World Population

[Zolar V]

So i was watching Hans Rosling on global population growth hosted by TED, and he was talking about how poverty induces people to procreate more. It seemed to me that the stimuli of poverty caused an internal mechanism of self-preservation to enable itself. Then the enabling of the self-preservation mechanism was manifested by having more children. One could claim many other factors regarding the manifestation, some being that more children meant more manual labor and the cost/benefit ratio between work/food is slightly greater with more children. I think that these claims are rather the effect of the self-preservation mechanism. If we were to see this type of behavior exhibit itself withing a population of animals would we classify it as self-preservation or something similar like natural selection?

Thoughts anyone?

 

 

 

[Marat]

I think that the explanation is in large measure cultural rather than biological, and so has to be addressed for humans separately from animals. For humans in third world countries, children are often a kind of social security system, since the more children there are, the bigger the family is, and the bigger the family is, the more the healthy and successful members can support those who are afflicted with disease and misfortune. So overpopulation in this context is an artifact of social organization in countries where the government has no social support system to care for its people, with the result that each family has to expand to take care of itself.

[Genecks]

If times are rough, in a last act of preservation have a lot of kids. Those that survive have survived the environment.

 

That's probably the subconscious act of it all. I doubt people are really thinking that.

But if I had a wife and 5 kids, then I'd make all of my kids go to school and choose serious careers in order to make cash.

And then we could all pull together our cash and live in a mansion.

 

Well, that's not really how it works in America.

It might if the Mexican-Americans with strong Catholic ties a chance to dominate the country.

I really think that will happen, btw.

 

But in a place like Africa where having multiple children means the tasks can be divided better and resources brought back together (and there is a lack of child labor laws), then it works out for them to have many children.

 

Don't forget that with a large child death rate (say the kid dies at age 3), the adults are going to have children again. Certain foreign countries must be under some severe, corrupt rule that prevents the people from actually improving their lands. I've never fully understood the ordeal. At best, I've only read, heard, been told that whenever someone tries to fix such societies, large murders and wars start to occur. It's difficult to reform the societies without some kind of bloodshed occurring.

 

Also, animals don't really have the same system of economics the world has. I think animal communities run like a dictatorship or communistic society. But their leaders aren't that corrupt, because they could be replaced.

Edited July 12, 2010 by Genecks