From: kasprj@isaac.its.rpi.edu (Jim Kasprzak)
Subject: Re: Are the Moties us?
Reply-To: kasprj@rpi.edu
Organization: The Big Wedge 
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 03:26:02 GMT

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.
  
|> If I am right, we would expect the following effects....
|> 
|> 1.  Women having children at a younger age
 
 But do the women who have children at age 16 keep having more until age
35+? Most teenagers with a child or two can't afford any more.

|> 2.  More women having children without husbands - after all, the male
|> is no longer so important and you only have so many child bearing
|> years.
 
 So what? Again, for the most part these women aren't having more 
children than the average. Most single-income (or no-income) women 
simply can't afford that many.

|> 3.  More premature births - we can take better care of them now
|> outside the womb and if you pop them out early you can have another
|> kid sooner.
 
 And again, this isn't making families have more children. Having the 
technology to make sure that your first two or three children can 
survive something like a premature birth simply means that you'll be
less likely to have the next two or three at all. 

|> 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). 

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

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