Eugenics and Depopulation

[Interloper]

Are those for real? Hoo boy!
Most of them sound like he either had a professional gag writer (who specializes in bigot humor), or that he should moonlight as a gag writer for one of the late-night talk show hosts... Maybe Dave Letterman.

If Porrit is whacko, then so are Prince Phillip,....

Well that's for sure. Everyone's known that for years. But he is very quotable!!
http://listverse.com/2007/09/11/top-15-quotes-of-prince-philip/
1. China State Visit, 1986

If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed.

2. To a blind women with a guide

“Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?”

3. To an Aborigine in Australia

“Do you still throw spears at each other?”

4. To his wife, the Queen, after her coronation

“Where did you get the hat?”

5. When asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union

“The bastards murdered half my family”

6. To a Briton in Budapest

“You can’t have been here that long – you haven’t got a pot belly.”

7. To a driving instructor in Scotland

“How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?”

8. After the Dunblane shooting

“If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?”

9. To a student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea

“You managed not to get eaten, then?”

10. To Elton John after hearing Elton had sold his Gold Aston Martin

“Oh, it’s you that owns that ghastly car – we often see it when driving to Windsor Castle.”

11. On the London Traffic Debate

“The problem with London is the tourists. They cause the congestion. If we could just stop tourism, we could stop the congestion.”

12. To the President of Nigeria, dressed in traditional robes

“You look like you’re ready for bed!”

13. Unknown

“If you see a man opening a car door for a woman, it means one of two things: it’s either a new woman or a new car!”

14. On key problems facing Brazil

“Brazilians live there”

15. To the matron of a hospital in the Caribbean

“You have mosquitos. I have the Press”

[Darth Rock&Roll]

Philip is notoriously bigoted, sexist and for the most part, downright racist.

Luckily, he means nothing.

[Steve James]

Well, where to start? Ok, "eugenics" means "good" "genes." We can all agree that some genes are preferable to others: such as, the gene that causes or allows us to contract prostate cancer isn't good for us (at least, not for me). What are the "good" genes, though? And, who gets to decide which they are? Of course, scientists and philosophers have usually determined or asserted that "their" genes were the highest expression of desirable human qualities or the qualities that were most beneficial to society. When the scientists were English, French, German, Belgian, Swiss, Italian, etc., they invariably saw themselves as having the "eu" genes.

That idea, however, immediately becomes corrupt when it is used to come to conclusions about those people who don't have the "eu" genes, and the supremacy of those who do. Eugenics (i.e., the idea that some people (gene sets) are superior to others) was developed in societies that had to justify and legitimize the subjugation of one group by another. It might not have been invented in the US, but it lasted here for most of the country's history. It always re-emerges whenever questions are asked such as "How come so many black men have high blood pressure?" or "diabetes?" or "end up in prison?" Or, "Why are there so many white serial killers?" or "so few in the NBA?"or "so many physicists?" Or, "How come Jews are so rich and in banking?" Or, "How come Germans start so many wars?

But, then again, the questions aren't the real problem. It's the answer given for them. When it's ... because they're black, white, Jewish or German, then watch out. However, this thread connects eugenics with depopulation. Imo, it'd be more accurate, if true, to say "eugenics and extermination." Depopulation is not working. This country will be a "majority minority" nation by the middle of the century, no matter what. The world will be almost 50% Asian (including the subcontinent) by the same time.

So, Oprah, good luck ... we don't die, we multiply.

[Michael]

Just when it's getting good, I'm in the middle of grading exams and won't be able to respond for a few days on this or the Fed thread.

[I-mon]

Mike, you're saying that the problem isn't overpopulation but mismanagement....but then a lot of the stuff which bothers us about society these days is the tendency towards "over-management". laws for everything, cameras everywhere, fingerprinting, ID chips etc.

[bailewen]

The main problem with arguing that we don't have an overpopulation problem is that regardless of wether we do or not right now, if we don't "depopulate" at some point, eventually, we will. It's inevitable. The maximum number of humans that the planet can support is finite. Populations expand exponentially. Therefore, population problem.

China is already facing some of the very real repercussions of this problem. If they were as advanced and clean and so on as the US or even Switzerland for that matter, the problem would be even worse because then they would have fossil fuel and electrical demands that exceed what the entire planet currently produces.

The flip side of this through is that when societies advance far enough, populations tend to shrink anyways. Just look at what's happening in some of the richest areas of Europe. When societies are richer, people marry later and have less children. It's like when the survival and success of the children are fairly well guaranteed, people just instinctively feel less need to have more children. . .or maybe it's for other reasons as many of the countries with shrinking populations don't impress me as social paradises. Anyways, there are obviously ways to control populations without resorting to Eugenics.

Examples:
http://geography.about.com/od/populatio ... a/zero.htm

Population growth for the following countries is negative:

Russia: -0.6%; -22%
Belarus -0.6%; -12%
Bulgaria -0.5%; -34%
Latvia -0.5%; -23%
Lithuania -0.4%; -15%
Hungary -0.3%; -11%
Romania -0.2%; -29%
Estonia -0.2%; -23%
Moldova -0.2%; -21%
Croatia -0.2%; -14%
Germany -0.2%; -9%
Czech Republic -0.1%; -8%
Japan 0%; -21%
Poland 0%; -17%
Slovakia 0%; -12%
Austria 0%; 8% increase
Italy 0%; -5%
Slovenia 0%; -5%
Greece 0%; -4%

The first number is the "natural birth increase" (term from the article) and the second number appears to be the projected change in population by 2050.

[I-mon]

[PartridgeRun]

Thomas Malthus is going to have his revenge, it can't be helped, it is, as Omar said, inevitable. You can't beat nature.
For a period of about fifty years the Green Revolution gave us the impression that we could, but in reality we just worked up an ecological bill of massive proportions... and the Goon WILL come to collect.

[Interloper]

Omar,
I think that a lot of the population drop in the poor, former-Soviet-bloc countries you've listed is due to emigration. So, the population is just shifting to other places.

In affluent countries such as Japan, there are fewer births as many financially well-off, educated households tend to have fewer children (if I recall my human socio-ecology correctly).

[Steve James]

Malthus was right in that 'population increases geometrically; resources increase arithmetically.' So, a family can increase its use of resources 300% or more during one lifetime. Food and water or the resources needed to provide them, however, can't increase at the same rate. If one assumes that all families operate this way, a calculator will show that eventually the resources will run out.

But, it only 'sorta' works out that way. Some people can use an imaginary calculator in their heads and predict, as well as Malthus, that "they" can't afford to have more children to support. Otoh, there are agricultural societies where the more hands, the more food and resources can be produced. In all cases, when the ratio of resources to people gets too lopsided, people just starve, infant mortality goes up, and less children are born. When there is enough resources, and the population rises to a certain point, transmission of common diseases goes up and more people die.

Yeah, we can screw things up artificially; but, nature has its own balance. It always works. Even in Japan, with its high standard of living, low birth rate and high life expectancy, people have gotten used to living very close together in small spaces. Of course, looking at history, lots of imperialistic countries have been relatively small, often islands or landlocked. They became imperialists because they wanted or thought they needed "room to breathe".

[ShortFormMike]

Oh, Michael, isn't that a big facile to just say all those problems are from "mismanagement". it's humans doing the management and it's not working out. what's that tell you?

and in the interest of full disclosure, did you come from, have, or plan to have a large family?

you seem a bit too passionate and oblivious to what most everyone acknowledges and overpopulation problems.

[bailewen]

Omar,
I think that a lot of the population drop in the poor, former-Soviet-bloc countries you've listed is due to emigration. So, the population is just shifting to other places.

That does exist but does not account for the numbers posted. Check the site I pulled them from:

...there are twenty countries in the world with negative or zero natural population growth. This is unprecedented in history!

This negative or zero natural population growth means that these countries have more deaths than births or an even number of deaths and births; this figure does not include the impacts of immigration or emigration. Even including immigration over emigration, only one of the twenty countries (Austria) is expected to grow between 2006 and 2050.

Emphasis mine. I'm sure that immigration/emigration has it's impact and the numbers would be even more exaggerated if taken into account. Just wanted to point out that even without it, lots of negative population growth in many countries and, as you said, many rich countries experience it too...just for different reasons.

[Steve James]

I'm sure that immigration/emigration has it's impact and the numbers would be even more exaggerated if taken into account.

It depends a lot on the reasons for the migrations. Though, if people in their child-bearing years move, this will always affect overall birth rates. Migration is also affected by the politics of nationality. People have always moved when their areas became over-populated. However, this freedom of movement is usually restricted by national boundaries, and nations don't share their resources. So, we have starvation, disease and other depopulating effects in one country while the neighboring country is well fed and healthy.

[PartridgeRun]

Omar,
I think that a lot of the population drop in the poor, former-Soviet-bloc countries you've listed is due to emigration. So, the population is just shifting to other places.

In affluent countries such as Japan, there are fewer births as many financially well-off, educated households tend to have fewer children (if I recall my human socio-ecology correctly).

Some days ago I read a small piece in my daily paper about alcoholism in Russia; apparently, some 40% of russian males are alcoholics. I also seem to remember that their average lifespan is very short, somewhere in the fifties if I remember correctly. I traveled through Russia in 2007 and that place definitely has got the heaviest vibe of any place I've been to yet.

I don't think that an informed person can deny that we are far, far into overshoot. Our current ecological footprint is massive beyond belief and with dwindling resources (of the sort that in every practical sense can be considered one-time endowments) and no room for expansion left, what will become of the Great Human Endevaour? It's going to get ugly I'm afraid.
Man doesn't bow to reality. It's the engine that drives the ever ongoing Greek tragedy that's human History writ large. In all matters pertaining the cerebral ape, Hubris will rule supremely.

[Chris Fleming]

A more pressing problem will be the age problem. Populations in the US, Europe, and Asia have and will be having more and more elderly people to take care of. The US is already a huge entitlement republic, with 80% or more of its citizens using some form of government subsidy, so how on earth are all of these people going to be managed? Long before people start talking depopulation, we'll be having massive poverty, the end of "retirement", and so forth.