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From: verber@osu-eddie.UUCP (Mark Verber)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Population control & Freedom
Message-ID: <2337@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 15-Sep-86 08:32:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: osu-eddi.2337
Posted: Mon Sep 15 08:32:49 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Sep-86 00:42:18 EDT
References: <3013@watmath.UUCP> <11700397@inmet> <7220@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: verber@osu-eddie.UUCP (Mark Verber)
Organization: The Ohio State University, CIS Dept.
Lines: 38

In article <7220@sun.uucp> rdh@sun.UUCP (Robert Hartman) writes:
> mumble, mumble, ...
>This is where the "enlightened" aspect of "enlightened self-interest"
>should come into play, both on the part of the indiviuals to see the
>aggregate situation, and on the part of those making policy to educate,
>persuade, reward, and withhold rewards, to effectively influence individual
>decisions.
>
>I should think that the goal would be to encourage people to be
>satisified with the number of children that they can reasonably expect
>to support, and to effectively discourage them from having more than
>they can reasonably expected to support.  The operative words here
>are "reasonable" and "effective"; there may be a tradeoff between the
>two.
>
> ...

From my observations, the only truly effective way to limit the
number of children is to remove the economic advantage that many
children bring.  In many opf the developping countries it is to the
parents advatage to have as many children as possible. After all,
who is going to take care of you in your old age, help with the
work, ...

The best long term solution from my perspective is to make having a
limited number of children advantagous.  You can see the effects of this
in the US and most of Western Europe.  This would require massive
support of the third world over a number of years.  Andrei Sakharov in
Progress, Coexistence & Intellectual Freedom finds fault in the US
and the CCCP for many of these problems.  He points out that neither
country have given enough aid to really help the long term situations,
but has applied enough to help the country get by, or has given enough
to win political favor.

Cheers,
Mark A. Verber			verber@ohio-state.arpa  (internet)
The Ohio State University	verber@ohio-state.csnet (csnet)
+1 (614) 422-0915		cbosgd!osu-eddie!verber (uucpnet)