Rants

I take it the basic premise behind posts of the kind is that we all share a deeply felt (therefore categorically demanding ultimate priority) conviction that the human kind must prevail indefinitely. Yet, looking back into our history, we must conclude that collective or personal action (in developed or non-developed societies) is extremely rarely driven by anyting other than short-term egocentric goals. Take capitalism for instance; there is nothing in its conceptual makeover that would necessarily give precedence to human species longevity. So, my question is, why all this surprise? I mean, with these things, it is important to check out the historical perspective and I hardly get surprised when I do that. To act differently would represent an unprecedented shift in human nature as we have to know it in its history (I am not saying it is impossible).

Not just human nature - any kind of life just breeds as much as possible until there is a population collapse and then starts again if possible. I suppose recognising this as inevitable is more relaxing.

On the other hand it seems like such a small tweak ( one or two babies less per person) to sort out so many problems. And I'm not sure that we always act only for short term goals though. Look at nuclear fusion projects, Mars landing stuff, pension plans etc... We are capable of deferred gratification for greater gain.

but Giles, any single pension plan has had a history of what, 150 years? This is not long term. Long term would be thinking about the environmental issues when embarking (or not) in your industrial revolution. Kinda hard no? I believe that it is quite possible that long term planning for such things transcends human nature for epistemological reasons. Can you prove that early environmental regulation in industrial processes would have been better for the humen kind today?

egocentrism and epistemological myopia is an issue beyond conscience and ethics. For ethics to have a pragmatic value, a full (i.e. until today impossible) understanding of the world's statics and dynamics is required.

Yeah when you plan that far ahead, the unknowns are usually too great. It depends though. For example dumping nuclear waste in a container which will break before the half life of the material is kinda bad even on a timescale of 10000 years. Anyway in this case, we are talking about an obvious short-term benefit though - on the timescale of 1-2 generation (30-50 years). Basically if you have 1 kid per person, then by the time this generation cops it, the population is halved, solving all warfare and climate probs in one fell swoop, and likewise for less drastic solutions.

I don't disagree with your proposed solution. The question I was trying to answer is why these people don't see it and if they do why they don't practice it. Think about the following: today's civilised people do practice birth control but they have come to this point out of a past of non birth control practice. Today, they are trying to somehow inject their present understanding and sophistication to peoples who have not gone through the process themselves. Will it work? Furthermore, it is not just about survival; significantly it is about dominance. My understanding is that people are not happy to just survive - they want to dominate. Numbers are the obvious, easiest and eventually most potent way for races and countries to dominate.

"Numbers are the obvious, easiest and eventually most potent way for races and countries to dominate."

Fotios, I don't think this is borne out by statistics. Neither high birth rates nor high population densities correlate with political or economic dominance, as far as I know. In fact, countries with high birth rates and densities, such as China and India, have concluded that the opposite is true: They need to stabilize the population by balancing birth rates with death rates in order to achieve economic progress. They are both making efforts to do so, with much more success in China because of the ability of the authoritarian government to control family size. Not so in India.

Also, Giles, rather than say "The US has withdrawn funding for billions of dollars of birth control programmes the world over because of the belief that contraception is evil" -- wouldn't it be more accurate to say "because of the belief that abortion is evil"? That seems to be what they're saying anyway, if you take them at their word.

As far as population is concerned, historically speaking, you cannot maintain dominance when those you dominate procreate much faster than you do. This is simplistic and of course more things are involved in becoming dominant as a people. However, look at the terror that China and India (huge populations and emerging sophisticated technology giants) are causing countries like the US and the UK. It is the populations numbers, and the absence of a sophisticated human rights framework, that become the impetus of this explosion. Where do you think cheap labor comes from?

Well, I will give what you're saying some thought ...

Intuitively, to me, expanding your population beyond the carrying capacity of your territory would seem to be useful only if you can conquer new territory. Otherwise, it's just like having more family than you can feed.

also, Mike, like I said in the email I sent you (just mentioning this in order to leave a proper record behimd) it is Giles you agree with, not me. Giles, the way comment poster names appear in your blog is indeed misleading; perhaps you should change this.

I've changed the position of the line so it's clearer who made the comment. Agree was a bit of a stupid design.

Ref abortion (Michael) - well politics in the US is heavily influenced by the catholic church, so I'd say it's probably both contraception and abortion.

Everything I have read mentions only abortion, not contraception.

For instance:

http://www.pathfind.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Advocacy_Resources_Fact_Sheets_Gag_Rule

Is there another policy regarding contraception that I don't know about?

Also, I think this based mainly on Protestantism, not Catholicism. This makes sense, given that Protestants are more than 50% of Christians in the U.S., while Catholics are less than 25%.

(http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html)

Fotios: Quality, not quantity, leads to dominance. In today's world especially, a small number of people who are healthy and educated, and can use technology and communications will out-compete a larger number of unhealthy, ignorant people who are unable to use technology and communications.

Your argument is polarised and therefore does not say much. The clash between completely ignorant but many and few but very sophisticated simply does not exist in reality. If "somewhat more sophisticated" people (who in our current world also happen to be of a specific race) do not keep their numbers comparably high, they will simply decline and get absorbed. Let me also say that in my book this is good thing. Another note I wanted to make is that it appears that empiricism/science (and the civilazion that sprung from it) has hit a plateau; meaning no great breakthroughs (of the Newtonian or Darwinian kind and even of less seminal importance) occur any more. Cars still have 4 wheels, it is a big problem to travel as far as the moon and we struggle to bring back Endeavor. Oh, and did you know AI is a complete failure? So, of course all that can be expected (if things continue like that) is for more numerous peoples to converge and finally surpass the less numerous traditional powers.

http://www.population-security.org/swom-97-04.htm

"“In response to concerns of the Vatican, the Reagan Administration agreed to alter its foreign aid program to comply with the church’s teaching on birth control.” This, according to William Wilson (the first U.S. ambassador to the Holy See after Reagan established diplomatic recognition) resulted in the withdrawal of U.S. funding of international family-planning organizations, including the United Nations Fund for Population Activities."

See several articles http://tinyurl.com/2rxx98

Don't forget that although protestants may have a majority, Catholics have a lot more money. IMO there is also more of a history of catholicism interfering in Politics.

While we're on Catholicism, this bbc programme is amazing - if you believe what it says, you will realise that they are VERY influential in the US:
http://tinyurl.com/2hv9yz