We Need Larger Families

[Mr. Boyce]

. . . regardless of the old "Paul Ehrlich" stuff, it's pretty clear that western nations need larger families. Perhaps this is part of the pinch scouting feels.

[BrentAllen]

Speaking of Paul Ehrlich... this, recently from George Will:

 

Speaking of experts, in 1980 Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford scientist and environmental Cassandra who predicted calamitous food shortages by 1990, accepted a bet with economist Julian Simon. When Ehrlich predicted the imminent exhaustion of many nonrenewable natural resources, Simon challenged him: Pick a "basket" of any five such commodities, and I will wager that in a decade the price of the basket will decline, indicating decreased scarcity. Ehrlich picked five metals chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten that he predicted would become more expensive. Not only did the price of the basket decline, the price of all five declined.

 

An expert Ehrlich consulted in picking the five was John Holdren, who today is President Obama's science adviser. Credentialed intellectuals, too actually, especially illustrate Montaigne's axiom: "Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know."

 

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will021509.php3

 

[scoutldr]

I had two kids...as many as I could afford to raise without government assistance. What a concept.

[Trevorum]

I must have missed something here. Why is it "clear that western nations need larger families"?

[GernBlansten]

Because we must emulate the birth rates of the third world. If we don't, we may never become a third world nation.

[Mr. Boyce]

My quick response to your questions!

 

First, market economies rely on markets. When populations shrink, the market disappears and there is a gradual return to subsistence economies. This is what happened at the end of the Roman empire,and it took many centuries to recover.

 

So you need a large population to support markets. This is an essential part of capitalism, and a good part of why the European nations began empire-building in the late 19th century. Producers need consumers. . . in fact, some production technologies depend on having a very large base of consumers in order to operate.

 

Second, the reason this is a wide concern is because of the various government programs of social assistance, especially Social Security.

 

Third, and my personal reason or one I believe is important, is that socialization of people is done better when people are raised within large families rather than small families. We see the "Prince" problem in China, in which the one child is so highly pampered that his actual psychological development is affected. I hypothesize that parents with larger families are LESS likely to become helicopter parents, are less tense as parents (and less tense families), and are willing to grant their children a bit more personal independence.

 

With respect to scouts, I think it's obvious is this day and age that the Top 3 Sports rule our children's lives. . . in a perverse fashion, I would add. It's possible that with more children, parents are less likely to force all their kids into the Superstar Athlete paradigm.

 

The comparison with the Third World is extraneous: the Third World has a difficult time supporting itself. This isn't the problem in the First World. Of course, maybe our REAL problem is that we expect to have too high a standard of personal consumption.

[GernBlansten]

Parasites, left unchecked, will eventually overwhelm the host and the entire population and host is sacrificed.

 

Is there an upper limit on population growth? When are there too many humans? Is our society really just a global ponzi scheme where an economy can only be sustained by continual and unchecked growth? Is there a symbiotic balance where the parasites and host can survive in harmony? Are we there yet, beyond it, or not even close?

[scoutldr]

The "symbiotic balance" is called "commensalism" in Biology 101.

 

"In ecology, commensalism is a class of relationship between two organisms where one benefits and the other is not significantly harmed or benefited. The term derives from the English word commensal, meaning "sharing of food" in human social interaction, which in turn derives from the Latin com mensa, meaning "sharing a table". - Wikipedia

 

In other words, "wealth redistribution" as the Democrats espouse it.

 

 

[ASM915]

Gern has a valid point about the parasite host relationship.

 

Then there was the ideology tossed out there a few years back, that Islam was preaching to procreate. Have as many children as possible. Then as the Judeo-Christian religions' population dropped off, or remained at a constant, Islam would become the dominate religion, then being able to flex their will on the rest of the world. This is not my theory, but it has some validity.

 

Last fall, my wife and her best friend went to Detroit to see the friend's daughter. The three of them took the daughters two girls swimming at a local pool. All their swim wear was conservative. It didn't matter to the men, who were Muslim, at the pool. They were not happy that the women and girls were there in the pool. Of coarse, my wife, half Italian, half Native, and the friend's family being Native, just did their thing anyway, and ignored the looks and comments.

[Kahuna]

>>Then as the Judeo-Christian religions' population dropped off, or remained at a constant, Islam would become the dominate religion, then being able to flex their will on the rest of the world. This is not my theory, but it has some validity

[Mr. Boyce]

I know this is a topic that gets especially liberals upset, since they still think of the 1960s projections and extrapolations. I'm not sure it makes sense to just toss this subject out as a liberal vs. conservative thing: maybe it simply is, or will be, a problem.

 

I just think the system we have works better with slightly larger families, and in the past couple months have twice heard the expression "four is the new two."

 

With respect to the enormous growth of the muslim population, well, it very well could become a problem in the United States. The Netherlands already is 40% muslim. When you get large populations that live by value systems that are very different than yours, you can run into political problems very quickly. . . in fact, there's a push for sharia law in England.

 

But I'm not saying we should be concerned due to the muslim factor, even though I think many liberals are short-sighted about the whole matter of what happens when Liberal Democracy comes into conflict with Muslim Precepts. . . I don't think the muslims will gladly back away.

[GernBlansten]

So overpopulation is irrational fear mongering of liberals.

 

Is overrepresentation of muslims irrational fear mongering of conservatives?

[vol_scouter]

Gern,

 

The answer to your query is NO.

[GernBlansten]

Fascinating. So the only way to stem the incoming tide of the Muslim hoard, is to out procreate them? Who wudda thunk?

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

This explains why there's been nothing but praise on this forum for the woman who recently gave birth to octuplets.