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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.sci
Subject: Re: Population control
Message-ID: <549@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 16-Aug-86 20:30:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.549
Posted: Sat Aug 16 20:30:57 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 18-Aug-86 01:10:15 EDT
References: <487@meccts.UUCP>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 103
Xref: watmath net.politics:18369 net.sci:1516

[Michael Stein]
>To say that
>the government has a right to interfere in such a personal choice,
>such as the choice to have children, is abhorrent.  

Since you do not provide any argument in support of this view, your
statement is mere name-calling.  Responsible people, in discussing
such an important issue, will want to do more than simply label
opposing views as "abhorrent".

>Authoritarian governments have never had this disposition against the
>government controlling such decisions.  The Chinese today practise
>forced abortions and infantcide.  Other totalitarian regimes such as
>the Nazi's would reward women for producing as many children (cannon
>fodder) as possible.  The view that coercive population control is a
>right of the state is not a view that is very compatible with a free
>society.  

Brilliant argument, Michael.  Some bad governments do it, sometimes
in bad ways, therefore it's intrinsically bad.  But the view that
everyone should be allowed to have as many children as they want,
with no attempt to use government to influence or control the
population level, is not a view that is very compatible with a good
life for future generations of humanity.  What alternative do you
suggest?  How about this one: letting the population increase until
war, genocide, disease, and/or famine stop the increase.  

Recommended background reading for studying population control
issues:  Garret Hardin's essay on "The Tragedy of the Commons" and
Hobbes's *Leviathan*.

>Even today, as several people have noted when talking about the
>Ethiopian problem, the world produces enough food.  The problem is
>distribution and storage.

My understanding is that the world currently produces enough food to
feed everyone, or nearly everyone, adequately.  But the enormous
problem of distributing the food to those who need it has been and
will continue to be aggravated by overpopulation, in various ways.
For example, overgrazing has resulted in desertification in the
Sahel.

An excellent introduction to the population crisis is the special
section (edited by the Ehrlichs) in the April 1986 *Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists*.  This issue is available for $3.50 from the
Bulletin at 5801 S. Kenwood, Chicago IL 60637.  Here is a quote from
the Ehrlichs' introductory essay:

  "Earth is overpopulated today by a very simple standard:  humanity is
  able to support itself -- often none too well, at that -- only by
  consuming its capital.  This consumption involves much more than the
  widely publicized depletion of stocks of fossil fuels and dispersion
  of other high-grade mineral resources.  Much more critical are the
  erosion of deep, rich agricultural soils, the diminution of our fresh
  water supply by pollution and mismanagement of groundwater, and the
  loss of much of the diversity of other life-forms that share the
  earth with us.  All these are intimately involved in providing humans
  with nourishment from the only significant source of income, the
  radiant energy of the sun, which, converted by photosynthetic plants
  into the energy of chemical bonds, supports essentially all life on
  the planet.  
  
  Two crucial points must be remembered.  The first is that with
  today's technology, humanity could not support anything like its
  current numbers without continually using its nonrenewable resource
  subsidy.  The second is that while exploiting that capital subsidy,
  civilization is continually degrading the systems that supply its
  income.  Consider only the accelerating extermination of other
  organisms, which is intimately connected with brute increase in the
  human population and its exploitation of the planet.
  
  Those organisms are working parts of the ecosystems that provide
  society with a wide variety of indispensable services, including
  regulation of the composition of the atmosphere, amelioration of
  weather, the generation and preservation of soils, the cycling of
  nutrients essential to agriculture and forestry, disposal of wastes,
  control of the vast majority of potential crop pests and carriers of
  human diseases, provision of food from the sea, and maintenance of a
  vast genetic library, from which humans have already drawn the very
  basis of civilization, and whose potential has barely been tapped.
  
  All of these services are directly or indirectly involved in
  providing necessities to humanity derived from our solar income.
  Ecologists standardly measure that income in terms of net primary
  productivity.  Net primary productivity is the total amount of the
  energy bound each year by plants in the process of photosynthesis,
  minus the portion of that chemical energy that the plants themselves
  must use to run their own life processes.  The global net primary
  productivity can be viewed as the basic food supply for the entire
  animal world, including *Homo sapiens*, as well as a major source of
  structural materials, fibers, medicines, and other things of
  importance to humanity. ...
  
  The population is now growing at a rate that, if continued, would
  double it in about 42 years.  Even if *Homo sapiens* could persist
  after wiping out most of the other animals, population growth clearly
  would soon carry it past the limits of Earth's short-term human
  carrying capacity, and a population crash would ensue."

I will not have any more time to read the net, but I can be reached
via email.

Richard Carnes