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Saturday, November 10, 2007
Population Doom
Time was, a number of prestigious persons, among them the late Isaac Asimov, proclaimed loudly that the geometrically expanding population of the world would eventually -- soon -- become "unsustainable." That is, there would be too many of us for Mother Earth to feed, clothe, house, and keep at a comfortable temperature. How many would that be? The number offered varied from one prognosticator to the next, but all were utterly confident in their vision. Quite as confident as Thomas Malthus.
There's just this one niggling little problem with that vision: It's wrong and has been proved wrong. Many fine minds, prominent among them the late Julian Simon, applied appropriate observations and economic reasoning to the matter, and in so doing demolished all the "evidence" brought to the subject by the population-control activists. Professor Simon himself converted Isaac Asimov, who, in a remarkable display of intellectual honesty, proclaimed publicly how important it is for a scientist always to remain aware that he might be wrong -- about anything.
But just because a thesis has been refuted doesn't mean it will die off. Indeed, some of the most wrongheaded ideas in intellectual history remain important players in Mankind's discourse, entirely because of the dedication of their adherents. Socialism and communism. Mercantilism. Keynesian monetarism. Islam.
This morning, the esteemed Mark Alger, one of your Curmudgeon's daily stops, links to this important piece by Eric Scheie:
I hate it when patently crazy ideas become respectable. But they do -- especially when they're promulgated as morality. (Even scientific morality!)
Anyway, I found this John Feeney guy (linked in a Mark Steyn column that Glenn Reynolds had linked earlier), and I just couldn't leave him alone.
Nor should I. Guys like him just won't leave the rest of the world alone with their obnoxious ideas, so the least I can do is write a blog post.
If you'd care to read Feeney's article yourself, here's the link. If not, here's Eric's excerpt of its thrust:
Feeney wants to shrink the world's population. Drastically. At his blog, he provides numbers. He wants the numbers to go down from what he's decided is an "unsustainable" 9 billion down to a more "sustainable" 2-3 billion, and features a long screed by J. Kenneth Smail explaining why "the long-term sustainability of civilization will require not just a leveling-off of human numbers as projected over the coming half-century, but a colossal reduction in both population and consumption."it is past time to think boldly about the midrange future and to consider alternatives that go beyond merely slowing or stopping the growth of global population. The human species must develop and quickly implement a well-conceived, clearly articulated, flexible, equitable, and internationally coordinated program focused on bringing about a very significant reduction in human numbers over the next two or more centuries. This effort will likely require a global population shrinkage of at least two-thirds to three-fourths, from a probable mid-to-late 21st century peak in the 9 to 10 billion range to a future (23rd century and beyond) "population optimum" of not more than 2 to 3 billion.Well, how's that for a utopia?
In the BBC piece that Steyn links, Feeney explains that this must be made to happen -- for the children!
Billions could die. At the very least, we risk our children inheriting a bleak world, empty of the richness of life we take for granted....What he's saying is simple.
Stop having children!
For the children!
That last bit got your Curmudgeon laughing so hard that coffee streamed out of his nose. (Yes, he turned away from the keyboard in time. There's a pile of unpaid bills that will never be quite the same, though.)
But wait a moment. Why don't we do something a little different this fine morning? (Here's hoping it's fine wherever you are; on Long Island it's drizzly and grim.) Let's stipulate Mr. Feeney's statement of necessity, and work out how we might bring his desired end state about by morally acceptable means. This will require some "outside the box" thinking, Gentle Reader, so get properly caffeinated before you proceed.
First, let's have a look at the current statistics on childbearing, worldwide:
What do those figures suggest to you, Gentle Reader? Who's doing the bulk of the reproducing? We of the nasty advanced industrialized nations, or the teeming masses of the Third World? One guess only.
If it's the teeming masses doing the breeding, then plainly, it's the teeming masses whose behavior we must change first. But how could we bring that about?
Now, now. No suggestions involving weapons of mass destruction. We've agreed on moral means only, so play nice!
The correlation between economic advancement and the limitation of fertility is too strong to be ignored; we must take it as an indication of a causal relation. Therefore, to get the teeming masses to stop having quite so many kids, we have to raise them economically and technologically to our level. But the primitive nations of the world are the way they are mainly because of coercive control by rapacious governments. People don't advance economically or technologically where the State can arbitrarily compel, prohibit, and expropriate them. So there's a precondition to lifting them to our estate, one the Feeneys of the world might not be willing to sanction: we have to liberate them first.
Therefore, to satisfy the demands of the population-doom crowd:
- The United States and whatever allies we can swing behind us must systematically invade each and every Third World nation on Earth,
- Depose its government,
- Set up an occupation regime like unto MacArthur's occupation of Japan,
- Compel the nation to accept liberal capitalist republican government under constitutional constraint,
- And go home only when the new order is too firmly entrenched to be displaced by a new tyranny.
All that having been done, the ordinary forces of industrialization and market economics would do the rest. The importance of children as auxiliary workers, vital to a subsistence economy bereft of advanced technological "force multipliers," would have been eliminated; just as here in the West, people would have children only for the sake of having children, not as a form of conscript labor and old-age security.
What's that you say? We'd have to militarize to levels well beyond those of World War II? We'd have to conscript every able-bodied man between eighteen and forty? We'd have to convert three-fourths of our economy to wartime activities? Hey, it's for the children! Whatsamatta wit'choo, ya hate kids or somethin'?
How do you suppose the Feeneys would view that prospect? America the Imperator, remaking the other nations of the world in her image whether they like it or not.
But it would be for the children. You know, the ones whose existence we'd be trying to preclude. Our time's one and only unimpeachable moral imperative. So when can we get started?
The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn. -- Martin Luther
(Welcome to the Eternity Road blogroll, Eric.)
Comments
Just for the record, that was “The Adorable Gabrielle Dolly,” and not “The Esteemed Mark Alger”—for all I wallow in the esteem. ::grin::
But she won’t tell you that; she’s pouting ‘cause her “Nummy Franny” dissed her.
Poo’ bebbeh.
But you know she does adore you, Fran.
On a more cereal note, I’ve frequently wondered to my self—“Self” I wonder “Just what exactly is wrong with the idea of a Pax Americana?”
And you know? My more-or-less classically liberal self doesn’t really have a good answer that doesn’t involve a lot of narcissistic hand-wringing about how “We’d become something we didn’t like.”
Like what? Liberators of the world? May the Lord smite me with it!
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 11/10/2007 at 11:36 AMMr. Feeney offers such a solution because he knows that his children wont be part of the excess population.
Posted by on 11/10/2007 at 12:37 PMThe world is a great big bath tub and the faucet is always turned on. Still nobody has figured out a way to close the drain. When that happens it’s time to worry. Population fearmongering is just another in a long list of excuses to control intimate aspects of people’s lives.
By the way, I think Akaky is dead right about Feeney knowing his children won’t be part of the excess.
Posted by Jim Sullivan on 11/12/2007 at 08:41 AMI always wonder why the reduce-the-human-population crowd doesn’t preach by example and go first. I don’t require anything as dramatic as a mass self-immolation, just quiet suicides with notes left on how they did it for the ‘future of the planet’. (Tongue removed from cheek now
)
Posted by on 11/12/2007 at 04:25 PMWe mustn’t forget the classics Famine, 1975!: America’s decision: Who will survive? and 1989 : Population Doomsday.
Posted by Joseph Hertzlinger on 11/13/2007 at 03:19 AMThank you for the link, and I’m honored to be on your blogroll!
Posted by Eric Scheie on 11/13/2007 at 10:04 PM
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