processes is "special," and that it is an obstacle for population size (density you mean?). So, really, I think you should raise these issues in a way that the facts can be critically discussed and evaluated. Generally, my impression is that the most difficult obstacles to resource-conservation is combustion transit and materialist consumerism. Are you saying, however, that in the absence of excessive motorized mobility and material consumption, waste management would still be a limiting factor? As for water and fertilizer, nitrogen is the most abundant ingredient in the atmosphere, though it's hard to render available for plant metabolism. Water can obviously be recycled, desalinated, etc. as it currently is naturally by various patterns of water-migration. Energy is obviously needed to produce food and shelter, but there is so much room for increases in consumption-efficiency, it's hard to even fathom that there could be some fixed limit/minimum to energy-usage per-capita. As for the oceans, people don't need to eat fish or at least not all the time. Other sources of protein are available for most meals. The kind of posts I was hoping for in this thread are visions for cultural lifestyles that people imagine would be possible with their target population. For example, with a global population of 1 billion do you imagine people being able to consume limitless and for all global poverty to be replaced with unrestricted access to all forms of material consumption? Do you imagine people being able to drive/fly as much as they want anywhere without concerns for pollution spiraling out of control or resources getting used up? I.e. what would this global population-limited utopia look and live like?

I think identical twins tend to actively differentiate from each other in various ways in reaction to the social perception that they are indistinguishable. So it may be that factors that prevent or encourage diabetes in one twin are actively resisted in the other. That's what I would guess anyway.

My comment had nothing to do with disrespect for anyone who lost their life or suffered. I was just expressing an impression I have had on two continents that SOME people tend to promote an association between the suffering, death, and terror of WWII as a natural result of the economic circumstances that preceded them. In other words, the idea is that nazism became popular and aggressive because of economic deprivation with the implication that it is natural to react against economic suffering by engaging in organized oppression and violence. To me this is like legitimating hostage-taking for ransom. It may be true that the violence of this period was due to people reacting to various inhumane conditions in an inhuman way (which is not that unnatural), but I don't think that anyone should think or suggest that certain types of politics or economic policies are required to prevent such atrocities from re-occurring, because that has the effect of making fear/aversion the basis for political will, which is of course anti-democratic. The problem is that there is a fine line between analyzing the causes and consequences of historical events and constructing influential ideological propaganda about how people should or must operate in the present. History is never as simple as being a pure remembrance of the past, because it also necessarily has semiotic effects in the present in which it is remembered. Should this prescribe pro-active/pre-emptive military action?

Maybe I just got lured into "feeding the troll" by responding to the post about reducing population instead of building floating habitats. I agree with you that resources-conservation and utilization-efficiency is important. I just think that procreation and population-control shouldn't be the first target for intervention. Obviously there's no problem with explaining to people the basic logic that more people consume more; but it is unethical imo to attribute resource-depletion and other social problems primarily to population number instead of to economic/cultural/social activities of individuals. It gives people the idea that they contribute to resource-depletion because of their very existence instead of due to their actions and choices. So if there's going to be any blaming for resource-depletion, it should be on the basis of individual consumption and behavior instead of on how many children someone has.

Excellent post. I just want to add that generally I think it's better to keep ethics discussion on the level of whether a particular treatment is ethical and not whether it is good to throw ethics out altogether for some classes of entities. It is legitimate to weigh the ethics of respecting animals against the ethics of protecting the human welfare they are depleting, but I don't think it is ever ethical to say that ethics should be thrown out the window for anyone. Every living thing and probably even non-living things should be given ethical consideration before arbitrarily harming them. Totally liberating violence cannot ever be ethical, can it?

Relgion is slowly learning to ground its validity in spiritual power. This is difficult after such a long history of conflating materiality and spirituality in the form of hybrid subjective-objective knowledge. Science could be said to be doing God's work by separating subjective and objective, or as religious scripture would call it, "spirit from flesh." Ironically, science and religion are viewed as enemies, when they really help each other refine their respective approaches to truth-power. Maybe the perception of opposition between them is foundational to their synergism, though.

I understand this logic, which I've heard many times. But the fundamental assumption you are making is that money can, should, and must determine the economic choices of what people choose to do with their labor. It really doesn't matter if you tax the billionaire to pay the yacht-maker to provide social-services to homeless people, the point is that that person may not WANT to provide such services regardless of the amount the government is willing to extract from the billionaire to compensate them for doing so. In other words, some people actually have reasons other than money to choose how to allocate their economic labor. If, for example, I think that homeless people should cook for themselves, why should I have to work in a soup-kitchen or other situation that provides prepared food for the homeless? Now, having said that I think it is possible to discuss the need for certain basic necessities to be guaranteed, but I don't think those require enormous amounts of taxation and expenditure. People need access to sufficient nutritional intake and some form of shelter that protects them from the elements, or at least the means to construct such a domicile for themselves. They need access to basic health-care, but the government shouldn't be used as a means of mandating funding of proprietary care-givers and pharmaceutical companies that exploit the inability of the government to refuse care by extracting high-revenues by pedaling expensive goods and services to people with an inability to pay. Now, the reverse of this is to ask whether it is ethical for people to receive higher quality of care because they have more financial means, and the answer to that is no - but until there is some means to mandate equal provision of things like health care WITHOUT this being used to exploit some to fill the pockets of others, these businesses are just going to use the system to milk taxpayers to the point of provoking them to deny care to the needy in the interest of their own finances. If you pay attention to welfare-state media, you will see that every public service is always attacked by tax-payers and the fact is that it is simply not necessary to expose recipients to this level of hate when the services they deserve only have such high costs because of the high profit-margins and salaries enjoyed by providers. I just think something needs to interrupt this triangle of funder/profiteur/beneficiary. Otherwise social welfare will continue to be used as an instrument of extortion, which is NOT good for the beneficiaries because it makes them seem like more of a burden than they actually are. Not really, because it would save bureaucratic work to simply require providers to provide needed services directly without compensating them. Then, those providers could choose to set their prices as high or low as their paying clients would accept. Granted, it makes sense to spread the cost of certain things across a larger number of people to reduce the cost per capita, but that method of funding has imo resulted in a general inflation of services to cost-levels that collect maximum revenues from available funding pools. So there seems to be no other method to fiscally discipline the supply side except to reduce the availability of collective funding. That is correct. The existing distribution of not only wealth is not morally right, but WHAT'S MORE the distribution of REVENUE/INCOME is not morally just or fair. Thus, when you redistribution wealth, it gets spent on commodities and generates revenues that get distributed according to the existing price/revenue structures of economic institutions. So you could redistribute all the wealth that exists, but as soon as that wealth was spent, it would become unequally distributed among those who control the accounts it was paid into. So it is easy to overlook that side of economic unfairness in favor of attacking wealth-inequalities, but all you would really be doing would be impoverishing people whose wealth-based income exceeded their employment-based income. In other words, you'd be disenfranchizing investors to enrich employees. What's the point of that? Why is a middle-manager who spends 40+ hours/week in an office more deserving than someone who makes income by investing inherited wealth privately? Obviously the poor and disenfranchized deserve access to basic necessities, but why should that be used as an impetus to enrich corporations at the expense of private wealth-holdings?

Assuming that global population change would be completely controllable using non-violent voluntary reproductive cultural choices, what would the ideal global population be and why?

I don't see any problem with not having children or just having one or two. The problem, imo, is when people take a paternalistic tone about other people's 'breeding' being a problem and that they should curb their reproduction because someone else says so. I don't know why I responded to a post about reproductive control anyway since it's always such a negative no-win topic. It's basically defeatist in claiming that the limits of population expansion have been reached and there's nothing science, technology, or culture can do to expand the frontiers further. If you're just going to decry every innovative idea, what's the point of discussing progress to begin with? To discourage any and all hope for a life-sustaining future?