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[–] 33 points 3 months ago (22 children)

Actually, we'd only need to lose 50 maybe 100 people. Total.

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  • [–] 17 points 3 months ago (20 children)

    Nah, their fortunes would just go to their heirs and you'd still have the same problem with roughly the same number of people. The solution is a system of regulation and taxation that stops incentivizing the pursuit of profit over all else. For example, shareholders should not be able to profit when workers don't. Real estate owners should not be able to engage in cartel-like behavior, collaborating with each other to fix prices.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago* (2 children)

    It's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine a world without capitalism.

    We don't give their heirs wealth my dude. It's a revolution. You round up the ruling class and seize their wealth and give it back to the masses that produced it.

    I know "that'll never happen". Said every person throughout history just before a revolution.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    The wealth redistribution wouldn't solve this particular problem though. If the ecological footprint of a quadrillionaire's wealth is giant spaceships, mega yachts, private jets, data centers and fuel for all of it then it doesn't matter who owns them. The ecological damage will always happen unless that wealth is disposed of or massively downcycled.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    I think you are assuming the destructive effects of "wealth" are constant. This is not at all reasonable. 1 million people being able to afford shelter, healthcare, and food is not comparable to the unnecessary destruction we see today brought about by datacenters, private jets, super yachts, wars for the capitalist military industrial complex, etc, etc. Those absurdities do not exist without a concentration of wealth.

    Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying? But, "wealth" does not have the linear relationship with the negative outcomes that you are implying. It is very much the concentration of wealth and power that results in these outcomes. The destructive power wealth has grows exponentially with its concentration in fewer and fewer hands. Simply because as it concentrates the wealthy are able to both cause the destruction AND avoid their consequences at the same time.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (9 children)

    The powers don't allow reforms. Removal of powers and a rebuild with safeguards is needed

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (8 children)

    You say you want a revolution

    We-ell you kno-o-ow

    We all wanna save the world

    You tell me it's the institutions

    We-ell you kno-o-ow

    We all wanna save the wo-or-r-ld

    But when you talk about destuction

    Don't you know that you can count me out

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (7 children)

    It's theseus' ship. is it destruction is kind of a dilemma

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    I would remind you that this comment chain began with someone suggesting that we'd "only need to lose 50 maybe 100 people". I'm under no illusions as to what was meant by that, and I'm saying that generally speaking, that sort of "solution" doesn't improve things. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss", etc.

    Force is sometimes necessary, yes, but generally speaking, the people who suggest it as a first resort before ever having gotten personally involved in attempts at other solutions, are the people who should be kept very far away from the real decision making.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Yeah I'm all for them to peacefully choose exile. But by the looks of it they're rushing towards the force scenario. Which is then technically a self defense situation.

    And yeah, it's the hydras head unless there's bigger changes as well. It's a small chance either part would work on its own

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (4 children)

    No one suggested it first. We've been working for decades through peaceful measures. Hell, we're still doing it now and they are responding with marking our organizations as "domestic terrorist" with both parties spending every ounce of AIPAC funds to stop us.

    Those that make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. We are right on that edge right now. We don't make the choice to use violence. They do.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (3 children)

    That's a lot of "we" and "our". Are you a member of a community organization that's working to peacefully improve things? Have you or someone you personally know been prosecuted as a terrorist for peaceful activism?

    Before trying Michael Collins IRA stuff, you should at least attempt CS Parnell Land League stuff. Especially since you need a large percentage of the community to have already gotten organized before either form of action can hope to succeed, and that organization is easier to accomplish when you're not asking people to kill people. How many of your neighbors are you on a first name basis with? If you can't organize a community boycott then you could never hope to organize a revolution.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    Nothing you said here was in response to the point of my comment. You instead tried to change the conversation about my personal experiences. I guess I have to provide a a resume in order for you to address my direct criticism of your comment.

    I'll remind you what is was. I was criticizing the part where you ignored historical class struggle and instead suggested people were advocating for violence as a first step.

    Also, the "we" I was using was referring to the working class and specifically those with class consciousness. It's pretty obvious in the context of the conversation.

    Do you want respond to my criticism or do I have to provide a resume first?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    They were rhetorical questions meant to make you think about alternatives, and the historical examples that have worked.

    You talk about historical class struggle as if nothing short of violence has ever worked, when this is demonstrably untrue and is generally only an argument used by those who haven't the patience nor discipline to try anything else. I will reiterate: community organization is the only way forward, not vague suggestions of murder on anonymous forums to strangers. Even if violence were the answer, I wouldn't follow any movement so undisciplined as to suggest it to strangers on an anonymous public forum and think that this made it somehow safe. The world needs more than Che Guevara t-shirts.

    I wish to point out to you a very much better way – a more Christian and charitable way, which will give the lost man an opportunity of repenting. When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him – you must shun him in the streets of the town – you must shun him in the shop – you must shun him on the fair green and in the market place, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone, by putting him in moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of the country, as if he were the leper of old – you must show him your detestation of the crime he committed.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    No one advocated for violence, the comment you responded to is pointing to the hypocrisy of talking about population reduction when 100 billionares do more damage to the environment and world than millions of people combined.

    No one advocated for violence as the solution; or said it should be used as a first step. You still have not addressed my first comments criticism.

    You aren't having a conversation or trying to "make me think". You're injecting opinions into comments that were never expressed. Maybe reread this conversation. You're putting a lot of effort into replies that aren't responding to what is being said.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    The money gets split when it goes to the heirs. Just keep eliminating the rich until the money inherited is diluted enough its not significant.

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  • [+] 29 points 3 months ago* (6 children)
  • [–] 24 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Just waiting for Theil or some other tech bro to start a company called "Vault-Tec".

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  • [–] 22 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I'd like to volunteer to start the list with about a hundred people we can get rid of right now.

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  • [–] 18 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Halving the population would definitely help, but some country populations have a lot lower impact than others.

    The real problem is the consumerism mentality, where we need to buy even bigger cars, TVs, houses, clothes, etc.

    This is what destroys our planet. And even if the population halves, this trend can negate much of the effect.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    True. Remove the US and we're halfway there already.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    The US is bad, but when you look at CO2 emissions it is still just at 12.7% of global emissions for example. Not even close to half. Obviously on a per capita bases that is still crazy high.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Your data does not include all the imported goods and land use required for Americans, but merely territorial emissions. US lifestyle is particularly wasteful, so yes, we'll be halfway there counting also all the imported trash that no longer needs to be produced and shipped.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Even that does not change things too much. Not to half anyway, but just to 14% of global CO2 emissions.

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  • [–] 89 points 3 months ago (22 children)

    Scientists argue that the indiscriminate use of Earth’s resources by humans has led to environmental effects, ranging from biodiversity loss to climate change.

    Motherfuckers will find it easier to imagine genociding half of humanity than ending capitalism.

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  • [–] 26 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Lol, what do you think indiscriminate use of resources is? That's literally capitalism!

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Unless you're an ecofascist neonazi, in which case the same phrase gets interpreted as "use of resources by the wrong kind of people".

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    Genocide is unneeded. Population levels decline naturally as people urbanize. Just keep moving people into cities and industrializing farming and the problem will solve itself.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Not with capitalism. Look at countries that do not take in many immigrants. South Korea and Japan are the results of what you're talking about.

    It's not just about industrialization. The exploitation of labor under capitalism still requires bodies to build its alter. The contradictions of capitalism are the primary problem. Value comes from labor. The profits of capital come from labor. They don't want "less people". They just want you to hate other workers and see them as "the problem".

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (5 children)

    They will get less labor whether they want it or not. They are banking on being able to fill it in with AI.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (4 children)

    Not at all. AI is primarily a tool for domestic surveillance and war. AI cannot produce surplus value to be extracted for profit. They aren't trying to replace workers with AI. At least not in the long term.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (3 children)

    Maybe it's a fantasy but if they could replace humans with machines that never bargained and went on holiday, they would in a heartbeat. And that's what they want to do. Maybe they will fail, maybe the technology will develop. It can do many things today that it couldn't so a few years ago. It's already solved more difficult mathematical proofs than any human alive today for example.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (2 children)

    Yeah, that's not true. The math proofs it has solved are not "more difficult than any solved by a living person". Many of the proofs AI has solved are corner case conditions that are not being actively worked on by mathematicians. In a trivial example. Image a problem like:

    x = n + 25

    AI says, hey, let's assume n=3.

    AI solved the proof that 3 + 25 = 28.

    Then we get an article posted about how AI solved the impossible problem of n + 25

    Now, it can be helpful to have these less general proofs solved. It can help mathematicians in creating a more general proof (what they are usually focused on).

    But, as far as I'm aware, these are most of the contributions of AI so far in the field of mathematics. You're falling for the hype around it. It's mostly filling in gaps for corner cases that are not actively being worked on.

    Which makes sense. Because it's just a text generation algorithm that predicts the most likely characters. It's using training data for the n = 3 case that it learned from another already solved problem and then injecting it into the unsolved problem. Sometimes is spits out something that makes sense, a human being has to verify it, and then a corner case for mathematical proof is "solved".

    It's not capable of thinking or rationalizing to anything new. It is filling in gaps in a field of research that is not primarily focused on "gap filling".

    It's why it's "having success" in Math but not Physics. Mathematicians focus on general proofs that apply under all conditions. So, the field inevitably has a lot of problems that could be solved by a lot of brute force for specific conditions.

    In Physics, scientist are constantly trying to "fill gaps". They work with real world measurements and observations. Any new "gap" is constantly being tested. AI has no gaps to fill with its brute force way of "thinking". And it's completely incapable of coming up with theories or hypothesis on a level a human does.

    This is why it's not solving ground breaking mathematics proofs and why it is mostly useless in replacing humans in the scientific process. Because it isn't actually thinking.

    Sorry, rant. But this is something that bothers me and you hit a nerve.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    Sorry the wording of that phrase was too ambiguous. I meant it had solved more proofs than any human had in their lifetime, and those were at least difficult enough to stump humans for years or decades. I didn't mean that they were more difficult than proofs that humans had solved, simply that the AI had solved a higher quantity of them, and that, on average, they would be considered difficult. At least difficult enough to stump humans for a pretty good stretch of time.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    Sure. That's fine. But I think you still misunderstand exactly what is being solved in most of those cases. It's not about quantity. If it was then all mathematicians would be spending time on filling "gaps". Mathematicians aren't focused on filling in gaps as a lot of the time that type of brute force work is not meaningful to the field of mathematics. They are focused on proving (or disproving) axioms that are foundational to the field. AI has not proven or disproven any mathematical axiom.

    The biggest proof it's ever provided was for "Erdos Problem". Which is essentially just a fun "dot placement optimization problem" that Erdos came up with, was never taken too seriously, and was difficult enough that spending time on it in academics would likely get you laughed at.

    It's formal proof yields almost nothing to the field.

    On top of that, it was "solved" by an AI math startup with closed source software. There is literally no confirmation that it was AI solving it organically or if the mathematicians themselves solved it during developing the AI and saw a means of getting headlines and more capital investment.

    Please, be more skeptical. I double majored in Math and CS and have worked in the field for over a decade. There are applications for AI that are helpful. But, right now, people are falling for a lot of the hype and lies that are being pushed around to attract capital investment. You're not an investor, you can be smarter and more skeptical than that.

    In a decade we're going to have a lot of reflection on this time and the lies being told about the usefulness of AI.

    We live in a world where one of the most valued companies in the world pretends it's AI robots are real and not just being remote operated by a human. You think AI startups aren't giving credit to AI for the work of humans? They all are. Because it gets them investment.

    A mostly fun and non helpful math problem gets solved by a human. The math community enjoys it. Laughs a little at the guy who spent too much of his life solving it. And no one outside the community hears about it.

    But if you say "AI did it". You get millions of dollars in investment.

    I don't have evidence a human solved it. But they also don't have evidence AI solved it either. And all financial incentives right now are in saying "AI did it". That is why you should be extremely skeptical of all these things you hear about the capability of AI.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Well, noone needs to get genocide, just stop making more

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Oh you mean eugenics and reproductive control. Yea, also genocidal.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Jfc, I'm not castrating anyone, just asking nicely - consider not making more. Maybe 8 billion is plenty.

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  • [–] -3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    Cool. You can "say that". But that doesn't happen. People have kids.

    Come up with one idea or policy that actually results in people having less children? Because that's what the comment you replied to is saying. They are talking about the inevitable policies that come from the "just have less" ideas.

    The idea is pointless if it just lives in your head. Would be great if everyone that read this comment gave me $1. But no one's gonna do that unless I actually had a reason for them to. The reasons to place on people to have less children either don't work or are human rights violations.

    You sound like the dumb "smart guy" that says "we could have world peace if everyone just smoked weed everyday".

    You don't solve something by coming up with a solution with no means of reaching it. Hell, it's not really a solution, it's just a conclusion. It's why the "population problem" is so good for propaganda. It redirects the problem and distracts stupid people that haven't actually thought through how that would work.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    The plan here is women's education and access to contraceptives. These 2 things very consistently cause a significant decline in fertility rates. To the point that leaders across the globe are shitting their pants over it.

    Consider that ~50% of births globally are from unplanned pregnancies. Prevention of those can do a lot of heavy lifting.

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  • [+] -8 points 3 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago* (3 children)

    Absolutely! Famously non capitalist countries have no capability of funding studies. Nope. Hell, we'd never have gotten the first satellite or first person into space without capitalism! Everything good comes from capitalism! And everything bad, yeah, it's socialism. And if it's REALLY bad, it's communism.

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  • [+] -4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)
  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Communism is, by definition, "a classless, moneyless, stateless society".

    When people say "no communist countries have existed" this is what they mean. Because that's not ever been achieved.

    There are countries that are run by communist parties (China). But these are not countries that have "obtained Communism". You are confused because you never looked up the definition of a communist society.

    For example, China is a country run by the Chinese Communist Party under a state structure of Socialism (with Chinese characteristics).

    Since you don't understand basic definitions I doubt that you're criticisms of "communist countries" were very insightful.

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  • [+] -4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Economist Richard Wolff has a lot of material on YouTube that explains the differences between Capitalism and Socialism as a mode of production, in addition to how this relates to how China's economy differs from those like America. Assuming you are genuinely interested in learning more

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    [–] 27 points 3 months ago

    Study reveals that humans are the main cause of human-caused environmental effects.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago

    Can I get a snap?

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 19 points 3 months ago* (8 children)

    Funny how they leave out that taking just 1% of the wealthiest for a nice dirt nap would help more

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  • [–] -4 points 3 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    Richest one percent are responsible for same level of climate warming as the 5 billion poorest people so yeah it would.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    The article suggest halving the global population by 2200. So not some nuclear war or disease killing half of humans basically over night. So more Japan and less nuclear war.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    japanese made several series, scenarios over overpopulation. blue gender, evangelion,,etc.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Those were originally made in the 90s. Japans population peaked in 2008 and has declined by over 5million people since. All without war, disease or stuff like that.

    This is also true for some other countries. The current medium UN forecast projects Chinas population to more then half by the end of the century.

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  • [+] 17 points 3 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Isn't climate change going to take care of this for us? Parts of the planet are becoming uninhabitable, food crops are failing, fish stocks are on the verge of collapse.... We are going to struggle to feed 10 billion people unless things drastically change!

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago* (2 children)

    Historically when people are desperate , die younger, they responded by having more children

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago

    Historically, that might be true, but that is because historically it made sense to have more children in order to eventually gather more food or earn more money. Birth rates are dropping all over the place. Even in countries like India with traditionally very high birth rates. We are entering into a post-ubundance world, resources like food and clean water are becoming increasingly scarce and increasingly expensive. It makes no sense having babies if you're not sure you're going to be able to feed them.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    We also consume a lot of meat and the like, which means we can feed a lot more people, if we wanted too.

    Today a good number of countries have natural population declines due to people having too few children. That includes some big ones like China, Russia, Japan, Germany and Italy. Also all continents beside Africa have a fertility rate below replacement. So in the coming decades the global population is likely to fall. Most of that is the side effect of good developments like women getting more rights, education and people becoming wealthier. It will just take time.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Capitalism called.

    They said “no”… ☹️

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago

    I am not particularly sympathetic, but there is a group that takes this quite seriously:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement

    The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT[A]) is an environmental movement that calls for all people to abstain from reproduction in order to cause the gradual voluntary extinction of humankind. VHEMT supports human extinction primarily because it would prevent environmental degradation.

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