Population and Scarcity: A Model of the Inevitable Dystopia

In Annika’s Ericksen’s presentation of the Children, Livestock, and Wealth in Niger, an ongoing dilemma in similar, poverty-stricken countries; the growth of population and the lack of resources to provide prove to be the causes for famine, disease and low mortality. 

 The more exposure that poor countries receive, the lifestyle dictated by scrambling funds and rationing food—constantly stuns me. And although moral values have now been resourced by the material in this class, I still wonder, in awe, how people can ignore the causalities of these situations. When poverty dominates the majority of the world, the effects are towering—they inevitably spread and affect everyone. It’s a slippery slope of the fragile nature of the human species.

 Let me provide a daunting example, and correlate the happenings to Robbins’ Population and Scarcity.

 The biggest, and arguably the worst pandemic to hit the human species was the Bubonic Plague, “The Black Death” which wiped nearly 30-60% of the world’s population in a matter of several years. Under the microscope, this disease was caused by a rat flea that infected the lymphatic system, with further outbreaks it spread to the lungs and was transferred through the exposure of a simple cough. Now initially, the bacteria was practically harmless—it lived in the digestive tract of street animals. 

 So how did such a tame disease, a disease that had once taken several lives in Justinian’s reign and thus suppressed, conquer Europe?

In the centuries prior to the outbreak, population was on an exponential incline. The Middle Ages had settled, religion was enforced, and the kings were as strong as ever. New technologies, inventions and opportunities for empire expansion clearly separated the nobles from the poor—by drastic standards. The majority of men saw their livelihood in farming and livestock. Thus, families began to grow—children were bred to benefit the farm and look after their overworked parents. 

As times began to get tougher with the hostile nature of rulers, large families were forced on the street to beg, live in dumps and fight for their keep. When the outbreak happened, it affected the majority of the poor population. That was the group of people who provided food for others, roamed every corner in the city and served in higher-class homes. With the immense transmission of the virus, the nobles were thus affected. People at the Opera picked up the virus by the cleaning crew an hour prior, priests were infected from showing up at a local sermon, food and meat also caused infection.

 The virus does not care for the social class. The multitude of people in one area—interlinked with one another was the major cause of the fire like spread. 

 How is this any different from what is growing today? Granted we have improved technologies and more communication—places like Niger are too similar. Like Robbin’s publication suggests, scarcity will always prevail within a growing generation. There is simply never enough resource, and those who have it, save for their kin.

 It is imperative to consider countries on the brink of destruction by famine and the fragile nature of human affliction. The causalities of a possible infection can affect the rest of the world. If your moral character is not prominent enough to urge you to help others in need, then maybe the scare of self preservation does the job.