Population Growth Problem Essays - Demography, Human Overpopulation

Population Growth Problem The growth of the world's population is a problem that many people see as being addressed at some point in the future. While we live in a country that is reaping the benefits of a superpower, most of the United States is disconnected from the problems of population growth. In this paper, I intend to address three major issues. How long will we be able to support our planets food needs? How can we deal with population growth in the present day? And How come certain areas tend to have larger population growth than other areas? But first in this paper, I will see how the theories of sociologists and demographers fit into the Earth's population problem. THEORIES MARX 1818-1883 Karl Marx viewed a capitalist society as an economic system that was bound to fail. In Marx's opinion this eminent failure was based in the design of the system. According to Marx, In the capitalist economy there are two major groups; the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie are those who own the means of production, have the power. The proletariat are those that work for the bourgeoisie and are at their mercy. At the economy develops, the gap between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat grows wider and eventually all the capital is controlled by a small percentage of the population and the proletariat is forced into poverty. To someone with little or no sociological background, the above paragraph has nothing to do with population as a social problem. But if you fit population into Marx's description of the capitalist system, it is more relevant than at first glance. The best way to make this point clear is to provide two hypothetical situations. Family X is a middle class family that is doing well financially and they tend to have more children than if they are not making so much money. But as the bourgeoisie gains more and more control, families like X have their income driven down and ultimately have fewer children. Families must have enough money, food, etc. to survive. If they don't have these goods and they can't control their wages, they must control they must control an aspect of their lives that would allow them to survive, whether or not to have children. Family Z is an extremely wealthy family that more or less monopolizes an aspect of their economy. As the economy progresses, family Z is able to drive down the wages of their workers thereby increasing their profit. Since a family like Z is only a small percent of the population, there is no worry whether or not they have many children. So in our society, according to Marx, we have nothing to worry about. As long as we continue with our economic trend, population will fix itself. Now if you look at Marx's theory on the whole, it makes a lot of sense. MALTHUS 1766-1834 Malthus was a sociologist that was the author of Population: the first essay. This essay is about the perfection of mankind. Malthus describes the different stages that man has gone through and he provides theory to control population. Malthus was sure that we can control population if we are able to use moral restraint. If we can fight against our natural urges to have children, it will keep population growth in check. One of the reasons that we have to control our natural urges is that there will not be enough food to support our population. Maltus feels this way because population grows at a geometric rate, while food can only be grown at an arithmetic rate. So we are in effect sealing our own fate by having children. Malthus says that by thinking about all of the hardships that our children will have to face, we will be motivated not to have them. So while Marz's theory more or less happens on it's own, if we are to listen to Malthus some work is to needed by us. WELD Weld is a contemporary Canadian sociologist that deals with population problems from an aspect that can be more easily understood by people of our time. In one article "Confronting the Population Crisis the twenty one most commonly used arguments to confound the issue." In this article, Weld is able to respond to those that don't view population as a social problem. Although I would like to go into each of Weld's responses, this is not a paper on her, so I will only choose a few. Her response to argument 2