News & Analysis
Overpopulation Alarmism Gives Rise to Corporate 'Sustainable Cities'
U.N.: World can 'thrive' as population reaches 7 billion ... As the global population hits 7 billion in the coming days, nations can take steps to tackle critical challenges and prepare for the arrival of billions more people this century, the United Nations said Wednesday. The milestone is expected to be reached on October 31. "With planning and the right investments in people now ... our world of 7 billion can have thriving, sustainable cities, productive labor forces that can fuel economic growth, youth populations that contribute to the well-being of economies and societies, and a generation of older people who are healthy and actively engaged in the social and economic affairs of their communities," UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, said in a new report. Among the steps the report focuses on are empowering young people with economic opportunities; planning for the growth of cities; developing programs to share and sustain the Earth's resources; and improving education, including sexual education. – CNN
Dominant Social Theme: There are too many people and the UN will have to help us with population control. We will build cities that are sustainable and you can live in them if you are a worthwhile person and work for a multinational corporation. Good luck!
Free-Market Analysis: This is one of the hoariest of all dominant social themes of the power elite: Overpopulation. It is also one of the most predictably effective. When people – especially in the West – contemplate the world's total, growing population, they tend to get nervous, upset even.
There are many potential solutions to the elite meme of "overpopulation." Certainly "culling the herd" via war, plagues, etc. is a popular theme on the 'Net. But there are other ways to take advantage of this theme and to further implement societal control. In this article we want to discuss the growing phenomenon of "sustainable cities."
We have written about these cities in the past. Not only are they politically correct (carbon neutral and "powered" by solar energy), they are intended in our view to house an emergent corporatist elite. In the future, the world's largest multinationals may well construct cities for valued workers much as industries used to do during the initial Industrial Revolution. Vestiges of these company towns with their two- and three-family houses can still be seen in Britain and America.
The modern idea has evolved, of course. One of the goals of the new corporate (company) town is perhaps to entrap the "best and brightest" by providing municipalities that offer every kind of resource, amusement and modern amenity. Of course, woe to those who find themselves on the "outs" with the corporate structure. They may find themselves in a position not only of losing their jobs, but also their housing, friends, colleagues and anything else of value. Leaving such places, especially involuntarily, will be seen as a form of banishment. Here's an excerpt on article entitled India: Building Private Cities from the International Real Estate Digest:
A light in the tunnel ... A new approach, tailored to match the Indian needs and Indian realities, may be to give enough power to private interests in solving the entire problem, instead of dividing the tasks with a largely ineffective public sector. A recent deal of almost $30 billion that will allow foreign private interests from Dubai to build two whole cities with their entire infrastructures is only the first tentative step in what some day may be called the 'Indian way of urbanization' ... They all, in one way or in another, target booming residential, retail and office market.
Yes, it all seems quite innocent and peaceful until one dissects the language and does a bit of research into what, say, a "sustainable" city entails. These cities will doubtless become tremendous control grids for those with the kind of (mathematical) talents valued by the top elites. They are not just going up in India. Abu Dhabi is constructing something called Masdar City. Information on the city's ongoing construction can be found at Wikipedia and a press release issued back in 2008 explains what's taking place, as follows:
"Masdar City" to be flagship of WWF One Planet Living Programme ... "WWF and Abu Dhabi's Masdar initiative unveil plan for world's first carbon-neutral, waste-free, car-free city" ... The WWF and Masdar, The Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, today launched a "Sustainability Action Plan" to deliver the world's greenest city – Masdar City.
Masdar City will be the world's first zero-carbon, zero-waste, car-free city, aiming to exceed the 10 sustainability principles of "One Planet Living™"– a global initiative launched by the WWF (known internationally as the Worldwide Fund for Nature and in the U.S. as the World Wildlife Fund) and environmental consultancy BioRegional.
Housed in six-square kilometres, Masdar City's electricity will be generated by photovoltaic panels, while cooling will be provided via concentrated solar power. Water will be provided through a solar-powered desalination plant. Landscaping within the city and crops grown outside the city will be irrigated with grey water and treated waste water produced by the city's water treatment plant.
The city is part of the Masdar Initiative, Abu Dhabi's multi-faceted investment in the exploration, development and commercialisation of future energy sources and clean technology solutions. The city, growing eventually to 1,500 businesses and 50,000 residents, will be home to international business and top minds in the field of sustainable and alternative energy.
Expanding populations are being used by the Anglosphere power elite as a way to further control the future of living arrangements. We are well aware that the powers-that-be use standardized testing to identify the best and brightest of the masses they "shepherd." The top scorers are funneled into top universities and then into further special programs such as Rhodes and Fullbright scholarships. There is no doubt that municipal plans around the world increasingly call for various kinds of urban exclusivity, no matter whether the cities are government run on behalf of industry, or are built by industry itself in "cooperation" with the local government.
Conclusion: The problem of overpopulation can be "solved" any one of a number of ways. But this dominant social theme can also be used by the powers-that-be as a methodology of increased command-and-control. The poorest among us shall be culled, while the most talented shall be harvested and nurtured within highly controlled environments. The UN's language sounds mild and reasonable; its implementation shall be far less so.
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Posted by taxesbyanyothername on 10/29/11 03:56 AM
We would have much more money to raise children if not for government exactions. They would have plenty to do as well. Lack of money does not limit children unless it is so bad that it becomes a sever lack of food. Perception/attitude limits children. No well to do country has even a replacement birthrate. All of the poor ones do.
Where women have no rights, such as Muslim countries, their populations are exploding. If we in the West don't start having more children we will be swamped by everyone else's. The U. N. predicts a 2100 Pakistani population of 750 million and even more in Nigeria. This does not alarm me but combined with the fact that the only reason our population is not expected to decline is immigration, it looks pretty bad.
Many countries will probably not even approach U. N. projections because they will become more affluent. That has consistently lowered birthrates where ever women have been given the vote. Unfortunately many countries probably will not become much more affluent since socialism, along with its attendant corruption, seems to have taken over the world. This may limit economic growth, and thus increase population growth in much of Africa and South Asia. The only goal socialism ever achieved was reducing population but in poor countries the only way they did it was by killing. Your example cases for people needing to have many children don't hold up. Infant mortality is down almost everywhere.
Most "agrarian" societies now are are either growing more affluent and thus in the process of consolidating farms into units large enough to be profitably worked by machinery, or they have many farms so small one person can do all the work needed on a part time basis and can not feed a large family on such a small plot. That was the main reason for the genocide in Ruwanda and the situation is similar in several countries. You wouldn't think that India would have much immigration but Bangladeshis move there continuously, many just for the chance of a small plot of ground. Very small. Total fertility rate 2.6 children/woman. Lower than in most poor countries simply because most of these women are malnourished. Money? You've got to be kidding.
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Posted by Danny B on 10/28/11 10:43 AM
Ahhh, Bischoff, I knew that we would disagree on that one. There are other factors to the equation. There are at least 2 cases where people have children out of necessity. Agrarian families have lots of kids for help on the farm. Some societies have kids so that the elders will be taken care of in their old age. Some societies have lots of kids to get a few survivors after infant-mortality takes it's toll.
The Japanese don't have kids because it's too much bother.
The Australians don't have kids because they're out surfing all day. The GOV of OZ pays you a baby-bonus of $ 5,000 to have kids. That would indicate that monetary considerations limit the birth rate. Germany, Russia and France pay you to have kids.
Reportedly, the Russians are all to drunk to have kids.
Everywhere I look, I see families limiting offspring because of financial considerations. The Latinos here in L.A. have lots of kids because they are very family oriented and because GOV pays for the kids.
A lot of people don't have kids because the state of the world. What are the kids going to do?
Click to view link
So while either of us may be right or wrong, it isn't a simple question with a simple answer.
Reply from The Daily Bell
We have disagreed with Bischoff, too, on this issue. But we disagree with him on MANY issues ...
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Posted by Bischoff on 10/28/11 01:01 AM
"As the West was increasingly impoverished, we reduced our birth rate. Japan is the best example... even though they aren't truly Western. We felt poor and cut back our birth rate."
It is exactly the other way around. The West and Japan grew rich and the birth rate went down. That's the way nature works.
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Posted by Danny B on 10/27/11 11:50 PM
Biology makes a convincing case that all species grow to the limits of their resources.
As the West was increasingly impoverished, we reduced our birth rate. Japan is the best example... even though they aren't truly Western. We felt poor and cut back our birth rate. America needed population growth to satisfy Keynesian growth demands. It also needed pop growth to evade the kind of age-demographics that Japan is facing. So, the southern borders were thrown open.
Westerners are more likely to respond to perceived resource limitations that the rest of the world. Much of the R.O.W. does not cut back their fertility until starvation hits them severely. Birth rates are highest in many areas that have the lowest level of agriculture mechanization.
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Malthus was essentially correct... . for some areas. The world is currently substituting carbon energy to get food energy. There seems to be a definite effort to suppress new sources of energy. Here is a comprehensive documentary on cold fusion;
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The unknown nuclear reaction that accompanies cold fusion is also present in the GEET.
Click to view link
If the PTB want to do serious population reductions a la Georgia Guidestones, they can NOT afford ZPE energy or cold fusion to get out of the bottle.
Keep in mind that the British East India company maintained the population of India at 220 million for just over a century. A modern day culling of the herd is NOT far-fetched.
Free energy would allow free desalinization and radical de-centralization. This, along with radical changes on the understanding of seed germination would allow even greater food production.
Click to view link
The number one killer in the world is diarrhea. Free energy would end much of that. 35,000 children under the age of 5 die every day from water-borne illness.
So much of the bad effects from population growth is due to pollution, not direct consumption. ZPE would once again push back our Malthusian date. Hopefully, birth rates in developing countries could be lowered by then.
Sustainable cities sounds like a wonderful idea. Sci-fi already has examples.
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I doubt that a city can be built that doesn't create a lot of waste that needs to be dumped somewhere else.
If the corporatist attitude were give free rein to decide who lives and who dies, it would favor it's own. The resulting population would be fit for the cast of another movie.
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Posted by Abu Aardvark on 10/27/11 07:45 PM
New York Times Magazine: "How Ready Are We for Bioterrorism?"
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Posted by Summer on 10/27/11 07:45 PM
I just watched on BBC2 - a high-brow political programme, a report on over-population, and wait for it... how the middle classes should start to eat delicious bugs instead of meat and fish - they even had a demo!
(Well, yesterday they did have Soros, described as a savvy investor giving *advise*: the Euro must survive and by implication that it's investable!)
If only people knew how they're been done over!!!
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Posted by Bischoff on 10/27/11 03:37 PM
Who needs the elites to regulate population growth... ??? What qualifies them to do so... ??? It isn't quite apparent when the elite manages the money and access to land, but when they start to call for the "raising" human beings as if they were a bunch of cattle, that's when the God complex really shows.
Nature takes care of the human reproductive rate based on the physical security and survival prospects humans perceive.
Where equal opportunity to access natural resources and free market competition exists, population growth is stable. Where populations are pampered through socialistic wealth distribution, the population declines. Where there is restricted opportunity to access natural resources and where there is a limited system to distribute wealth, population increases. The less the opportunities, and the limited the system of wealth distribution, the higher the birth rate.
If the elite wants to help solve the birth rate problem, I say, STOP MEDDLING and get out of the way. Give people equal opportunity to access natural resources and a free market distribution system, and nature will take care of the birth rate and overpopulation will not be a "growing" problem.
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Posted by TerryWriterFromPortCredit on 10/27/11 02:28 PM
Reminds one of the Richard Florida book "Whose Your City?"
So what's next? Glass domes seen from Space?
The 99%'ers locked out and living in a "Road Warrior World?" banging on the glass?
People shoulder to shoulder in ghetto-cities sleeping in stairwells huddled for warmth?
Here's an image for you - people shoulder to shoulder huddled in stairwells for warmth - while down the over-crowded street (Edward G. Robinson charcter) lies on a slab watching a movie/dream of what life "should" have been for him (as the minions of the power-that-be euthanize him [his choice]so he can become "Soylent Green" - human flesh processed into a food biscuit]).
Sure puts a different bent on cannabilsm.
T.
P.S. If the taste of a strawberry makes you weep for times past (as it did EGR's character - the trigger that decided him to choose euthanasia instead of waiting out for a natural death) - then you are almost there.
T.
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Posted by Jason on 10/27/11 01:37 PM
Might it be a good thing if the elites sequester themselves in these cities? That way there would be a chance that the rest of society could be left alone. I don't see why they would do that, however, as it would be harder for them to leech off of everyone else's productivity. I have also never understood the "problem" of overpopulation. If the population really is too large, it will crash without any outside help.
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Posted by Hoss on 10/27/11 01:24 PM
Cities naturally spring up for economic and practical reasons, and they decay for the same reasons. Centrally planned cities, especially those where their location, power sources and transportation are dictated in advance, will simply fail. If it's private money being burned this way, more power to them.
Reply from The Daily Bell
No, it's not JUST private money. Inevitably these are private-public partnerships ...
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Posted by TimurTheLame on 10/27/11 08:58 AM
As technology advances it may indeed come down to the most talented being culled and the poorest being harvested and nurtured.
I recall reading that the world's population in 1950 was two billion. Though admittedly there are wide open spaces on the planet which could physically accommodate an exponentially increasing population, it does not necessarily follow that sustenance would follow. I also read that the harnessing of nitrogen for fertilizer is the only reason that the numbers are as great as they are, the conventional ceiling being four billion. Food provided the brakes.
I agree that the overpopulation scare is a useful control tool for the PTB but I was unable to glean DB's thought on whether the increasing numbers are good or bad. Methinks altogether it is a form of man-made disaster in the making.
Cheers-
PS: Check the word "Traveo"
Reply from The Daily Bell
Timor the Lame, we never wrote that under the scenario described above the poor would be "nurtured." We wrote they would be "harvested." Perhaps that explains your confusion.
