patrick.net

dr6B says

Most of the world is now at or below replacement rate. In map below, green, yellow, and red are above. Dark blue is below, lighter blue at about replacement.

Great News!

curious2 says

Advancing technology and productivity is a better way to achieve growth without relying on immigration, especially immigrants who hate us. We don't need population growth, and we don't even really need economic growth.

One thing we could do is look beyond Light Water Reactors and consider Sterling Engines/Molten Salt Plants, smaller in scale, but more of them.

Heraclitusstudent says

Malthus was totally right. Population growth is obviously very limited and the case can already be made that we are overshooting the environment. Just count dead zones in the ocean.

Once the rest of world starts looking like Haiti, you will be invaded.

But he was wrong. Since he made his prediction, humanity has increased in size several fold, but wealth has increased even more substantially; not just absolutely but per capita.

I'd much rather be an Mumbai Carpet Weaver OR a Manchester Janitor today than in 1820.

My God we are even supporting alcoholics on the dole and not even requiring they go to the Poor House or Botany Bay. We pay people just to get drunk and watch Sally Jesse Rafael or whatever the current equivalent is.

Goran_K says

The third world would not have the problem you're describing without 1st world welfare.

1. The Black Plague was a great thing in Europe! It gave the serfs and journeymen "crofters " a ton of political power and increased ability to innovate. It weakened the nobility as well, and gave an extra kick in the ass the re-implementation of old technologies like the wind and water mills.

Rather than sending Europe into a dark spiral of death, the Black Plagues and the NAO disruption ("The Year without a Summer") launched a pantload of social and technological transformations.

2. Absolutely correct. The populations would decline to a level that is more sustainable, and then slow and increasing contact and trade would emerge, instead of a barbarous rabble fighting over scraps with a handful of warlords and their relatives made milionaires and living in NYC as UN Representatives

The best thing for Africa would be to cut them off from the world, though that's unrealistic. Very quickly the murder rate would drop via famine, disease, and running out of bullets and even machetes.

HEYYOU says

I love debates especially when I can delete comments that don't completely agree with me.
3? 6? 8? 12? 21? 22? 23?

The comments were not deleted. A growing number of people are choosing to ignore you, because your posts and comments have become so obviously unhinged. Seriously, honestly, you should quit or change whatever drugs you have been taking, or seek help, because something is definitely wrong. That is not to insult you. It is intended to save your life.

Goran_K says

No, bad policies enabled the outbreak.

Bad policies enabled the "outbreak"?
Jeeez, if you listened to the material I posted you would understand the meaning of work "outbreak" in this context: i.e. humanity started to grow beyond the limit of equilibrium with its ecological environment. Contrary to most other species in nature.
Clearly GOOD policies enabled the outbreak.

curious2 says

That's like saying you want to discuss a bad investment, but only with people who intend to buy it. Perhaps you should post a transcript of the "talk", including any subliminal components and audio cues.

If you don't understand the thesis made in the original post, then why would you feel you can comment on it?
Are you afraid to be "hypnotized" by a 10min talk?

Reality says

the idea of carrying capacity for a rapidly technologically advancing human society is silly.

Divide the land area of this planet by 10 square feet lots, I can assure you you'll get a finite number.
I can also assure you the planet has a "carrying capacity" that is less than that number.
Who is silly, really?

And btw, counting on exponential technological progress to forever support your exponential growth is also silly.
This assumes that the rate of technological innovation will get continually faster and faster, forever. That's an idea as silly as claiming that the idea of "carrying capacity" is silly.

When I was in school in the final quarter of 20th century, I too was taught that the Black Death was a great thing for Europe. Over time, however, I realized there were several problems with that narrative:

1. The Middleast was just as devastated by the Black Death / Great Plague as Europe was (if not more so), but they didn't seem to have reaped any of the alleged benefits typically ascribed to the 30-60% population reduction.

2. Far higher percentage of people in the cities died than the percentage in the country side. 50-60% in major cities such as Paris, Hamburg, Bremen, whereas the countryside in Germany and England had death rates around 20%. That couldn't have been good for commerce; nor craftsman (in the cities) or the serfs/peasants (less market demand for food going into cities).

What I suspect really happened to benefit western Europe were:

1. The drastic reduction of existing banking centers (e.g. the population of Florence was reduced by 60-70%) and administrative centers and their dependent population (i.e. the urban poor and the wasteful rich that had become a tax/interest burden on the rest of the society especially farmers outside the cities). Because the economy was heavily agricultural at that time, the reduction of urban population as ratio to rural population served as a tax-reduction on the rural farmer population.

2. Disruption of Mediterranean trade (especially from Egypt and from Black Sea bread-baskets) removed the price cap on farm output from Western European farms (which didn't have the most productive farms, due to weather, compared to Egypt and Black Sea coast)

3. The mass death of the clergy (serving final rites) put in people's mind that the clergyman was perhaps not as godly, giving rise to religious reformation

4. The Black Death hit the Islamic empires even worse, causing to implode, giving Western European Christinadom an opportunity to "reconquest" (i.e. Spanish reconquest of Iberia from the "moors" accelerated shortly).

Heraclitusstudent says

And btw, counting on exponential technological progress to forever support your exponential growth is also silly.
This assumes that the rate of technological innovation will get continually faster and faster, forever. That's an idea as silly as claiming that the idea of "carrying capacity" is silly.

The rate of technological innovation has geometrically increased every century since the beginning of the industrial revolution. That’s over 250 years.

What data do you have that it will actually slow?

Heraclitusstudent says

Reality says

the idea of carrying capacity for a rapidly technologically advancing human society is silly.

Divide the land area of this planet by 10 square feet lots, I can assure you you'll get a finite number.
I can also assure you the planet has a "carrying capacity" that is less than that number.
Who is silly, really?

The total number of hydrogen atoms in the Sun is also finite. Why is solar energy considered a "regenerative energy source"?

A finite number can be so large that, in practical terms it's unlimited.

Here's a back of the envelope calculation: the earth's surface area is 196.9 million square miles, or 5.1 trillion acres! That's 51 acres of either land or water-front property per person even when the earth has 100 billion human population! If there is enough technology to spread people out entirely evenly (like you suggested). If the technology exists to grow corn at current per acre rate (150 bushels per acre), that's over 7500 bushels or over 400,000 pounds of corn per person per year; even if producing meat via the very inefficient cattle at 10:1 feed-to-meat ratio (instead of the typical fish at 2:1 feed to meat ratio), that would be 40,000 pounds of meat per person per year, or over 100lbs of meat per person per day! That's with 100 billion human population! with everyone gorging on beef (one of the most wasteful/luxurious ways of producing food) instead of eating corn directly. We are far far away from the earth's carry capacity.

BTW, the conversion rate between corn and ethanol is about 21.6 pounds of corn per gallon of fuel produced. So, setting aside 20,000 pounds of corn to give everyone steak for brunch and steak for dinner every day (would require much less corn if you prefer fish, chicken, milk or eggs), the remaining 380,000 lbs of corn per person can produce 17,600 gallons of fuel per person per year! I don't know about you, but I burned less than 1000 gallons of fuel in the past year.

Heraclitusstudent says

If you don't understand the thesis made in the original post, then why would you feel you can comment on it?

I saw the obvious error in what you wrote, and SIWOTI did the rest.

Heraclitusstudent says

Are you afraid to be "hypnotized" by a 10min talk?

No, but I will not give it another view/download whatever metric they count. It has obviously only damaged your perspective, or confirmed some bias you wanted to believe. I see no benefit in wasting time listening to it.

As for tech, we're right now, somewhere in that early to mid-S curve zone for so-called nanotechnology where design/building on the molecular level is petering out, with existing tools, for the next wave to pull it into another geometric ascension.

Eventually, what that will mean is that we'll be able to construct things on a molecular scale, just like we could on a bulk scale, during the mid-20th century.



So if that's the case then we'll have solar satellites (note: not stupid panels on ppl's houses), microwaving energy everywhere on earth for assemblers to build anything we want and need, including food. Yes, that's the year 2200!

Reality says

A finite number can be so large that, in practical terms it's unlimited.

We also have all the energy coming from the rest of the Milky Way, so I wouldn't be too concerned about the Sun mailing it in.

Reality says

1. The drastic reduction of existing banking centers (e.g. the population of Florence was reduced by 60-70%) and administrative centers and their dependent population (i.e. the urban poor and the wasteful rich that had become a tax/interest burden on the rest of the society especially farmers outside the cities). Because the economy was heavily agricultural at that time, the reduction of urban population as ratio to rural population served as a tax-reduction on the rural farmer population.

In 1200 before the plague, metropolises were considered Cologne (biggest city in the Germanies, I believe) with 40,000. Aachen and Trier, big Wool Trade cities, maybe 20,000, also considered massive in their time. 40,000 is about the population of (Greater) Eureka, California. The only city remotely sizable was Naples, mostly because of it's well preserved Roman infrastructure.

London had maybe 30,000, and the second biggest city in England, by far, was Bristol with a whopping 12,000 people. Rome maybe had 40,000 permanent residents in a fraction of the area Roman Rome was.

In contrast, the Renaissance that launched in the 1300s featured the explosion of cities, including of course Florence. But also London, Paris, Milan, and many other cities

1200s Europe was definitely far more agrarian than the centuries after it.

What should be revised is the overreaction to making the Dark Ages less Dark. From a population, technological development, trade, and economic/standard of living perspective, the Collapse of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages were definitely, definitely Dark. Thatched Houses reappear in Italy for the first time in a millenium.

Those cities were not big banking centers before the plague. Florence had a population of 110,000-120,000 in 1338 before the Great Plague; that was reduced to 50,000 in 1351 after the plague.

Reality says

Those cities were not big banking centers before the plague. Florence had a population of 110,000-120,000 before the Great Plague; that was reduced to 50,000 after the plague.

No, Florence was around 40-50,000 during the 1200s, at the peak of the Middle Ages. The huge boom of Florence was largely due to being the world banking center of the 1350s-1500s.

The biggest city in Europe was Neopolis/Naples with maybe 100,000 at best.

http://historicalfictionresearch.blogspot.com/2014/11/snapshot-florence-1338.html

According to Wikipedia entry on Florence citing Will Durant's book, there were 17,000 beggars alone in the streets of Florence in 1338. Presumably that population had to be sustained by a much larger general population in the city and the tax and interest payment flowing into the city, just like beggars today in the Big Apple. That burden was removed by the Great Plague.

Reality and Plissken, get over the middle ages.

We're in modern times where in fact, technology, without the socioeconomic dynamics of the Black Plague, have a greater impact on the future than whether or not ppl in the cities survive the disease or not.

Think about it, if we knew how to control "cytokine storm" inflammation back in 1918, via injections/IV drips, the Spanish Flu would not have decimated the same number of ppl as WWI.

Thanks for interjecting, Rin. The numbers from Plissken and from me are actually not in disagreement. Florence apparently had an early boom from the 1200's to 1338 (increasing population from about 30k to about 120k) before the crash during the Great Plague / Black Death, dropping back down to 50k pop, before booming again after 1351. The city managers may have figured out in the 2nd go-around not to run huge welfare programs that attract welfare seekers (the same mistake that ancient Rome had made 1500 years earlier), thereby putting the city on a more sustainable growth path.

Reality says

Thanks for interjecting, Rin. The numbers from Plissken and from me are actually not in disagreement. Florence apparently had an early boom from the 1200's to 1338 (increasing population from about 30k to about 120k) before the crash during the Great Plague / Black Death, dropping back down to 50k pop, before booming again after 1351. The city managers may have figured out in the 2nd go-around not to run huge welfare programs and attract welfare seekers (the same mistake the Rome had made), thereby putting the city on a more sustainable growth path.

Rome survived much longer than US Existed with the Anona in place. And a similar one in Constantinople The Anona was necessary because slaves took the jobs freemen used to do, esp. after Pompey Magnus and Caesar flooded the Slave Markets from their big conquests in Asia and Gaul. Eventually, slaves took all the farms, as wealthy landlords dispossessed the Roman Yeomanry and turned them into grazing lands for sheep, forcing the Legions to rely increasingly on Barbarian troops instead of the lesser sons of stout Roman Peasants, and Italy dependent on Grain Imports.

Reality says

Thanks for interjecting, Rin. The numbers from Plissken and from me are actually not in disagreement. Florence apparently had an early boom from the 1200's to 1338 (increasing population from about 30k to about 120k) before the crash during the Great Plague / Black Death, dropping back down to 50k pop, before booming again after 1351. The city managers may have figured out in the 2nd go-around not to run huge welfare programs that attract welfare seekers (the same mistake that ancient Rome had made 1500 years earlier), thereby putting the city on a more sustainable growth path.

I'm not in total disagreement, a boom is Possible, Do the numbers only cover Florence or do they include the surrounding areas, damn can't remember the village the Medicis fled to just a few miles away.

My main disagreement is I'm pretty convinced Urbanization and Progress are linked, and there is no such thing as reduced urbanization going hand in hand with substantial economic and technological progress. If we even disagree about that.

Please see the link I provided above. It was citing historical records written by a Florentine banker / historian and elected city manager who lived through that time period. He gave 90k pop in the city not counting clergy and foreigners residing in the city. The city could provide 25k men in arms in times of war and 80k additional soldiers from surrounding countryside.

I agree with you that Urbanization and Progress are linked: ease of transportation (what can be cheaper than walking next door or a block down the street) enable new business opportunities. However, things go in cycles: eventually hangers-on and dead-weights outpace new creativity, and that's when urbanization=progress turns into urban decay (that cycle played out in Detroit over a century, and is playing out in NYC and Chicago with all the urban SJW's now!). After a couple centuries of re-urbanization in Western Europe (after the "Dark Ages" after collapse of the WRE), the tax burden (and interest payment was just another way of collecting tax) of keeping up urban centers was starting to be heavy again. The Great Plague drastically reduced that burden in Western Europe by disproportionally killing much higher percentage of urban population than rural population.

The Great Plague / Black Death killed just as high a percentage of population in the Middleast / Islamic Empires. For them however, what resulted was not an economic miracle but a societal collapse. The difference I believe was due to decentralization and independent merchants/bankers in Western Europe vs. the centralized management in the middleastern Islamic empires.

Reality says

the centralized management in the middleastern Islamic empires.

The question here is .. what management? A bunch of Imams and their so-called Caliphates are a bunch of douchebag religious bumpkins who don't know their head from their ass, can't manage any society, nevermind an empire.

It's amazing that many Muslims can't even tell that Rumi's basically a Buddhist, trying to infuse those notions into Islamic speak.

Goran_K says

The rate of technological innovation has geometrically increased every century since the beginning of the industrial revolution. That’s over 250 years.

What data do you have that it will actually slow?

1) 250 yrs is a joke.
2) I never said it will slow. I said it can't go on at exponential rate, because that would soon result in rates of breakthrough discoveries happening hourly faster than any human brain can possibly absorb.
3) data: trees don't grow to the sky.

Rin says

Reality says

the centralized management in the middleastern Islamic empires.

The question here is .. what management? A bunch of Imams and their so-called Caliphates are a bunch of douchebag religious bumpkins who don't know their head from their ass, can't manage any society, nevermind an empire.

By today's standards, you are correct. By the standards of 8th century, when their empires just started, they were relatively low-tax for the commerce protection services that they provided. Once again, things went in cycles: by the 13th century and later, they became too much of a taxation and regulation burden. That's why Western Europeans tried to go all the way around the world the other way in order to get around them to reach India and China, accidentally discovering the Americas!

BTW, religion was/is a very efficient way of reducing administrative cost. Put it this way: in Detroit and parts of Chicago, only 15% of murder cases get resolved. How can a society function without a religious faith that criminals will be caught and punished somehow? In the absence of a faith in a "god" or "gods," most people would default to a blind faith in an omnipotent government run by very much fallible men in costumes.

Reality says

BTW, religion was/is a very efficient way of reducing administrative cost. Put it this way: in Detroit and parts of Chicago, only 15% of murder cases get resolved. How can a society function without a religious faith that criminals will be caught and punished somehow?

England seemed to do well when it confiscated the Monasteries, so here we disagree. Not to mention the huge bump in performance over Southern Europe by Germany, Scandinavia and Britain starting in the 1500s.

Also interesting: The Steam Engine (as a novelty) was rediscovered during King Billy's reign, not seen since the Roman Empire and (I believe) Archimedes.

Reality says

BTW, religion was/is a very efficient way of reducing administrative cost. Put it this way: in Detroit and parts of Chicago, only 15% of murder cases get resolved. How can a society function without a religious faith that criminals will be caught and punished somehow? In the absence of a faith in a "god" or "gods," most people would default to a blind faith in an omnipotent government run by very much fallible men in costumes.

The only reason Henry VIII didn't get his divorce is because the Pope needed Spanish troops to defend him from his enemies.

But I'm not so sure, religious societies can have many problems and Pagan/Atheist can ones have far fewer issues. For example, Roman unwalled cities. Whereas Dark Ages cities were all walled. The Pentagon is unfortified, as are most police department buildings and city halls. The revisionist conception of the Dark and Middle Ages is not helped by the fact that most castles and forts in the Dark Ages to Middle Ages were wooden, especially those of the petty barons and counts, and have long rotted away. Nobody spends money on expensive forts - especially relatively poor petty nobles - unless they are absolutely necessary; Wood was often the best most could afford. Raubritters - Robber Knights - were endemic in Germany. Which society had more internal strife? Something else is at play.

I've seen some reports that the Murder Rate in 1400s England was at least 13 per 100,000, based on scanty records of judgements. That was when England was 80-90% rural and united in one religion. One thing we do know is that most medieval marriages among ordinary people were due to the gal getting knocked up, since we do have abundant church records showing births far less than 9 months after the wedding is registered.

The Pope tried to get a peace of Christendom and ban crossbows against Christians, it failed.

One benefit of the Black Plague was the death of so many Petty Lords with their endless petty squabbles and the consolidation of territory, reducing internal violence.

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

England seemed to do well when it confiscated the Monasteries, so here we disagree. Not to mention the huge bump in performance over Southern Europe by Germany, Scandinavia and Britain starting in the 1500s.

England made the local branch office of a religion into an independent religion. As did northern Germany and Scandinavia. Thereby reducing the overall cost of running religious institutions in the local society (not having to pay homage or tax to Rome for licensing rights). BTW, it can be argued that both Christianity and Islam are actually spin-off's of Judaism.

The French tried to abolish religion itself during the French Revolution. They quickly had to find a replacement, first "Church of Reason" then personality cult.

Reality says

The French tried to abolish religion itself during the French Revolution. They quickly had to come find a replacement, first "Church of Reason" then personality cult.

Agreed.

The French Revolution is the model for Leftist Utopians, hence "Jacobin Magazine".

www.youtube.com/embed/Xcb4_QwP6fE

Unfortunately Catholicism, Judaism, and (many forms of) Protestantism are in decline. Episcopalians, Reform Jews, and unfortunately Catholic Educational Institutions lead the pack in utopian rubbish. Oh, and Anglicans. Eventually the Anglican Church will probably be claimed and dominated by Africans, which is likely a good thing given the complete spinelessness of CoE. The CoE could not be a center of resistance to Islam, nor could the Lutheran Church of Sweden.

I say this a secular person.

But I do believe civic nationalism can stand in for quite a big deal. There does have to be a common touchstone of beliefs for all, even if people only dig 7 of 10 of them.

The current assaults on EVERYTHING by PostModernism is extremely dangerous, since any whacky theory/Islam will fill the void.

Reality says

religion was/is a very efficient way of reducing administrative cost.

No, religion is the SUV of motivational vehicles. It has a lot of power, but terrible environmental costs, and is grossly inefficient at traveling the same distance (i.e. doing the same work) compared to other vehicles.

Ancient Greek religion helped to motivate spectacular intellectual achievements, because of the possibility of earning distinction and becoming a god. Archimedes, Pythagorus, Plato, Socrates, and many others achieved a sort of immortality by their discoveries and innovations. The same religion motivated the prosecution of Aristarchos for heresy, because he figured out that the earth revolves around the sun. Archimedes' otherwise brilliant Antikythera mechanism had only one flaw: it put the earth at the center of the solar system, so he wouldn't be executed for heresy. It's amazing Archimedes got the mechanism to work well even with that flaw, but still, the loss of Aristarchos was a tragedy.

Reality says

Put it this way: in Detroit and parts of Chicago, only 15% of murder cases get resolved. How can a society function without a religious faith that criminals will be caught and punished somehow?

There is no substitute for evidence and reason, especially in criminal justice. Religious faith produces witchcraft executions, which Islamic theocracies continue to this day. Group loyalty results in crimes getting blamed on outgroup "enemies" who had nothing to do with them, and we see a similar dynamic in Detroit: loyalty and fear preclude testimony, because witnesses fear getting killed if they testify, and mistrust the police anyway. Tracking guns and ammunition would produce evidence and lead possibly to convictions, although gang members can provide alibis for each other, as vigilante Sharia patrols can to thwart prosecution.

Curious,

I can certainly agree with you on the specific issues that you have raised. I was addressing a meta-issue.

Most people simply worship power: pick a sport team/color and be a fan of that. Only about 15-20% of the adult population can think for themselves on bigger issues and vote for someone like Ron Paul. The rest just want to be sheep. Perhaps 1/4 to 1/3 of that 15-20% would one day decide to exploit the sheep, until they themselves are carved up on the chopping block. That's just the reality of life.

In the absence of a vague theistic "Creator," most people (not 51%, but more like 80+%) would simply worship whoever is the temporal ruler toting the biggest gun. That's how Egyptian Pharoahs ruled, as gods. That's why some of the religions postulating a higher being was/were invented to begin with! as a counter-balance to the temporal ruler.

As real life experience since French Revolution (followed by Russian Revolution, then Chinese Revolution, etc. etc.) proved again and again, when a modern society abolishes religion, what follows into the power vacuum is not Reason, but Personality Cult.

Traditional religions serve three very important functions in society:

1. faith in Crime and Punishment; pun with Dostoyevski's book title intentional: as his book clearly illustrated what intellectualizing youth in marginal financial circumstances and removing religious faith would lead to, as proven later on by all the participants in the October Revolution and the following soviet era;

2. check on temporal rulers;

3. putting a lid on female hypergamy, so young women would reproduce.

Seems to me, doing all three via government power in a purely secular society would be much more expensive.

Reality says

As real life experience since French Revolution (followed by Russian Revolution, then Chinese Revolution, etc. etc.) proved again and again, when a modern society abolishes religion, what follows into the power vacuum is not Reason, but Personality Cult.

I recognize your examples (Napoleon, Stalin, Mao), but China remains officially irreligious, and several eastern European countries remain mostly irreligious while renouncing communism. They don't seem to suffer a personality cult anymore.

Reality says

2. check on temporal rulers;

The issue with that is the tendency by ambitious political or religious figures to fuse church and state, sometimes as an express command, e.g. the totalitarian doctrine of Islam (which Muslims call "a complete system" because it fuses mosque and state).

curious2 says

I recognize your examples (Napoleon, Stalin, Mao), but China remains officially irreligious, and several eastern European countries remain mostly irreligious while renouncing communism. They don't seem to suffer a personality cult anymore.

Both Russia and China still suffer from massive corruption and leader-worshipping tendencies. It is not a co-incidence that both those two countries tried/trying to buy off the less religious Democrat politicians in this country. Corruption is simply a sign that individuals in leadership positions having too much arbitrary power instead of being under robust procedural oversight.

curious2 says

2. check on temporal rulers;

The issue with that is the tendency by ambitious political or religious figures to fuse church and state, sometimes as an express command, e.g. the totalitarian doctrine of Islam (which Muslims call "a complete system" because it fuses mosque and state).

Religion is quite unnecessary if a totalitarian leader wants to merge state power and religious power onto himself. Personality cult can be carried out quite successfully without religion (aside from the personality cult itself). Personality cult is a religion.

Traditional religions simply provide a platform upon which an alternative power center can be potentially formed.

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

Rome survived much longer than US Existed with the Anona in place. And a similar one in Constantinople The Anona was necessary because slaves took the jobs freemen used to do, esp. after Pompey Magnus and Caesar flooded the Slave Markets from their big conquests in Asia and Gaul. Eventually, slaves took all the farms, as wealthy landlords dispossessed the Roman Yeomanry and turned them into grazing lands for sheep, forcing the Legions to rely increasingly on Barbarian troops instead of the lesser sons of stout Roman Peasants, and Italy dependent on Grain Imports.

That's the version taught in most history classes in school. However, the price structure in the market place must have worked the other way around: conquest brought in cheap grain, which depressed grain price in Rome, thereby bankrupting the independent farmers . . . driving them into the big cities (leaving farm land around Rome cheap enough to be bought up by the wealthy, or through mortgage debt bankruptcy repo process) . . . just like cheap imports in the past few decades made youths born in rural America migrate into the big cities in search of jobs and handouts. People would not sell their family farms when they were making profit and decide to become bums in the city.

Rome was in effect no longer a republic after Caesar and Augustus.

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

Reality says

The French tried to abolish religion itself during the French Revolution. They quickly had to come find a replacement, first "Church of Reason" then personality cult.

Agreed.

The French Revolution is the model for Leftist Utopians, hence "Jacobin Magazine".

You guys just ignore the role of the low clergy in the French revolution, including in starting the revolution in the general states of 1789.
The French revolution maybe included some anti-religious elements but was never built against religion the way communism was.
It's totally absurd to claim the French lost their religion, stopped being Catholics and started adoring Napoleon instead.
This entire narrative is just a lame republican rewriting of history to justify an irrational need for religion, just like claiming the nazis were collectivists.

These are bad, bad, simplistic ideas.

And btw, this could be an interesting thread on history but thoroughly irrelevant to this thread. I suggest you move to your own.

curious2 says

I recognize your examples (Napoleon, Stalin, Mao), but China remains officially irreligious, and several eastern European countries remain mostly irreligious while renouncing communism. They don't seem to suffer a personality cult anymore.

You're right. It doesn't make any sense. Reality is just rationalizing that we need religion.
The real reality is that no one has ever suffered from being too rational - and certainly not from being rational enough to reject religion.

Heraclitusstudent says

You guys just ignore the role of the low clergy in the French revolution, including in starting the revolution in the general states of 1789.

That's just like Hitler was an art student (painting and sketches), Stalin was a seminary student, Mao was a librarian and Pol Pot was a middle school math teacher. Bloody revolutions were usually led by young formerly unsuccessful / less successful intellectuals. At the time of French revolution, almost all entry-level intellectuals were either trained to be clergymen or trained to be lawyers. The young clergymen may have had the numbers, but the young lawyers were even more reckless and ruthless; e.g. Maximilien Robespierre himself.

The French revolution maybe included some anti-religious elements but was never built against religion the way communism was. It's totally absurd to claim the French lost their religion, stopped being Catholics and started adoring Napoleon instead.

The French Revolution was a pre-run of the latter communist revolutions (starting in 1848). Existing religious establishments were targeted due to the wealth and asset amassed by them. The Cult of Reason ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason ) took place at the height of the French Revolution, before Robespierre's Cult of Supreme Being (himself as the high priest) and long before Napoleon. Your high school history may not have covered that aspect of French Revolution. Wonder why. I bet, you probably never heard of Louis Phillipe II Duke of Orleans, the uncle of Louis XVI, and his role in paying rioters to attack Bastille starting the "French Revolution" as well as paying for and organizing "the women's march" on Versaille to capture the King and the Queen and force them to relocate to Paris to become prisoners. The Duke was going after the crown seeing that his nephew was weak and lenient by temperament (most scandals regarding the King's dictatorial tendencies and the Queen's extravagance that we learn in school today were actually fabrications by the "fake news" journalists of that time paid for by the Duke and his British financiers). The Duke was later beheaded at the guillotine too a few years into the revolution for his trouble in starting the revolution; his son though did become the King after Bourbon Restoration (after the fall of Napoleon) nearly 4 decades later, likely due to the family's connection to Britain.

This entire narrative is just a lame republican rewriting of history to justify an irrational need for religion, just like claiming the nazis were collectivists.

Just like the teaching of history in your high school was incomplete, history as it is presented to the public is always incomplete (subject to gate-keeping by those who wrote history, ref "1984"). The profession of history is essentially constant revision: at better times by adding back in the parts that had been omitted previously, so as to arrive at a more complete picture. Otherwise, the profession of history would be entirely rote-memorization of questionable material initially put down by the court historians for the benefit of contemporary politics shortly after the historical events. i.e. the first writing of history is almost always flawed, and therefore would have to be re-interpreted again and again later.

These are bad, bad, simplistic ideas.

And btw, this could be an interesting thread on history but thoroughly irrelevant to this thread. I suggest you move to your own.

The relevance of history is in that, those episodes were previous times when the same ideologies had been promoted to generate chaos. There is nothing new about the ideas "we have an over-population problem" or "let's get rid of God" Both ideas have been tried before, by entry-level intellectuals looking for a revolution in order to make room in the upper echelons of society (i.e. killing off the guys already in those positions in order to make room). The real over-population is in the over-educated rote-reciters who lack creativity therefore unable to create value thereby generate profit on their own in the market place. I highly recommend Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment; schooling that does not endow marketable skills indeed produce Roskolnikovs (i.e. raising expectations beyond the person's natural ability and unleashing the reckless malevolence normally hidden in the darker parts of human nature).

Heraclitusstudent says

You're right. It doesn't make any sense. Reality is just rationalizing that we need religion.
The real reality is that no one has ever suffered from being too rational - and certainly not from being rational enough to reject religion.

Like I said, might be a good idea to read up on the Cult of Reason and Cult of Supreme Being during French Revolution. Most of the leaders advocating either eventually had their heads chopped on the guillotine by their likewise rational and intellectual colleagues in the name of the Revolution itself (long before the later restoration of traditional religions).

When I can't get a house in the country and have my next neighbor over a mile away, then I'll believe in overpopulation.