🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <l2lmp5INNrnt@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM> jdr@starflight.Corp.Sun.COM writes:
>Compulsion is not just about a small minority imposing their will on a
>resisting majority. It is also about people agreeing to mutually compel
>themselves in their enlightened self-interest.

Ok, so supposing (hypothetically speaking) the citizens of some
country decide that they're not terribly interested in this "mutual
compulsion"?  What then?

>Historially, societies have in fact compelled their members to limit their
>reproduction.

I'd love to see references on this, please.  Last I heard, India and
China were trying to keep their populations down, whereas several
countries in Europe (France, Germany, and Italy?) have (or nearly
have) shrinking populations.  Malaysia or Singapore (sorry, cannot
remember which) runs advertisements on television encouraging their
educated upper-class women to make more babies (the justification for
this is vaguely eugenic, but it stands as an example of how high
standards of living make other compulsion unnecessary).

>Raising standards of living (as in Europe or Japan) doesn't work, in the sense
>of buying us more than a decade or two, at most. Even a world population of
>10,000, living like modern West Europeans, would wind up doing to the entire
>planet what the Somalis have done to their country, in a few thousand years.

I don't believe this at all -- perhaps you meant a larger number.
Europe and the US combined have about a population of 5*10^8, or
50,000 times 10,000.  That is (assuming lots of linearity), in one
year Europe and the U.S produce the same amount of pollution, habitat
destruction, what-have-you, that a population of 10,000 would in
50,000 years.  50 is much greater than "a few".  There's nothing
inherently evil about living well, though it would be good planning to
find a sustainable way for all people to live well.

And, I think that a little bit of efficiency can go a long way.  I
assume that the goal is to hit a pleasant standard of living in a
sustainable way.  I don't think this is impossible, though the result
might be a slightly lower standard of living than the one that we have
now.

David Chase
Sun