Are we facing an Overpopulation Doomsday or a Cornucopian Singularity? Al Fin makes the distinction most people want to ignore — we aren’t all in the same boat:
Who is right — doomers or Kurzweil? It depends upon where you live. If you live in a nation or region with a very low average population IQ, you are apt to see many examples of the activity pictured in the photo above — subsisting on castoff and detritus. Generations of philanthropists, NGOs, religious charities, government aid and assistance, etc. have been lavished upon countries such as Haiti only to see them sink into violence and deprivation time and again. Below a certain point, average IQ determines what a society’s destiny will be.Nations of high IQ, such as Japan, South Korea, China, and European countries, have the potential of creating cornucopian worlds in the near future, if the political classes are sufficiently constrained. North Korea, Mao’s China, the late USSR, etc. are examples of high IQ societies that allowed despotic governments to lead them into widespread misery and shortages of food and comforts.
I don’t think you need to agree with his largely genetic argument to recognize that the “developing” world is not developing at anywhere near the rate of the “developed” world.
You may be right about the “genetic argument” defining the fate of a nation, but you just forget one little thing on your argument.
Most of the nations you cited are heavily dependent on imports from developing nations. Once these third-world countries break their environment and become unable to produce anything, they will all die, and it doesn´t matter how smart they are.
Once Brazil destroys the Amazon forest, the entire USA and Canada will become a desert.
So, yes, no matter what people think, we are all in the same boat.