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From: orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Population Control and Social Problems
Message-ID: <475@whuxl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Feb-85 09:42:45 EST
Article-I.D.: whuxl.475
Posted: Tue Feb 12 09:42:45 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Feb-85 04:00:55 EST
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Organization: Bell Labs
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> From Will Martin:
> > From me (Tim Sevener)
> >   In this case and many others in which a landed
> > aristocracy owns most of the land, much of the land goes idle.  It is left
> > idle both for the enjoyment of the aristocracy, and because there is little
> > incentive to make it productive.  
> 
> The thing is, it is BETTER for land to be left "idle" and "unproductive".
> Then the natural processes and growth may continue unimpeded and 
> undamaged by interference from humanity; light use, like individual
> hunting for subsistence (as the Amerinds did), will not damage it,
> and fits in with the other natural predation.
> 
> Why do we feel compelled to upset this situation? Because we have
> enough people to feed that we find it "necessary" to engage in
> unnatural practices like agriculture, dam and road building, etc.
> All of these degrade and harm the land and the environment in general.
> 
> What all this arguing about social organizations, libertarianism vs.
> anarchism vs. socialism vs. whatever, and trying to find fault with
> this or that system, is ignoring is that the cause of all the problems
> is simply excessive people.
> 
 
There is no doubt that excessive population is a major problem for
the whole world and especially the Third World.  Many people have difficulty
understanding the magnitude of the problem of exponential population
growth, even intelligent people.  They create fallacious solutions to
exponential population growth such as sending people out to space,
and so forth.  Isaac Asimov had an excellent essay on this subject in which
he examined these supposed solutions and demonstrated that even if one
could whisk a segment of the population away to another planet at the
speed of light with no real cost involved (thoroughly unrealistic assumptions)
that such solutions could not solve the problem of exponential population
growth.
What is appalling and was generally ignored in the last election is that the
Reagan administration has reversed decades of efforts by past administrations
to curb population growth in the Third World.  The proposal to cutoff funds
for countries which support abortions is only the tip of the iceberg.
During the summer the Reagan administration issued a report declaring that
"population growth" was not a problem and pointing to examples of highly
populated regions like Hong Kong as proof that population growth was
good for economic growth.  Whether we all would *like* to live in a whole
planet populated like Hong Kong was never considered in the report.
Nor did the report consider just where the resources were to be obtained to
support current levels of population growth. 
One assumes that the same magic that will wish away unprecedented federal
deficits will also somehow solve the world's need for resources with
twice the present population while the *present* population is leading
to massive famine.
  I am still dumbfounded how the American people could vote for such
myopic policies!
                 tim sevener   whuxl!orb