Humanity is immensely capable of large-scale adaptation.
10k years ago we were getting chased around by sabre-toothed tigers.
1k years ago we were still dying of hunger and lack of hygiene.
100 years ago the first biplanes took to the sky.
Now look where we are. Human progress is exponential. There's every reason to believe that we'll be capable of dealing with our problems as they come. Malthus was wrong 200 years ago, and you are wrong now.
We have clean energy options in solar, nuclear, and battery storage. These are getting better, cheaper, and safer every day. We've got people working on geo-engineering solutions. We've got remote work. We're automating and localizing manufacturing.
They're complaining about a rise in the absolute number of hungry people, not the rate of hunger.
I hope you're not arguing that the rate of hunger has done anything but gone down drastically in the past 1000 years.
That there are short-term oscillations change nothing about the very obvious long-term trend. Keep in mind also that most economies are still recovering from Covid. Heck, the EU is a rich area and is still recovering from 2008.
Now, 1000 years ago, there were ~0.3B people. [0]
The daily calorie supply is hard to get, but in 1200 it looks to have been about 2000kCal in the UK. [1]
Now we're up to 3000kCal per person per day, for 27x the population. [2] And honestly, we're not even trying to maximize this number at all; farmers are optimizing for profit, not for maximum calories. Absolutely enormous tracts of land go uncultivated. Hydroponic farming is used for minuscule percentage of our food supply. We're nowhere close to maxing out the food supply.
When I see complaints like yours I can only conclude one of these:
1) The people involved truly don't get the idea of rates, or long-term trends in rates, or the impact of technology on our lives
2) They aren't arguing in good faith and simply want me to be sad.
Rates are irrelevant. I don't see a scenario where 2 children dying of hunger is better than 1. My original statement is absolutely true: there are more people affected by hunger today than 1k years ago.
Our example community used to have ten children total, and one died of hunger. The the industrial revolution happened. Now we have 300 children, and two died of hunger.
That's 288 children living materially much more abundant lives. 288 lives that wouldn't have existed. One of them might be a key scientist / entrepreneur that launches us to 1000000 kids and zero dying of anything.
Please don't sensationalize your example, it doesn't help your argument and others can play that game too *.
While it's true that the industrial revolution has led to significant economic growth, I don't think that justifies the fact that two children died of hunger in your example community. Every child deserves to live a life free from hunger and poverty, regardless of the overall economic situation. It's not a zero-sum game where we have to choose between economic growth and the well-being of the most vulnerable members of society. And I'm not convinced by the argument that the potential benefits of economic growth outweigh the cost of individual lives. We should be working to create a world where every child has access to the resources they need to thrive, not justifying the deaths of children as a necessary cost of progress.
* In your example, one of the two kids that dies is your son. The other one is the kid who's death is going to launch his best friend in a downward spiral that will eventually lead him to push the button and start global nuclear war that kills everyone and everything on the planet.
You're ignoring the fact that modern technological society unlocked hundreds of lives that wouldn't otherwise have existed. Turning our backs on the industrial revolution would, in effect, "kill" these people by preventing their chance at life.
> We should be working to create a world where every child has access to the resources they need to thrive, not justifying the deaths of children as a necessary cost of progress.
> It's not a zero-sum game where we have to choose between economic growth and the well-being of the most vulnerable members of society.
The deaths of the two children aren't "justified" and neither is the "death" of the hundreds who didn't get to live in the first place. We have to minimize deaths and maximize life.
You're right that it's not a zero-sum game. The best thing for everybody is maximum growth. In the year 1800 there was approximately zero concern for the welfare of the poor, and yet the breakneck growth in that century gave the poor vastly higher wages and made left-wing, pro-worker ideas like workplace safety and the weekend practical for the first time.
Sacrificing growth for a softer approach to life gives you neither.
The best way to ensure every kid has the resources they need is to first become a rich society. The second step is to ensure your society stays rich by focusing on getting richer. When you're tapping an exponentially growing system to feed the poor, your first priority is to keep that system growing as fast as possible, not to throw a wrench into it.
I never supported the idea that we should turn our backs on modern technological advances. Of course these have improved our lives.
But going back to your example, why are you trying to rationalize the fact that now two children are dead from hunger? If anything, the overall economic growth in your example and all the additional available resources should have made certain that not even a single child died.
And yet, here we are, with more that 8 billion people on the planet, all our technological advances and all the resources that we have and still, 1 out of every 10 people on the planet faces hunger. There is no sugar coating this. It is a tragedy.
They're only dead because they got to be born first. It's not like modern agriculture reached out and killed them on purpose.
Richer mothers are better able to plan their families and tend to restrict it to a number of kids they can feed. The answer is, and always will be, exponential growth.
How can you claim that famine has been "largely eradicated" when I just posted a reference that says that more than 800 million people are affected by hunger?
800M is straight up wrong. I don’t know what methods are used in the link you’re talking about, but it is inaccurate. Here’s an assessment of the current famine conditions:
The 800 million number is straight from the World Health Organization. The one you are linking to is a third party that says that the World Food Programme organization reports 330 million in 78 countries.
Here are two things to consider:
* the world has more than 78 countries. There are people affected by hunger even in first world countries. "Hunger in the United States of America affects millions of Americans, including some who are middle class, or who are in households where all adults are in work." [1]
* While 330 million is lower than 800 million, it is still immensely bad.
People are hungry not because the civilization fails to produce enough food. It fails to produce enough order to let this food reach the hungry.
The causes of any prolonged famine are political: local overlords and thugs grab the food and keep it under their control, so that they would stay on top of their local social pyramid and / or profit from reselling.
Isn't order a part of civilization though? Aren't local thugs and overlords part of our civilization? I'm not sure what your argument is. Our civilization cannot secure enough food for everyone.
Humanity is immensely capable of large-scale adaptation.
10k years ago we were getting chased around by sabre-toothed tigers.
1k years ago we were still dying of hunger and lack of hygiene.
100 years ago the first biplanes took to the sky.
Now look where we are. Human progress is exponential. There's every reason to believe that we'll be capable of dealing with our problems as they come. Malthus was wrong 200 years ago, and you are wrong now.
We have clean energy options in solar, nuclear, and battery storage. These are getting better, cheaper, and safer every day. We've got people working on geo-engineering solutions. We've got remote work. We're automating and localizing manufacturing.
Defeatism is not the way.