Once in a while, I mention to students that most of the world’s difficulties would be greatly ameliorated were the human population to shrink to something small and tidy. All we gotta do is outlaw octomoms and encourage “quality not quantity” in the offspring department for once. –You know, take some time to raise one or two really good kids, not a bunch of wild little rat bastards running around to who-knows-where.Plus: we could encourage sexual fence-sitters to make up their damned minds and go gay, goddamit.
Well, great minds think alike, I guess. Today, in his “What’s New” newsletter ( HOW MANY PEOPLE CAN FIT ON THE PLANET?), the generally peevish and cantankerous Bob Park reports that
Last week, a demographer in Moscow warned that the population decline in Russia will have serious economic consequences.
I’ve been reading Bob’s stuff long enough to know that these “cornucopian,” counter-Malthusian chuckleheads really piss Bob off. Me too.
Bob continues:
This week, Investors Business Daily criticized famous British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough for supporting the Optimum Population Trust, a group that wants to reduce the number of people in the world.
Reduce? No, no, the IBD editor says, "we must produce more young workers to pay for our elderly retirees." He credits this, uh, insight to the "late, great economist Julian Simon," a University of Maryland libertarian who said, "People aren't a cost they're an asset."
Simon, it turns out, is the guy who inspired Bjørn Lomborg (of The Skeptical Environmentalist) and any number of right-wingers, who seem to have lost their grasp of reason.
I mean, they may as well call for deregulation of the banking and finance industries too! (Oh yeah, I think they’re actually doing that.)
Naturally, many authorities (e.g., Jared Diamond and the late Garret Hardin) have been unpersuaded by Simon’s curious endless-baby-boom boosterism, and then some.Grumpy Old Bob then writes:
Personally, I grow more aware of the needs of the elderly with each passing year: Finding a parking place, for example. Fewer people I could live with.
To ensure species survival, Darwin said, species reproduce far more often than needed for replacement. Evolution made it the dominant force in human relations. It's overkill, and behavior modification, as the church has discovered, is futile. Equilibrium is reached only when the death rate rises to meet the birth rate. For most species, therefore, the "balance of nature" is not a happy condition.
As Bob notes, clever humans, however, have invented a technology—the pill—that could help us to avoid that unhappy condition.
So-called “conservatives” in this country have generally thwarted that project, too, owing to some seriously goofy ideas about conceptuses and other proto-personal human cell clumps. They see a little person there, with tiny tears and tiny arms akimbo. What's the matter with 'em?!
I just don’t get it. Why isn’t everybody on board some version of this Optimum Population Trust thing? Seems like a total no-brainer to me. Reduce the population. Reduce all problems.
Why do we have to be like rats and bugs, scurrying around unpleasantly, chewing up the furniture indiscriminately, dying like flies?
Nope. There’s a better way. Use your head, man!
If there were any real conservatives in this country, they’d be behind that. Why don't they freakin' conserve something for once?
