Wow you really did miss my point entirely.
Or I caught it and threw it away. 6 of one, a half dozen of the other...
I didn't say that, I asked what natural selection was based on and it's actually a pretty objective question. Malthus observed that populations tend to procreate beyond the ability of their resources to sustain them, resulting in a struggle for survival.
And he's absolutely correct. Even a casual observation of nature would confirm that.
Malthus, however, made the transition from descriptive to prescriptive... long story short, just because it happens in nature doesn't mean we should turn it I to social policy.
Oh and by the way, if you ever read Malthus he believed in some kind of a utopia, which was popular at the time.
So he was far from alone in that foolish belief. So?
He spoke of the 'geometric growth' of populations and given the trauma the earth has experienced from over population his warnings seem almost prophetic.
It's easily observed in every other form of life on the planet; what kind of fool would think it couldn't happen to homo sapiens?
You say prophetic, I say observant. Six in one hand...
Darwinism, especially social Darwinism, has always had it's source in these problems.
Except that social darwinism is prescriptive and "darwinism" -- the theory of evolution by natural selection, that is -- is only descriptive. I get so tired of explaining the difference... in vain.
I've always liked you Valentine, you seem like a guy who isn't content just swimming on the surface. China, if you ever noticed, managed to get themselves out of third world status simply by controlling population growth.
You really think that's all it took?
Places like Africa and a lesser extent India not so much, so what's the difference?
The difference, among many other factors, is that many of these places were ravaged by WWII and had to rebuild their economies, in some cases literally, from the ground up.
US society got through it relatively unscathed, and so we rested on our laurels for a good chunk of the late 20th century.
Now
they're going full throttle, and
we're paying the price for 80 years of complacency.
But again, that's only one of several factors... I won't deny that population is another one... but to say "simply" is beyond "surface"... it's shallow.
Just ask yourself, what was the population of the world in 1801, what was it in 1901, 2001 and what do you think it might be in 2101? Because in a round about way, Darwinism kind of predicts what we can expect as the result.
11.2 billion by 2101, assuming current trends. Although "darwinism" doesn't take out technological prowess into account.
It's likely that our planet will scarcely be able to sustain so many at our current tech progression... but 1. We're always one eureka moment away from tossing our tech progression out the window, and 2., by then, we might not be limited to just
this planet...
A pipe dream? Perhaps.
But if population is the big bad boogeyman, why not give individuals the freedom to choose not to increase it? Unwanted pregnancies, unprepared mothers, and unloved children are the biggest drain on our resources... and states with full and comprehensive birth control programs -- including access to abortion as a last resort -- see those numbers drop like a stone.
