From: rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace)
Subject: Re: Are the Moties us?
Organization: Trinity College, Dublin
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 12:47:47 GMT

In <6w-yrlc@rpi.edu> kasprj@isaac.its.rpi.edu (Jim Kasprzak) writes:

>In article <1992Aug12.201344.6642@oracle.us.oracle.com>, mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
>|> 
>|> Up until quite recently the optimum genetic strategy for a human
>|> female was to have a few kids and concentrate on them.  The optimum
>|> strategy for a male was to have as many by-blows as possible but to
>|> also have a small family that he concentrated his effort on.
>|> 
>|> This is no longer the case in most developed countries.  
>|> 
>|> In the US today, if you have a family of twenty kids you won't have
>|> fun but you will probably bring all, or the fast majority of them, to
>|> maturity.  That means you will have a larger share of the next
>|> generation.  This is true for both men and women.
> 
> Whoa. Whoa! I think you've got it exactly backwards.
> 
> In less developed or expanding societies, a large family is a positive 
>strategy. Consider: where medical science is primitive, there is less of
>a chance of any given child surviving to maturity, so a family should 
>have as many pregnancies as possible. Also, where mechanical technology
>is primitive and most labor is human-powered, a larger family will have 
>more wealth-producing potential. 
> 
> Now consider a society with advanced medicine and technology, like 
>today's United States. Take two families with an income of US$50K each,
>one with two children and one with ten children. Which one has the 
>better chance for prosperity in this generation and the next one? Keep
>in mind also that in a technological society, education is a de facto
>prerequisite for wealth, and that education costs money. A family which
>has ten children is likely to decrease the wealth of both the parents 
>and the children.

That is true, but the family with ten children will also pass on a lot
more of their genes to the next generation. Wealth these days doesn't
usually mean survival, it's more a case of how good a time individuals
have during their lives, and evolution doesn't care about that.

>|> 4.  Women having more kids
> 
> This is not happening. Check the birth rates of the first-world nations.
>Population growth in the USA is strictly due to immigration - the birth 
>rate is negative. Japan has achieved, or come quite close to, zero
>population growth. Some European nations are actually declining in 
>population (Hungary comes to mind). 

Again, this is true - but I think the original poster's point was that
genes for wanting to have as many children as possible are likely to
become more and more prevalent as time goes on, simply because people
who choose to have more children are going to have more surviving
offspring in the next generation. Now suppose genes for wanting to have
many children are carried by most of the population - the falling
birthrate trend would then be reversed. (Of course, this would be only
in the very long term - at the moment, economic effects far outweigh any
effect genetics might be having on the birth rate.)

Are there any effects that would counteract the genetic trend towards
wanting to have more children? (In the very long term.) Or is there some
flaw in the reasoning?

--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science