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FITZZ wrote: I have to agree with the owners policy.
I have two children myself, and before they reached an age where they knew how to behave themselves in public, the Missus and I simply either got baby sitters when we wanted to go out to eat...or ordered in.
When my children were old enough to behave, they knew what was expected of them and for the most part did so...but many other patrons children didn't.
I know many people might have " What do you mean my child can't eat here" point of view...but given number of times I've seen parents allowing their children to run wild in restaurants ( and in public in general)...all I can say is if you control your kids this wouldn't be an issue.
As for infants...it's a simple fact...they scream and cry...ask any parent..I didn't force my screaming kids on others ( as much as I could avoid it) and honestly don't want to hear yours while I'm trying to enjoy a meal..

EDIT:...Wow, I sound like a real ass hole...not my intentions, I guess my point is...Parents..control your kids.

Best post in this thread.

You dont go out paying money to enjoy a meal or movie etc only to have it completely ruined by some screaming parcel sitting next to you.

Redbeard wrote:
More people is more people. The world cannot support the number of people it has currently, including in this statement their infrastructure needs.

The Malthusian argument has been consistently refuted by history every time its cropped up. Eventually it will correct, as there are intrinsic ecological limits on the number of people the planet can sustain, but it doesn't appear we'll be hitting it any time soon. Notably, the UN recently adjusted its estimate for the global population ceiling from 9 billion to 15 billion because we're expected to hit 7 billion at least 5 years ahead of the previous schedule.

Redbeard wrote:
You say this like it is a bad thing. Maybe what is actually completely wrongheaded is a government program that requires never-ending increases in population in order to be viable.

In general any consistent increase in quality of life requires, at least, a general increase in global population. At least in any economic system predicated on consumption. Its not an issue of government policy, its a natural ramification of scarcity as a mechanism for valuation.

Redbeard wrote:
I say the world cannot afford higher population growth rates, and if the governments need to change to meet this reality, so be it.

Paying people to not have children is, generally, a bad idea considering that any given economic system is going to require more people of relatively low education than people of relatively high education. Not to mention that when you have an abundance of people with strong educational backgrounds who are doing work best performed by the relatively uneducated you end up with Egypt, among other places.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

biccat wrote:
As for water, I hope you understand that water is a renewable resource. Sure there's a fixed amount, but once it's used, it gets recycled.

The problem of water is two-fold.

First is the issue of natural contamination that comes from mass habitation. Because any large concentration of humans will contaminate its readily available sources of drinking water in fairly short order said population must either find an alternative source, or clean up the current one; a the former task becomes increasingly difficult as the population increases, and the former runs into the second issue of energy.

Second, purifying water requires energy, regardless of whether that purification involves the removal of waste products, or desalination. Energy is both expensive, and a scarce resource which is, at this moment, nonrenewable (renewable sources may as well be irrelevant). This not only creates yet another scarcity conundrum, but because no energy production process is particularly clean, one of pollution as well. This doesn't necessarily decrease the net amount of potable water available, but it does increase the cost of potable water, which is essentially the same problem.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Redbeard wrote:
Seriously? You've got to have some sort of source to make a claim like that. You think that the US could feed seven billion people indefinitely? You are aware that parts of the country, parts used for food production, are currently experiencing drought conditions as our water tables are depleting, right? We're doing okay now, but sustainably? Not so much. We're not going to have the water resources to make enough food for ourselves, let alone the entire world. Maybe not tomorrow, but looking forward to 2050. We're not even long-term sustainable today.

Grain production world-wide is enough to provide every person on the planet with a diet of ~3800 calories per day. When you account for everything else that number jumps to ~7000. The problem isn't availability, its cost.

Humans will never run out of food as long as Soylent Green is an option...

And water? If Bear Gryls can drink his own pee, then so can you.

Redbeard wrote:
Seriously? You've got to have some sort of source to make a claim like that. You think that the US could feed seven billion people indefinitely? You are aware that parts of the country, parts used for food production, are currently experiencing drought conditions as our water tables are depleting, right? We're doing okay now, but sustainably? Not so much. We're not going to have the water resources to make enough food for ourselves, let alone the entire world. Maybe not tomorrow, but looking forward to 2050. We're not even long-term sustainable today.

Well, in the US we pay farmers to not grow food.

As for could the US feed the world? That's a stretch but N. America certainly could.
Here's a nice read:
http://www.good.is/post/the-united-states-is-a-food-wasteland/

Necros wrote:And water? If Bear Gryls can drink his own pee, then so can you.

Dang tootin'.

Heck, with stillsuits we could reduce water loss to a thimbleful a day in the deep desert.

Necros wrote:
And water? If Bear Gryls can drink his own pee, then so can you.

You're insane.

I agree with Redbeard, intelligent people today dont get 15 kids...for a good reason!

While I agree we should stop exporting "free" food to those countries (and, in principle, end foreign aid in general), I don't see a problem with food exports in general. Some economies produce goods more efficiently, and if it's more efficient to produce widgets in Africa and food in the US and trade between the two, there's no problem.

Grain production world-wide is enough to provide every person on the planet with a diet of ~3800 calories per day. When you account for everything else that number jumps to ~7000. The problem isn't availability, its cost.

Really? Should we do it just because we can?
Sustaining any country with artificial food is simply idiocy in its purest form. I even claim it to be an act of sheer evil spawned from ignorance and utter lack of any trace of intellect (describing the majority of do-gooder people who vote with their "feelings").

Lets take Ethiopia, a country that had a population of around 35 million back in 1975-ish.
This was coined to be t h e most food needing country on the face of the planet, entire campaigns and popular movements were started to get unthinking people to give money for food, the so famous pictures of children with swollen stomachs and flies in their eyes originate there and how could you not want to pump thousands of tons of food and aid to the country after seeing those pictures.

What would happen if we simply left that place to its deserved darwinism, it would stabilize itself as the stupidity of every family spawning 15 kids each would by nature be culled to sustainable levels for that region.
The help we could have given could have been in the form of teaching them to grow stuff or build better irrigation, you know, teach a man how to fish and give him one fishing pole will make him hungry at first but happy and smart later on.

But no, we poured food into that place and keep doing that since nobody dares to pull the plug out of fear of not being re elected by the feel-good sheep that voted for this madness in the first place. Now (2004) they have a population of over 72 million after having started at 32 million just some 35 years previously with the by then population already being
unattainable.
UN predicts them reaching 115 millions by the year 2015. That is the population growth of 4-5 entire Swedish populations in just 9 years on a planet already overpopulated.

This is what happens when a regions natural population-to-food mechanism is totally screwed by us educated and oh so well meaning do-gooders in west.
Do you think their education, health, living standards, mortality and freaking common sense has kept up with this food aid backed growth madness when we keep encouraging 15 kid families?
At the same time sending UN personell to teach them the importance of not having 20 kids each is like pouring water by the teaspoon on a raging gasoline fire that you pump gas on at the same time.

What happens when/if we pull the food plug you think? Instead of a self correcting famine where a million or two will starve to death we will get a mass death on a 50 million scale with the ensuring wars that will plague the region as a fallout.


I am totally against any form of food aid that goes beyond what is naturally sustainable for any country other then during natural catastrophes etc. Solving stale aging populations by adding even more people to this world is like solving the financial debt crisis by printing more money, eventually there will just be to many of them.

Necros wrote:If Bear Gryls can drink his own pee, then so can you.

Mr Gryls is only one man, think of his bladder, there's only so much to go around.

I don't like noisy children, I aprove of this and would eat there.

ShumaGorath wrote:I don't like noisy children, I aprove of this and would eat there.

This.

If you can't keep the volume of your children under control, then too damn bad. Teach them to be quiet when told, or else you'll be asked to leave. Banning kids completely does seem a -little- harsh, as there are lots of good parents with well-behaved children that understand the concept of 'eat quietly and act mature', but the result - not the means - is what really matters in the end here.

Really?
Sustaining any country with artificial food is simply idiocy in its purest form. I even claim it to be an act of sheer evil spawned from ignorance and utter lack of any trace of intellect (describing the majority of do-gooder people who vote with their "feelings").

What the hell is artificial food? Japan imports the vast majority of it's food, is that insanity?

Lets take Ethiopia, a country that had a population of around 35 million back in 1975-ish.
This was coined to be t h e most food needing country on the face of the planet, entire campaigns and popular movements were started to get unthinking people to give money for food, the so famous pictures of children with swollen stomachs and flies in their eyes originate there and how could you not want to pump thousands of tons of food and aid to the country after seeing those pictures.

What would happen if we simply left that place to its deserved darwinism, it would stabilize itself as the stupidity of every family spawning 15 kids each would by nature be culled to sustainable levels for that region.

So you advocate aiding the starving by letting them die, thus fixing the problem because they aren't starving any more. You're a fething genius.

The help we could have given could have been in the form of teaching them to grow stuff or build better irrigation, you know, teach a man how to fish and give him one fishing pole will make him hungry at first but happy and smart later on.

So you would instead enforce farm education on a starving and dying population without equipment that is roughly 50% illiterate. Say, would they have time to till the fields while you educate them? How would your educators deal with the reoccurring civil and foreign wars? The repeated droughts? WOULD YOU JUST TEACH THEM IRRIGATION AGAIN AFTER THEY ALL STARVED TO DEATH AS PER YOUR FIRST PLAN? SEEMS A LITTLE REDUNDANT. WHY NOT JUST BOMB THEM IF WE'RE GONNA SPEND THE MONEY..

But no, we poured food into that place and keep doing that since nobody dares to pull the plug out of fear of not being re elected by the feel-good sheep that voted for this madness in the first place.

Who the hell are you talking about?

Now (2004) they have a population of over 72 million after having started at 32 million just some 35 years previously with the by then population already being
unattainable.

Yes, they have a high population growth rate. Thats what happens in under educated agrarian populations. More kids counteracts infant death and children work the fields.

UN predicts them reaching 115 millions by the year 2015. That is the population growth of 4-5 entire Swedish populations in just 9 years on a planet already overpopulated.

Interesting fact, ethiopian birth rates have fallen steadily since 1975.

This is what happens when a regions natural population-to-food mechanism is totally screwed by us educated and oh so well meaning do-gooders in west.

Did you just argue that agrarian food growth is natural? Really? Is that a thing you just tried to do?

Do you think their education, health, living standards, mortality and freaking common sense has kept up with this food aid backed growth madness when we keep encouraging 15 kid families?

Actually the number is 5 and birth rates have nothing to do with the declining health of ethiopian farming and according to historic trends would logically aid it were it functional.

At the same time sending UN personell to teach them the importance of not having 20 kids each is like pouring water by the teaspoon on a raging gasoline fire that you pump gas on at the same time.

Well thats nice. So we're back to your solution of "just let them die". How civilized.

What happens when/if we pull the food plug you think? Instead of a self correcting famine where a million or two will starve to death we will get a mass death on a 50 million scale with the ensuring wars that will plague the region as a fallout.

Logically there would be a mass exodus from ethiopia as historically occurs during famines. Fifty million people wouldn't just drop down and have gold coins come out of their corpses.

I am totally against any form of food aid that goes beyond what is naturally sustainable for any country other then during natural catastrophes etc.

Yes, and you're only stated reason is because "It prevents people from dying". Thats not a very good argument when the stated intention of the food aid is to prevent people from dying.

Solving stale aging populations by adding even more people to this world is like solving the financial debt crisis by printing more money, eventually there will just be to many of them.

Solving stale, aging populations by lowering population growth leads to economic failure and generation gaps. You have to have new people to replace the old ones and either way it has nothing the hell to do with ethiopia in either case.


THIS IS THE WORST POST I'VE SEEN IN MONTHS

I used to eat artificial food at mcdonalds all the time.

Necros wrote:I used to eat artificial food at mcdonalds all the time.

Wow. I can't believe how well that -actually- fit. I mean, usually there's some degree of chafing between the post and the lol/img, but in this case it fit like a glove.

Pyriel- wrote:I agree with Redbeard, intelligent people today dont get 15 kids...for a good reason!

While I agree we should stop exporting "free" food to those countries (and, in principle, end foreign aid in general), I don't see a problem with food exports in general. Some economies produce goods more efficiently, and if it's more efficient to produce widgets in Africa and food in the US and trade between the two, there's no problem.

Grain production world-wide is enough to provide every person on the planet with a diet of ~3800 calories per day. When you account for everything else that number jumps to ~7000. The problem isn't availability, its cost.

Really? Should we do it just because we can?
Sustaining any country with artificial food is simply idiocy in its purest form. I even claim it to be an act of sheer evil spawned from ignorance and utter lack of any trace of intellect (describing the majority of do-gooder people who vote with their "feelings").

Lets take Ethiopia, a country that had a population of around 35 million back in 1975-ish.
This was coined to be t h e most food needing country on the face of the planet, entire campaigns and popular movements were started to get unthinking people to give money for food, the so famous pictures of children with swollen stomachs and flies in their eyes originate there and how could you not want to pump thousands of tons of food and aid to the country after seeing those pictures.

What would happen if we simply left that place to its deserved darwinism, it would stabilize itself as the stupidity of every family spawning 15 kids each would by nature be culled to sustainable levels for that region.
The help we could have given could have been in the form of teaching them to grow stuff or build better irrigation, you know, teach a man how to fish and give him one fishing pole will make him hungry at first but happy and smart later on.

But no, we poured food into that place and keep doing that since nobody dares to pull the plug out of fear of not being re elected by the feel-good sheep that voted for this madness in the first place. Now (2004) they have a population of over 72 million after having started at 32 million just some 35 years previously with the by then population already being
unattainable.
UN predicts them reaching 115 millions by the year 2015. That is the population growth of 4-5 entire Swedish populations in just 9 years on a planet already overpopulated.

This is what happens when a regions natural population-to-food mechanism is totally screwed by us educated and oh so well meaning do-gooders in west.
Do you think their education, health, living standards, mortality and freaking common sense has kept up with this food aid backed growth madness when we keep encouraging 15 kid families?
At the same time sending UN personell to teach them the importance of not having 20 kids each is like pouring water by the teaspoon on a raging gasoline fire that you pump gas on at the same time.

What happens when/if we pull the food plug you think? Instead of a self correcting famine where a million or two will starve to death we will get a mass death on a 50 million scale with the ensuring wars that will plague the region as a fallout.


I am totally against any form of food aid that goes beyond what is naturally sustainable for any country other then during natural catastrophes etc. Solving stale aging populations by adding even more people to this world is like solving the financial debt crisis by printing more money, eventually there will just be to many of them.

I have a modest proposal for all these hungry people.

Let's hear it, SWIFTly.

Kilkrazy wrote:Let's hear it, SWIFTly.

+1000 internets for you.

Pyriel- wrote:
Really? Should we do it just because we can?
Sustaining any country with artificial food is simply idiocy in its purest form. I even claim it to be an act of sheer evil spawned from ignorance and utter lack of any trace of intellect (describing the majority of do-gooder people who vote with their "feelings").

What?

There's nothing artificial about food produced outside nation X being consumed inside nation X.

Pyriel- wrote:
What would happen if we simply left that place to its deserved darwinism, it would stabilize itself as the stupidity of every family spawning 15 kids each would by nature be culled to sustainable levels for that region.

Perhaps you should look into the actual causes of the Ethiopian famines before you start recommending alternative courses of action. In any case, to get you started, I'll tell you that it had nothing to do with the inability of the country to produce food.

Pyriel- wrote:
The help we could have given could have been in the form of teaching them to grow stuff or build better irrigation, you know, teach a man how to fish and give him one fishing pole will make him hungry at first but happy and smart later on.

Since 2001 the arable land in Ethiopia has increased by nearly 40%.

Pyriel- wrote:
UN predicts them reaching 115 millions by the year 2015. That is the population growth of 4-5 entire Swedish populations in just 9 years on a planet already overpopulated.

Thomas Malthus was wrong 180 years ago, and he's still wrong today.

Pyriel- wrote:
Do you think their education, health, living standards, mortality and freaking common sense has kept up with this food aid backed growth madness when we keep encouraging 15 kid families?

My God, you really have no idea what you're talking about. Birth rate always, always increases in excess of rates of education, standard of living, and morality in any undeveloped economy. That's how it worked in the West up until about 150 years ago.

dogma wrote:
Thomas Malthus was wrong 180 years ago, and he's still wrong today.

I'm not sure I agree with you. Malthus stated a concept. He didn't say it would happen in 10, or even 50 years. That principle still holds true. Populations do grow faster than food supplies, and food supplies can be stretched. I think that the depletion of the water tables through over-use to produce food in the short term may well lend itself to that. I posted a link to this data earlier in the thread. I think there was one response, saying 'water is renewable'. Clearly, whoever wrote that didn't read the link, because that's the whole point. We're using water faster than it is being renewed through natural cycles, and have been for years. That's why the ground water is receding, and droughts are becoming more prevalent. And that will impact food production.

When talking about sustainability, there are still other things to consider. More people means more land to house people, and more land used to feed people. As we expand, any species that has not developed a symbiotic relationship with us (rats, dogs, cows, for example, in three different ways) gets pushed further out. The first species to become threatened are the predators, whose territory must necessarily be larger than that of the prey, and the megafauna, who need more size and sustenance based on their size. Humans won't be the first species to suffer from human overpopulation (or perhaps the correct tense here is weren't), and evidence of the impact of human population growth on the other species that we share the planet with is quite easy to find.

If you're so self-centered that you believe another million humans is worth the existence of the other species on this planet, then sure, we're haven't reached a population cap - Yet. But realistically, I think we're well over-populated already. Our species current state (including our growth rate) is not sustainable, because we do end up consuming more and more land year after year. And we do end up driving other species to extinction, to satisfy our seeming unquenchable need to keep going.

I'd support this guy, just as I support the local cinema that has a 21+ theater room. Nothing better than having a meal or watching a movie and never having an unruly child spoil my time.

I will say one thing though, if there are a lot of droughts in the near future then hopefully the flooding caused by global warming will take care of it.

I'd also support throwing out obnoxious adults.

Redbeard wrote:
Populations do grow faster than food supplies, and food supplies can be stretched.

But they don't, that's why Malthus was wrong.

He was right in the sense that there is a point at which consumption will exceed production, but that point isn't necessarily now or in the near future.

Redbeard wrote:
I think that the depletion of the water tables through over-use to produce food in the short term may well lend itself to that. I posted a link to this data earlier in the thread. I think there was one response, saying 'water is renewable'. Clearly, whoever wrote that didn't read the link, because that's the whole point. We're using water faster than it is being renewed through natural cycles, and have been for years. That's why the ground water is receding, and droughts are becoming more prevalent. And that will impact food production.

Well, we're using cheap water faster than it can be replenished. There are ways to use otherwise non-potable water which do not impact the water table (brackish water in particular is relatively easy to desalinate), they're just more expensive. Which is why I mentioned to said person that the real issue is not availability, but cost; and, by extension, energy production.

Its also worth noting that issues with water tables tend to be in places like Nevada and Southern California which only became habitable due to the diversion of potable water from other sources.

Redbeard wrote:
When talking about sustainability, there are still other things to consider. More people means more land to house people, and more land used to feed people. As we expand, any species that has not developed a symbiotic relationship with us (rats, dogs, cows, for example, in three different ways) gets pushed further out. The first species to become threatened are the predators, whose territory must necessarily be larger than that of the prey, and the megafauna, who need more size and sustenance based on their size. Humans won't be the first species to suffer from human overpopulation (or perhaps the correct tense here is weren't), and evidence of the impact of human population growth on the other species that we share the planet with is quite easy to find.

I think you've got two different arguments going on there. The first relates to sustainability of homo sapiens sapiens, and the second relates to the sustainability of species other than homo sapiens sapiens. I'm not convinced that they're clearly interlinked any more than the survival of wolves is necessarily connected to the survival of one of its prey species; particularly given the human potential for adaptation.

Redbeard wrote:
If you're so self-centered that you believe another million humans is worth the existence of the other species on this planet, then sure, we're haven't reached a population cap - Yet.

To be perfectly frank, I don't particularly care about the vast majority of humans that die every day, let alone the non-human animals that do.

Keep in mind, I say this as a guy that used to earn his keep by soliciting people on the behalf of Greenpeace.

Redbeard wrote:
But realistically, I think we're well over-populated already. Our species current state (including our growth rate) is not sustainable, because we do end up consuming more and more land year after year. And we do end up driving other species to extinction, to satisfy our seeming unquenchable need to keep going.

I don't know what you mean by "not sustainable" because, to my mind, nothing is sustainable in a permanent sense. Can you clarify?

Monster Rain wrote:I'd also support throwing out obnoxious adults teenagers.

I can support this. I would love to be able to go to a movie where I don't have to put up with some damn teenagers talking through the whole thing.

I honestly never thought I would want kids. For years and years I've laughed at the idea. Somehow, Redbeard's arguments have made me want to spawn a couple of little bastards (cause I still refuse to get married), just to stick it to 'Mother' Earth. If you think there are too many people, move to Wyoming or Montana.

Monster Rain wrote:I'd also support throwing out obnoxious adults.

If you look like a cast member from 'The Jersey Shore'
You ain't coming through the door!


Oh and Dogma, referring back to your post on the second page, It's events such as this that make me want to not live on this planet anymore!

How did we get to ths topic! I was inly gone for 1 day and look whats happened in my absence.

On Pyriel-'s comment, I often wondered when i was younger why people kept having children if it ment that they had to share their food around, causing them all to be hungery, then I took economics as a subject. We need poor people to make our stuff, but africa seems to be one giant hole, what does anyone get out of it. nothing.

Do you know how hard it is to talk about this without being racist?

Andrew1975 wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Let's hear it, SWIFTly.

+1000 internets for you.

WE need a rimshot...STAT!

Frazzled wrote:

Andrew1975 wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Let's hear it, SWIFTly.

+1000 internets for you.

WE need a rimshot...STAT!

http://instantrimshot.com/classic/?sound=rimshot

Ledabot wrote:Do you know how hard it is to talk about this without being racist?

Really not very difficult at all, unless you ascribe the cause of Africa's current problems to the majority of residents being black. You can criticise the governments, comment on the state of the economy, point out the viability of Western style government, farming, and social control techniques, or the counter, but not once do you have to say 'because they're black.' Sorted, racism free observations on the subject.

htj wrote:

Ledabot wrote:Do you know how hard it is to talk about this without being racist?

Really not very difficult at all, unless you ascribe the cause of Africa's current problems to the majority of residents being black. You can criticise the governments, comment on the state of the economy, point out the viability of Western style government, farming, and social control techniques, or the counter, but not once do you have to say 'because they're black.' Sorted, racism free observations on the subject.

The sad fact of the matter is that 80% of the time, any mention of something negative + any african nation in the same sentence will immediately cause the other person to play the racist card, you don't even need to mention skin colour etc, it's immediately assumed that because you are having a negative conversation about africa you must therefore be racist...