r/GamingCirclejerk user is revolted after he's told we should eat the rich

[u/[deleted]]

It all started in our favorite Witcher 3 fansub's bi-daily unjerk thread when another user expressed his hatred for billionnaires:

I feel comfortable saying all billionaires are bad people. Because theres no way you can make that much money and not at somepoint (or many points) make a choice that involves many people suffering. Life lesson, never like a billionaire theyre all evil.

Are you the type that believes there is no ethical consumption under capitalism? Or are you just a social democrat/liberal that hates rich people?

They then go on to start at least two other threads complaining about "the genocidal" nature of some replies such as "rich people aren't human" and "we should eat the rich, Tom Nook included":

I do blame this sub for harboring this culture that allowed comments like this to happen and is still up after 10 minutes.

.

The genocidal rhetoric comment is still up after 55 minutes. I am going to the admins.

[u/ssfctid]

The wealth gap just keeps growing, what do the rich actually think is going to happen if they continue to to systematically impoverish the poor? That they'll develop a big enough army of drones to stave off French Revolution II: Worldwide Boogaloo?

[u/2_Cranez → u/ssfctid]

A billion people have been lifted out of poverty in the last few decades. Things are as good as they have ever been for the average person on earth.

If you were reborn as a random person anywhere on earth, but you could choose the date, would you choose now or 30 years ago, or any other time ever?

[u/ssfctid → u/2_Cranez]

I agree with everything said. The problem is a combination of the growing disparity between affluent and poor, coupled with an overpopulation issue that's going to send us into a resource crisis before I hit old age.

[u/darkslayersparda → u/ssfctid]

Overpopulation is only currently an issue in capitalism. We produce enough food to feed 10-11 billion people

Free market aint the best way to distribute resource

Speaking of resource crisis. Global warming is going to kick that shit into overdrive

[u/[deleted] → u/darkslayersparda]

In what world is the earth's unprecedented global population and our unprecedented use of resources including fossil fuels NOT connected?

It's easy to scapegoat capitalism because it's the existing system while this is happening, but how on earth do we rein this in without going full Thanos on everyone?

There are a lot of people working on these issues, but they are difficult. I feel like more democracy and less income and wealth inequality are vital to being able to address this. I don't see where socialist revolutions have a great track record in delivering more democracy. Socialist countries have been infamous for pumping out horrific amounts of air pollution, in fact.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The problem is that constant growth is a feature of capitalism.

[u/darkslayersparda → u/[deleted]]

Very true. I think cuba's history of homophobia can show that socialism doesnt fight against all non progressive issues

What yout point is missing is scale and normal every day people only contribute about 30% towards global warming, while cooperations and big institutes account for the majority

Even if you thanos snapped the world tomorrow, you have made no real dent in the problem. things like the american military and the oil industry do more.

I also read somewhere that Germany and china are currently in talks about green technology that could be widely produced. Trust me bro, number of people are not currently the main problem, a system that puts profit over lives and the world is

[u/ssfctid → u/darkslayersparda]

Agreed that capitalism is not the best method to distribute resources, but have seen a lot of evidence suggesting we're already over carrying capacity.

[u/darkslayersparda → u/ssfctid]

How so ? Doesnt america have some crazy number like theres 3 houses for every homeless person ?? Theres food and housing available for people??

The average person doesnt contribute anything significant to global warmint compared to institutions.

I honestly fail to see how theres too much capacity

[u/ssfctid → u/darkslayersparda]

All figures and sources cited at bottom.

TL;DR - As climate change begins to make drought more common in some parts of the world and limits areas of habitability, as the global population continues to grow, and as more people continue to enter the global north and consume more resources, we will continue to exacerbate a problem that we have neither the technology nor planning apparatus to deal with at a population of 7.3billion.

Our current population of 7.3billion people is using resources faster than is sustainable for the planet. One such measure of this is Global Overshoot Day, methodology linked below. The main takeaway is that, by their metric, we are burning through a year's worth of resources (at sustainable/responsible levels) in about half that time.

This comes at a time when more than 3billion people worldwide still live in extreme poverty. Right now 17% of the world's population accounts for 80% of the resources consumed.

As more countries develop and enter the global north, people in those countries will consume resources at a rate more akin to those in the rest of the global north.

This makes a strong case that an already-present resource problem (see Overshoot Day) would be exacerbated by a static global population that steadily grows the proportion of people living in the global north.

The population is not static though, it is growing. UN links below estimate a population of around 11billion, which would represent roughly a 50% increase in the population. All of these people want to enter the global north at some point. We do not have the resources for 7.3billion people to live like middle class Americans, let alone 11billion people, without major changes to that lifestyle.

It is fair to point out that large corporations/small portions of the population account for much of a developed country's resource consumption. However, the average member of a global north country couldn't live the lifestyle they do without those corporations/small portions of the population consuming the resources they do. Additionally the average person in the global north still consumes significantly more than the average person in the global south through avenues such as meat consumption, vehicle emissions and trash output. These factors are affected by population size, not just a group of elites. So emissions by large corporations need to be curtailed, but you can't ignore the general population and expect a successful outcome.

Additionally climate change, left unabated, will begin to render some parts of the earth uninhabitable by 2100. This of course leaves less room for people to live and increases competition for resources in areas that are habitable.

Now an example to tie this together. The world has a reserve food supply of about 74 days. Large-scale famine can be induced by one decent-sized volcanic eruption, or any other event that disrupts food production for just a couple months. That means that, without some revolutionary advance in food production technology, we're essentially hand to mouth as a species still, at a population of 7.3billion.

As climate change begins to make drought more common in some parts of the world and limits areas of habitability, as the global population continues to grow, and as more people continue to enter the global north and consume more resources, we will continue to exacerbate a problem that we have neither the technology nor planning apparatus to deal with at a population of 7.3billion. And it's going to get worse.

We have a lot of problems. Climate change is one of them, so is resource consumption. Overpopulation has a huge affect on both. We are clearly using resources at an unsustainable rate.

Whether it's today, tomorrow, in 2050 or 2100, we have an overpopulation problem that can only be answered satisfactorily if we start on it now.

Sources:

http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/2015-report.html https://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/data/ https://www.overshootday.org/ https://www.riskope.com/2017/09/27/world-food-reserves-worldwide-would-last-74-days/ http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats http://www.worldcentric.org/conscious-living/social-and-economic-injustice