Quothe Carlos Murillo, from writings of Sun, Jun 09, 2002 at 10:30:20AM -0400:
> But dead wrong. Such an incentive would be positively correlated with
> an increase in poverty, which is in turn positively correlated with
> an increase in babies.
Au contraire. The problem is that the U.S., like many other nations,
has a self-destructive economic mindset which believes that constant
growth, not stability, is what's important, and, necessary. The
problem with this is that we live in a nation, and a world, with a
finite amount of resources. Take land for example, and notice how
open land, woodlands and farms are disappearing as the population
continues to grow.
Our politicians tend to think in the following circular, and
destructive, manner: we need to give the economy a boost, that
requires more jobs to be created, that means that we need businesses
to expand and the creation of new businesses, more land is needed for
more buildings... now, we've created more jobs. Uh-oh, now we need
more people - maybe we need to import some cheap labor and we need
more people to have more babies, now we need more houses for these
people to live in, and we need more highways (gobble, gobble, there
goes more land lost to "development") Now, we've got more people than
jobs again, so we need to create more jobs... The vicious cycle
continues...
Now, toss the environment into the aforementioned mess, and see how
more and more people having more and more babies causes more and more
harm to Nature. Society turns to pollution control, more efficient
cars, houses and appliances, etc. as a solution; however, that only
necessitates more manufacturing, more traffic, more pollution, the
need for more people, more land, etc. Of course, the aforementioned
also results in more profits for some greedy people, and the typically
corrupt politicians get to say that they're doing something about the
problem while helping special interests, and hence, that route is
taken. Most politicians don't like simple solutions which don't
please special interest groups and businesses, so, the simple and
effective solutions, like stopping the overpopulation problem, are
ignored. Let's not also forget that there's that societal nuisance
called religious dogma which also deserves some of the credit for the
overpopulation problem, which some people deny the existence of
because they're brainwashed by such dogma and a desire for economic
growth rather than stability - e.g., greed.
--
Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals:
All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature &
rdd_at_rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such
http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.
Received on Sun Jun 09 2002 - 10:57:51 BST