You say:
"People have been wringing their hands about the profligate breeding which has led to this situation for over forty years."
And:
"Now, suddenly the message is getting through, and people are curbing their fecundity . . ."
No one I know has been wringing their hands.
Any diminishing fecundity is the result of a higher standard of living and is the choice of people who simply cannot enjoy these living standards while having children.
However, the Africans for example are increasing population as an astounding rate -- this in spite of AIDS, pneumonia, TB, and the other inflictions of that unhappy continent.
The way to handle the increasing population of the Third World is for them to improve their standard of living. Then, when they have learned to enjoy better living conditions, it is likely they will reduce the number of children because they are too expensive to produce.
Harry
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pete wrote:
On Fri, 03 Oct 2003, Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It is a fact that we are becoming a technological >society requiring an increasing proportion of highly intelligent workers. >It is also a fact that fertility rates in developed countries are now >heading towards non-replacement levels -- that is, below 2.2 children per >family.
[...] > >So something will have to be done if populations in both developed or >developing countries are to survive in a century or two from now, never >mind whether they'll be able to cope with advancing technologies. Italy's >population, for example, with a fertility rate of 1.1 children per family >is heading for total extinction within four or five generations. All this >will require a great deal of study.
Well, I'm sort of baffled by all this. We have a planet with over six billion humans, living in an environment that has been suggested to only have the capacity to sustainably sink the effluent of two billion. People have been wringing their hands about the profligate breeding which has led to this situation for over forty years. Now, suddenly the message is getting through, and people are curbing their fecundity, and you immediately start talking about them declining to extinction. How about simply considering that these are rational individuals who understand the concept of overpopulation and choose to not contribute to it, but actively correct for it, having looked around and understood that every extra body means an incremental decline in the quality of life for everyone, including themselves. It is about as likely that people will population-limit themselves to extinction as it was that they would breed themselves til they were stacked like cordwood. I suggest they are actively seeking a sensible population level, and are doing it much better than commentators have given them credit for. The optimum sustainable population of europe is probably around 1/3 to 1/2 its current level, and when they reach that level, population will stabilize.
As far as IQ in terms of the quality of the gene pool, I can't say I'm particularly concerned. I would expect we will soon come to understand the genetic components of intelligence, and by the time we've come to the determination of whether they are significant enough to be a concern, we will also have the technology and will to correct for them in the germ line. Until that time, I don't think the situation will degrade enough to matter. I expect it will all work out quite well. -Pete Vincent
**************************************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 -- Fax: (818) 353-2242 http://home.comcast.net/~haledward ****************************************************
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