From: skaven@milton.u.washington.edu (William Gilliland)
Newsgroups: alt.flame,alt.politics.homosexuality
Subject: Re: I'm not your man...
Date: 15 Apr 92 23:17:16 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Apr15.231716.25012
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

In article <kcu8iB6w164w@Bogus.COM> punk@Bogus.COM (Jack C. Royce) writes:
>dlu@wobble.uucp (Doug Urner) writes:
>
>> Yes!  You've hit the nail on the head!  Heterosexual sex can lead to
>> reproduction -- even when "precautions" are taken.  Over-population
>> looms over us like the sword of doom.  What are we to do?  In a
>> different life this is where the good guy is supposed to arrive and
>> say "I'll pay the rent!"  So I'll try a bit of a rewrite.
>
>Your solution to over population is to turn gay?
>
>I'd think spending tax dollars building undersea colonies, and outer space
>stations for people to live and work would be a viable solution to this.
>
>Also learning how to mass produce food in "hostile" environments, and evenly
>distributing it to the hungry would also be in order.
>
>You know that much of the aid that has been donated to go to feeding the hungy
>never gets there?
>
>Some goes to lining the pockets of the people running the scam, some just gets
>lost somewhere.  And sometimes the foriegn government just hold the food!
>
>Its been known to happen.  I'd drop this tying homosexuality into global
>overcrowding.  That is not the issue.
>

It is obvious you have never heard serious mathematical thought on the subject
of exponential population growth, Jack.  Let me present you with the standard
analogy.

A population of bacteria is growing in a jar.  It's population doubles every
30 minutes (NOTE: in humans the population doubling time is ~ 20 years).  Now,
after about 8 hours the original jar is full.  Now, assume the jar were doubled
in size. (NOTE: this is analogous to your idea of...

>I'd think spending tax dollars building undersea colonies, and outer space
>stations for people to live and work would be a viable solution to this.

...which is simply 'increasing the size of our jar', so to speak.) How much
longer could the population continue to grow at the current rate?  The answer:
Even though the original jar held the population for 8 hours, the new room will
only last for 30 minutes of growth. (NOTE: If, by some MASSIVE expenditure of
tax dollars we were to build 5 billion living units in space and underwater, it
would only hold 20 years of population growth.  Then, to contain it for another
20 years, 10 billion living units would be needed, and so on.)

There is a statistic (I dont have the exact number) that if current rates of
growth are maintained by the year 5000 there will be on the order of 1 Billion
human beings per square yard of land on Earth.  Obviously, this is not possible.
The growth is going to have to stop.  And how does growth stop?  There are two
methods: Increasing the death rate, or decreasing the birth rate.  Given modern
medicine's attitude towards death (i.e. prevent it) the former is not likely.
Therefore the latter must be the method.  

Decreaseing the birth rate can be approached by a number of methods.  In the 
light of population growth, encouraging MOTSS relationships would serve to 
slow the rate of births.  (Note that I did not say it would work... for example
it would meet vehement opposition from the usual proponent of population
growth -- the Vatican.)  

Your suggestion to improve food distribution is counter-productive.  By 
increasing the food supply, you increase the number of people that can be
supported, which increases the demand on the food supply.  Historically,
the rate of food production has been linear while the rate of population
growth has been exponential.  It is a mathematical theory that, given enough
time, _exponential growth will always outstrip linear growth_.  

Am I being pessimistic?  No, I'm being realistic.  I think that encouraging
people to vent their sexual desires/energies in same-sex relationships would
be a lot better than China's method of population growth (forced abortions) or
the methods over which we will have no control (starvation, mass plague as
population exceeds medicine, resource wars, ecological collapse due to humans
devastating the natrial web of life.)  The end of growth WILL OCCUR.  And if
we act now, we can have a say in how it ends.  People who summarily reject
reasonable, humane methods on the basis of personal prejuidices are part of the
problem, not part of the soltion.


"Doesn't it bother you that evil messages | Bill Gilliland
creep into this .sig file when you read   |  
it backwards???"                          | skaven@u.washington.edu
                                          |
"Stranger things have happened."          | (with apologies to Negativland)
Newsgroups: alt.flame