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[James Dasher <jdasher AT ibiblio.org>]

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