For years, some of us have criticized President Trump for his reference to the media as the “enemy of the people.” While Trump has indicated that he adopted the attacks to appease his supporters, the danger is that many would believe it. Now a new Hill-Harris X poll shows that one-third of Americans say the news media is “the enemy of the people.” Not coincidentally, that figure matches Trump’s core base that remains firm in the polls. However, it shows that this mantra is believed by millions of Americans, who are now viewing the media as the enemy.
I have repeatedly called out the media about a self-defeating bias against Trump, a trend that has fulfilled the stereotype advanced by the President. Indeed, CNN and MSNBC is risking not only this type of backlash against the media but, again, fueling a desire in some voters to vote for Trump to stick it to the establishment. There is no need to warp the news. Trump is justifiably criticized on many fronts. However, some networks have become openly partisan. Watching CNN cover breaking news is like watching open advocacy from the anchor chair — immediately contesting statements and leading guests to the most critical possible take on developments.
None of that however excuses Trump’s reckless attacks on the free press, the very cornerstone of our democratic system of government. While the bias against Trump in palpable on some outlets, the vast majority of media in the United States remains professional and unbiased in their reporting. Indeed, the New York Times, Washington Post, and other major newspapers have continued to report on important stories despite the constant threats and badgering from the White House.
I have long objected to this rhetoric from Trump. Past presidents have attacked the media but never in these terms. They have maintained presidential in reminding the public of the importance of our free press while disagreeing with specific stories. The use of the “enemy of the people” language is perfectly chilling given its use in authoritarian nations like China to crackdown on free speech and the free press. Most presidents would view this poll as a terrible legacy in convincing one-third of Americans that the free press is actually the enemy of the people.
The percentage of people buying into this view is higher outside of major cities. Forty-six percent of rural Americans said they believed the news media to be the “enemy of the people.” Moreover, 51 percent of Republicans polled said they thought of the press as “the enemy of the people.”
On the good side, according to Gallup, trust in the news media is the highest it has been since 2009. Most importantly, there remains 67 percent of us who believe that the “news media is an important part of a democracy.”
A growing number of us believe that the news media is an important part of the Democratic Party.
Pew Research in a poll a few months ago found that 68% say “made-up” news significantly impacts confidence in government. They place the blame for this on political leaders (who stir the pot) and activists but they fault journalists for not doing their job of fixing the problem and thereby contribute to it. As a result, 80% feel that steps should be taken to reign in “made-up” news. Most importantly, the poll found that journalist inserting opinion into news stories is a large problem that greatly diminishes the public’s ability to distinguish fact from “fiction” (i.e., opinion).
https://www.journalism.org/2019/06/05/many-americans-say-made-up-news-is-a-critical-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed/
Personally, I think the incorporation of opinion in news stories, especially to the extent that readers/viewers cannot tell where one begins and the other ends, is the major problem today. There was a time not too long ago when newspapers, for example, had clearly defined news and opinion sections but today there is often not much difference between the two.
“‘What about Assange?’: UK Foreign Office video calling for press freedom shamed for hypocrisy”
British are experts at hypocrisy. but as the great English American writer Emerson said about consistency….
Tom Nash claims that exploding populations are not an issue in the world today. Yet the world’s population has almost tripled since 1950 (see link to Pew Research below).
The migrant crisis at America’s southern border right now is largely related to exploding populations in Central America. Here’s a snapshot of three key nations and how they have grown:
El Salvador: Pop 1950 ….2.2 million …..Pop 2016 …..6.3 million
Honduras: …Pop 1950 ….1.5 million ……Pop 2016 …..9.1 million
Guatamala …Pop 1950 ….2.9 million …..Pop 2002 …11.2 million
So it’s ironic that someone who wants a border wall denies population growth. But inside the rightwing media bubble, nothing has to make sense.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/01/30/chapter-4-population-change-in-the-u-s-and-the-world-from-1950-to-2050/
I forgot to note the population growth of Mexico. Here are some numbers to consider:
Mexico, 1960 pop 35 million 2015 pop 121 million
No wonder so many Mexicans spilled up this way and changed our country’s racial complexion. But Tom Nash and Alan deny that any population bomb exploded. Yet at the same time, they’re concerned about border security. Go figure!
Quantity of citations rather than quality doesn’t change the fact that you didn’t know what you were talking about. Erlich’s book was about the collapse of civilization that never occurred in the context of his book.
EXAMPLES OF SURGING POPULATIONS:
Iran ……….1950 pop ..16.9 million ……….. .2015 …..87 million
Ethiopia ….1950 pop ..18.4 million …………2015 …..90 million
Nigeria …..1950 pop ..29.7 million ………….2015 …165 million
Pakistan ….1950 pop ..39.6 million ………….2015 …204 millon
India ………1950 pop 357 million ………….2015 1,230 billion
https://photius.com/rankings/world2050_rank.html
Peter, even after an explanation of what the discussion is all about you don’t seem to understand. That is incredible. Even a ten year old would have gotten the distinction by now. Either you like repeating garbage or your brain is really f—– up.
Either choice is bad but for some reason you wallow in what you think is your “success”.
The collapse of civilization is what the discussion is about, not population rises that were predicted by almost everyone. The book never would have been written about the latter.
Alan, I understand that you and Tom have NO credibility. And you’re just a nasty old man who can’t win any arguments with facts. So you typically get abusive until the moderator is forced to take your side and block the liberal you’re abusing.
Peter, are you still trying to justify your ignorance and inability to put facts together? That is what it seems like. Take note how you can’t discuss the facts ‘the collapse of civilization’ which is what was reported at the time and the basis of the book without going off topic.
Go ahead and find a review that lauds Erlich for recognizing that populations were increasing. Then note that they talk about the point of the book ‘the collapse of civilization’ quite different than what you glean from your hasty search of Wikipedia to find out who Paul Ehrlich was.
No, the moderator doesn’t take my side and he doesn’t block Liberals because they are debating with me. I don’t think you have been blocked by the moderator. You are still here. You say I have no credibility, but when you said there was no significant evidence of voter fraud I presented such evidence and you disappeared. That demonstrates you have no credibility and no ability to defend your statements.
Get over it. You were poorly educated. Blame the school system, your parents or yourself. You should actually blame yourself since as long as you have been on this blog you have never tried to up your game. You are too lazy to do that.
Erlich like Malthus overestimated. it doesn’t mean that overpopulation isn’t an issue.
The funny thing is that a lack of population growth in better countries is also an issue. Europe is in serious need of children. Born from European stock on the native soil!
That is not what I said, you lying sack of ****. Nice try though, Peter.That’s about your speed, but if you really practise a lot, you can become a champion in the Lying Sack of **** category.
https://principia-scientific.org/50-years-since-paul-ehrlichs-the-population-bomb-and-not-all-dead-yet/
I mentioned Paul Ehrlich and his long-term status as the environmental guru.
Peter defended Ehrlich’s idiotic predictions by observing that the popoulation has indeed grown, just as Ehrlich predicted.
And any damn fool, even Peter, could have predicted.
The issue was Ehrlich’s certainty about the massive environmental catastrophe that was about to plague the world due to overpopulation.
Keep in mind that Ehrlich was confidently making these predications when the world’s population was about half of what it is now.
And we’re not seeing that massive environmental disaster Ehrlich “knew” was going to happen even as the world’s population doubled.
Ehrlich became very famous, widely followed, widely believed, and respected as the Patron Saint for environmentalists.
And perhaps very wealthy as well. To defend his work because he predicted the world’s population would grow is sheer idiocy.
Tom, we ‘are’ seeing a massive environmental disaster. It may not be as Ehrlich predicted, but disaster is upon us. Freak weather is becoming the new norm and many scientists believe we have reached a tipping point with regards to Climate Change. Yet Republicans steadfastly deny the obvious with convoluted logic to the effect that, “Paul Ehlich was wrong so we needn’t worry”.
That kind of logic is like saying our invasion of Iraq was a ‘triumph’ because we lost less men than Vietnam.
But aside from Climate Change, the population bomb has created Islamic radicalism, mass migrations and serious threats to the oceans. That giant garbage patch in the South Pacific is arguably as scary as anything Erhlich predicted.
No one in the Scientific community knows how to remove all that plastic from the oceans. It would take a super fleet of cargo ships to scoop out all that crap. But even if we organized that super fleet tomorrow, the plastic is already breaking down and leeching to the ocean floor. Micro plastics have been found at the greatest depths. I’m not sure Paul Ehrlich imagined anything that scary.
Mass migrations will continue and accelerate. Europe is in serious danger of losing it historical identity as hordes of refugees overwhelm the continent. But the most serious crisis could play out in Bangladesh when rising seas flood that low-lying nation. At that point, tens of millions of refugees will be on the move throughout crowded Asia. That scenario could come late in the century when Millennials are in their 80’s.
So this idea that Paul Ehrlich was wrong so we can hide our heads in the sand is about as stupid as stupid gets.
It will come faster than that. Europe is besieged. Germans are very, very pissed off about it. Their lugenpresse does not tell the truth. We have many friends on the ground and the average German is very unhappy about migrant invasion by Muslims.
Asia will have a lot of border conflicts. Who knows if Pakistan and India may nuke each other. Well, on the plus side, if that happens, it may plunge the world into global nuclear winter, food production crisis, famine, and bye bye overpopulation problem
Adaptation and resiliency are key
“Germans are very, very pissed off about it. Their lugenpresse does not tell the truth.”
Kurtz, with that in mind…
—
Germany: Some Hate Speech ‘More Equal than Others’
by Judith Bergman
Although the “military arm” of Hezbollah is prohibited in the EU, the “political arm” is not, which means that in Germany, Hezbollah is free to engage in “non-military” activities — such as fundraising.
On the one hand, the federal police conduct countrywide raids on middle-aged Germans who post their thoughts on Facebook, while on the other, members of openly lethal terrorist organizations who espouse nothing but hatred towards a specific ethnic group, the Jews, are not only allowed to march in the heart of the German capital… but are free to organize and fundraise for their purpose.
That participants in the anti-Semitic Al Quds march have been allowed to flaunt their hatred for nearly four decades now, while middle-aged Germans are having their apartments searched for anti-Semitic and racist messages on Facebook, exposes a disturbing double standard in the application of the law.
At the very least, it shows that German authorities appear to harbor extremely selective views of what constitutes hate speech, based, it seems, on nothing more than the identity of the group that voices it.
continued at: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14484/germany-hate-speech-al-quds
When Peter’s mind wanders he seems to lose sight of what connects to what and how and why they connect. He is a general in generalizations that in general are wrong.
Maybe Peter and Ehrlich can put their heads together and re-do the sensational alarmist predictions that Ehrlich so confidently made 50 years ago.
Those convinced that we “are seeing a global environment catastrophe” already need not bother with forecasting, since they “know” it’s already upon us.
I don’t pretend to know the impact of the inevitable increase in the world’s population. That 500-600 year pattern of higher populations from century to century obviously continued through the 20th Century, and into this century.
I never said that population growth would not be a problem; I pointed out the the “Paul Ehrlich- type groupthing” can be dead wrong, regardless of how many devoted followers it has.
For those who believe that we “are” already experiencing a global environmental disaster, they are relying on questionable forecasts….not hiding behind their curtains because of their cities and towns and air and water are all polluted and the resources scarce.
They see a global warming theory as indisputable scientific fact; as I pointed out with the Ehrlich example, people can be as wrong as they are certain.
An interesting fact pointed out in the article that I linked is that there were surprisingly few repercussions from the fact the the Ehlich prophesy was proven to be ridiculous.
Rather than being embarrassed or feeling discredited from having some much egg on his face, Ehrlich appears to still be in good standing at Stanford and is even looked to for his input on environmental matters.
Most of us won’t be around to see what the works looks like in 2100, and many will be gone by 2050.
So it’s relatively easy and relatively safe to predict this or that looming disaster that far out.
I’ll predict the end of the world in the year 2101, and since I and virtually everyone who might be reading this won’t be around to call me on it, I’ll state it with certainty.
And even if the leading proponents of the global warming theory are as dead wrong as the Ehrlich theories, they can always stay on their campuses, shift gears, and come up with a new, “improved” theory about what will happen decades or centuries in the future.
When this thread shifted into a discussion of global warming, my initial comment was that I was an “agnostic” on the global warming issue.
One reason is that scientific consensus and groupthing are far different from scientific fact.
Erlich overestimated wrongly. It’s also erroneous to dismiss the issue.
Oh, I don’t deny it. There’s a definite glut of population in the third world, and the more of them the harder they will charge up there. Let’s keep exporting maximum birth control down there!
And let them have a taste of “Feminism.” that will slow it down! cultural poison that we’ve been overdosing for too long, spread some of the fun down there!
“‘What about Assange?’: UK Foreign Office video calling for press freedom shamed for hypocrisy”
https://youtu.be/Qg5HJcfmvV4
“‘What about Assange?’: UK Foreign Office video calling for press freedom shamed for hypocrisy”
JT: “Most presidents would view this poll as a terrible legacy in convincing one-third of Americans that the *free press* is actually the enemy of the people.”
This is a very poor post by the good Professor. He repeatedly replaces “the media” with “the free press.” The quote above is a clear misrepresentation of the survey and makes himself into a purveyor of fake news. How ironic.
Why is it that Hannity, et. al., vilify MSNBC and CNN, but not specifically ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, etc? It seems to me that they should vilify ALL the mainstream media, not just cable outlets. That fact leads me to believe that Fox employees are motivated to discredit their economic competitors as opposed to discrediting the mainstream media. You will never hear Hannity, Carlson, or Ingraham specifically mention ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS by name.
That fact leads me to believe that Fox employees are motivated to discredit their economic competitors as opposed to discrediting the mainstream media.
Shill, scorched earth “reporting” started with Woodward & Bernstein circa 1974 with Dan Rather, CNN, et al piling it on higher for 4 decades. It is only recently that conservatives started to respond with Fox News, Breitbart, Daily Caller, et al and look how the Left howl.
the reason why the Left suffer from TDS is because they can not stand a differing opinion and loathe their tactics being used on them. Your ilk embrace a monolithic thinking on a level that dwarves a fundamentalist evangelical christian. This is what makes Trump so popular with Americans: they despise what the Left have done to America and Trump is articulating what most of them feel – disgust for the destruction of our once hallowed, sacrosanct institutions. Own it. It’s on your bubba
You will never hear Hannity, Carlson, or Ingraham specifically mention ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS by name.
You watch them more than we do at home since we do not have TV nor are we on any social media, but you go on ahead and contribute to their ratings. Just don’t tell your oracles at CNN that you can quote Hannity, Carlson & Ingraham.
I cannot help you my friend; I can only pity you. I just hope you live long enough to watch all the hopes and dreams you have for this country are vanquished. Yours is a dying cause.
When logic is not available, condescension and bludgeoning with power will do the trick. Saul Alinsky would be proud
How many milkshakes have you thrown this last week at Americans you find disagreeable?
Here’s an excellent, long interview of Andy Ngo by Brett Weinstein:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC4u1zo6OpQ
/////
“It is only recently that conservatives started to respond with Fox News, Breitbart, Daily Caller, et al and look how the Left howl.” They respond with censorship by the government and private entities, not howling.
Jeff,
You won’t live to see the death of our cause because our cause is life and our people will live. you should hope your silver doesn’t run out because you will need it when time comes for you to buy a berth on ours when your ship sinks
We are resilient and we innovate. We don’t cannibalize our own.
Media = right-wing. And the public is becoming more aware that corporate media is, indeed, an enemy.
Corporate media: Google, Facebook, Twitter …
All are on the left banning right wing commentary.
Jeffrey, I shift around a lot in my television habits using recordings to skip the advertisements and much of the programs. I see villification of all MSM by those on Fox but CNN and MSNBC have well surpassed the others in their craziness.
I too skip the commercials when I survey Fox and MSNBC. And Hannity, et. al., talk about their better ratings as if that fact proves their programming is more factual. On the contrary, it just proves what P.T. Barnum said that there is a sucker born every minute…
Jeffrey, the proof is in the pudding. You have the ability to record and so do I. You pick the show some dates in the future and we will both record it. Then you can show us how that show isn’t factual and I can rebut. We will both have the recordings to refer to. I have made this offer countless of times but those saying what you are saying refuse to do it. Why? Because they know in their hearts that Fox is mostly accurate with the facts and when they aren’t and they discover they aren’t they will openly state a retraction. (Remember the left wing hit sites follow these shows word for word so Fox has to be very careful as they have to prove what those sites said is wrong. They frequently use video tape to prove that the left wing sites didn’t quote them correctly.)
Remember, Hannity is providing opinion so one can’t call him a liar for his opinion. One can however talk about the facts he brings to the table. I have dealt with this on the left wing sites years ago and found that these sites made statements that weren’t true. They even sometimes did this with a recording posted that showed they were not telling the truth counting on the fact that people aren’t interested in the truth rather want to hear their beliefs confirmed.
Are you up for seeking the truth or do you just wish to make statements without proof?
The internet is the media now, so anyone who tweets is a columnist. If you don’t like the news, tweet your own.
Peter is abysmally ignorant of the predictions of Paul Ehrlich …..any damn fool can predict that the population will increase over time.
What Ehrlich predicted was a cataclysmic decline of civilization, mass starvation, etc .by the 1980s as a result of the increasing population
It’s very, very easy to check out what Ehrlich wss predicting, and just how incredibly wrong he was.
Yes, and just like the climate change thingy, all the world’s National Academies of Science and every relevant association of scientists endorsed Ehrlich’s predictions!
Wait, …….
“….No scientific body of national or international standing maintains a formal opinion dissenting from any of these main points. The last national or international scientific body to drop dissent was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists,[23] which in 2007[24] updated its statement to its current non-committal position.[25] Some other organizations, primarily those focusing on geology, also hold non-committal positions.
This is a list of scientific bodies of national or international standing, that have issued formal statements of opinion, classifies those organizations according to whether they concur with the IPCC view, are non-committal, or dissent from it. The California Governor’s Office website lists nearly 200 worldwide scientific organizations hold the position that climate change has been caused by human action.[46]… (LIST FOLLOWS with positions and quotes in support)”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change
Because Wikipedia is a reliable source for scientific evidenced based data.
Thanks for playing
I am not sure the precise causal mechanisms. The solar cycle is a factor too. There is a lot of politicking that spoils climate science. It’s very unfortunate because the climate change is very real. And you clowns have just tried to use it to create more insane tax schemes. Very sad! Focus on what can help in the time we have left to adjust.
And yes that includes border security.
Instead, the left is whining about border jumpers who perished in the desert and one of their dogooders who got pinched for helping them by leaving water caches in the sonoran desert. Stupid!
But not much can be done to help., Nature will take its course and the third world is going to get a beating. The question is how many of them will make it up here for the future invasion that will absolutely dwarf whatever is happening now.
Tom, why do you have to make a long sentence when a shorter one would suffice? Let me give an example.
Long sentence:
Peter is abysmally ignorant of the predictions of Paul Ehrlich
Short sentence
Peter is abysmally ignorant
Do you see what I mean?
Anyone who thinks that Paul Erllich and The Population Bomb that he wrote ( and his multiple appearances as a media darling and his other publications and statements)……anyone who thinks that Ehrlich is still credible is too far gone to understand anything.
Tom, Peter is unable to intellectually put ideas together. He is like a two year old trying to put a square into a triangle. He hasn’t recognized that though they may be of the same color and both made of wood (plastic)they will not fit.
Tom, Paul Ehrlich may have been off the mark on many things but not population. In fact, I actually ‘under-stated’ population growth. The world’s population has almost tripled since 1950! That’s a population bomb!! There’s no other way of putting it. That population bomb is responsible for Climate Change, deforestation, the decline of oceans and mass migrations towards the northern hemisphere.
So what if Ehrlich got the details wrong..?? The title of his book remains a major issue.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/01/30/chapter-4-population-change-in-the-u-s-and-the-world-from-1950-to-2050/
No, Peter, most knew that the population was on the rise and many accurately predicted the population in the future. The reason Erlich became noticed was his book was really about the collapse of civilization. Population is a square while the collapse of civilization is a triangle. Neither will fit into the hole shaped like a circle.
I heard that those Betsy Ross shoes that Nike pulled from production weren’t entirely pulled from production. A few made it through and are going for $2,500.00. The law of supply and demand.
Peter,
They could probably “risk” ignoring it for as long as they ignored the king of environmental groupthing, Paul Ehrlich.
Tom, feel free to identify Paul Ehrlich. Like, “German Biologist, Paul Ehrlich”, assuming you mean him. Otherwise I’m not sure ‘who’ you’re referring to. Or what your comment implies.
If you’ve never heard of Paul Ehrlich, the former patron saint of the environmental Cassandras, you should read The Population Bomb, Peter.
Tom, I didn’t think you were so stupid as to be referring to ‘that’ Paul Erlich. You think the population bomb never went off?
Erich wrote “The Population Bomb” in 1970. And here’s a fact: ‘The World’s population has more than doubled since 1950’. That’s an extraordinary fact. ‘In other words, it took all of history to reach the population mark of 1950. But since then the global population has ‘more than doubled’!
The populations of Europe and North American have stagnated. Which is probably what rightwing media refers in labeling Erlich a ‘Cassandra’. But the populations of Asia, the Middle East and Africa have exploded. That’s why mass migrations to Europe are now a serious issue. That’s why White people are becoming a global minority.
The population bomb accounts for the rapid rise of Muslim populations. The population bomb accounts for rapid deforestation which contributes to Climate Change. The population bomb explains the explosion of plastic waste threatening the oceans. In fact most of the issues facing the world today are in some way tied to exploding populations of developing nations.
Here’s an interesting fact: In the 1950’s-1960’s, Chicago ranked as one of the world’s 10 Biggest Cities. But now Chicago only ranks about # 70. Chicago’s population hasn’t dropped that much. But it illustrates how many global cities have surpassed Chicago since Erlich wrote his book.
So if you think Paul Erlich has been discredited, it only goes to show that rightwing media DUMBS PEOPLE DOWN.
Paul Erlich’s name is associated with the ‘collapse of civilization in a few decades’. The collapse of civilization did not occur. Global warming is associated with the ‘collapse of civilization’ as well except I think today’s mantra replaces the old mantra that the tipping point will be reached in 12 years though the talking points are nearly the same as they were in the previous decades including the time lines. I am still waiting for Florida to disappear and Al Gore is waiting for his 300 million to become a billion.
The point was not that certain areas would run out of food rather the population explosion would *collapse civilization*. That didn’t happen. The starvation is local and not something that causes the collapse of civilization. Critical thinking skills are necessary to prevent the appearance of ignorance when one is caught with his pants down and has to quickly refer to Wikipedia.
Erlichs gift to the world was not that population was on the rise. Loads of people pullled out their slide rules and correctly predicted the rise in population. It wasn’t that deforestation existed because that was a well known fact. It was the collapse of civilization, but that Peter, is a differentiation I don’t expect you to understand.
Gee, but didn’t Erllich accurately predict that the world’s population would grow?
That would put him a select group of millions ( if not many) more other “seers” who understood that the world popoulation does, in fact, increase.
But if Hollywood Hill is impressed by that brilliant observation, what the hey…it’s good enough for him.
https://principia-scientific.org/50-years-since-paul-ehrlichs-the-population-bomb-and-not-all-dead-yet/
There may well be a lot of people who are not familiar with the writings and predication of Saint Paul Ehrlich.
It’s a wonder 🤔 that this charlatan has any apologists left, even in Hollywood.
The books title was The Population Bomb.Therefore, Peter thinks the book was read because people wanted to read what they already knew, the population was increasing. The word bomb didn’t set off any signals in Peter’s brain so he didn’t realize the real reason of the book was to predict the collapse of civilization. That would be too much for Peter. He would have to actually have to glean the books substance and to do that he had to think. Thinking is not on Peter’s agenda for his conclusions might not agree with his ideology.
It was still current literature when Peter was a tween. The sort of discourse Ehrlich traded in was fodder for magazine journalism. Guess Peter never had to do a book report on it.
I actually did have to do a book report on it some years after it was published in 1967. Ehrlich had a trio of disaster scenarios delineated at the end as well as a set of ‘what-you-can-do’ recommendations. They were comically silly, and manifestly so by 1979. More sophisticated Malthusians were working for the Club of Rome and the Carter White House (remember the Global 2000 Report?).
What a resource economist said to me 20 years ago is relevant: Ehrlich was a biologist who never understood that human beings make adaptive changes in response to price signals.
Was that your choice of book or an assigned book? If the latter, why that book?
“human beings make adaptive changes in response to price signals.”
I think a lot of people fail to recognize the absolute importance of statement including Nobel Prize winners in economics.
No particular reason. We were told to read something and just had that paperback lying around the house. Because it was a biology class, we couldn’t read imaginative literature. The book was instructive in one sense: I’ve never trusted peddlers of eschatology since (whether it be of the politico-military, economic, environmental, or metaphysical variety). It was all the rage in that era, as you recall. Calvin Coolidge once said, “You see 10 problems rolling down the road, you can bet nine of them will roll into the ditch before they get to you”. The task is always identifying problem no. 10.
Civilizational collapse is indeed happening in places like “the West” where it is a cultural phenomenon of people so weak and atomized that they can’t even come together and defend their national borders in a time of crisis. Western Europe, same!
This is why the “new right” in Europe, a decade or two back, stopped whining about Jews all the time. one day they woke up, saw what a great job the Israelis were doing protecting their own turf, and said, why complain about these folks, they’re an inspiration!
Nationalism, in moderation, neither too much nor too little, is an important sentiment of solidarity among a people, necessary to survival!
Erlich was wrong about predictions but not about the underlying issue, overpopulation. While that is more of a local than a global problem, it can become global very fast under conditions of environmental collapse such as the syrian desertification and famine projecting a million or two refugees into Europe.
Stop whining about rightwing media. You hit one target and then miss the next all the time. You don’t convince people by antagonizing and insulting them.
‘Overpopulation’ is not a problem. It’s not even a coherent concept.
sure it is. it relates to population density in a given area and how much is too much. it’s a question of judgment which is based on measurement.
defining the relevant area is important. the issue is less one of how many people are there globally, than how many sane, competent, and orderly humans are in a given place, functioning well socially, versus those places where they’re not. and how they will flow from the schiessholes into the decent places over time.
which is precisely what we’re seeing.
Honduras: overpopulated
Switzerland: not overpopulated
Singapore: Density: 7,804/km2 (20,212.3/sq mi)
Honduras: Density: 64/km2 (165.8/sq mi)