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I spent two weeks delivering for Uber Eats and made $4.40 per hour

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383 points imartin2k | 3 comments | 13 May 17 10:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.703s | source
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jstanley[dead post] ◴[13 May 17 12:21 UTC] No.14330589[source]▶
Only for the short term. Once enough people have died, prices will reach a new equilibrium.

And you can't keep everybody alive. Population will grow exponentially until something bounds it. The ultimate bound is the amount of resources we can extract per person.

There's going to have to be competition for resources, and those who lose out will die. We may as well get used to that now.

1. pg314 ◴[13 May 17 14:21 UTC] No.14331119[source]▶
> Population will grow exponentially until something bounds it.

That's only true if fertility rates stay above the replacement fertility rates. As nations become more developed, fertility rates tend to fall. In the EU-28 the fertility rate was 1.58 children per woman in 2015, well below the replacement rate of 2 [1]. India's fell from 5.9 in 1960 to 2.4 in 2015 [2].

> There's going to have to be competition for resources, and those who lose out will die. We may as well get used to that now.

Your Malthusian view is outdated. We can easily feed and shelter the current population (and projected peak population) for the foreseeable future.

[1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&l...

[2] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?

replies(1): >>14331324 #
2. narrowrail ◴[13 May 17 15:06 UTC] No.14331324[source]▶
As I believe humans are the #1 cause of climate change/ destruction and the eradication of other species, I think we could stand to lose about half the current human population until we can figure out a sustainable lifestyle.
replies(1): >>14332486 #
3. pg314 ◴[13 May 17 19:12 UTC] No.14332486[source]▶
Setting aside the obvious moral problems with "losing" half the current human population, letting the market decide is exactly the wrong thing to do here. It's not the bottom 50% (the once that would starve) that are the problem in terms of climate change, it's the top 50% (or 10%). The average CO2 emissions per capita in the US are 16 metric tons per year, versus 1.6 in India [1]. You would end up with 50% of the population, but still have 95% of the CO2 emissions.

You could accomplish much more by cutting the fossil fuel subsidies ($5.3 trillion in 2015 if you count the externalities [2]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16...