Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

internetworkers - Re: [internetworkers] Population [was Representation [was Candidate Match for Pres]]

internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: James Dasher <jdasher AT ibiblio.org>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Population [was Representation [was Candidate Match for Pres]]
  • Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 22:41:13 -0500

Okay, okay, I'll bite. Placing my devil's advocate hat firmly on my head....

On Thursday, Feb 12, 2004, at 14:37 US/Eastern, Diana Duncan wrote:

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.

I used to see ZPG ads all the time in places like the New Republic. Since I stopped reading the dead tree version of that and other magazines, I haven't noticed the ads so much, but I would imagine the movements haven't gone anywhere. But countries with the most restrictive breeding policies (like China) tend to be the biggest s(p/h)itholes on the planet (again, like China). You could probably make a pretty strong case that population control and environmental degradation are intertwined.

Sure, there are exceptions. And sure, there are wars. Unfortunately, the people able to kill the most people - like us Americans, for example - also attempt to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties, where possible. The people with the most primitive weapons - I'm thinking of places like Rwanda, here - somehow manage to do more with a couple warehouses full of machetes than we do with Tomahawks (the missiles, of course).

I'm going to go out on a limb, though, and guess that Rwandans would settle for a little less population control.

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.

I don't personally care whether you decide to have one child, none, or fourteen. In the aggregate, though, your choices have economic, political, and cultural effects. ZPG opponents might cite two examples. (Heck, they might cite more, but these are the two easiest ones to think of.)

First, if more people make decisions like you and your husband - or mate, or partner, or whatever term you prefer - and limit themselves to two-or-fewer, you don't have a replacement population. That means that fewer people will, for example, pay into Social Security. In other words, you're trading current comfort and convenience - the financial, physical, and emotional stress of multiple children outweighs that of one - for future benefit.

A couple caveats, just to keep people's e-toes from feeling e-bruised. If you don't care about Social Security - and there's no particular reason you should - then there's no need to worry. Also, you may not calculate current vs. future comfort. You may feel less capable of raising two or more children than you are of raising one, and decide to limit your progeny for altruistic rather than selfish reasons. I don't know, and, in the abstract, I don't really care.

(In the particular, I think kids are kinda neat, and don't doubt that you're a great mom. Unless you make -- Caelan, was it? -- eat peas, or brussels sprouts. In which case I'll bet you're a terrible mother who wants only the worst for her children. In fact, as everybody knows, brussels sprouts are a gateway food to things like grasshoppers and raw eggs. You really should try to be a better parent.)

The second effect is what some people call the "Roe Effect". That is, since people are products of both nature and nurture, people who practice population reduction will not have as many children as people who don't practice population reduction. Sure, children of pro-abortion (and birth control, and population reduction) parents may grow up to spawn seventeen children; just as a child born to anti-abortion parents may open a Planned Parenthood clinic. But, since evolution is a biological process, those who biologate will win out over those who biolodon't.

Anyways, there's two cents. They ain't my pennies. I ain't sayin' where my pennies is. But you said you were in a weird mood, and I thought the hallelujah chorus might've failed to satisfy your penchant for debate.

Though the stork video was pretty funny.

--
James Dasher
misterdasher dot com
IM misterdasher





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page