TED Community » Victor Petri

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Human well being, human progress.

An idea worth spreading

People are not problems, they are problem solvers. Overpopulation consequently does not exist. http://humansrunderrated.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/go-forth-and-multiply-on-the-joy-of-population-growth/

Talk to me about

Anything. Politics, population growth, economics, peak oil, demographics, capitalism, globalisation.

Comments

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• A reply on Talk: Sebastião Salgado: The silent drama of photography

  May 7 2013: I do not think population growth is a problem, nor that it is uncontrollable. In fact population growth is slowing immensely. Also with people, if anything, more people has meant we all have it better.
  Destroying forests is devastating for other species, that's true.
  But where basic human needs have been met, and economies turn more towards services, forest covers are growing immensely, and wildlife is returning, as can be seen in North America and Europe, where wolfs, bears, bisons and birds are returning (see the Kuznet curve).

• A comment on Talk: Sebastião Salgado: The silent drama of photography

  May 7 2013: This eco nostalgia is going to get people killed.
  Romanticizing tribal pre historic life is irrational and dangerous even.
  
  To live "in harmony with nature" means dying at 30, dying from violence and being hungry. "In harmony" only a couple of 100s of million people can live on this planet.
  
  If anything, the removal of forests has improved human well being enormously. Now, as a wealthy Western hobby, creating nature reserves is fine, but developing nations should be given the freedom to clear land as they please.

• A reply on Talk: Paul Gilding: The Earth is full

  May 6 2013: Paul Ehrlich would,
  He said in sixties when population was only 3 billion:
  The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate .
  
  And is now still scratching his head why 7 billion people are living in way better conditions than in 1969.
  You see, the perceived boundaries are a certain pessimistic mindset that some people have. They have had it since ever, in 200AD, Tertullian said: ‘We are burdensome to the world, the resources are scarcely adequate for us… already nature does not sustain us.’
  
  
  It's all rubbish, there are no physical boundaries, because more people will mean more minds and hands to overcome shortages. Mind over matter. The expanding human race will continuously overcome any physical boundary, as we have since the dawn of civilization.

• A comment on Talk: Bono: The good news on poverty (Yes, there's good news)

  Apr 26 2013: Good talk.
  I do think corruption is the biggest problem. And from this cronyism.
  And in this sense I question the usefulness of (some) charity.
  
  Business and investing, in a transparent and non cronycapitalist way, is the way forward.

• A reply on Talk: Bono: The good news on poverty (Yes, there's good news)

  Apr 26 2013: Screw the facts, say hell yeah to the anecdotal evidence.
  
  And what has interest to do with poverty anyways?
  I bet you the billion poorest people in the world are not paying interest, and their governments pay the least interest.

• A reply on Talk: Bono: The good news on poverty (Yes, there's good news)

  Apr 26 2013: To clarify some:
  To correct for price differences (between countries), the World Bank's poverty line is designed to hold purchasing power constant across space and time. It reflects what $1.25 could buy in one place (America) at one time (2005). According to the Bank, therefore, you are poor if you consume less than what $1.25 could have bought in America eight years ago.
  
  
  http://www.economist.com/node/21548963
  Most of the progress has been concentrated among the poorest of the poor—those who make less than $1.25 a day. The bank's figures show only a small drop in the number of those who make less than $2 a day, from 2.59 billion in 1981 to 2.44 billion in 2008 (though the fall from a peak of 2.92 billion in 1999 has been more impressive). According to Mr Ravallion, poverty-reduction policies seem to help most at the very bottom. In 1981, 645m people lived on between $1.25 and $2 a day. By 2008 that number had almost doubled to 1.16 billion. Even if many of these middling poor move up, their places are often taken by those who have just escaped from absolute poverty; population growth does the rest. The poorest of the poor seem to have escaped the worst of the post-2007 downturn. But the growth in the middling poor shows there is much to be done.
  
  
  
  And finally:
  On the poverty line
  Has “a dollar a day” had its day?
  
  http://www.economist.com/node/11409401

• A reply on Talk: Bjorn Lomborg: Global priorities bigger than climate change

  Apr 26 2013: Everything you think on overpopulation is wrong.
  People are not problems, but problemsolvers.
  http://humansrunderrated.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/go-forth-and-multiply-on-the-joy-of-population-growth/

• A comment on Talk: Erik Brynjolfsson: The key to growth? Race with the machines

  Apr 25 2013: To all interested in the Gordon vs Brynjolfsson debate, the Economist discusses it thoroughlt:
  http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21569381-idea-innovation-and-new-technology-have-stopped-driving-growth-getting-increasing
• +1

  A comment on Talk: BLACK: My journey to yo-yo mastery

  Apr 23 2013: Humans are Underrated!

• A reply on Talk: Ken Jennings: Watson, Jeopardy and me, the obsolete know-it-all

  Apr 22 2013: And in addition to that, futurists (doomsayers actually), predicted London to be knee deep in horse manure by 1900, 25% of all british land was used to feed horses.
  The car was a great solution to this, an enormous improvement, albeit we know now it comes with a new set of problems (which we will solve, but probably create new smaller problems along the way).