From: pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel)
Subject: Re: Global Sterilization (was Re: The Marching Morons)
Organization: Sydney University Computing Service, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 22:49:46 GMT

dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:
>In article <pete.725984485@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU> pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel) writes:

>> Nevertheless, I think you underestimate the resources required to produce
>> a well educated population. Can you point at any non first world country 
>> anywhere that has one? Resource richness is imho required for good education.

>I disagree completely.  Education is labor intensive, not
>natural-resource intensive.  The developing countries have a lot of
>labor.  They will get more labor as mechanization makes them more
>efficient.

However, education is concomitant with industrialization, and
industrialization _is_ natural-resource intensive.  Now natural
resources are controlled as commodities. They cost money. Even natural
resources that are in plentiful supply are doled out as if they were
scarce in order to profit their owners. That's capitalism.

Because natural resources are commodities they are priced to scale with the
wealth of the first world economies. This puts them out of the reach of the
overpopulated countries, who are of course not weathy. Poor access to natural 
resources means poor industrialization means poor education.

But human resources are also an issue. Educated men do not prefer to live in
squalor, and so they do not flock to educate the masses. Educated men dole out 
their expertise for profit, and likewise sell it to the highest bidders, which
will be first worlders. And you have sidestepped the issue of juvenile 
availability for education; in third world countries every set of hands is
put to work trying to acquire food - and children who are not available for 
education will not be educated. Vicious Circle.

>Remember, the country with the most advance education system in the last
>century was the United States.  The US was also the country with the
>fastest population growth rate.

And the country with far and away the best access to natural resources. 
Or do you suggest that is not related?

But just a couple of weeks ago in this thread some of your compatriots
were complaining that your populace is becoming less well educated as
they become crowded and impoverished in your cities. Recent reports on
Australian television make it appear that you have a terrible social
problem with large numbers of armed morons making your densely populated 
areas extremely dangerous.

But perhaps these reports are exaggerated. Or perhaps those are high school
graduates out there with the uzis :-)?

>> there are real problems. Or are you saying that we're not destroying 
>> ecosystems, using up non-renewable resources and generally fowling the 
>> planet up at an ever increasing rate of knots? It's very easy to call
>> people names, friend. Try addressing yourself to the argument.

>But I wasn't presented with an argument; I was presented with slogans.

Many apologies; it was the beat.

>How about this: list a nonrenewable resource, and I'll argue how it
>can be extended, substituted for, or be made available in effectively
>unlimited amounts.

Rainforests.

> >If we were to reduce the world population by a very large percentage in
> >a generation or two it would give us the breathing space we need to set
> >up sustainable ways of living and developing.

>The unstated assumption is that this breathing space is necessary.
>I disagree.

You are nestled in the bosom of the richest and freeest nation on the planet.
You live in a luxury that is only fantasy for the overpopulated nations. But
of course you are entitled to your opinion.

> > We could provide a first world
> >standard of living for everyone, and save and revive disappearing cultures
> >and ecosystems before they disappear. Are these not laudable goals? Is there
> >some better way of acheiving them?

>Sure -- let the world industrialize, let people get rich, and forget
>these authoritarian fantasies about sterilizing the untermenschen.

"let the world industrialize"? What, industrialization is something that just
happens in the natural course of events? Are you saying that overpopulated
countries should just forget about their poverty and grow up? Are you saying
that the rich don't get richer and the poor don't get poorer? Are you saying
that the planet has unlimited natural resources in every respect? Are you
saying that tens of billions of happy healthy well educated first worlders 
can be supported without massive disruptions and terminations of ecosystems?

Take the wild blue yonder from your own eye before you remove the pipedream 
from mine.

>>>We don't reproduce without limit.  
>>Correct. Eventually famine, war and pestilence provide us with limits
>Wrong -- *affluence* provides the limit.  War, for example, tends
>to increase population growth.

How does affluence limit population growth? Don't people reproduce with full
bellies? And if you are correct about war the other horsemen still remain.

>>How do you define imminent? I believe that the last estimate of the
>>number of people the earth could sustainably feed I read was ten
>>billion.  So that's less than fifty years away. But given the
>>enormously disproportionate use of resources by first world economies
>>we can expect real trouble sooner than that, no?

>The UN FAO projects we could feed about 50 billion people with
>existing agricultural technology.  Other estimates range higher (150
>billion is one I've seen).  Technological change can only increase the
>limit.  I suspect that the ultimate limits will be set only by the
>energy available to produce food.  Agriculture as now practiced is
>hideously inefficient, turning only a tiny fraction, less than 1%, of
>the sunlight hitting farmland into chemical energy of foodstuffs.

These are encouraging statistics, and thank you for citing them. Of course
they ignore the distribution and management problems that even now afflict
us, and they don't bear on the main thrust of this thread, but they do imply
that we have time enough to work on technological solutions before the first
world begins to feel the real pinch.

-- 
Internet: pete@extro.su.oz.au             UUCP: {uunet,mcvax}!munnari!extro!pete
                       I am a big pond in a small fish.
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