The Philosophy Discussion Forum

Posted: **Sun May 03, 2026 11:17 pm**

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2026 5:17 pm
I think it is better to focus on efficient use of resources and eliminating waste.

This is MATH (not ethics/morality). I suggest you try it.

The fundamental equation is C = PER x P where C is total consumption, PER is consumption per person, and P the population.

Consider the population is in quintiles by age, 0-20, 20-40 (childbearing if women), 40-60, 60-80, and 80-100. Label these Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, and Q5. At the start, assume each of these P/5 (over simplified in actuarial terms to make your math easier.)

Each generation assume births of birth rate x Q2/2 (half of Q2 women.

Your suggest, reduce PER, lets say cut it in half (say we think could survive on that. Initially looks great, we have cut total consumption in half, but try running generations for a birth rate > 2 Let's try 3.0

In each generation there are births and deaths and people move up to the next quintile. So births = Q2/2 X 3. We have Q5 deaths, then move up so new Q5 = Q4, new Q4 = Q3, new Q3 = Q2, new Q2 = Q1, and Q1 = births. We add Q1 + Q2 +Q3 +Q4 + Q5 to get the new P and recompute the new total consumption C (we have already reduced PER as much as we can and still survive -- you can choose a fraction for survival that is less, it won't change the eventual outcome).

How many generations before C is now greater than what we started wit? Twice what we started with? Ten times what we started with.? Don''t you understand that if B > 2 P will increase EXPONENTIALLY.

Posted: **Sun May 03, 2026 11:32 pm**

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2026 5:17 pm As individuals, we have a say in the direction our country and society takes. We can change that direction if we choose.

Absolutely, but as an individual who has chosen to be an "activist" (since the 60's) I do NOT consider working to change direction of the country not to be an individual choice.

And IC, I think you do not understand how individual choices and societal choices interplay. We'll stick with Canada, because research has been done to find out why so many individual Canadian women are choosing to have no/few babies (1.25 is a VERY low birth rate)

Known -- it is ECONOMIC, they are deciding not to have babies because child rearing very expensive. They don't feel they can afford it.

Now suppose Canada (collectively, people and the government they empower) decides whoa, that's way too fast a population decline (it is). The government does not attempt to solve this by issuing orders but by trying measures that might affect the economics of child rearing. Things like providing free child care, tax credits per child, tax deductions per child (the credits would affect all, but deductions just working/tax paying people), etc.

If correct (that it was the economics of child rearing then that should change the individual decision of women how many children to have.

Posted: **Sun May 03, 2026 11:47 pm**

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2026 11:32 pm And IC, I think you do not understand how individual choices and societal choices interplay.

Oh, I most certainly do. It's Socialists who don't get it. They think they can get ahold of this thing called "society," and make it do what they want, independent of individual choices and freedoms. I have no such delusions.

So you want to starve the Developing World? I find that hard to believe...and a little horrific, if true.

Posted: **Mon May 04, 2026 12:18 pm**

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2026 11:17 pm
phyllo wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2026 5:17 pm
I think it is better to focus on efficient use of resources and eliminating waste.

This is MATH (not ethics/morality). I suggest you try it.
...
How many generations before C is now greater than what we started wit? Twice what we started with? Ten times what we started with.? Don''t you understand that if B > 2 P will increase EXPONENTIALLY.

If you did a little research, you could easily discover that world population growth is slowing. The population is expected to reach a maximum of 10.3 billion in 2084 and then decline.

IOW, there is no exponential growth.

Posted: **Mon May 04, 2026 12:52 pm**

phyllo wrote: ↑Mon May 04, 2026 12:18 pm
MikeNovack wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2026 11:17 pm
phyllo wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2026 5:17 pm
I think it is better to focus on efficient use of resources and eliminating waste.

This is MATH (not ethics/morality). I suggest you try it.
...
How many generations before C is now greater than what we started wit? Twice what we started with? Ten times what we started with.? Don''t you understand that if B > 2 P will increase EXPONENTIALLY.
If you did a little research, you could easily discover that world population growth is slowing. The population is expected to reach a maximum of 10.3 billion in 2084 and then decline.

IOW, there is no exponential growth.

This is what I was pointing out about the Malthusian mistake. The idea that population increases at a steady rate is simply historically and demographically false. What actually happens is that as conditions and prospects change, so does birth rate. And this is why I think the most effective response to ill-founded fears of overpopulation is working for the more healthy and expeditious modernization of the Developing World, through the supplying of more modern methods and the seeking of new technologies, rather than, say, abusing the declining West or inflicting forced starvation on the poor -- it's both the compassionate response, and the effective one.

Posted: **Mon May 04, 2026 1:02 pm**

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon May 04, 2026 12:52 pm
phyllo wrote: ↑Mon May 04, 2026 12:18 pm
MikeNovack wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2026 11:17 pm

This is MATH (not ethics/morality). I suggest you try it.
...
How many generations before C is now greater than what we started wit? Twice what we started with? Ten times what we started with.? Don''t you understand that if B > 2 P will increase EXPONENTIALLY.
If you did a little research, you could easily discover that world population growth is slowing. The population is expected to reach a maximum of 10.3 billion in 2084 and then decline.

IOW, there is no exponential growth.
This is what I was pointing out about the Malthusian mistake. The idea that population increases at a steady rate is simply historically and demographically false. What actually happens is that as conditions and prospects change, so does birth rate. And this is why I think the most effective response to ill-founded fears of overpopulation is working for the more healthy and expeditious modernization of the Developing World, through the supplying of more modern methods and the seeking of new technologies, rather than, say, abusing the declining West or inflicting forced starvation on the poor -- it's both the compassionate response, and the effective one.

Can't argue with that.

Posted: **Mon May 04, 2026 3:04 pm**

I'll refer you back to my "math" excerize because you need also to understand population "momentum"

Start with some P. and a birth rate of 3.0 (rapid increase_and hold for three generations. P has gone up.

Now drop the birthrate to 1.5. That is a rate for rapid decrease. But look at P for the next 3-4 generations. Why did this happen? Because during the period when the birthrate was 3.0 Q4> q5, Q3> Q4, Q2>Q3, Q1.Q2, and births >Q1 (our population skewed young) In other words, while P = Q1+Q2+Q3+Q4+Q5 the effective P (for turning things around more like 5Q1 (significantly larger)

IC, you have a "socialist" bee in your bonnet, but worse, you don;t even feel the stings. You saw nothing wrong with my Canadian example of how the government might induce higher birthrate and you say that's different from socialism. HUH. Where the hell do you think the loonies and toonies to fund those programs would be coming from? Taxes m[posed on wealthier Canadians, "stealing" from them. SOCIALISM -- do you not recognize it because democratic?

Posted: **Mon May 04, 2026 4:53 pm**

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Mon May 04, 2026 3:04 pm IC, you have a "socialist" bee in your bonnet,

Perhaps so. There's something about an ideology that kills 140 million people in one century that does get to one.

You saw nothing wrong with my Canadian example

No, I ignored it, as you note: because it does not address any place in which overpopulation is any kind of problem. I always ignore the completely irrelevant.

SOCIALISM -- do you not recognize it because democratic?

Socialism is actually the opposite of "democratic." It only regards the "demos," the "People," as being those who knuckle under to Socialism. Everybody else is simply regarded as subhuman or at best, potentially pre-human, since they've failed to be "humanized" by taking on "the Socialist standpoint."

In other words, anybody who thinks differently from the Socialists is the subject of Socialist "re-education," or else of elimination.

You really should read the theory and history of your professed ideology, before you glom onto it. You'l be surprised how awful and stupid it really is, what insane wickedness it has already done...and how definitely not "democratic" it always is.

Posted: **Mon May 04, 2026 8:50 pm**

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon May 04, 2026 4:53 pm
a) No, I ignored it, as you note: because it does not address any place in which overpopulation is any kind of problem. I always ignore the completely irrelevant.

b) You really should read the theory and history of your professed ideology, before you glom onto it. You'l be surprised how awful and stupid it really is, what insane wickedness it has already done...and how definitely not "democratic" it always is.

a --Nn, of course, this was the reverse situation (1.25 would result in far too rapid a decline) But that was not the main point. What was being discussed was the interplay between group decisions and individual decisions, how group/governmental decisions might affect individual decisions. Whether the problem over population or under population (threat of) NOT relevant for that.

BUT -- my examples of possible measures the Canadian government might take were ALSO examples of "socialism" (as I would define it). Money would be being TAKEN (stolen would be your word) from the well off/rich to fund subsidies so poorer Canadian women would make the individual decision they could afford to have more babies if they wanted them.

b -- I have, but a far fuller range of the theory and history than you seem to feel relevant. You are simply deciding that socialism can't be democratic because you are refusing to call anything but totalitarian socialism socialism. So you get "non-democratic "by definition. I AGREE WITH YOU, TOTALITARIAN SOCIALISM IS NOT DEMOCRATIC. Where we disagree is your exclusion of non-totalitarian socialism from socialism.

Posted: **Mon May 04, 2026 11:45 pm**

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Mon May 04, 2026 8:50 pm What was being discussed was the interplay between group decisions and individual decisions,

By you? Maybe. But I was asking you what you were going to do about the population of the Developing World. And I never lost track of that.

You are simply deciding that socialism can't be democratic because you are refusing to call anything but totalitarian socialism socialism.

Point me to any place in which the Socialists have gained their agenda of controlling all the means of production, where what I describe hasn't been the result.

non-totalitarian socialism

That. Point out where that has ever happened.

There's a very obvious reason it cannot, and it's inherent to Socialism itself. Socialism is a centralized, top-down, governmental, imposed arrangement. It requires the abolition of private property and the seizing by the State of all the means of production. By definition, it cannot tolerate diversity of political choice or alternate economic practice. If it did, then it wouldn't be Socialism, because it would lack those two things Socialism insists it must have.

So it's inevitably totalitarian. And, surprise, surprise -- in every historical case, that's exactly what it has been. How many times does a dumb idea have to be tried, and how many people does it have to rob, torture, incarcerate and murder, before people admit to themselves how dumb it is? What's the number?

For me, 140 million is plenty. How about you?

Posted: **Tue May 05, 2026 1:48 pm**

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon May 04, 2026 11:45 pm . By definition, it cannot tolerate diversity of political choice or alternate economic practice. If it did, then it wouldn't be Socialism, because it would lack those two things Socialism insists it must have.

Precisely my point. You are defining democratic and/or non-state based socialism as not being socialism.

For example, consider a system where all owned by communes which interact with each other in a free market (note that an "individual owner " might be treated as a very small commune) and several communes forming consortia/joint ventures to handle larger projects.

You'd not call that socialism/communism. Fair enough. But you KNOW that I do. That when I say "I'm for socialism" I might be meaning something like that. You KNOW this Which makes your saying things like "if you say you are for socialism you are saying you are for totalitarian state socialism" utter nonsense.

Posted: **Tue May 05, 2026 2:01 pm**

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Tue May 05, 2026 1:48 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon May 04, 2026 11:45 pm . By definition, it cannot tolerate diversity of political choice or alternate economic practice. If it did, then it wouldn't be Socialism, because it would lack those two things Socialism insists it must have.
You are defining democratic and/or non-state based socialism as not being socialism.

No, I'm pointing out that by its own definition, Socialism itself declares there's no such thing.

In fact, Socialists use the word "democratic" not even to mean what we mean by the word. For them, it means only "the standpoint of the [already Socialist] People," not "all the people." They are the ones mis-defining, not me.

But that's standard for Socialist propaganda. As James Lindsay has so aptly put it, "They use your vocabulary, but they do not use your dictionary." They use the words ordinary people cherish, like "equality" or "human" or "people" or "democracy," but they don't mean what the standard definitions ever mean. Thus they "co-opt" (their word) your cherished values, and then morph them into a claim that you have to be committed to their twisted definition, or you don't really love "equality," or "freedom," or "democracy."

For example, consider a system where all owned by communes which interact with each other in a free market (note that an "individual owner " might be treated as a very small commune) and several communes forming consortia/joint ventures to handle larger projects.

That will not be Socialism, because it doesn't have the two qualities Socialism insists it requires: the abolition of private property and the State ownership of all the means of production.

What you're trying to do is call things like welfare or small communes "Socialism," in order to save large-scale Socialism from the wickedness it has done. However, a few little hippie communes with odd internal practices will never produce the Socialist State, they do not control the general economy, they have not banished private property, and they will not advance the Socialist utopian project, unless they are suffered to expand their scope to national or international totalitarianism.

Read your own theory. It will tell you what actual Socialism requires. Or maybe you have, and justs don't want to admit what it actually dictates. I think that's just as likely.

140 million. What do you do with that degree of disastrous failure?

Posted: **Tue May 05, 2026 6:25 pm**

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 05, 2026 2:01 pm
MikeNovack wrote: ↑Tue May 05, 2026 1:48 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon May 04, 2026 11:45 pm . By definition, it cannot tolerate diversity of political choice or alternate economic practice. If it did, then it wouldn't be Socialism, because it would lack those two things Socialism insists it must have.
You are defining democratic and/or non-state based socialism as not being socialism.
No, I'm pointing out that by its own definition, Socialism itself declares there's no such thing.

In fact, Socialists use the word "democratic" not even to mean what we mean by the word. For them, it means only "the standpoint of the [already Socialist] People," not "all the people." They are the ones mis-defining, not me.

But that's standard for Socialist propaganda. As James Lindsay has so aptly put it, "They use your vocabulary, but they do not use your dictionary." They use the words ordinary people cherish, like "equality" or "human" or "people" or "democracy," but they don't mean what the standard definitions ever mean. Thus they "co-opt" (their word) your cherished values, and then morph them into a claim that you have to be committed to their twisted definition, or you don't really love "equality," or "freedom," or "democracy."
For example, consider a system where all owned by communes which interact with each other in a free market (note that an "individual owner " might be treated as a very small commune) and several communes forming consortia/joint ventures to handle larger projects.
That will not be Socialism, because it doesn't have the two qualities Socialism insists it requires: the abolition of private property and the State ownership of all the means of production.

What you're trying to do is call things like welfare or small communes "Socialism," in order to save large-scale Socialism from the wickedness it has done. However, a few little hippie communes with odd internal practices will never produce the Socialist State, they do not control the general economy, they have not banished private property, and they will not advance the Socialist utopian project, unless they are suffered to expand their scope to national or international totalitarianism.

Read your own theory. It will tell you what actual Socialism requires. Or maybe you have, and justs don't want to admit what it actually dictates. I think that's just as likely.

140 million. What do you do with that degree of disastrous failure?

Where does the figure of 140 million come from? Does it come from the Soviet Union, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia? If so, then most EVERYONE is in agreement that those places were horrible nightmares. Only the insane would call them otherwise. But look at places like Cuba or Venezuela. Did they kill millions of people? According to estimates I have seen, Cuba had a higher literacy rate and less infant mortality per capita than the US, at points during Castro's time there. AND that was in spite of US sanctions! Was Cuba not "socialist"?

Posted: **Tue May 05, 2026 6:26 pm**

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 05, 2026 2:01 pm What you're trying to do is call things like welfare or small communes "Socialism," in order to save large-scale Socialism from the wickedness it has done. However, a few little hippie communes with odd internal practices will never produce the Socialist State,

Well obviously, IC, anarchists are not going to be advocating for a STATE.

At the same time, I would be loathe to propose something people have not ever done before. I'm not THAT sort of "utopian". But in this case, there IS precedent. There certainly have been human societies where the entire society divided into groups which as collectives owned the means of production (the land). Usually these would be hereditary clans, and note that is one potential solution to the recruitment/replacement problem faced by the 19th-20tCentury communes that "failed" because too financially successful << the recruitmant/replacement mechanism has to be able to cope with that possibility >>

Posted: **Tue May 05, 2026 6:46 pm**

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Tue May 05, 2026 6:26 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 05, 2026 2:01 pm What you're trying to do is call things like welfare or small communes "Socialism," in order to save large-scale Socialism from the wickedness it has done. However, a few little hippie communes with odd internal practices will never produce the Socialist State,
Well obviously, IC, anarchists are not going to be advocating for a STATE.

Then they aren't Socialists, by Socialism's own definition. The might be small-scale communitarians, or cult freaks, but not proper Socialists. Socialist believe in those two essential things, the confiscation of private property and the seizing of all means of production, for which the State is absolutely required.

There certainly have been human societies where the entire society divided into groups which as collectives owned the means of production (the land).

Well, the economy you're talking about is agrarian. And even in Marx's day, that was passé. Land is not our current mode of production. We're post-industrial, urbanized, international, and highly technological, you will observe. Whatever today's mode of "means of production" is, it certainly isn't merely family farms.

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