The Threat of Overpopulation on Mass-Production and Mass Consumption

The threat of overpopulation on mass-production and mass consumption

Introduction
It is quite plausible that a larger population is a resource to economic gains by stimulating mass-consumption and by providing mass-production at a low cost to business around the world, because there would be economies of scale, the division of labour would be facilitated by greater density of settlement and so forth. However, beyond a certain point, which is defined as overpopulation, diminishing returns might set in and these advantages of a larger population will vanish. In 1990, the world population was 1.6 billion people, currently a total of approximately 6 billion people inhabit the earth and this number is projected to reach 16.4 billion, more than double today’s population by the year 2060. As the population continues to explode, many researchers and theorists fear that Earth's carrying capacity will be met in the near future, and if the predictions come true, it will be tragic and devastating for many. The problem of overpopulation is an issue that faces societies around the world and is not just increasing steadily, but exponentially. The problems of Overpopulation come with many social, economical, environmental issues. Although problems of overpopulation cannot necessarily be prevented and eliminated, technology is being used to help improve the situations. In this essay, I want to focus the attention on the threat of overpopulation to management’s ethos of mass-production and mass-consumption by using three illustrations. In the following discussion, I will first examine the negative consequence of resources shortage and the environmental degradation, which are the most direct effects caused by overpopulation to mass-production and mass-consumption. This will be followed by the threat of the rising unemployment and social unrest to management.

The 3 illustrations I want to use are the overpopulation in China, India and Australia respectively. With just over 1.3 billion people, China is the world’s most population country, taking up roughly 25% of the world’s population. Specifically, for every kilometer, approximately 139.6 people are living in the radius. Overpopulation has been such a problem that China has confined each couple to bear only one child. However, In the next few decades, India, the world's second most populous country is expected to surpass China in population. Also, India's high population growth is not only focused on the poor sections of society but also results in sub-standard conditions for growing segments of the Indian population. The last illustration is Australia, as it is regard as a “last frontier” by many people because it has a relatively small population of just over 18 million people together with vast amount of mineral wealth and resources. Is Australia is not safe from the challenge of overpopulation, then who can be? In the following analysis, I will use the sever phenomenon caused by overpopulation in these three countries to illustrate the threat of overpopulation on current management.

Scarcity of resources and environment degradation
It is obvious that overpopulation results in mass-consumption in a large extent. The average level of consumption is very high and a majority of people consume a large amount of goods and services. In addition, mass-production is in reality the process of utilizing more energy and resources to increase the productivity and efficiency. To put it simply, the more inhabitants living in the earth, the greater the need. Because of overpopulation, people consume more, putting increasing strains on the resources that sustain mankind. However, those resources fail to deal with the burgeoning demand. In the following, I will analyse the effect of the shortage of two major resources, namely, food and energy, due to overpopulation, on mass-production and mass-consumption.

Assessment of food shortage

One of the main consequences of overpopulation is an increasing total demand for food. Specifically, insufficient growth in agricultural production may seriously harm the mass-production of the sector of agricultural, induce large scale hunger and malnutrition in the poor region, and even jeopardize the social economic development of the entire society. For example, India prides itself on having been self-sufficient in food production for decades, but the fact is that India has 16.8% of world’s population but only 2.42% of the land area and 4% of water resources. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute's 2011 Global Hunger Index, it ranks 67 out of 81 countries and has more than 200 million food-insecure people, the most in the world (Bureau Report, 2012). What is worse, according to UNICEF, a third of the world's malnourished children live in India and overpopulation seems to be one of the main reasons (World radio, 2012). Another example is the rapid population growth in Australia, triggering a process of land use to less and less and even to intensification. Also, because of the rapid growth in population, urban area considerably spread to farmland and natural areas, which affect the quality life of residents and reduced the functional capacity of natural resources (Cocks, 1996, 117). There is no doubt that the sever consequence of above examples are the result of overpopulation.

In order to tackle the problem of food shortage, one of the goals is to increase food and land production. And there are two methods to achieve these objectives, through extending cultivated land acreage as well as through increasing yields. However, both ways require a vast amount of investment in land development and irrigation. This put great threats on the mass-production of agriculture. Because rather than by increasing land productivity, most of the underdeveloped countries have until now responded to overpopulation by increasing more land acreage under cultivation; but the problem is that there are not enough arable land and most of countries have already exhausted the supply of arable land, therefore, they are facing a sudden need to increase yields, which is regard as significantly more difficult due to insufficient money ability to invest in technology to improve the land productivity. This great threat, challenging the mass-production in agriculture, probably explains why the developing countries are losing the capacity to feed themselves. In turn, this threat will ultimately result in a society of mass poverty, which is contrary to a society of mass-consumption.

Assessment of scarcity of energy

Another consequence of overpopulation is energy shortage. The abrupt increase in oil price, natural gas and coal, and the difficulty of discovery of new energy sources signal that energy supplies were virtually exhaustible.
For instance, in China, most major cities are facing power cut as the energy demand peaks; therefore, most of the factories are force to stop pumping out goods. India is another nation facing energy crisis. Insufficient of energy, such as coal, oil and natural gas, require India to import increasing amount of expensive fossil fuels, which haven taken toll on the India’s economic development. Also, in order to protect their domestic consumers from the global high cost of energy, most of the state-run energy companies are racking up billions of dollar in losses by selling relatively low price fossil fuel.

From the example above, we can see that the increasing demand of energy drive up prices of energy and raw materials and put pressure on ports and transportation lines. Thus, most of the energy-consuming factories have to save energy by reducing the energy intensity and improving energy efficiency. The high price of input and a wide margin for saving energy, again put a great threat on the mass-production of factories. Factories face a dilemma of balancing the energy conservation as well as the increased efficiency in the use of energy and the industrialization and the development process, which require a great consumption of power.

From the assessment of the shortage of food and energy, we can conclude that given present zooming consumption rates and the estimated increase in these rates because of overpopulation, the real per capital cost of providing people with a multitude of goods and services based on natural resources, such as water, food, raw materials, fossil fuels and so forth, will inevitably and markedly increase. What is worse,. Continuing population growth and the endless search for economic development have contributed to the environmental damage. In addition, environmental degradation may be imposed by the scarcity of natural resources

As Australia’s cities continue to grow, they are facing an increasing problem in disposal of solid waste. According to State of the Environment Advisory Council, each Australian produces 681 kilograms of garbage per year, while this figure is 513 kilograms in other industrial nations. Wainwright (1996) pointed out that New South Wales, the most populous state in Australia, is facing an environment crisis due to a growing mountain of tires being dumped on native bush land and private farming properties. Unscrupulous operators are dumping or burying more than one quarter of the five million tires worn out in New South Wales each year on secluded bush sites or leased private properties.

There is no doubt that most factories and companies have to deal with the environmental problem and of course the government will tackle the environmental pollution by fining the manufactories and make more environmental constraints on them. Therefore, Taking into account of the scarcity of resources and environment degradation, entrepreneurs suffer rising input prices such as land prices and price of raw materials because of the smaller amount of the resources and the difficulty to gain assess to the resource. This, In turn, manifests in higher price for goods and service, which consumers suffer from. This violates the low cost purpose of mass-production. As a consequence, overpopulation puts a great threat on companies, which focusing on mass-production to survive and even make profit in the competitive market. They have to invest considerable amount of money and energy into technology to cut the cost of the entire process of the mass-production and increase efficiency in order to achieve the leading position on the market. This will further exacerbate the competitive threats in the market. In addition, the society of mass consumption is the result of a higher purchasing power, as well as of social struggles for a better share of the production benefits. However, due to overpopulation, the price level rises and then the future purchasing power of money will go down and people are difficult to gain the benefit of mass-production. This also goes against the purpose of mass-consumption.

Increasing unemployment rate and social unrest

Overpopulation not only put great threat on the higher input prices for mass-production and on the difficulty of investing in technology to cut price and increase efficiency but also put great on sever social issues, such as increasing unemployment rate and social unrest. Because of overpopulation, the competition for available jobs is tremendous. According to the latest World Development Report by the World Bank, India’s youth unemployment was 9.9% for males and 11.3% for females in 2010, while, in 1985, the figures were 8.3% and 8%, respectively. The rising youth unemployment rate, is virtually 50% more than the national average, or total unemployment rate (Kundu, 2012).This figure is shocking. Another example of growing unemployment is the immigration problem in Australia. In Australia, immigrant, who mainly contributed to the rapid of population growth in Australia, adversely influence the unemployment issue. The increase in immigration create the excess supply of labour and hence unemployment. The immigration minister Chris Evans said he would decide whether to slash Australia’s migrant intake if the unemployment was continuously rising.

Thus, it is clear that because of overpopulation, the supply of labour excess the demand, which cause unemployment. This either forces down the real wage or the real wage rigidity. If the real wage falls, the disposable income will decrease as well. And because of the higher prices for goods and services caused by the shortage of resources, People do not have sufficient income to purchase a great amount of goods and services, greatly challenging the ethos of mass-consumption. As a result the ethos of mass-production is likely to be impaired, as mass-production in fact is backed by mass-consumption. In terms of social unrest, low income employees might strike in order to strive for higher income, leading to great social unrest. In addition, the conflicts between Pakistan and India on water resource are especially sensitive since both highly-populated, fast growing countries have nuclear weapons. This is one of the social problems exacerbated by a resource limitation because of overpopulation. It is no doubt that all the social unrest will jeopardize the usual operation of many factories and companies, and is therefore eventually challenge the ethos of mass-production and mass-consumption.

Conclusion
In sum, the stress and strain caused by overpopulation is actually so tangible that resources are mercilessly exploited to cater to the ever-increasing needs of growing population. Also, the the external environmental costs of population growth are pervasive and cumulative, as for each small incremental increase in population, there will be a large incremental impact on the environment since much of what is left is marginal and sensitive to disturbance. The increasing demand for the scarce resource and environmental degradation caused by overpopulation, result in the high price for input and producing goods. This surely goes against the low price purpose of mass-production. What is more, manager are difficult in finding feasible solutions to solve the high cost of operation and to solve the situation of low-consumption, caused by high-cost products and low real income. Also, the high unemployment rate and increasing social unrest caused by overpopulation impede the normal operation of production. We should know that he rapid rise in world population is not creating problems only for the developing countries. The whole world faces the problem that resources are being used up at an increasing rate, production cannot keep up with the demand of population increase, and the limited available jobs cannot meet up the large supply of employment. Unless all the countries of the world take united action to deal with the population explosion there will be more and more people fighting for a share of less and less land, food and fuel and the future will bring poverty, misery and war to us all.

Bureau Report (2012). Starving in India: the forgotten problem. Available at http://zeenews.india.com/exclusive/starving-in-india-the-forgotten-problem_5168.html (Assessed January 16, 2013)

World radio (2012).India Child Hunger: 25 Million Children Suffer From Malnutrition And Starvation. Available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/india-child-hunger_n_1517098.html (Assessed January 16, 2013)

Cocks, D.(1996). People Policy: Australian’s Population Choices. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.

Wainwright, R (1996). Bush, Farm Threatened by Illegal Type Dumping. The Sydney Morning Herald Januray 10 : 5.

State of the Environment Advisory Council(SEAC).(1996). Australia: State of the Environment. Collingwood, Victoria: CSIRO Publishing.

Kundu, K.K. (2012). Yong, Jobless and Indian. Available at http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/11/23/young-jobless-and-indian/ (Assessed January 16, 2013)

Immigration Department. (2008). Australia may cut immigration if unemployment rises. Available at http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national-old/migrant-cut-a-job-for-govt/story-e6freooo-1111117857262 (Assessed January 16, 2013)