Posted on 01/06/2006 1:56:39 PM PST by Caleb1411
I know we're nowhere close to our women having an average 7-9 children, but the author of this article is suggesting that we ought to. Meanwhile, take a look at the countries where the average woman IS having that many children, and ask yourself if we should be emulating their social institutions.
Go visit hellholes like Nigeria. Malthus' predictions are being fulfilled in places where birth rates have been way beyond replacement level. The people who are living most comfortably in today's world are the ones living in countries with very low birth rates. Even China, where the standard of living is still very low by Western standards, has made huge gains in standard of living over the time period that their population growth has been ruthlessly restrained -- the same time period during which fast-reproducing African and South/Central American countries went from bad to much much worse. The relationship between the U.S. economic and social dominance in the world, and its demographics, is not coincidental.
No, wait ... we starved to death in the 1970's because there were too many of those black, brown, and yellow people in the world, right, Dr. Erlich? Or did we freeze to death when we ran out of oil? My memory is so fuzzy these days, what with the global warming ...
If by "we" you mean white people, no, because we haven't been reproducing at a geometric rate. It's the black, brown, and yellow people who have been starving to death and suffering under murderous regimes. But the "no reason to limit birth rates" crowd never seems much concerned about that. As long as "we" aren't starving, the rapid increase in the world population, and its accompanying starvation and murderous regimes aren't a problem, right?
I care now, but everybody will care when it reaches a point where the regionalization of the problem that has held up so far, breaks down, and the swarms of hungry illiterate masses crossing borders into comfortable countries get too big to be managed at all. Then "we" will start starving and living under dictators like Mugabe and "Dear Leader". I'd rather turn the tide now. If we wait too long, we won't be in any position to try to improve the standard of living of "those black, brown, and yellow people"; we'll just be another color swatch in the global mass of misery. And the notion that we should try to compete with the other color swatches, by reproducing faster than they do, is beyond ludicrous. That will just result in us being a larger color swatch in the global mass of misery.
I think governments should just be allowed to kill off "excess" people, like the Chinese do. That will solve all the world's economic problems.
Personally, I think strong incentives to reduce the birth rate would be a much better approach. We've already seen some success with that approach in this country, when we stopped paying mothers who were already on welfare more money for having more babies.
Nobody should be getting welfare, anyway.
Interesting article. Thank you!
I'm with you on population growth. Too many dang people where I am already ;~D (And that's not the only one of this man's goals I don't happen to share)
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