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From: doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Population
Message-ID: <1102@terak.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Mar-86 15:33:10 EST
Article-I.D.: terak.1102
Posted: Tue Mar 18 15:33:10 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Mar-86 03:17:26 EST
References: <[MC.LCS.MIT.EDU].852574.860316.KFL>
Organization: Calcomp Display Products Division, Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Lines: 21

My apologies to net.space folk... I don't know how to route mail
from Usenet to mc.lcs.mit.edu...

> Nobody
> should have the right to decide those things for others.  I am not
> saying that I should sit in a control room somewhere and set the
> population and median income to some figure.  I don't think that I or
> any government has the power to do anything of the sort.  And if
> anyone did have such a power, they shouldn't.  There is no point in
> colonizing space, or even on living on Earth, unless we can be free.

What we have here is a fundamental opposition between "freedoms".  On
the one hand, the freedom to have as many children as you please; on
the other, the freedom to live in conditions better than overcrowded
starving squalor.

This kind of dilemma can be seen in microcosm in the smokers vs. anti-
smokers debate.  Perhaps whatever truce is worked out in that conflict
will provide guidance on the question of population control.
-- 
Doug Pardee -- CalComp -- {elrond,savax,seismo,decvax,ihnp4}!terak!doug