Epa Wants To Shut Down Permian Basin Oil

Your post reminds me of another Marx. Groucho and T. S. Elliot had an uneasy relationship that lasted years. Groucho's embarrassment about his poor origins and Elliot's ingrained anti-semitism made for a rough but real friendship. Groucho regretted not becoming an intellectual persona.
All the Jewish Marxes were profoundly anti-authoritarian and loved to embarrass those in power. Once Groucho reminded Elliot that his birthname was Tom. Elliot was more forgiving of the elite and never wanted to risk his high place in society by challenging them.

So what does this have to do with the topic at hand? Not much, really. It's just an oddment of recent history that used to fascinate me.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

from Morning At The Window - T. S. Elliot

 

Why the future doesn’t need us - Bill Joy (2000)
Bill Joy (1954 – ) is an American computer scientist who co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003. His now famous Wired magazine essay, “Why the future doesn’t need us,” (2000) sets forth his deep concerns over the development of modern technologies.

A summary:

Joy traces his worries to a discussion he had with Ray Kurzweil at a conference in 1998. He had read an early draft of Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence and found it deeply disturbing. Subsequently, he encountered arguments by the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynski argued that if machines do all of society’s work, as they inevitably will, then we can: a) let the machines make all the decisions; or b) maintain human control over the machines.

If we choose “a” then we are at the mercy of our machines. It is not that we would give them control or that they would take control, rather, we might become so dependent on them that we would have to accept their commands. If we choose “b” then control would be in the hands of an elite, and the masses would be unnecessary. (my emphasis) In that case, the tiny elite: 1) would exterminate the masses; 2) reduce their birthrate so they slowly became extinct; or 3) become benevolent shepherds to the masses. The first two scenarios entail our extinction, but even the third option is bad. In this last scenario, the elite would fulfill all physical and psychological needs of the masses, while at the same time engineering the masses to sublimate their desire for power. In this case, the masses might be happy, but they wouldn’t be free. Joy finds Kaczynski’s arguments both convincing and troubling.

About this time Joy read Hans Moravec’s book Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind where he found predictions similar to Kurzweil’s. Joy was especially concerned by Moravec’s claim that technological superiors always defeat technological inferiors, as well as his claim that humans will become extinct as they merge with the robots. Disturbed, Joy consulted other computer scientists who, for the most part, agreed with these predictions.

Joy’s worries focus on the transforming technologies of the 21st century—genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR). What is particularly problematic about them is their potential to self-replicate. This makes them inherently more dangerous than 20th-century technologies—nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons—which are expensive to build and require rare raw materials. By contrast, 21st-century technologies allow for small groups or individuals to bring about massive destruction. Joy also argues that, while we will soon achieve the computing power necessary to implement some of the scenarios envisioned by Kurzweil and Moravec, we overestimate our design abilities. Such hubris may lead to disaster.

For example, robotics is primarily motivated by the desire to be immortal—by downloading ourselves into robotic bodies. But Joy doesn’t believe that we will be human after the download or that the robots would be our children. As for genetic engineering, it will create new crops, plants, and eventually new species including many variations of human species, but Joy fears that we don’t know enough to safely conduct such experiments. And nanotechnology confronts the so-called “gray goo” problem—self-replicating nanobots out of control. In short, we may be on the verge of killing ourselves. Is it not arrogant, he wonders, to design a robot replacement species when we so often make design mistakes?

Joy concludes that we ought to relinquish these technologies before it’s too late. Yes, GNR may bring happiness and immortality, but should we risk the survival or the species for such goals? Joy thinks not.

Summary – Genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) are too dangerous to pursue; we should abandon them.

 

China foresaw the population problem and made it a law, only one child per couple. We were all up in arms that it abused human rights and Chinese preferred boys so girl babies were thrown in the river.
Here we have people willing to abort late term babies, not fetuses.
Why not insert subcutaneous birth control? And/Or require people to get a license to even have babies. If you want to chose your birth control, you need proof that you are using it. People now have different reasons for having babies, laziness is one of them. But we no longer need 10 kids to have hands on the farm. Those who want to complete themselves by having a family could get a license after a bit of time. That might be helpful to extend the honeymoon.
Netflix has a show on called, I think, Snowflake Mountain. It showed kids from well to do families who had no idea about doing and did not want to.
Cutting back on the slaves and producing worthless kids themselves, Like hunter Biden, the wealthy might find themselves in a quandry.
Yahoo.com was commenting about the Dems having caused a bit of a problem with their handling of Covid. 65 in Congress have covid, 5 are Republicans. Too much testing? They all had the entire program of vaccines....
Stuff comes back to bite you.

 

Meanwhile, in the Permian Basin... it's really hot.

 

Unlike many other conservative leaning people, I do think there is an excess population problem. I differ from the global elite in that I don't think it is an acute problem. We have the time and the means to solve it without having to kill a bunch of people, as is the globalists' plan. If, say, a woman who is likely to be always chronically poor and unlikely to properly raise children anyway is paid a substantial amount to have a simple operation after she has had one or two babies (or even before), we could do much to end the cycle of poverty.
Any solution sounds harsh and intrusive on personal rights. I've never felt comfortable with my own thinking on the subject. I'd like to hear others' thoughts on this unpleasant topic.

 

For the second, it's the abolition of all private property. For the first, it's your private property.

 

There are references to excess population, but I think that refers to birth rates that are too high. What capitalists want is a steady increase in population coupled with a steady increase in economic growth, with one dependent on the other. This leads to greater stability, which in turn ensures more prosperity.

However, the following problems also emerge:

Population aging - population control plus prosperity backfires, leading to birth rates that are too low. That's why seniors in industrialized countries have to bring in more young people in poor countries to take care of them, among others. Believe it or not, even countries like China are being affected.

Pollution and environmental damage - by default, these rise when there is more economic activity, and in time they even affect resource availability. That's why the same rich have been calling for "green" energy, which unfortunately isn't really "green".

A resource crunch - this is very obvious because the biosphere is limited and gravity has an economic cost. That's why even with four centuries' worth of oil underground we still have to scrape the bottom of the barrel and resort to shale and other forms of unconventional production. The same thing is taking place for mining: we have to move increasing amounts of earth to extract decreasing amounts of minerals, and of lower grade. It's essentially diminishing returns: increasing amounts of money, energy, and material resources in exchange for decreasing amounts of energy and material resources extracted.

In short, even the most dense capitalist is realizing that continuous, and even accelerating, economic growth, and especially driven by a global derivatives market with a notional value of over a quadrillion dollars, can't continue simply because the biosphere has physical limitations. It's that simple.

Thus, faced with that reality, the global elite imagine a future where science and technology will lead to a digital future where people will find themselves in white-collar jobs, living in small, sci-fi abodes, riding highly efficient public transport, and no longer carrying for money thanks to an abundance of credit, goods, and services made possible through an army of robots.

It's very much like playing bingo, which is why I find the meme shared earlier appropriate. The difference, though, is that many think that all that is a leftist phenomenon. What they don't realize that it's the result of capitalism: a few grow richer than others, take over, and dream of a sci-fi future.

 

I won't address most of your points, some of which we are at an impasse over. This following one, though, is troubling.

Population aging - population control plus prosperity backfires, leading to birth rates that are too low.

How much of that phenomenon is only due to people wanting to enjoy their prosperity? Other factors are involved, like the need for both husband and wife to work to achieve that prosperity. I'm all for women's freedom to do what they want but it seems to me that the traditional family structure has been engineered out of society. Many women express a preference to stay home, take care of the household and raise their kids but they'll never have that option.

I'll raise another issue. The prosperous west has pretty much lowered its overall intelligence by the fact that poorer (and presumably less intelligent) people have many more children than less poor people and they are subsidized by the government in this. I believe we are stupider, as a society, than we used to be, thinking in terms of a century. Widespread education does not produce widespread intelligence. Asian countries, having never been blessed with prosperity until recently, have proven Darwin to be right in that they have surpassed us in general intelligence. We need to develop broad strategies to reverse these tendencies.

 

I've seen that argument before about how much space the world's population would take up if they are standing six feet apart, or whatever distance is being used. The examples are irrelevant because they ignore all the factors that really matter. How much food can be grown? How much water and energy will that production take? How much energy is needed for modern housing and transportation and where is that to come from? What are we to do with all the waste people and industry produce?
You may be right that the earth is not broadly overpopulated. I lean towards it being so but I'm not fully decided about it. The thing is, we need to look at the issue rationally and with a honest appreciation of human life and what it takes to make a good life reachable for everyone.