From: kasprj@jacob.its.rpi.edu (Jim Kasprzak)
Subject: Re: Are the Moties us?
Reply-To: kasprj@rpi.edu
Organization: The Big Wedge 
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 07:02:04 GMT

 MF= Michael Friedman
 JK= myself

 JK:
|> Look at what the families of the pre-industrial era were like. You'll
|> find that most of them had four or five (or more) children surviving to 
|> maturity.

 MF:
|> That seems hard to believe.  If it was true, then just assuming 25
|> year generations it would have taken only 500 years to multiply the
|> population of Europe by a factor of 1,000,000.  Even today there are
|> under a billion people in Europe.  500 years ago there were far more
|> than 1,000.  Where's the hole in the logic?
 
 The hole in the logic is that there were a lot of factors which killed
off adults as well as children. Disease, starvation, wars and the like.
Not all adults who survived to maturity had children themselves.

 JK:
|> Prosperity _is_ a proven survival trait on the scale of a human 
|> lifetime. 
 
 MF:
|> But not a trait that leads to having many kids.  It used to be - the
|> rich had tons of bastards - but that's a lot rarer now.  If prosperity
|> doesn't lead to having many kids then the traits that lead to
|> prosperity will decline in the gene pool or traits that lead
|> prosperous people to have many kids anyway will increase.
 
 There are no genetic traits that lead to prosperity, as far as anyone
knows. Your argument seems to be based on the fallacious assumption that
all conscious activity can be traced to one's genetic pattern. I don't 
want to open the "nature vs. nurture" can of worms, so suffice it to say
that it's generally accepted that both have a significant influence on 
human behavior. In other words, people gain the inclination to become 
rich, or to have many children, from other sources than genetic makeup,
so the concept of such habits being "bred out of the race" is silly.
 
 And at any rate, I was talking about the general prosperity of the human
race, not just the upper levels of our current society. The poorest people
in the USA would be considered quite wealthy by the standards of, say, 
pre-industrial Europe. Our middle-class has a higher standard of 
living than medieval royalty. That's the prosperity I'm referring to which
is increasing our lifespans and decreasing the size of our families.

 MF:
|> And what happens in the next generation?  People who are motivated by
|> prosperity over protecting their bloodline will die out.
 
 Yes, the people who are so obsessed with money that they don't bother to
start a family will leave no descendants. But those people are few and 
far between. As I said, the _general_ prosperity of a society will lead 
to the average birthrate of that society going down. 
 
 MF:
|> Even if you are right, one very simple strategy to out-grow your
|> opponent is to have the same number of kids he has, but to have them a
|> few years earlier.  Two equal populations with doubling times of 4
|> generations and generation times of 16 years and 24 years,
|> respectively, will have a 2 to 1 population imbalance in just 192
|> years. 
 
 Yes, you're quite right. But how many people do you see, rich or poor,
whose goal is to "out-grow" their neighbors? People try to get a better
car, better computer, bigger swimming pool, housing in a better neighborhood,
send their kids to better schools, etc. Very few people care about having 
more children than their neighbors.

 MF:
|> Let's try it slow.
 
 Okay. Sorry for my cluelessness. 

 MF:
|> Right now there is a negative correlation between wealth and birth
|> rate.
 
 In other words, the wealthier you are, the fewer children you will have.

 MF:
|> I contend that this negative correlation will decline in magnitude over the
|> next 100 years and I'm guessing that is has already declined.

 So you're saying that the rich people are starting to have more children.
And I'm saying that they're not.

 MF:
|> Anyone know how to check this out?

 JK:
|> Census data. Try a trip to your local library.
 
 MF:
|> What, exactly, would you check?  One thing to remmber is that a family
|> with 5 kids is almost automaticly poorer than a family with one kid.
|> How do we factor this in?  After all, it provides an automatic bias
|> leading to large families being poorer than small families.
 
 The census bureau groups people by family income. Just divide the families
into income brackets, ignoring all other factors, and then find the average
number of children in each bracket. (Actually I'm pretty sure _you_ wouldn't
have to do that yourself; it's probably all been compiled by the US Census 
Bureau.)
 
 MF:
|> Until something happens to forcibly restrain humn breeding I would
|> expect to see a continuing trend that brings us closer and closer to
|> the Motie model.

 JK:
|> You'd be in the minority, then. The facts fail to support your hypothesis.

 MF:
|> Which facts are those?

 JK:
|> Demographics as recorded by the census bureaus of the world. Again, I 
|> reccomend going to the library and doing a bit of research on the subject.

 MF:
|> Can you be specific?   I doubt it.
 
 Look, you're the one with the hypothesis. I'm not going to do your homework
for you. Start with the publications of the US Census Bureau. Any major 
university or city library should have a good set of their reports, and you
could even write to the Census Bureau yourself and request them. Your taxes
helped pay for it. They probably have an index of subjects; look for "Birth
Rate by Income Level". If you want to check on other countries, they have 
census bureaus as well, and it may take a bit of inter-library searching, 
but the information is hardly a secret. A reference librarian would be able
to point you in the right direction; that's what they're there for.
 
 This is the Age of Information. The data you're looking for is out there.
Do a bit of legwork (and brainwork) and check up on it.
------------------------------------------------------------------
     __  Live from Capitaland, heart of the Empire State...
 ___/  | Jim Kasprzak, computer operator @ RPI, Troy, NY, USA
/____ *| Pro-Environment. Pro-Education. Pro-Family. Pro-Choice. 
     \_| Pro-Change. Pro-America. Pro-Clinton.
      ====  e-mail: kasprj@rpi.edu or kasprzak@mts.rpi.edu