Let Them Starve?

As you know, were all about asking questions and expanding
perspectives here at the Ranting Walrus. As usual, we have
for you another unusual idea: "Why don't we let the
starving portion of the human population die off instead 
of increasing the population more so we can equal the
amount of food we have since we greatly outnumber our prey?"

The basic assumption here is that there's not enough food to
go around. I honestly don't know how much it would take to
feed the entire population of the world, but i had 3 meals
today, yesterday, the day before... And don't forget, this
country is having an 'obesity epidemic!' Its not that
there's not enough food, but the distribution of that food
is uneven.

Furthermore, there was some pertinent data collected from

the biosphere experiments. (If you're unfamiliar, a group

of scientists made a big giant dome that contained several

different climate zones (a tropical rainforest section, a

tundra, savanna, deciduous rainforest...) which they lived

in for two years, sealed off from the rest of the world)

They came up short on harvest, and were forced to

drastically restrict their diet, eating only one large salad

everyday. However, their health had never been better,

indicating that we would actually function better eating

less, which if acted upon, would free up even more resources

to be shared among the starving.

An interesting side note: when your stomach is empty, it
secretes a hormone called ghrelin which has been positively
correlated with increased creativity and intelligence. My
thoughts are this is an evolutionary adaptation: when you're
starving, its because you haven't been able to get food. Your
stomach makes ghrelin, and suddenly you start thinking in new
ways, and devise a new plan to get your meal. The existence
of such a hormone also validates dreams of smart drugs...
but thats probably not happening anytime soon.

And as far as competition: why compete when you can
cooperate? Cooperation just makes more sense: you're
getting another person to do your work, and it doesn't
get much better than that. Helping people is not only
a better thing to do morally, but its just as good if
you look at it in terms of numbers. If you do nice things
for people, they are more likely to return the favor.
You feel good about yourself, thus boosting self image.

So its in your best interests to help those around you.
Hence why we need to devise ways to help these people
living in squalor worldwide. I had an idea a few months
ago to potentially cure a lot of diseases with nothing
but a pocket full of jelly beans, a head full of lies,
and more optimism than is necessary. Imagine a bunch of
fake doctors, giving jellybeans as placebo drugs to
people and telling them its medicine that will cure AIDS,
malaria, etc. There are different ways to boost the
effectiveness of a placebo: a red pill will work better
than a blue pill; a happy doctor will have better
results than a grumpy or indifferent doctor. Unfortunately,
this idea was brought before a big debate in the APA and
they declared it unethical, but that just means I'm not
going to have their support. If I can get a success rate
of 51%, that means more people are benefiting from it
than not, so its better for the majority of people if
it works. That's the only problem... I don't know for
sure exactly how effective this will be. I can say that
placebos from other studies have had success rates of
up to 50% (these were for antidepressants, which were
found to be just as effective as the actual meds... don't
bother buying the real drugs, buy the illegal ones, they
will cheer you up with much more reliability than the
legal ones will), but these were for painkillers. Since
pain is a purely psychological phenomenon, applying a
new mode of thinking would be one way to cure that problem,
but would it be enough to work on other, germ based
diseases. There is evidence to indicate yes. Although with
viruses it might not be the same: you can reduce the
symptoms of the person, but once you have a virus you
will always be a carrier. So even though you won't suffer
from AIDS, you can still pass it onto those who don't have it.

And for increasing the population, yes, there are a lot of
people on this earth, probably more than our food supply can
handle, but who are we to deny the basic needs of life for
our fellow man? I believe you should lend a hand wherever
you can, especially if it would save a life. Even if you have
the people compete over their resources, you'd have survival
of the fittest. But then again, cooperation instead of
competition would allow more people to survive... which
means the most cooperative people would survive. Who knows,
maybe if we can get in harmony with our planet it will
sustain more life than we originally thought.

This is all very idealistic, but man has been killing off
his brothers since recorded history, so I don't seriously
think theres any future hope of humans forgetting about
things like anger and revenge and pursuing cooperation over
competition. Humans will be humans, and there will probably
never be world peace, and that my whole plan for the future
will never happen as well. This question is more a predictive
model than a plan of action. Those in starving lands will
perish while the rich hoard up all the food.

That's just human nature.