Sekolov

Overpopulation

Hi.

I restored my paragrpah on Ethiopia, because that country is one of the most often cited examples of overpopulation.

I deleted your paragrah on Uganda because you copied text from another website, which is against wikipedia policy. If you want to write something in your own words, or if you want to cite that same text with quotation marks to show that you didn't write it yourself, you can do that.

However, it would also be a good idea to explain why Uganada's growing population is bad, and how it has made the country worse off than in the past. Most countries that are poor today were even poorer in the past when their populations were smaller, so it's not accurate to blame their current poverty on overpopulation. Instead, poverty is a natural occurrence, and is independent of population size. When countries choose to industrialize and modernize, they become rich. Uganada is poor because it has not industrialized and modernized. Many countries in western Europe are more densely populated than Uganda, but because they have industrilziued and modernized, they aren't poor. Please see List of countries by population density to see how low Uganda's populaiton density actually is.

Also, the projection of Uganda's future population has no proof. Birthrates all over the world are falling. But even if Uganda did become the 12th most populous country, that doesn't doom it to poverty. Japan is more populous, and it's not poor.

A country will be rich or poor, depending on whether or not it has industrialzed and modernized. Population size and density have nothing to do with it. Grundle2600 15:38, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Uganda text was not copied by me from another website. I simply moved the text another editor had produced into the proper position within the article. Sekolov 18:18, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh. OK. Thanks for telling me. I apologize. Grundle2600 03:45, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi again. I agree with you that the earth could not support tens of people per square foot. But that would mean a populaiton in the quadrillions. I was only talking about the tens of billions, which is perfectly possible if those technologies are used. And Julian Simon never said the population would reach into the quadrillions. He understood that population growth was an S-shaped curve, not an exponential one. And he was right. His critics wronlgy assumed that population growth would always be exponential. Surely you know that demographic transition causes the birthrate to fall. Grundle2600 03:56, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Simon assumed "ever increasing" populations in his own words. Any ambiguities in his projections are his fault for lack of clarity.virtually all of the highly competent critics of Simon (Diamond, Bartlett, etc.) conclude that he meant what he said: "ever increasing" in the same manner. I am quite aware of the theory of "demographic transition", but this theory has not been proven to apply to ALL the Lesser developed countries. More importantly many LDCs may have endemic poverty and lack of ability to achieve the competitive threshold; no one has ever proved that Pakistan or Madagasgar will ever be able to be competitive with China in a world economy and thus may have to permanently exist in a state of overpopulated, impoverished misery. Can you prove the DTM is universal. If so please write a book on it. Your cornucopian assumptions are nice, but cannot be proven, Grundle. Are you willing to risk the misery of future biilions of people because you "believe" your unsubstantiated theories? Why dont we work on all these cornucopian infrastructure ideas of yours and if they work out then add the billions of people. The opposite course you recommend seems highly reckless at best, and sinister at worst. Sekolov 15:12, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Simon used the phrase "ever increasing" to designate an S-shaped growth curve, which is not the same thing as an exponential growth curve. So while the earth's population might reach the tens of billions, it would never reach the qualdrillions.

Yes, I can prove that it is possible for every country to have a first world standard of living. Every single time that any poor country has ever adopted strong protection of property rights and held on to them for several decades, the country turned utself into a rich, first world country. Every country in the world started out poor. The reason that countries are rich today is because they adopted policies that encouraged the creation of wealth. 60 years ago, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea were all poor, third world countries with famine. Today they are all rich, first world countries with a first world standard of living. These things have been studied and measured in various Indices of Economic Freedom. Also, if you look at all the countires that have stonrg protection of property rights, not a single one of them has famine. [1]

In the 17th century, people worried about running out of candle wax. It never occurred to them that someday the light bulb would be invented. Technology and development could make every country rich, and the earth could support 30 billion people. Poverty and famine are not caused by overpopulation. Instead, they are caused by underdevelopment.

10 years ago, farmers in Zimbabwe were using modern agricultgure to grow huge amounts of food. Since then, President Robert Mugabe seized the farmland, and kicked the farmers out of the country. Now that land sits idle, because no crops have been planted. So the country has famine. The same thing happened in Ethiopia a few decades earlier. While some people blame Africa famine on overpopulation, the truth is that the famine is caused by bad policies such as those.

There are countries in Africa that are doing much better. Mauritius is the most densely populated country in Africa. But it does not have famine, because it has strong protection of property rights. Botswana also has a good system of government, and is in the process of becoming rich, althnough it's not fully there yet.

Likewise, the densely populated countries of western Europe, and the densly populated Asian tiger countries do not have famine, because they also have strong protection of property rights.

Turning a poor country into a rich country is easy. Just adopt strong protection of property rights, and everything else will take care of itself. The world is full of real world examples of countries that dd this. Just compare South Korea to North Korea to see what a difference it makes.

This List of countries by population density shows that there is no correlation between a country's population density, and how well it is doing. Therefore, reducing the populations of poor countries will not make them better off. Instead, what poor countries need is property rights, modern agricluture, electricity, refrigeration, education, health care, desalination, nuclear power, and economic growth.

Grundle2600 20:09, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Overpopulation is not about "population density". It is about exceeding "carrying capacity". Please study up on this distinction before editing substantially to the Overpopulation article. Regards. Sekolov 13:42, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Deforesation

Hi Sekolov, The text you recently added to deforestation appears to have come from a web site [2] although you have shown it to be sourced elsewhere.KAM 01:11, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I didnt add this text. I merely reverted a deletion, performed editing and provided sources. Please continue this thread on the article talk page to keep the discussion together and please sign your posts. Sekolov 18:15, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Spelling changes on Yusuf Ma Dexin

In a recent edit, you changed one or more words from one international variety of English to another. Because Wikipedia has readers from all over the world, our policy is to respect national varieties of English in Wikipedia articles.

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In view of that, please don't change articles from one version of English to the other, even if you don't normally use the version the article is written in. Respect other people's versions of English. They in turn should respect yours. Other general guidelines on how Wikipedia articles are written can be found in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. If you have any queries about all this, just ask anyone on Wikipedia and they will help you. Thank you. cab 00:54, 29 June 2007 (UTC)