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[Diana Duncan <dianaduncan AT contentdb.net>]

OK, since I'm in the mood for controversial topics, this one occurred 
to me.  WARNING -- WARNING -- WARNING: don't read this if you aren't in 
the same mood!  I'm going to write some probably offensive things!

On Thursday, Feb 12, 2004, at 05:41 US/Eastern, James Dasher wrote:

> IIRC, the Constitution originally mandated one Representative for 
> every 60,000 people.  Today, the number is capped at 435.  Thus, each 
> citizen matters less as the population grows.  It ain't quite taxation 
> without representation, but it's certainly taxation with less and less 
> representation.
>
> I'm familiar with arguments against removing the limit, and they all 
> boil down to "it wouldn't work".  But telling citizens that they're 
> too dumb to figure out how to manage to govern themselves is hardly 
> worthy of a government supposedly of, by, and for those same citizens.
>
> With almost 300,000,000 people in the U.S., we'd have almost 5,000 
> Representatives.  North Carolina, with roughly 8,000,000 people, would 
> have more than 100 Representatives.  Socialists, Greens, Libertarians, 
> Conservatives, Reformists, and others would all have a chance to elect 
> someone to represent them.

Why don't people talk about Zero Population Growth and Negative 
Population Growth any more?  Overpopulation contributes to so many of 
the problems on our planet today.  The world used to be able to rely on 
periodic massive wars or plagues to control the population, but we seem 
to have curbed their effectiveness.  (At least for now...the overuse of 
antibiotics may come back to kick us in the ass, and it seems viruses 
are mutating pretty darn fast lately).

As a personal choice, I prefer to limit my offspring.  However, what 
worries me is that it seems that only stupid people have lots of 
children nowadays.  Most educated people are concerned with careers and 
with providing safe, happy upbringings for their children, and rightly 
conclude that smaller families make this more likely.  Uneducated or 
extremely religious folks make the opposite choice.  So what worries me 
is...should educated folks have more children to combat a population 
explosion of idiots?  Not that idiots necessarily beget more idiots (or 
vice versa with the non-idiots) but you can probably understand my 
concern.

Have at it.

Diana