The design choices of people who make memes out of their political opinions are so random and funny to me sometimes. Like why is one of them a Russian gopnik? Why is the other one a blushing gamer femboy who paints his nails??
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Reading the study I get the following remarks:
Living space, not great. 60m2 for a 4 person family. That's tight. I live alone in a 90m2 house and I could use more space, do they want me to live in a 15m2 house or do they want to force to share living space? Sorry but I won't compromise there. I prefer people having less children that me having to live as ants in a colony.
That is just a personal pick with the DLS minimum requirements chosen.
But still forgetting that. The reasoning is extremely faulty. Most of their argumentation heavy lifting is just relied to Millward-Hopkins (2022) paper establishing that 14.7 GJ per person anually is enough. That paper is just a work of fantasy. For reference, and taking the same paper numbers. Current energy usage (with all the exiting poverty) is 80 GJ/cap. Paleolitic use of energy was 5 GJ. Author is proposing that we could live ok with just triple paleolitic energy. That paper just oversees a lot of what people need to live in a function society to get completely irrational numbers on what energy cap we could assume to produce a good life.
Then on materials used. The paper assumes all the world shifting to vegetarian diet, everyone living on multiresidential buildings, somehow wood as the main building material (I don't know how they even reconcile that with multiresidential buildings...). And half of cars usage shifting to public transport How to achieve this in rural areas it's not mentioned at all).
A big notice needs to be done that both papers what are actually doing is basically taking China economy (greatly praised in the introduction) and assuming that all the world should live like that. And yes, probably the world could have 30 billion inhabitants if we accept to be all like China, who would we export to achieve that economic model if we all have a export based economy? who knows, probably the martians. And even then, while a lot of "ticks" on what a decent level of life quality apparently seems to be ticked, many people in western countries would not consider that quality life, but a very restrictive and deprived life standard.
I'm still on the boat the people having less children is a better approach to great lives without destroying the planet. At some point a cap on world population need to be made, it really add that much that the cap is 30 billion instead of maybe 5 billion? It's certainly not a cap in the number of social iterations a person can have, but numbers give for plenty of friends. And at the end it's not even a cap on "how many children" can people have, as once the cap is reach the number of children will be needed to cap the same to achieve stability. It's just a cap on "when people can still be having lots of kids". Boomer approach to "let's have children now" and expect that my kids won't want to have as many children as I have now.
Also another big pick I have with the article is that it blames the current level of inefficiency to private jets, suvs, and industrial meat. But instead of making the rational approach of taking thise appart from the current economy and calculate what the results will be. Parts from zero building the requirements out of their list. Making the previous complaint about those luxury items out of place completely. On a personal note I would reduce or completely eliminate many of those listed "super luxury" items. But I have the feel (just a feel because neither me not the author have studied this) that the results of global energy and material usage won't drop that much, certainly not at the levels proposed by the authors with their approach.
You mad?
Yes, to support everyone on what our economy outputs today will involve the quality of life decreasing for a lot of people. And the economy will have to change, to build the things that people need but are currently unable to pay for. This is unsurprising.
Probably the living space is more to show this is feasible over it being the expected/desired solution. It would be very counterproductive to tear down good houses, but small apartments work well for "house single unhoused people".
Rural transport is a rounding error compared to the number of private cars that could be converted with minimal fuss in cities.
Why would an export economy be a bad model? They literally have a surplus; all you need to do to fix it is.... Make less?
I'm not mad. I will just not allow anyone to reduce my living standards because they don't want to use a rubber.
A export model is not bad. I just said that's unreasonable to think that all the world could follow that model. Because then "who would we export to?". It's like liberals thinking that the tax rate in a tax heaven are proof that every country could have those tax haven rates. Good for them, that the model worked, but for some country to export other country needs to import, that's all. Chinese economic growth have been very linked to being the world factory. That's great, but it could not be assumed that all the world could just do the same.
Who said anything about using a rubber? Or not? Let's properly support the people that exist now.
And do you think that's likely to happen any time soon in the real world?
It's all well and good coming up with theories on paper but if your theories only work on paper, then don't count them as solved.
They’re not mad, they’re just a bad person. Don’t use empathy in argument with someone who has none.
Also, those numbers are like averages. Some places would have high rises to accommodate the sheer numbers of people, working or non-working.
But yeah, I’d tear down my own fucking home right meow if it was for equality on a massive scale.
A bad person? For what? For not wanting to live in a tiny bedsit just so the world can accommodate more theoretical people that don't exist and need not exist?
Definitely use empathy on someone who has none. That's how they practice.
Even seeing somebody else do it neurologically strengthens those circuits in the brain. This is the actual front line, the human brain, and saying not to USE EMPATHY ON PEOPLE WHO HAVE NONE is a command to retreat in the very moment it is your turn to act.
It's a minimum to bring the impoverished up to. The paper makes no suggestion that the rest are to be brought down to that standard except by changing production practices.
How do you need more than 90m² when living alone?? I live in a 60m² apartment and literally only use like 30-40m² and idk what I'd use the rest for.
I have a kitchen, a living room and two bedrooms. I do remote work so one of the bedrooms have a double purpose as guess room and office.
I would love to have at least, another room dedicated to storage. And second room so I could have a hobby/office room and a guess room separately.
Also I would love to have a garden.
I spent a lot of time at home, between remote work and hobbies, so I would like to have a more spacious living space. The more time you spent on a place the bigger it probably needs to be.
The paper assumes all the world shifting to vegetarian diet, everyone living on multiresidential buildings, somehow wood as the main building material (I don't know how they even reconcile that with multiresidential buildings...). And half of cars usage shifting to public transport How to achieve this in rural areas it's not mentioned at all).
Yeah, that's totally unrealistic. We could get rid of 99% of cars and only keep ambulances and fire trucks, and most people would be happier. Also we should get everyone on a vegan diet. Vegetarian is okay, but still enslaves animals. We can do much better.
What about people not living in cities?
Public transport for low density areas is terrible. So or you are forcing people to live in cities (where public transport can be good) or you are forcing people to endure terrible public transport.
Also forcing dietary changes on people, something as big as preventing people to eat or use animal products...
I just don't think forcing that on people would be clever. I know how I would react if anyone were to impose that way of living to me, and I can only assume that many people would react the same way.
I have some information that's gonna blow your mind: people lived in rural areas for many thousands of years and cars were only invented a hundred years ago.
They lived self sufficient lives and walked to town once a month for essentials. If they were lucky, they had a mule and a wagon.
I'm guessing you live in a rural area and you think you need your car, because you've gotten used to driving into town every few days for fresh groceries and haircuts? Yeah, so that's arrogant decadence. You live a cosmopolitan lifestyle with inner city conveniences, despite being out in a rural area with plenty of space and low land values, and this is made possible by your poison death machine.
The poison death machines are not sustainable. Go back to living how your ancestors did. Take the mule into town once a month for soap and molasses, or move to the city. You don't get to have it both ways
I don't want to live like people lived two thousands years ago, thanks.
I agree that we can support everyone on earth if we change our social, economic, and political systems.
I also think it is good that voluntary population decline is already happening and seems likely to continue in many industrialized nations.
Is there a workable plan to get to that point or is it a theoretical idea like communism
workable
No. It would require guillotining all billionaires, dissolution of a shit ton of wasteful industries (AI for example), vast reduction of meat consumption (which also means closing large parts of the meat industry) ...
Basically it requires the rich and powerful to not be rich and not be powerful anymore
Imposing such a drastic change in living conditions for the the whole population of this planet is impossible. The rich will not allow it and everybody who isn't worse off than the conditions suggested here will fight it. Most people won't even consider going vegetarian, for fucks sake.
Using this study as proof that there are enough resources to support billions more people is beyond stupid. Humans are not an altruistic species. We already have the money and resources to adequately support everyone already existing, but just flat out refuse to, and always have.
Adding more people to this hellworld because some naive study assumes that at the last second of the eleventh hour before we hit 3c warming and run out of fresh water and arable land, we will evolve into a species capable of physics defing magic and perfect communism... is really, really, REALLY fucking stupid.
what tf kind of game controller is that? three vertical buttons??
I know the world has more than enough resources and productivity for everyone on it to live comfortably without overworking, but 30% is the lowest figure I’ve ever seen. Would like to know where that came from. I’ve seen so many widely varying estimates of everything.
I recommend reading the image to find the source
This is one of the things that pisses me off about the Star Trek "fans" who point to the Replicator tech (which wasn't introduced until the Next Generation series) as the reason humanity was able to end scarcity. No, it absolutely was not what ended scarcity in the Star Trek universe. What ended scarcity was the absolute end of capitalism. We have now and have had for over a century, the capability to end world hunger and provide housing for every man woman and child on the planet. We don't do it because it would remove the overinflated value of those things as well as the obscene wealth of the rich.
Genocide normalization