The Future of World Population :: Papers

The Present and Future The growth of the world's population is a problem that many people see as being addressed at some point in the future. While we live in a country that is reaping the benefits of a superpower, most of the United States is disconnected from the problems of population growth. In this paper, I intend to address three major issues. How long will we be able to support our planets food needs? How can we deal with population growth in the present day? And How come certain areas tend to have larger population growth than other areas? But first in this paper, I will see how the theories of sociologists and demographers fit into the Earth's population problem. THEORIES MARX 1818-1883 Karl Marx viewed a capitalist society as an economic system that was bound to fail. In Marx's opinion this eminent failure was based in the design of the system. According to Marx, In the capitalist economy there are two major groups; the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie are t hose who own the means of production, have the power. The proletariat are those that work for the bourgeoisie and are at their mercy. At the economy develops, the gap between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat grows wider and eventually all the capital is controlled by a small percentage of the population and the proletariat is forced into poverty. To someone with little or no sociological background, the above paragraph has nothing to do with population as a social problem. But if you fit population into Marx's description of the capitalist system, it is more relevant than at first glance. The best way to make this point clear is to provide two hypothetical situations. Family X is a middle class family that is doing well financially and they tend to have more children than if they are not making so much money. But as the bourgeoisie gains more and more control, families like X have their income driven down and ultimately have fewer children. Families must have enough money, food, etc. to survive. If they don't have these goods and they can't control their wages, they must control they must control an aspect of their lives that would allow them to survive, whether or not to have children. Family Z is an extremely wealthy family that more or less monopolizes an aspect of their economy. As the economy progresses, family Z is able to drive down the wages of their workers thereby increasing their profit.