Tue May 18, 2021 11:30 PM
Tue May 18, 2021 01:48 PM
If David Banner (Hulk) would have explained to Thanos that his plan to half the population doesn’t account for future geometric population growth, that could have saved more battles ahead, but then there would be no more epic battle movie scenes.
Thanos didn’t understand science, biology, and evolution. Most tyrants don’t. To them, might equals right, and they don’t care how fascinating life and science is.
Many populations would have been right back to the same level in a few decades, depending on the initial population (halved). That’s geometric growth. What does keep populations in check? Available resources (food, prey), and higher order predators (or war).
Humans (and I’m assuming other sentient beings) have another population check: choice. Giving women access to birth control and more rights has been an amazing and peaceful check on population growth.
If Thanos was smart about population control, he would have ensured females were given more rights and choices to have children or not. Putting women in leadership positions would have helped to ensure that as well.
There is another option that Thanos could have taken. It would be unethical, but not nearly as bad as killing half the people that existed already. He could have reduced fertility rates. I don’t think the Avengers would have gone back in time to bring back fertility rates.
Smart decisions aren’t epic movie material though.
Still, population control misses another point. Thanos said he wanted to decrease the population because back on his homeworld there were wars over dwindling resources to spare for large populations. He wanted to save everyone else from the hardships of war and just take all the blame himself. That’s still the wrong way to deal with the problem of resource distribution.
We have market economies to distribute goods and services. That system is often cheated, so we apply laws to regulate the market. What do we do when there isn’t much trade or when countries don’t care about trade with another country and just want their resources? We can create international laws and punishments for breaking those laws.
When resources are scarce, it is often the wealthy and powerful who have the most access to those resources. If a population is desperate, they can upend the social order to take those resources, but then they will end up fighting over it amongst each other. The solution is often to find more resources, usually from some other country. What happens if those resources run out? Hopefully, if it’s doesn’t support a basic need, the society can learn to live without it. If it does support a basic need, then the society needs to get creative and find alternatives. And if that fails?
The leaders may find that the population’s demand has overcome its available supply and its either time to decrease the population through the most ethical means, or it has to venture into new territories to obtain resources. Usually that means taking land from some other country, which is what Thanos was was up against and became the evil that he was originally against. Countries could become seasteaders (life at sea) or venture into space to obtain new resources. Most planets are not habitable and are sterile of life, but their resources can be mined to create giant spaceships that could sustain life.
The most feasible and humane thing to do would be to artificially reduce the fertility rate if people would not voluntarily do that themselves. Guess what? Our pollution is already doing that. Microplastics from our garbage is reducing sperm counts already. Problem solved. 😐
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Tue May 18, 2021 02:23 PM
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Tue May 18, 2021 02:23 PM
A psychiatrist explores how a drug often associated with Burning Man could be a breakthrough in treating PTSD.
Tue May 18, 2021 08:40 PM
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Tue May 18, 2021 11:30 PM
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As another hurricane season bears down on the state, more than 50,000 Florida home insurance customers will soon receive notices that their policies have been canceled or wont be renewed. State insurance regulators recently authorized extraordinary terminations of thousands of policies of Florida-based insurers Universal Insurance of North America, Gulfstream Property & Casualty, and …
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