50% of the worlds wealth owned by 2%

This thread is the reason I do not get involved with politically charged threads in GD, and do not even look at SC, (unless I feel like laughing at the racism.) I feel a structured argument easily falls inot personal attacks, I don't blame GD for that, I suppose that is the **** rolls on the internet. I'm yet to a have a debate on the internet that doesn't resort to personal attacks. Yet talk about this kind of think with people in the pub, everyone seems to be very polite...

Mostly.

So you don't want to get involved with debating it as people end up resorting to personal attacks, but are happy to come in here and call everyone who is debating this topic rude. Brilliant. :p
 
Well for starters food takes a lot of energy to produce and vast amounts of land, both of which are currently finite.

We may have a system based on water on this planet, but most of that water is saline and therefore undrinkable and impractical (saline dehydrates you or can lead so salinisation of land if used for industrial use). That leaves only a finite number of fresh water bodies on the planet which in turn are divided geographically so are not really endless by any stretch of the imagination. We are completely at the whims of the hydrological cycle. If water really was endless, do you not think that we'd never have hose-pipe bans? Fox is right, the planet simply cannot support a growing population indefinitely, there is an upper limit. Of course, we can push that limit further each-time through innovation and technology, but fundamentally there is an upper absolute that we cannot cross.

Geo-politics are by default overwhelmingly involved in both of the above, but I have neatly avoided mentioning them as to help argue from your mentioned ideal.

Also, it's 4.20am, so that's the best you're getting at the moment I'm afraid. :p

ok, took a while to reply. but anyways.. surely the water in the oceans could be desalinated for drinking use and surely the deserts could be used for growing vast amount of crops. skyscrapers with farms on each level, that would be doable. of course that requires vast amounts of energy and money but the same is spent on needless wars etc. and yes technically the world cannot sustain an infinite population but there is still huge huge room for expansion.
 
ok, took a while to reply. but anyways.. surely the water in the oceans could be desalinated for drinking use and surely the deserts could be used for growing vast amount of crops. skyscrapers with farms on each level, that would be doable. of course that requires vast amounts of energy and money but the same is spent on needless wars etc. and yes technically the world cannot sustain an infinite population but there is still huge huge room for expansion.

Desalinating the water from the sea requires specially constructed desalination plants which require a lot of energy to run. Now we still have the problem of finding the energy for these plants to produce enough fresh water for a large population.

Farms on skyscrapers....what? How on earth is that supposed to work? It really isn't as simple as dumping some soil on the floor, planting some seeds, and sprinkling some water on it.
 
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The idea that we cannot produce enough food or supply enough word to sustain a population of 7 billion, or even 70 billion, is flawed to me. It's not really about production, just distribution. We produce more than enough food today to sustain the global population (though probably not at Western eating standards).

If we wanted to produce and distribute good food and clean water to everyone, we could. We manage this for the wealthy people in the world without too many issues. It's just that the less wealthy "don't count" as much and so don't get the goods (that's observational rather than my opinion).
 
Farms on skyscrapers....what? How on earth is that supposed to work? It really isn't as simple as dumping some soil on the floor, planting some seeds, and sprinkling some water on it.

"Vertical Farming" pretty much in the concept stage at the moment as there is no real need to go to the expense of setting one up but meant to be quite a viable idea. Though small scale vertical farming is already going ahead.
 
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