That’s not what the paper says is the problem.

Right.

As the argument of population control is one I think not at all worth having for many of reasons, such as, you just can’t do much about it!

I’ve often argued a similar line. This topic is notorious for bringing out bad-faith posters trying to shape the narrative. Sometimes it seems hardly worth discussing to me as well. Especially among redditors which is what I was used to for many years. But to not be able to discuss it at all is too much for me as a mod, especially when those who would take advantage of us discuss it freely.

And it will become reality easy enough if it becomes mandatory and that’s sad enough.

My concern is that there are still different ways that this can all go down, and that we aren’t charting towards handling the crisis in a wise and humane manner. We’re basically blindly following capitalists into the void. And acting “naively” (following systemic biases) is not moral or ethical in our position. People are already dying of exposure today, in our local communities and around the world. It is the most disadvantaged that suffers most and it will continue to be that way unless something is changed.

But I guess if we find ourselves truly not welcome here anymore than it seems we would just have to move with you guys.

Whatever works best for everyone involved.

Okay then, what do you propose we do if you believe we’ve overshot our carrying capacity?

You mean what to do to improve the average quality of life?

Anti-colonial, anti-hegemonic action. Which I am always happy to discuss. It will just have to occur in a different space.

We need to start distributing resources more effectively, not culling people.

This is exactly what I argue and the removed study supports it as well imo.

Let me ask you this: if you believe the earth has exceeded its carrying capacity, wouldn’t your conclusion be to start getting rid of people or halting their reproduction? That’s textbook eugenics…

No. First you look at where the strains are. You see that people with exceptional privilege in developed countries create extremely disproportionate strain, and that the capitalists support the increased reproduction of that group - even without their consent - to keep their ponzi scheme running. You would then seek to divert resources from the over-privileged group to reduce their disproportionate strain, and a proven way to reduce resource demands among them is to prioritize family planning measures and bodily autonomy in the hegemonic states. This reproductive care and agency is, of course, only one piece of the puzzle that is deconstructing colonialism and emissions inequity.

The removed study gives a nod to this by acknowledging that otherwise viable solutions are not politically viable. The consequences of the politically viable (Business-As-Usual) solutions is at least as much of a humanitarian nightmare. And yet, the limits exist. What does this indicate? That politically nonviable solutions (such as degrowth in developed nations, and/or revolution and a new economic framework) need to be re-examined. That we’re between a rock and a hard place, and that the default trajectory does lead to ecofascist solutions.

Requesting a reduction of resource demands even if it means the lowered reproduction of the most privileged socioeconomic classes is no more eugenics than creating an inhospitable planet and accepting the consequential deaths of the billions of people who are not able to support themselves under such conditions. Plenty of studies demonstrate that humans are able to naturally adapt their reproductive rates based on their environments, and other studies show that this is happening right now in over-developed states where people manage to retain reproductive agency. What is disastrous for us as a collective whole is how capital circumvents our natural tendencies in order to augment industrial productivity and the retention of the control of power structures within a select ethnonationalist ingroup.

A different but related issue at present is that reproductive rates are driven through the roof by capitalists looking to exploit weakly organized labor, which drives unnaturally high birth rates in some developing nations exploited by foreign corporations. However, the reality is that the inflated populations in developing countries are still less destructive than the declining (not including immigration) populations of the developed nations. Which then brings us back again to more agency and more equitable distribution of resources, and the natural balance of reproductive adaptations that follow reversing colonialism.

I would agree. With Capitalist Realism as well. I’ve argued both many times.

@eleitl and I have been members of the wider collapse community for quite awhile - since around 2009 for me. I am a member of multiple communities, each many times larger and more active than this one (although I’m particularly fond of the userbase here).

We’ve seen collapse communities prosper and we’ve seen them falter. The tension between users, mods, and admins is nearly a constant. Despite those tensions, more and more people join these spaces every year because they still find value in them. One of the common discussions that triggers these tensions is the Limits to Growth.

That conversation has been going on since '72 and it’s not about to stop. If this is an issue now then it will continue to be one moving forward. Personally I do think it’s something important to discuss (how could it not be?), I know many other Marxists who agree, and I believe that in most cases the community has successfully held these conversations while self-moderating (including the work of the mod team) against ecofascists and right-wing trolling, brigading, etc. Successful as compared to how other communities handle it, at least. Temporal population limits themselves have never been the primary focus of discussion, and as a moderator I would not allow that focus to develop because such myopia is not productive for understanding our holistic situation.

Many of us come from spaces that can generally handle these challenges to our consensus standard. Our much more frequent complaint (on other sites) is admin censorship over the merits of such things as introducing rent-seekers to guillotines. I don’t mean to say that opinion in these spaces are perfect but in my experience, far-right propaganda gets proliferated on more reactionary forums (such as the front page and climate change subreddits which are largely captured). The collapse channels in recent years, on the other hand, are where those talking points are often dunked on and resoundingly refuted by informed users.

I love the people I’ve interacted with on lemmy and I am interested in supporting an even better space for discussing collapse in the fediverse. I don’t want anyone to have to feel alone as they deal with a firehose of lies around sustainability, as I had to do for many years. My only real interest here is creating a safe space for people with both empathy and collapse-awareness.

Our current hosts are not entirely comfortable with the prospect of us navigating these complexities skillfully. From our brief discussions in the removed thread, it appears that they think we are already failing to do so. And that is their right as admins! It is certainly possible for low-quality collapse-related discussions to turn into genocidal echo chambers - I see them all the time lately in non-collapse-related forums - and while I trust in the community here, the admins are under no obligation to undertake that risk.

As developers, however, they gave us a graceful solution: Federation allows us to move to an instance that will be more comfortable hosting us. That reduces tensions for everyone. It’s a win for all parties involved as far as I can tell.

I appreciate our admins/devs. I am not particularly concerned about our differences of opinions from my side of things, but I also don’t want to give them headaches or create any more hard feelings - I’d rather just get out of their hair.

If anyone feels they got the short end of the deal, I encourage them to reach out and I will do whatever I can to make amends. I know that is not ideal, but it is what I can offer.

Hexbear is not federated with lemm.ee for the time being. The relevant thread: https://hexbear.net/post/1712067

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