Comment by onion2k
13 days ago
I understand the logistics very well. I'm not suggesting we move the food and water to the people. I'm suggesting we move the people to the food and water. Cities like New York have a population density of 50k/mile^2. We can build lots more cities at that scale much closer to where resources are easily available.
I'm choosing to ignore a lot of the problems with people from disparate backgrounds living together, people not actually wanting to leave where they live, people not wanting to share freely available resources, etc. Those are very hard to solve problems.
I'm only saying that over-population is not the cause of resource problems. If we can solve the other problems then a lack of resources stops being a problem, which proves population size is not the root cause.
I would like to challenge your suggestion - ignoring for the moment the practical issues like cultural and economic and educational roadblocks.
New York doesn't magically receive food. New York is a large net recipient of food imports. It produces value to society and exchanges some of that value for food farmed by others. The U.S. (and most of the West) is structured in such a way that productivity per capita is high, and it means everyone in the food supply chain can live a reasonable lifestyle with enough food. Most African nations do not structure their society this way. It's not an accident. This is the way they choose to live. I grew up in Africa and I'm happy to explain the many ways in which American and African cultures differ. For example, corruption isn't corruption in most of Africa. It's good manners. Gift giving has been happening in tribes for thousands of years. In business it is a common courtesy to provide a gift during negotiations. Of course the person with the largest gift is the most generous and the nicest person, so of course they get the contract. This is a fundamental difference in our cultural and social understanding of what is right and wrong.
What you appear to be exercising is a typical Western hubris: "if we can just get the savages to live with us, they would see the light and live like we do." This assumes that everyone want to adopt your values and way of living. They don't. The reason there isn't much food in Africa (relative to the population size) is not by chance. They live on some of the most fertile land in the world. Africa should be the breadbasket of the world. The issue is that they don't like the way you live and don't want to live that way. Any kind of mass migration strategy would merely result in lots of hungry people in America.
What I said is that the world produces enough food for everyone (and then some), so 'over population' is not the reason for people not having enough resources. I was careful to point out that was all I was saying in several places. I added caveats to say that there are lots of hard problems around moving people to the resources.
You chose to ignore all that, and argue against the point I explicitly didn't make. Congratulations on winning that argument. Your prize is a huge straw man.