# Outlook for high-yield agriculture is not good. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 27, 2015, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853 "2015-10-27T06:21:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2015, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/1 "2015-10-27T06:21:31Z")
Somehow we hijacked the Canadian election thread after the election was over. I pointed out that using fossil resources for fertilizer isn’t sustainable, and got this in response. > [@The "Longest Election Campaign in Modern Canada" Thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-longest-election-campaign-in-modern-canada-thread/726807/869): > > Yes. They should do us a favor and starve themselves to death. Or, you could propose another solution. I’m thinking that anything with the word ‘organic’ in it isn’t going to be one of them, well, unless your name is ‘Pollyanna’. If you didn’t insist on growing human population every generation, you wouldn’t have these problems. [Since now we’re way off-topic for a Canadian election thread, it continues here.] But hey, bitching about environmentalists, that’s sure to somehow magically help. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2015, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/2 "2015-10-27T06:28:04Z")
Let’s see, it was going something like this when the thread, having jumped off the highway, went deep into the woods: > [@The "Longest Election Campaign in Modern Canada" Thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-longest-election-campaign-in-modern-canada-thread/726807/861): > > It’s impossible to say. Some countries will find it to their advantage to import food, some to export it. The nature of comparative advantage alone is so potentially complex that no smart person would hope to guess how things would work out, and of course any number of factors could change what can be produced where; emerging economies, global climate change, new technologies, trends in what foods are desired, and so on. What is for sure is that food would probably be more plentiful and cheaper. > [@The "Longest Election Campaign in Modern Canada" Thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-longest-election-campaign-in-modern-canada-thread/726807/862): > > I’m fine with much of what you say, as long as all externalities are properly priced in. Currently, this frequently does not happen. > > For example, hypothetically a country could produce a food product cheaper, but only by pumping it full of pesticides and synthetic chemical fertilizers. Cheap product, but at the cost of damaging the environment. If this damage to the environment is considered to be “free”, then importing this “cheaper” food would not be good. > > Any country that does not price in externalities like this could then produce food “cheaper”. We have to choose; Do we want to properly price in things like damage to environment, pollution, C02 emissions, overuse of water, etc. to global trade? OR are we happy to simply go to the lowest common denominator, and let countries with the worst record in protecting common resources get the best share of the market? > > Or, if a > [@The "Longest Election Campaign in Modern Canada" Thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-longest-election-campaign-in-modern-canada-thread/726807/863): > > I would have to nitpick that artificial fertilizers are not necessarily bad for the environment and have probably saved billions of people from starvation. So that’s good. > > Of course it’s theoretically possible a country could make food cheaper by, say, using something that is very polluting. That said > > 1. That doesn’t mean Canada will end up importing it. Countries will end up trading based on comparative advantage, not competitive advantage. > > 2. At the risk of, again, pointing out the crazily obvious, this happens NOW. Canada has stronger labour protections and environmental regulations than the great majority of countries we trade with and yet we are not overwhelmed by foreign stuff - because, again, things being cheaper don’t mean it’s to our comparative advantage to import them. In essence, the Canadian dairy farmer isn’t competing with the New Zealander dairy farmer; he is competing with Canadian machine shops, plastic injection molding factories, and software companies. The dairy industry has successfully used politics to extract money from those industries and take it for themselves, thus increasing their welfare at the expense of everyone else. > > [This is a really important concept to get.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage) > > I’m all for the world coming to agreement on, say, carbon emissions, but if you think Canada’s dairy farmers are insisting on protected status and government handouts to save the world from CO2 emissions, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn you can have for a good price. Those are different issues, and politically corrupt protectionism is absolutely not going to help the world avoid externalities like the ones you describe. > [@The "Longest Election Campaign in Modern Canada" Thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-longest-election-campaign-in-modern-canada-thread/726807/866): > > Right. Increased production leading to increased prosperity. > > Here’s the problem: We already live in what economists of a century ago would have considered a “post-scarcity” level of productivity; poverty still exists. It will never be enough to simply “produce” our way out of poverty. Who is entitled to the profits, who has ownership, still matters. > > Comparative advantage is measured on an average level, like GNP; free trade still screws over many persons within the society. Unless you’re proposing some kind of neo-Blanquist wealth-sharing, free trade is socially _counter_-productive. > [@The "Longest Election Campaign in Modern Canada" Thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-longest-election-campaign-in-modern-canada-thread/726807/867): > > Look up phosphate-induced [algal blooms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algal_bloom) and get back to me, Pollyanna. > > In any case, what you’re calling “artificial” fertilizers are made of mined phosphate, and that supply will get more expensive and scarcer. Feeding people a fossil resource is unsustainable. It wasn’t really about high-yield ag, I just felt like sniping, since phosphate runoff is one of those things conservationists get bothered about all the time. We use a truly crazy (and unsustainable) amount of phosphate, and get a crazy amount of pollution. Hopefully someone will find a better way soon. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2015, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/3 "2015-10-27T09:24:57Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > It wasn’t really about high-yield ag, I just felt like sniping, since phosphate runoff is one of those things conservationists get bothered about all the time. We use a truly crazy (and unsustainable) amount of phosphate, and get a crazy amount of pollution. Hopefully someone will find a better way soon. They will. Genetic engineering. Vertical indoor gardening. Artifical food. Lots of game changing technologies coming online within the next couple of decades. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2015, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/4 "2015-10-27T10:33:04Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > If you didn’t insist on growing human population every generation, you wouldn’t have these problems. I’m of the opinion that every breeding age individual should be injected with the equivalent of a Norplant device that only gets disabled when at least some minimal conditions are met e.g., a proven ability to provide for their spawn, the ability to calculate the change from a dollar transaction, professed unbelief in Santa, fairies, djinn, devils, angels, jewish zombies, pedophilic prophets, etc. I’m also of the opinion that Canada was just great with 2/3 of the people it has now. But until I’m elected (or my plans come to fruition) Evil Overlord, people are going to have babies and the option to let them starve to death isn’t one that should be on the table just because there might be an environmental impact. Want to save the environment? Stop people from having babies. And every environmentalist who has kids is a hypocrite. > [@](#): > > But hey, bitching about environmentalists, that’s sure to somehow magically help. :rolleyes: People who promote ‘organic’ aren’t necessarily environmentalists because sometimes the ‘dirty’ option is more efficient than the ‘green’ one. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2015, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/5 "2015-10-27T10:57:15Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > I pointed out that using fossil resources for fertilizer isn’t sustainable, and got this in response. Well, it’s sustainable for the next 40, 000 years or so. If your scale of sustainable exceeds 40, 000 years, then nothing is sustainable. Either there’s nothing to worry about, or nothing worth worrying about. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2015, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/6 "2015-10-27T13:40:16Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Here’s the problem: We already live in what economists of a century ago would have considered a “post-scarcity” level of productivity; poverty still exists. It will never be enough to simply “produce” our way out of poverty. Who is entitled to the profits, who has ownership, still matters. “Poverty still exists” hides the fact that the proportion of people living in poverty has dropped like a stone in the industrial age, despite rapidly increasing population. It’s estimated the percentage of people living in poverty was around 10 times higher in 1815 than 2015 ([cite](http://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/world-poverty/)). That’s not to imply everything’s hunky-dory and poverty / income inequality are things of the past. But it’s very misleading to suggest increasing productivity has failed to improve lives. > [@Uzi](#): > > Want to save the environment? Stop people from having babies. And every environmentalist who has kids is a hypocrite. Am I being whooshed? I think education / providing birth control is a more plausible and ethical means of lowering population growth. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2015, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/7 "2015-10-27T14:33:51Z")
I see good reasons to bitch about extreme left environmentalists and those who spread misinformation. It makes scares about phosphate running out (bizarre misunderstanding) and undermines a more effective agriculture drawing on the genetic engineering to allow for adaptation of higher yields to the more fragile and saline soils. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2015, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/8 "2015-10-27T14:38:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Outlook for high-yield agriculture is not good. It’s not clear in your OP but…well, why? Phosphorus? Doesn’t seem [likely](http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2013/04/01/phosphorus-essential-to-life-are-we-running-out/). Seems to me the outlook for high-yield agriculture is pretty good. It better be, since if it’s not then a hell of a lot of people are going to starve. From the linked cite: > [@](#): > > Phosphorus, the 11th most common element on earth, is fundamental to all living things. It is essential for the creation of DNA, cell membranes, and for bone and teeth formation in humans. It is vital for food production since it is one of three nutrients (nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus) used in commercial fertilizer. Phosphorus cannot be manufactured or destroyed, and there is no substitute or synthetic version of it available. There has been an ongoing debate about whether or not we are running out of phosphorus. Are we approaching peak phosphorus? In other words, are we using it up faster than we can economically extract it? > > In fact, phosphorus is a renewable resource and there is plenty of it left on earth. Animals and humans excrete almost 100 percent of the phosphorus they consume in food. In the past, as part of a natural cycle, the phosphorus in manure and waste was returned to the soil to aid in crop production. Today phosphorus is an essential component of commercial fertilizer. Because industrial agriculture moves food around the world for processing and consumption, disrupting the natural cycle that returned phosphorus to the soil via the decomposition of plants, in many areas fertilizer must now be continually applied to enrich the soil’s nutrients. > > Most of the phosphorus used in fertilizer comes from phosphate rock, a finite resource formed over millions of years in the earth’s crust. Ninety percent of the world’s mined phosphate rock is used in agriculture and food production, mostly as fertilizer, less as animal feed and food additives. When experts debate peak phosphorus, what they are usually debating is how long the phosphate rock reserves, i.e. the resources that can economically be extracted, will hold out. > > Pedro Sanchez, director of the Agriculture and Food Security Center at the Earth Institute, does not believe there is a shortage of phosphorus. “In my long 50-year career, “ he said. “Once every decade, people say we are going to run out of phosphorus. Each time this is disproven. All the most reliable estimates show that we have enough phosphate rock resources to last between 300 and 400 more years.” ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2015, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/9 "2015-10-27T15:02:07Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Am I being whooshed? I think education / providing birth control is a more plausible and ethical means of lowering population growth. Education in general, sex ed, and improved economic conditions are the most realistic solutions at this point. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2015, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/10 "2015-10-27T15:23:15Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > I’m of the opinion that every breeding age individual should be injected with the equivalent of a Norplant device that only gets disabled when at least some minimal conditions are met e.g., a proven ability to provide for their spawn… In other words, you dislike freedom, especially for poor people. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2015, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/11 "2015-10-27T20:38:31Z")
Ooh! That’s the solution! Men made of straw! ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/12 "2015-10-28T01:24:30Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > In other words, you dislike freedom, especially for poor people. Soooo, the rest of us should have to deal with expensive environmental protection measures and a destroyed environment because some person (any person, you brought up the people being ‘poor’) wants to breed. I ain’t against them practicing all they want, btw, if that’s your concern. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/13 "2015-10-28T02:17:25Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > (any person, you brought up the people being ‘poor’) Actually it was you who brought up poor people, as anyone who reads your first post can plainly see. You said that people’s right to have children should be taken away except if people have “proven ability to provide for their spawn”, obviously meaning that you would deny the poor but not the rich such freedom. Now it appears that after supporting eugenics in your first post, you’re running away from what you wrote. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/14 "2015-10-28T02:53:37Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Actually it was you who brought up poor people, as anyone who reads your first post can plainly see. You said that people’s right to have children should be taken away except if people have “proven ability to provide for their spawn”, obviously meaning that you would deny the poor but not the rich such freedom. ‘proven ability’ doesn’t mean they are rich. And while people may have the freedom to breed all they want, they should also take responsibility to not breed when others have to support them in that activity. Where’s my freedom from supporting you from doing things that directly affect me? And I’m not talking about supporting schools so children can get an education, or if, unforeseen, you lose your job after having kids, but taking money out of my pocket because you know there is no way you can support your kid on your own in your current circumstances. And I’m not denying anyone. I was answering the contention that I am in full support of people breeding willynilly as purported by **foolsguinea**. Yet, where is your condemnation of her? What I’ve written is my opinion and is very unlikely to ever be implemented. She wants to stop high-yield agriculture, and given the anti-gmo crowd out there, is far more likely to see her wish. That would cause uncounted numbers of people starving in the world. Any solution I can dream up would prevent those people from being around in the first place and at most prevent people from popping out kids to their hearts content. No one starves, the environment is saved, but some people end up butt hurt at not being able to be selfish by breeding us into oblivion. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/15 "2015-10-28T05:18:04Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > ‘proven ability’ doesn’t mean they are rich. That’s dodging the point. Obviously if you’re saying that you want to take away reproductive freedom from people who don’t have a “proven ability to provide” for them, any reasonable reader would conclude that your goal is to take away reproductive freedom from poor people. What else could it reasonably mean? > [@](#): > > And while people may have the freedom to breed all they want, they should also take responsibility to not breed when others have to support them in that activity. Where’s my freedom from supporting you from doing things that directly affect me? You tell me. Does the Bill of Rights give you freedom from supporting others from doing things that directly affect you? Does the Geneva convention do so? Or the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights? If none of those or any other documentation of basic human rights gives you any such freedom, then it would appear you don’t have any such freedom. > [@](#): > > And I’m not talking about supporting schools so children can get an education, or if, unforeseen, you lose your job after having kids, but taking money out of my pocket because you know there is no way you can support your kid on your own in your current circumstances. Who’s taking money out of your pocket, eh? I find it difficult to believe that any poor person is taking your money by force. If you object to the government taking money from you by force, then you should become a libertarian and advocate for less government, rather than for more government. > [@](#): > > And I’m not denying anyone. I was answering the contention that I am in full support of people breeding willynilly as purported by **foolsguinea**. Yet, where is your condemnation of her? A classic dodge. You can’t defend what you wrote with facts or logic, so you instead point to some other poster and say “where is your condemnation of her”? Whether or not I criticize anything that **foolsguinea** said, it won’t do anything to make your statements more logical, moral, or defensible. To state the bleedingly obvious, your first post was deliberately written to be nasty and bigoted, referring to human beings as “spawn”, “jewish zombies” which was an insult aimed at Christians, “pedophilic prophets” was intended to insult Muslims, etc… **foolsguinea** , however lacking her knowledge about the global phosphate fertilizer supply, instead writes mature and polite posts. People who behave in a mature and polite way tend to draw support, while those who are deliberately nasty and bigoted have the opposite effect, driving people away from their positions. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/16 "2015-10-28T06:11:11Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Well, it’s sustainable for the next 40, 000 years or so. Where does the 40,000 year figure come from? ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/17 "2015-10-28T10:15:08Z")
Farming is NOT the same as gardening. Gardening is NOT the same as farming. Yes with a garden you can have earthworms and use compost as your fertilizer to grow your tomatoes. However a farm is a commercial enterprise. Soil exists as a medium to hold the plants and all the soils nutrients probably have to be either supplied from artificial fertilizers or at least enhanced. You eat from your garden but most likely if your garden fails its not the end of the world. If a farmers crop fails - thats his income source. In farming we do the best we can to lower any methods of contamination from fertilizers and pesticides. The same cant be said for city dwellers and their lawns. So please give farmers a break. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/18 "2015-10-28T10:23:42Z")
And by “farmers” he means Archer Daniels Midland. Which is pretty much the image everyone conjures up when they here the term “farmer”. Not that I’m jumping on the OP’s bandwagon here, but let’s not over-romanticize the idea of farming. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/19 "2015-10-28T10:35:58Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Not that I’m jumping on the OP’s bandwagon here, but let’s not over-romanticize the idea of farming. Of course not - it’s an industry like any other. And as such, it benefits from constantly advancing technology. All of the agriculturalists I’ve known (including in my own period working on a farm) were very tech-savvy, constantly tinkering and innovating, and many of them had advanced college degrees in agriculture, engineering, botany and biology. There was nothing old-fashioned about what they did. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853/20 "2015-10-28T12:35:36Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > That’s dodging the point. Obviously if you’re saying that you want to take away reproductive freedom from people who don’t have a “proven ability to provide” for them, any reasonable reader would conclude that your goal is to take away reproductive freedom from poor people. What else could it reasonably mean? That rich people who can’t provide for their kids can’t have them? If the rich people are crack smoking alcoholics with a history of spousal abuse I’m all for them to be disallowed as well. Even if you take it to mean that poor people shouldn’t be allowed to have kids, so what? Why should people who can’t keep their kids from starving or care for them effectively be allowed to have them? > [@](#): > > If none of those or any other documentation of basic human rights gives you any such freedom, then it would appear you don’t have any such freedom. Because the freedoms that we should be able to enjoy are in total summed up in those documents? That those documents are written in stone and can’t be changed as societies change? > [@](#): > > Who’s taking money out of your pocket, eh? I find it difficult to believe that any poor person is taking your money by force. And I’m not stopping them from reproducing by expressing my opinion, am I? Maybe someone will listen and decide not to reproduce thus reducing all of our collective tax burden and help save the environment in the process. > [@](#): > > Whether or not I criticize anything that **foolsguinea** said, it won’t do anything to make your statements more logical, moral, or defensible. What is the root cause of anthropogenic pollution? People. Logical. How to stop pollution? Get rid of people. Logical. My solution is to prevent them from breeding at such a level as to increase the population. Logical. The morality of doing so is debatable. Foolsguinea’s is to actively cause them to starve to death. Illogical. The morality of doing so isn’t debatable. > [@](#): > > To state the bleedingly obvious, your first post was deliberately written to be nasty and bigoted, referring to human beings as “spawn”, “jewish zombies” which was an insult aimed at Christians, “pedophilic prophets” was intended to insult Muslims, etc… Kids are spawn. A jewish zombie is the equivalent of santa and the tooth fairy. That someone takes offense at it is no concern of mine. I’m just exercising my freedom of expression. If they don’t like being called out on worshiping zombies, then they probably should stop doing so. Mohammed married a girl of 6 and had sex with her at 9. Logically, what do you call people who do that? The insult is to the rest of us having to cater to such beliefs. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/outlook-for-high-yield-agriculture-is-not-good/735853.md?page=2)