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To: Dr. Brian Kopp
Why have only two children? Why not one? Why not none? What policymakers have discovered is they do not know how to get couples to put the brakes on fertility decline. They do not know how to stop couples from stopping having children.

The decline in birth rates is old, old news (at least to anyone who's been paying attention for the past several decades). Malthusian theorists believed that the population would inevitably expand geometrically, while resources could at most grow linearly (if indeed they weren't eventually exhausted). But it turns out that it is knowledge that expands geometrically, and the technological advances brought about by human knowledge and applied intelligence have vastly increased our effective resources. At the same time our greater wealth and standards of living and lifespans and health and leisure and education and other opportunities have resulted in a voluntary reduction in birth rates. So the Malthusian disaster scenario has gone Psssst.

If Mr. Ruse wants to increase birth rates, there's an easy formula for doing so: Destroy wealth and trade, suppress individual freedom, eliminate opportunity, substitute indoctrination for education, crush people's hope for a better future, and in general create a retrograde society in place of modern civilization. When poverty is pervasive and infant mortality is high and life expectancies are low, people may once again feel that they have to produce lots of children in hopes that at least some of them will survive and maybe even help support their parents in old age.

8 posted on 04/20/2002 11:11:19 PM PDT by dpwiener
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To: dpwiener
hey, remember how long it took for TIME magazine to run the cover story "men and women are different"!
9 posted on 04/20/2002 11:13:44 PM PDT by GeronL
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To: dpwiener
What about russia or china, both these countries satisfy most of your conditions for population growth, but both countries' growth rates are plummeting.
10 posted on 04/20/2002 11:23:52 PM PDT by borghead
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To: dpwiener
If Mr. Ruse wants to increase birth rates, there's an easy formula for doing so: Destroy wealth and trade, suppress individual freedom, eliminate opportunity, substitute indoctrination for education, crush people's hope for a better future, and in general create a retrograde society in place of modern civilization.

You mean we gotta vote for the Democrats?

13 posted on 04/20/2002 11:50:23 PM PDT by Friedrich Hayek
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