A Woman in Every Pot

In response to recent mass murders by self-described “Incels,” there were a couple of high-profile articles sincerely recommending forced redistribution of women. In case you missed them, please follow these links.

This suggestion was dismissed as absurd for the obvious reasons: that the Incels’ misogyny is 99% of what makes them undatable, and that women — being autonomous humans — cannot be forcibly “redistributed.” But I think the obvious responses are incomplete because a lot of people, when confronted with the idea that women aren’t slaves, respond by thinking “But maybe they should be; maybe things would be better if they were…”

So today I would like to explain why trying to control women more is not merely unethical — it is also a totally counterproductive approach to the exact problem that the above-linked dudes are trying to solve.

Let’s lay out the problem: Some portion of the young, straight men in society are unable to find women who want to be with them. This can make a guy frustrated, angry, often violent, maybe suicidal — while the same guy might be happy and feel motivated to be a productive member of society if only he had a wife or girlfriend and possibly also children.

What happens if we try to solve this problem by decreasing women’s freedom and economic power?

Look at it from the woman’s perspective. If you don’t have the opportunity to earn a living wage yourself — and your mate’s economic contribution makes a big difference when it comes to getting food, health care, etc., for yourself and your kids — then Geezer McMoneybags starts looking really attractive compared to the charming young guy who is barely able to make a living wage himself. That’s not being shallow or superficial, that’s rational self-interest.

But let’s change the scenario a bit. Suppose the woman is able to earn a living wage, and her spouse’s financial contribution isn’t a deciding factor in her kids getting to grow up in a safe and healthy environment. Now she’s freer to prioritize other qualities in a mate. The man himself — his time, his efforts, and his character — becomes more valuable than what’s in his wallet.

Just look at it from an anthropological perspective. Societies with a more patriarchal culture (and with more economic inequality in general) tend to be more polygynous. In other words, the top tier of powerful men monopolize multiple women, either through officially recognized polygamy or through a series of marriages. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are a whole lot of frustrated and hostile men that the ones at the top can use as cannon fodder.

If you want a male-dominated society full of manly men vying with one another for dominance, then you’re talking about a society that — by design — has quite a lot of losers. It’s not a bug, it’s the whole point. Some Incels and others in the Manosphere have suggested that teenage girls should be assigned to men and forced into marriage. But where do these teenage girls come from? If you are one of society’s losers, do you really think that a patriarch in a country where he legally owns his daughter is just going to give her to you, as a participation trophy for being born male?

Maybe a solution that is more equitable for the women is actually also more equitable for the men. Obviously women don’t want to be the third string wife to some gross, old, rich, powerful asshole (like Donald Trump, to name one high-profile example). Sure, some will choose that path regardless. But given more attractive options, women are more likely to “redistribute” themselves — rather than sharing each others’ (old rich dude) sloppy seconds. A society where the women have more opportunity to choose men based on their personal merits is a society with fewer male losers.

The catch is that in this scenario the man has to be better than nothing. Literally. Because when women can get by economically without a man, then having no man at all is on the list of possible options. So if you’re a guy and you want to be with a woman, your presence has to be more attractive than your absence.

This should not be a high bar to cross. The overwhelming majority of women are either straight or bi, which means that by definition they are attracted to at least some men. Sadly, too many young guys who go looking for dating advice online end up getting sucked into misogynist communities. If your problem is that you are having difficulty attracting a woman, I can hardly think of a more counterproductive solution than finding a bunch of fellow losers and working yourselves into a collective lather over how horrible women are.

A more effective solution is to work for a more egalitarian society. And keep in mind that women are people — with their own interests and motivations — not prizes.

Also published in The Medium.

Rethinking Economics 4: The other reason why the government is always wrong...

In part 1, I discussed the fact that Americans tend to approach questions of public-vs-private sector by asking "which one is right and which one is wrong?"  (Spoiler alert: they generally agree that the private sector is the one that's right.)  (And if you don't believe my claim that 'many people take it as an unquestioned article of faith that "we need to cut the government smaller." Regardless of what the problem is, that's always the solution' -- read this post that came up in my subscriptions reader since then.  Even though it was posted on April 1, I don't think it was meant as a joke.)

In part 2, I argued that that's the wrong question, and that maybe we should think outside that box, and in part 3, I talked about how the American phobia of the public sector is largely due to psychological baggage from the Cold War. But I don't think that's the only cause of the modern American mistrust of government.  My brother John explained an additional reason as follows:

The ideology got cemented in our current political alignment in the US because of racism.  In the post WW2 era, with Brown vs. Board of Education, the courts began to rule that black Americans were actually people.  The government then began to dismantle Jim Crow segregation.  In time, everything that was a public accommodation became non-discriminatory in name at least.

The conservative response was to retreat from public institutions into private institutions that were still legally able to discriminate against black people.  So Chief Justice Rehnquist got his start writing charters that allowed suburbs to bar black people from buying property in the suburb --- hence suburbification, white flight, white flight from public institutions, conservative dismissal of public institutions, conservative creation of private counterfeit institutions, and ultimately conservative distrust of and desire to dismantle public institutions are all derived from reactionary conservative racism.

Since the 1968 2-party realignment, the GOP has been the dominant party because of its embrace of a neo- (softer/PC) racism.  That’s the core of the party to this day.  88% of the people who voted for Romney are white, and they include all of the country’s racists.  Every person who voted for Romney is frankly guilty of voting based on racial and other personal animus (such as moral indignation against empowered women who use birth control) --- even though almost all of them have hidden their true motives from themselves.

I agree with John's analysis.  Another place where this aspect becomes obvious is in the gay marriage debate.  It is astonishing how many Americans sincerely argue that the solution is simply to "get the government out of the marriage business."

I'm not surprised that Americans would come up with this.  The logic is attractive:  (a) The government is inherently incompetent and ruins everything it touches, (b) we have a conflict involving marriage, (c) the government is involved in marriage, ==> therefore, the problem is the government!  Of course!

But it's odd to stick with this idea because if you think about it for a couple of minutes, you see that "getting the government out of marriage" -- in addition to failing to solve the problem at hand -- also creates a host of new problems regarding what to do about all the things (inheritance, medical decisions, immigration, etc.) that were hitherto handled by having a generally-agreed-upon third party (the government) provide official, legal recognition of kinship relations.  But at least it take these problems out of the hands of the government with its pesky "equal protection under the law" (even for people you don't like!)

And, as John pointed out, hostility specifically towards black people plays a huge role in people's attitudes towards the government.  Specifically, Romney couldn't entirely take back his statement about "the 47%" because keeping the undeserving from receiving any government largess was one of his party's main selling points -- a higher priority than actually getting out and getting positive things done.  And, ironically enough, it was a big selling point specifically for the people in the 47% of non-tax-payers (and people living on government entitlements) because what they're often concerned about isn't government largess per se -- they're worried about the wrong people getting it:

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?" 

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

Why is this such a passionate issue for some people?  I don't know, but maybe you can get an idea from some of the election-night tweets about how Obama and his fellow "niggers" hate to work and just want to live off welfare....

Why can't we have nice things? Savoia & Sowa's "Marzi 1984-1987" (Part 3 of my "rethinking economics" series)

Three young girls in a friendship triangle, jostling over which two are best friends. One friend is distraught about not getting accepted into a coveted ballet class (pronounced "not skinny enough" by a teacher who had, herself, not quite made it into a prestigious ballet company), and the other two are left with mixed feelings about their own elation at getting accepted. Seeing strange new things while visiting cousins in the country; enduring marathon mass services with a very pious mother. Sylvain Savoia & Marzena Sowa's Marzi is full of scenes from growing up that are easy to relate to -- making the unfamiliar aspects of the setting all the more vivid and striking. You see, the story of Marzi takes place in Poland, under communism.


As you might expect, Marzi's young experiences involved things like standing in long lines in the bitter cold, waiting for the opportunity to buy a little bit of meat from a tiny shop that doesn't have enough for everyone, and rushing out to another shop to buy as much toilet-paper as possible as soon as the neighborhood gets news that there's been a delivery. Marzi's experience involved being downwind from Chernobyl and not knowing whether she would be permanently affected, despite the precautions he family took. She also recounts getting fine new refrigerators from Russia (and having almost nothing to fill them with) and seeing her parents hoarding cash (including US dollars) to buy things on the black market in case of emergencies.



Yet even the seemingly-unfamiliar components of the story recount universal human experiences. Marzi was happy with her cloth doll until her friend got a Barbie doll. As always, the joy of having stuff is relative, not absolute. If you're reading this, you probably have a phone and the means to occasionally buy nice clothing and a Barbie doll -- and you don't think much of it. But the key wasn't so much that Marzi's friend had all of these things, it was that she had them and the other kids at her school didn't. (I'm sure I don't have to provide you with any illustrations of how this applies to your own childhood, and possibly also adulthood.)

Marzi's friend's parents worked in the meat industry, hence had the opportunity to buy themselves as much meat as they wanted, including some to sell on the black market and/or sell preferentially in exchange for kickbacks. So they could shop in the one big store in their town that was always fully-stocked with anything you could want -- but where they only accepted payment in US dollars.



This is the part, naturally, that brings to mind a brilliant observation by Jared Diamond:

[T]he values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs.

This is one of the main reasons why -- for Americans -- the private sector is the only true sector, as I discussed earlier. It's why Americans today have a pathological fear of public sector providing any kind of goods or services.

A related story was featured in the book The Collapse of Belief, which I reviewed at Main Street Plaza:

Years ago, during the Soviet reign in Eastern Europe, a visiting diplomat from that region had his belief in the superiority of communism collapse when he first entered an American supermarket. He thought the store was fake at first. "If it were real," he said, "there would be long lines of people to buy all that food." But when he instructed his driver to take him across town to another store not on the planned route, he saw the same thing, and his conviction cracked.

It's a neat tale of how new evidence can help you think outside of the box, which is the point of the whole book. Yet, ironically, (though the book is good overall) this particular story pats its American audience on the back for thinking squarely inside the American box. America has giant stores chock-full of any goods you could possibly want -- always plentiful and inexpensive! That's what makes America great!! That's why we won the Cold War! Boo-yeah, go team!!

The tales of lines and shortages under a centrally-run economy are, of course, true. But look where clinging stubbornly to this triumph has led us.

Yes, America is the land where you can buy anything you could possibly imagine at any time of day or night. Consumer spending is practically the measure of the strength of the economy. If we're surrounded by crumbling public infrastructure, the electrical grid, rail network, and waterworks have had no improvements beyond emergency patching for thirty years, aging bridges are in danger of collapsing, the young population continues to slip behind in terms of the getting the education necessary to contribute to current and future technology, etc., at least we can always go to Target.

It's part of the reason why reasonable health care reform is such a battle in the United States. People can invent stories of waiting in long lines for a tiny ration of health care under "socialized medicine" and Americans are primed to believe them. It doesn't matter that it's as simple as in the tale of the diplomat above to step outside the US and see that the stories aren't true. It doesn't matter that such tales don't even make sense when you think about them for two minutes, or that US healthcare is among the most expensive in the world, by a lot, for the same treatments, or that the closest thing I've seen to the "waiting in long lines for a pitiful scrap of health care" is the model where people hold out until their problem is an emergency, and then go wait in line to have it treated at the emergency room because they don't have any health insurance. Communism made Marzi's family have to wait in a long line to get a few sausages -- while their American counterparts had as many sausages as they wanted -- so why should "socialized medicine" be any different?

Why, indeed...?

Maybe it's difficult to keep past triumphs in their proper perspective when planning for the future.

See also Rethinking economics 1: the private sector is the only true sector and Rethinking Economics 2: Lessons from Switzerland!!.

Rethinking Economics 2: Lessons from Switzerland!!

See here for part 1 on the private sector vs. the public sector.

Reading a post on a favorite blog, I learned that the far-right wing news outlet World News Daily recently wrote an article praising Switzerland and Sweden for having strong economies despite the current economic problems throughout the developed world.

Said the WND author: "Other governments could learn something." I agree wholeheartedly. I have learned some fantastic ideas from observing how things are done in Switzerland!! Mostly a simple point that absolutely can and should be applied elsewhere.

First off, what I learned is totally outside the box of the current Republican-Democrat polarized thinking in the United States today. WND naturally looks for interpretations from inside its ideological box -- but even on face-value that's a little absurd. Sure the Swiss political system is economically right-wing by European standards (though, still, practically flaming communists by American standards), but Sweden? Does there exist a country that is more Socialist? Clearly what we learn can't be simply that the Republicans' ideas are right and the Democrats' are wrong (or vice-versa). Maybe it's something else!

Now, I don't know much about Sweden, but Ed Brayton (linked above) points out that while they have low public debt, they also have one of the highest effective tax rates in the world, so maybe the lesson is to actually pay for government spending rather than repeatedly borrowing in order to cut taxes again...? Seems as good an interpretation as any. But, anyway, back to the country I know something about: Switzerland.

Before attempting to apply the Swiss model, it's important to understand the ways in which Switzerland is unique. The key point is that Switzerland is a tiny country with a ton of money. And the fact that the country is relatively less socialist than its neighbors is in large part the result of the wealth rather than the cause. How Switzerland became wealthy is a long and complicated story -- I'll just mention that the highly lucrative and questionable banking industry played a non-negligible role, and staying neutral during WWII didn't hurt either.

Then, when more people have the means to find their own individual solutions to things (like quality child-care and early-childhood education, for example), there's less push to find common solutions. So, for example, if you have small children and don't happen to be wealthy, you're better off in neighboring France.

But the interesting part of Switzerland's story isn't so much where the wealth originally came from as what they've done with it.

Switzerland supports an astonishing amount of scientific research. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) gets more than a billion Francs per year (a Franc is about a dollar), and several other universities in Switzerland have comparable budgets. In addition to hosting CERN (a multi-national nuclear physics research organization), there's also the Paul Scherrer Institute (which I have toured) -- full of particle accelerators as well.

The research performed at these institutions gets applied in real-world practical applications. For example, the Paul Scherrer Institute studies proton therapy, which is better than traditional radiation therapy for certain types of tumors. Additionally, ETH provides assistance for people to start their own companies based on research done there. I've seen how effective their programs are -- I work for one such company. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Also, remember how amazed I was by French public transportation? Well, Swiss public transportation is even better. If you haven't lived it, I can hardly describe how quick and convenient it is to go anywhere in the country (including wilderness) without ever getting behind the wheel of a car.

Additionally, Switzerland is a world leader in healthy, organic, sustainable agriculture, and a trend-setter in terms of buying local, seasonal foods (or, failing that, buying fair trade items).

In the US, economic health is constantly viewed in terms of consumer spending. But most of these consumer goods we're talking about are fundamentally disposable, and typically aren't even produced in the US. A wise economist once said that you don't pay people to dig holes and fill them back in again just to fuel the economy.

Suppose that one country (say, Finland) chooses to make education the top priority, and turns "teacher" into a highly-respected, well-paid, coveted position. Suppose another country (say, Germany) chooses to create incentives to power the country with solar energy. Suppose another country (say, Switzerland) funds world-class science research institutions, plus a super-efficient rail network, and creates incentives for sustainable agriculture. Suppose another country (do I need to name names here?) chooses to buy a mountain of junk from China.

All of these purchases fuel their respective countries' economies.

But at the end of the day, one of these countries has a highly-educated populace. One of these countries has extensive renewable power (and all of the security that goes with it). One of these countries has a robust and innovative tech industry, not to mention highly efficient transportation and a clean environment. And one of these countries has an enormous landfill and massive debt to China.

That's what I learned from Switzerland.

The US needs to stop seeing spending for the sake of spending as a good thing -- especially going into debt to do it. America's children would be better off if the American people could find the political will to make it a priority to spend wisely for the future.

Rethinking economics 1: the private sector is the only true sector

Blogger Brent (of "A Mormon in the Cheap Seats") wrote an excellent post for faithful Mormons about how social services for the poor in the US are more about levelling the playing field than about creating dependency. While I agree with his main points, one thing that has repeatedly struck me about recent American political discourse is that discussion of government social spending has been framed almost exclusively in terms of helping the poor (and whether they deserve it, etc.). Yes, keeping people from starving on the streets is an important component of functioning modern society -- but it's not the only role played by the public sector.

Let's take a step back and talk about some basic economics. In a modern society, most goods and services are provided either by the private sector (individuals, corporations, private organizations) or the public sector (government, at the local, state, or national level). Each of these two sectors has its advantages and disadvantages (as I discussed here). Any good American can tell you that there are plenty of goods and services that are produced a lot more efficiently by the private sector, motivated by private profits. However, it seems like most Americans are unwilling or unable to accept that there exist critical goods and services that can be provided better by the public sector.

I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out. I think the classic example from economics 101 is the lighthouse. In a costal city, no private individual or corporation profits enough from the lighthouse to pay the entire cost of building it, but the entire city profits from the trade that is made possible by affording ships safe access to the local harbor.

A modern society has a lot of lighthouses (metaphorically speaking). Scientific research is a big one. Technology a cornerstone of modern industry, and scientific research drives technological advances. However, the private sector is horrible at scientific research because the profitable kind is the kind that sets out to prove "my product works and is safe". I assume that I don't have to explain that if you set out to prove a pre-selected conclusion, at best you will get something that superficially resembles science, but without the accuracy.

Another lighthouse is education. A modern society benefits from having an educated populace. However, there are (at least) two big ideological obstacles to having successful public education in the United States. The first is that people seem to believe that public education is some sort of "entitlement" -- which, in Americanspeak, means "Some free-loader getting undeserved money, goods, or services on somebody else's dime." The second is a pervasive American belief that the government can never do anything right.

This belief is so pervasive that many Americans aren't even aware that it is an assumption that they are making. For example, if the government provides some service badly (say, for example, public transportation) many Americans will immediately conclude that the problem is that the government is inherently incompetent -- rather than looking beyond that idea for other causes for the particular problem, or looking for examples of other governments that have provided the same service well (for possible ideas to emulate).

It surprises me how many people take it as an unquestioned article of faith that "we need to cut the government smaller." Regardless of what the problem is, that's always the solution. Now, certainly, there exist countries that absolutely would benefit from cutting their government smaller. But in the United States, after many decades of acting on this belief, maybe more random hacking at it (solely for the purpose of making it smaller) isn't helpful. Why not change to insisting on competence? Insisting that what the government does, it should do it well.

I know that "government regulation" is a dirty word in American English. But I would like to make the radical suggestion that while it's possible for government regulations to be done badly (causing inefficiency), it's also possible for government regulations to be done well -- achieving desirable goals for your society.

I saw an interesting illustration of this idea in a recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek. (Why was I reading Bloomberg Businessweek? Somebody left a copy of it in the train, and it turned out to be surprisingly interesting...) Anyway, the thing that struck me in the article was that in the US, government regulations are/were preventing people who want solar energy from installing it, whereas government regulations in Germany were instrumental in building a huge (largely private) investment in a solar network that is cost-effective, despite Germany not being a particularly sunny country. And the US public utility companies looking out for their short-term profits were a large part of the problem, so privatizing (a popular solution to government inefficiency) would do the opposite of helping. It's time to expect government competence instead.

How did Americans come to believe that the private sector is the only true sector? Here's my guess:

The cold war had a huge impact on American thought. A lot of what it means to be American is tied up in being the opposite of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union crumbled from within, it was almost universally interpreted by Americans as proof that the American way is the right way and the Soviet way was the wrong way. And this leads many people to the conclusion that the public sector is always wrong and the profit-driven private sector is the only true sector of the economy. (A secondary/related factor: too many educated people mistaking Ayn Rand novels for Economics textbooks instead of taking an actual Economics course.)

The problem with that logic is that just because having the entire economy run by a centralized public sector doesn't work, that doesn't imply that having the private sector run the whole economy does work. The culprit may well be a lack of balance. Indeed, the US seems dead set on becoming the example to illustrate that leaning too far in the other direction doesn't work either.

See also part 2: Lessons from Switzerland!!

The Right Questions: Eric T. Freyfogle's "On Private Property"

Remember how I was complaining about ideologues' lack of new analysis? Specifically, the inability to use data and observation of human society over the past half-century to evaluate and modify beliefs and theories...?

Well, I had a clever idea of my own the other day! Instead of just complaining that I haven't tripped over any new ideas, why not wander over to the bookstore and look for some? And I found a real gem: On Private Property: Finding Common Ground on the Ownership of Land,by Eric T. Freyfogle.

What does private property even mean? What precisely can you expect to do to/with/on your land when your right to property is upheld? If you think those questions have simple, clear, well-understood answers, you're wrong.

On the most basic level, your use/enjoyment of your property affects your neighbors' use/enjoyment of theirs, and vice-versa. Land use disputes can't be simply interpreted as one side upholding the right to property and the other side opposing it. They're more reasonably characterized as a complex negotiation over how the rights and interests different parties interact. And, unfortunately, US court rulings on property disputes often tend to have an "ad hoc" quality -- instead of being based on a general, objective set of principles.

Freyfogle gives a fascinating historical overview of how our definition of property has evolved over the past few centuries. He uses a number of actual property-dispute court cases to illustrate the ambiguity of what is (and has traditionally been) guaranteed by the right to property. And he proposes a framework of ideas about how we can understand better what private property should mean.

Whether or not you agree with his answers, Freyfogle is asking all the right questions. There is nothing more mind-expanding than looking at familiar issues from a new perspective by analyzing the key assumptions. And the question of how land and resources are divided is going to be one of the most critical issues of our time as population pressure continues to rise to the nine billion mark. We're not living on the edge of the (supposedly) unlimited frontier anymore, folks, and it's time to think hard about what that means for our society and the world.

I'd like to recommend this book for online discussion. I would especially like to recommend this book for any of you who call yourselves "Libertarians" or "Objectivists" -- if you're going to hold up the right of property as the most crucial right, then it's in your interest to be sure you know what you're talking about. Unfortunately, unlike The Authoritarians (which we discussed earlier), this book isn't available for free download. It costs $16 from the publisher. Worth the money, IMHO, but I hope they'll eventually pasture it as a free (or very cheap) e-book at some point so it can enjoy wider distribution.

Still segregated after all these years: Jonathan Kozol's "The Shame of the Nation"

Seems like only a half-century ago that the U.S. Supreme Court declared (in Brown v. Board of Education) that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." And where are we today?

Still separate. Still unequal.

It turns out that -- while it's not so hard to eliminate de jure (legally-enforced) segregation -- de facto segregation is a bit harder to root out. Kozol reports that the poorest schools (in large, Northern cities) typically have a student body that is more than 90% black and Hispanic. Schools with a real mixture of races are actually quite rare in and around U.S. urban areas -- they're typically either almost entirely black+hispanic or almost entirely white+other. Even in areas of NYC where the residential neighborhoods themselves are fairly integrated, school choice programs within the public school system create a dynamic where the white kids get sent to one school and the black kids to another.

Kozol describes the harm. Poor schools often have major infrastructure problems such as overcrowded, dilapidated buildings with chemical hazards. It's not rare to lack playgrounds, not to mention basic materials like books and chairs for every student. When one school can spend $17,000 per pupil and another only $9000, it makes a huge difference (multiplied by the number of kids in the school) in terms of the quality of teachers you can attract and the supplies and infrastructure you can buy.

Since race is mixed in with the money situation, it makes the "haves" care that much less about the plight of the "have nots." Probably most of the people reading this post are right now saying to themselves "Of course the children of the rich deserve a better quality of education than the children of the poor because they're paying more in property taxes." When people call America a "land of opportunity," they don't mean it's supposed to have a level playing field. They mean that you can buy opportunity (if you have the money), otherwise you get a curriculum that is designed to produce docile, obedient, low-level employees.

Kozol argues that the de-facto segregation is itself a problem (apart from the money problem) because being able to interact easily and comfortably with people of other races is an important factor for success in a mixed-race country. I agree, as I discussed in my post European dream.

Unfortunately, the problem is incredibly difficult to grapple with. De-facto segregation is not illegal, and apparently is not covered by the Brown decision mentioned above. People who would like to see greater equality can do very little to stop the momentum of the current system. A major overhaul would not merely be expensive -- it would be a political impossibility. In today's America, putting equality and the common good above the individual's right to leave his fellows in the dust (if he can) is almost universally viewed as "communism" and hence evil.

This problem illustrates the difference between civil rights for black people and civil rights for gay people. Black people in the U.S. face major structural inequalities that don't have any simple solutions. The thing that's so infuriating about anti-gay discrimination is that it's just so gratuitous! You could pass a law that doesn't affect the straight majority, and problem is essentially solved. Refusing to grant gay people equal rights is like kicking them in the face just for the sake of kicking them in the face. For black people, it's not nearly so simple. The relevant laws and court cases have been on the books for nearly a half-century or more -- and the inequalities are still there. It's because there's no simple, obvious, fair way to even things out. Ditto for Hispanics and immigrants.

The most encouraging possibilities mentioned in Kozol's book are found in the few schools that really are integrated. Their success demonstrates that it's possible, and may encourage parents to do more to integrate the schools in their own districts.

My Utopian Idea!

Ever since I was a kid, I've contemplated how human society could function differently, for the better. I've come up with a lot of naive ideas over the years (I'll bet Mathmom remembers what we came up with back in High School) -- which is fine because figuring out why a given solution wouldn't work helps you to hone in on a good solution. I assume many of the rest of you have spent time on the same problem, especially if you like science fiction. I've never liked being limited to the capitalist/communist dichotomy, as though no new possibilities or ideas have flowered over the past half-century -- despite how dramatically things have changed in that amount of time.

I'd like to ask you to pause a few moments (step away from the computer, if necessary) and think about ideas you've had about how society might be different. When you're done, please come back and read my new idea.

Done?

OK, here's mine:

All adults get one half-day of education per week for their entire lives.

Here's how it works: Each person takes one course per semester (six months), and the course can be anything at all that could potentially be offered by a university or a community college or even a vocational school. This would include subjects like art, music, and sports (even extreme sports) in addition to standard academic courses. The only restriction would be that you can't take more than three semesters in a row in the same broad subject area (eg. once you take three semesters of sports or three semesters of science, then the next semester you have to study something else). Anyone who employs anyone else would be aware that every employee requires one half-day of release time per week (in the same way that they are now aware that employees must be documented and have social security tax paid on them, etc.).

This came to me while contemplating the current U.S. health insurance reform debates. I think that a good government needs to be "of the people, by the people, for the people" (because rulers and oligarchs tend to see their needs/interests as outweighing others' needs, even when they sincerely believe they're being fair), and a functioning democracy or republic depends on an educated populace.

Education is one of the farthest things from a "zero sum game" there is. If one person gets a lot of it, that takes nothing from the big pot of education that's left for others. If anything, it increases the big pot, because if your friend learns something, she might find it interesting enough to tell you about it, and then you might learn something to and/or feel motivated to learn more on your own.

I'm discouraged to see the trend in the U.S. of viewing education as "every man for himself" and as long as your own kids get some, then screw everybody else. You (and your kids) have to live in the same society with everybody else's kids. (As an aside, I often wonder how much good could be done if all those people who home-school would instead send their kids to public school and then invest that same amount of time that they now spend home-schooling on improving the public school instead.)

In addition to the benefit from the education itself, my plan would have further advantages:

1. Linking the campuses would be a boon to developing viable public transportation. One of the problems with setting up a public transportation grid is that you need to have common destinations (as opposed to having all of the start and end points diffused over a large area). With this system, you just go to whichever campus is nearest to your home or work, and from there take a train to whichever campus offers your class. (Naturally the class itself would be less than half a day, to allow time for transportation.)

2. People would constantly be meeting people outside of their socio-economic-racial-cultural group (and making friends, since they'd be meeting people with common interests), which would diminish racism and classism, helping society to function more harmoniously.

3. The society would be more responsive to changing labor needs. If a given line of work starts becoming obsolete and some other skill is desperately needed, then the change in demand could be swiftly met by a change in the labor supply.

Naturally the biggest drawback to this plan is that the United States of America cannot afford to do this. And that's not to even begin with the political reality (that apparently a big portion of the American public would rather continue to be royally ripped off by the world's most expensive healthcare-payment-bureaucracy -- as long as that bureaucracy will reassure them that nobody will get something for nothing). Unlike health insurance reform, universal socialized adult education would cost a lot more money than it saves. And I'm sure I don't have to review for you what state the U.S. economy and treasury are in.

I'm just saying, if it were possible, what a wonderful world this would be!

Now, you've probably noticed that my plan says nothing about economics or about how to deal with the energy crisis. I have more about energy coming up (from a book I'm currently reading), and as for economics, well, as I said here, I should have taken more courses in economic theory. (Maybe I could, if only my utopian fantasy were a reality!) In other words, I'm open to suggestions.

The commies and me!

When I was in high school, I started to get the impression we weren't hearing the whole story about communism. It was the '80's, and we heard plenty of stories about people bravely escaping from the evil Soviet empire, and all about how their propaganda paper was named "Pravda" which -- ironically -- means truth! Yet, I wondered what this cold-war stand-off looked like to ordinary people on their side.

It wasn't until grad school, however, that I decided to investigate. Politically, I'd gladly sloughed off religious social conservatism when I stopped believing in Mormonism, but I figured that the jury was still out on Reaganite borrow-and-spend supply-side economics. Then I started listening to Rush Limbaugh and some other right-wing radio shows. It began when my then-husband found them entertaining. I found them entertaining too, at first. But they gradually convinced me that their convictions were based on bile, anger, and especially ignorance and stupidity.

(Yep, it's true! I used to be a regular listener of the Rush Limbaugh show, back in the early days before all the scandals broke about his drug use and about getting out of military service because of a boil on his butt. The experience basically inoculated me for life against having any kind of respect for the Republican Party.)

Since I was anti-impressed by the right, the next obvious stop was to see what the left had to say. I started with Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States -- an excellent book, and a fascinating look at a familiar story from an unfamiliar perspective! I was sold on it immediately. My next stop was to check out the campus Communist club.

I liked the campus Communists at first, and I participated in their club for a few months. Yet in the end they failed to convert me to Leninism. The key problem was the lack of new ideas and new analysis. Each group of ideologues seemed to have a favorite intellectual who has thought up some clever analysis fifty or a hundred years ago, but nobody seemed willing or able to evaluate and modify their theories based on observation of human society over the past half-century. The closest thing to modern analysis was when people would interpret current events in terms of their chosen beliefs, like holy writ.

Here's an example I found particularly frustrating: the fall of the Soviet Union. The right took it as complete vindication and proof that they're right, and my new Communist friends' position was no more nuanced. The Trotskyists took it as proof that Stalin had sold out the revolution, and the Stalinists took it as proof of the age-old claim that the revolution must be global otherwise the evil capitalists will destroy it. In short, nobody learned a damn thing.

For myself, I felt like it should have been possible to gather some data and do some socio-economic research about which things worked, which things didn't, and why. Take, for example, the idea of a centralized command economy, which I was reminded of when reading The Jungle recently:

Since the same kind of match would light everyone's fire, and the same shaped loaf of bread would fill everyone's stomach, it would be perfectly feasible to submit industry to the control of a majority vote. [...] As soon as the birth-agony was over, and the wounds of society had been healed, there would be established a simple system whereby each man was credited with his labor and debited with his purchases; and after that the process of production exchange, and consumption would go on automatically, and without our being conscious of them, any more than a man is conscious of his beating heart.

Okay, that was a clever and intriguing idea when The Jungle was published, back in 1906. But there's something wrong when people are still making this claim ninety years later, after some of the (rather obvious) flaws have become painfully apparent: production of all goods in a society requires far too much specific logistical management to submit every decision to popular referendum, and electing a committee to run not only the legal system but the entire economy means concentrating too much power in too few hands.

On the other hand, it's equally simplistic and stupid to imagine that -- just because the above doesn't work -- that proves that private interests are the most efficient providers of every type of goods and services a society needs. If you open your eyes and look at the evidence around you, you'll see that the private sector and the public sector each have their strengths and their weaknesses. It's not a question of choosing which one is "right" and which one is "wrong" -- it's a question of optimizing your strategy by using the best of both. There may even be other ways we haven't even thought of yet for organizing labor and capital to produce goods and services! With the rate that society and technology are changing, why assume the possibilities from a century ago are the only possibilities available to us today?

In retrospect, of course, I can see that it was unfair of me to expect this level of analysis from the campus Communist club. Clearly, what I was looking for was the Economics Department.

I had a few other, more legitimate problems with the club, however:

First of all, they were always on about the working class and labor unions, but -- as far as I could tell -- they didn't know anyone who was blue-collar and/or in a labor union, and didn't have any interest in meeting any. (I was actually one up on them since I was dating a bus driver, who, in fact, took me to see an actual Communist Party parade in Paris. That was a fascinating cultural experience! Unfortunately, the relationship didn't end very well.)

On top of that, all of their activities were focused on proselytizing and fund-raising (in preparation for "the revolution"). I wanted to do something that was a little closer to reality, so I helped organize an anti-war protest with them. (I talked about this in my Confessions of a former Nader voter posts.) To put it mildly, that demonstration didn't go quite the way I'd hoped. We gathered up all of the different Communist, Anarchist, Quaker, and other radical organizations in the area, and, let's just say, some of them were pretty weird (not the Quakers, BTW).

The worst part was when one person stood up to speak at the rally and gave a speech in support of Saddam Hussein. The second-worst part was visiting another local Communist club and noting that on their literature table they had a book called Rethinking Stalin. I know, there have been other leaders who have "cracked a few eggs to make an omelet" and are remembered as heroes anyway (see: The Bible), and yet I'm still not in favor of "rethinking Stalin." And the third worst part was when someone from one of the smaller radical groups stood up at the rally to denounce the goals of the rally. I met Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists, and others I couldn't identify, and boy-oh-boy did these guys hate each other worse than they hated any capitalist! If you've seen the "People's Front of Judea" scene from The Life of Brian, you might think it's an over-the-top exaggeration.

It's not.

And so ended my adventures with Communism.

Living downtown and car-free!!!

A lot of people hate living in the city: the crowds, the hustle-and-bustle, the noise. Then there are lots of other people who think they would hate it, but -- once they try it -- discover they love it!!!

I fall into this latter group. I'm introverted, solitary, and anti-social, so the idea of living in a place that's full of people? It was a no-brainer that I'd hate it! I wanted to find my own "Walden Pond" or something. (Never mind that I've never actually read any Thoreau -- it's the principle of the thing!) Then, as I explained in my post le metro, once I tried living in the city, I loved it!!! It was like a revelation of new possibilities that I'd never considered, and now I'm hooked! Today I'm going to explain why I love it, and encourage you -- if you've never considered living downtown -- to think about it.

My number one reason why I love car-free urban living is convenience.

Since your car can take you anywhere, anytime, it seems like it would be hard to beat that in terms of convenience. But really it depends on your temperament and what types of tasks you find pleasant or unpleasant. As I said in my post about le metro, the stress and time wasted on concentrating on driving, finding a parking space, remembering where you parked, not to mention keeping track of maintenance, insurance, etc. add up to a huge pain in the butt compared to the breath of fresh air that is stepping out of your house and taking a pleasant, invigorating walk to your destination. I think commuting by car and working out are both intolerably boring tasks, and it galled me to have to do each one separately if there was any way I could trade them both in for a task I like, namely going for a walk. Walking regularly is a pleasant, painless, even entertaining way to get some exercise. (The entertainment factor come in if you love people-watching like I do -- it's fun and a source of great free material for aspiring writers.)

An additional plus over traditional workouts is that you can't just start up with good intentions (buy the equipment and/or gym membership) and then decide you're too tired, lose interest, etc. If your only means of getting home involves your own feet, then you don't need a whole lot of will-power to stick with the program.

And that's not to mention the cost in actual money! It was painful to me to see such a huge chunk of my paycheck go bye-bye for a vehicle that I didn't even want. For all of my exmo friends who talk about how much better they're doing financially after giving up tithing: giving up a car is even better!!! I caught another person on my blogroll making a similar calculation here.

There are a bunch of bunch of great noble reasons for adopting an urban lifestyle. Not wasting fuel helps us move towards a sustainable future both in terms of protecting the environment and keeping the peace with other people competing for the same scarce fossil resources. Living in the city, you typically interact on a daily basis with people from all different backgrounds, making it difficult to function as a hard-core racist, and encouraging understanding among different groups instead. But choosing this lifestyle isn't a question of martyring yourself for a grand cause -- once you've tried it you may end up doing it just because you want to.

But what about the kids?

That's the best part! Admittedly the question of the school district opens up a whole can of worms, and it may be a challenge to find a solution that works for you as I have in my European dream. But aside from that question, urbanism means a host of different options for kids concentrated within a few blocks of your home.

Back when I was living in New Jersey, a colleague of mine used to talk about the hours she would spend driving one kids to one private school than the other kid to another school, and would waste whole days driving her kids to their various lessons. And she had only two kids who were both young teens. When you live in the city with decent public transportation, it's possible to give kids a bit more independence at a younger age. Obviously you need to work out age-appropriate rules, but you're not locked into a situation where your kids under sixteen are stuck at home (with maybe a strip mall or something within biking distance) except when you're available to drive them somewhere. Plus if the car isn't an absolute necessity for getting around, it's easier to put off the dangerous rite-of-passage of giving your kid the car keys until you're sure your kid is mature enough to handle it.

Kids aren't the only ones who benefit from being able to transport themselves conveniently without driving. There are plenty of people who can't drive because of various handicaps such as blindness, and there are others who shouldn't be driving but do it because it's so inconvenient in many parts of the U.S. to transport yourself any other way. Elderly people can stay independent longer when they live within walking distance of shops. I see this in France all the time: very old ladies with their baskets making the rounds to the market, the bakery, and the pharmacy, and having a nice chat with the shopkeeper at each one. That's what I plan to do when I get old. :D

Plus even people who are normally okay to drive are often in situations where they shouldn't drive (and end up driving anyway for lack of other options). That includes more-or-less unavoidable situations (taking a required prescription, feeling angry and hence less able to concentrate), as well as irresponsible ones (driving while talking on the phone or after drinking). Drinking is only half of the problem of drinking-and-driving, the other half is the driving, which should be just as avoidable. And even if you're a safe driver, you are endangered by having to share the road with tons of poor drivers, many of them in super-sized assault vehicles...

The real question, though, is whether it's even possible.

Admittedly, in the U.S. it's pretty challenging to find a place to live that is a "walkable urban space" (where pretty much everything you need can be obtained within 1/4 to 1/2 mile or so of your home, even perhaps your job, plus ideally convenient public transportation and safe bike routes fill in any gaps). Daddy, Papa and Me wrote a post about the possiblity of walkable urbanism in the U.S. And I'd like to encourage more people to consider it, because the more people that want a walkable urban space and make it a priority, the easier it becomes to make it a reality.

Where have all the checks and balances gone?

Here's a bit of disturbing news that kept me from sleeping peacefully last night. A "correction" for a real-estate market gone awry? Considering how many people's solvency depends on their home equity, I wouldn't take this lightly.

It means the American people will have that much less to pay with when the bill comes due. What bill? Well, to catch up on maintenance of the crumbling infrastructure for one thing. I won't call it a "quality of life" issue or even "investment in the future" since I imagine those are frivolous aspects of government that some feel ought to be cut off before "drowning it in the bathtub". But functioning infrastructure benefits the economy, and dependence on foreign oil is a huge national security issue. (On a related note, having a functioning healthcare and education system is a sound economic investment as well, not some evil plot by commies and freeloaders...)

The most frightening part, though, is that the president can admit to breaking the law, wipe his butt on the Constitution, and flush the U.S. economy down the toilet, and somehow impeachment is not on the table? How is that possible??? Maybe we could use some leadership?

I'd swear it was the end-times if I believed in the end times. But since I don't, I do believe it's time to start cleaning this mess up...

Normally I like to keep my topics light, and I'm sure to get flamed for this one since I'm not an economist or an expert political analyst (not to mention the fact that I currently live in Europe...). For some excellent expert analysis, look here. For the sake of the U.S. and its Constitution, I think impeachment needs to be on the table and needs to be a priority in order to start turning things around.

Is religion the problem?

Should we try to eliminate religion entirely? Deconvert the world?

These are the big questions making the rounds of the atheist community these days.

I say it depends on what your goals are. Let's say for the sake of argument that the goal is to leave a human-habitable planet with a sustainable human society on it for our descendants. Preferably a free and open society, and not some bizarro soylent-greenish solution like "okay we have enough resources for everyone to live happily until they're thirty, then we have to eat them..."

Given our current globally-interdependent world, creating a sustainable human society/lifestyle will require a great deal of cooperation among all of the peoples of the world.

(This post will be full of unsubstantiated claims and opinions like that one -- please feel free to dispute any or all of them in the comments.)

I think religion can hinder cooperation and understanding among peoples, but I don't think it's necessarily the primary obstacle. And setting out with a goal to eliminate religion can interfere with more important goals.

Consider the goals of freedom of/from religion, separation of church and state, and a free society with a shared secular public sphere. Consider the goal of high-quality public education, which is what allows people to recognize the difference between actual freedom and the slogan "freedom" (and vote for the former in a democracy). All of these are goals where lots of believers can get on board with us.

There's one thing to keep in mind about believers who are political moderates: Just because they're not violent/dangerous/insane, that doesn't necessarily mean they're not attached to their faith. If they get the impression that the ultimate goal of science education (and/or freedom of religion) is to eliminate religion, many will feel threatened and start to sympathize with the theocrats. There's no reason to alienate our allies like that. Keeping crap-masquerading-as-science out of the schools is not some sort of stealth evangelizing for atheism, and it benefits the whole society. People of differing worldviews can coexist and interact in a free society as long as they agree to do so.

Some say that if there were no religion there would be no war. After all, it's easier to convince people to go out and kill other people if they think it's God's will. God kills people all the time, and carrying out his will is -- by definition -- good. And it's easier to convince people to risk their own lives if they think martyrdom leads to paradise, not to true death.

Still, I think that -- even without religion -- the root causes of war would still be there. War is fundamentally about competition over resources.

People who feel confident that they will see their children grow up to be successful adults have little to gain and lots to lose from violence. The most dangerous people are those whose prospects are so bleak that they're better off taking resources by any means, including killing and risking death. I talked about this in my fertility, mortality post. Any human community can be persuaded to get along with any other human community -- regardless of religion -- as long as it's in their interest to do so.

I would argue that the converse is also true: That (regardless of religion) any human community can be persuaded to kill any other human community if it's in their interest to do so. Humans have a remarkable ability to stereotype and make assumptions about any human community they see as "other." It's weird, but while you naturally see that your own community is full of all different types of people, it's nearly impossible to avoid mentally flattening different races and nationalities into cartoon caricatures. Even educated people who know intellectually that foreign societies have the full spectrum of human qualities still have a difficult time feeling on a gut-level "they're more like us than they are different." Actually living in a city where you're surrounded by people of different origins (or living in a foreign society) seems to be the only way to see that people are the same, and even then it's not clear whether you're learning that "people everywhere are just people" or whether you're merely expanding your own community.

The problem (as well as the "adaptive" value) of mentally simplifying other groups is obvious. The belief that "they're like that, they're not ordinary people like us" is what paves the way for the belief that "they can't be reasoned with; we have no choice but to kill them."

I think that the meta-strategy for peace and sustainability is to see to it that the children of every country have a real opportunity to grow up healthy (again see fertility, mortality for details). See to it that every parent has the expectation that all of his/her children will live to adulthood, which makes it so that investing themselves completely in raising a few treasured children well (and not a quiver-full of disposable warriors) is the most attractive strategy.

How does religion play into this? Regardless of what is written in any official holy book, most people are going to act in their best interest. When it's time for war, those who like the scriptures about God killing all the infidels will rise to power, and when it's time for peace, those who prefer the passages about God loving everyone will rise to power. I figure we might as well make friends with that latter group and compare notes with them. They're the ones who are in a position to sway the (political) opinions of the average believer.

Let's look at this in terms of strengths and weaknesses: The advantage that the fascists, racists, fanatics, and theocrats have is that they enjoy lockstep, unswerving, unquestioning obedience from their followers. Their disadvantage? They can't get along with their closed-minded counterparts in any other racial/ethnic/religious group.

For those who want a free, open, secular/pluralistic society it's the opposite: Everybody has an opinion, nobody will unquestioningly follow the leader through right and through wrong. So our weakness is that most of the time we're marching in a bunch of different directions at once. But our strength is cross-cultural cooperation. Every race, creed, and culture has its open-minded people, and by definition their superficial differences aren't a barrier to working together.

If we can agree (atheists as well as people of faith) on meta-strategy, we can start to make progress on how to carry it out. It's easier said than done at every step of the way, though, so we'll see...

Fertility, Mortality or Sex vs. Death

One time I heard my sister commenting to my mom about how striking it was that the book she was reading – set around 150 years ago – was so full of death and so focused on death. My mom replied that back then the romantic ideal was a beautiful death scene.

“In those days,” she explained, “people were obsessed with death the way people today are obsessed with sex.”

I didn't say anything, but I was dying to point out how fortunate we are today. Which would you rather have: romantic sex or a romantic death?

I'm being completely serious when I say this. Increased life expectancy – combined with convenient, effective contraception – has dramatically transformed our whole society and outlook.

Today if you're in a loving marriage, you expect to be able to grow old together. Abusive or otherwise bad marriages are ended by choice, rather than having good and bad marriages alike cut short by untimely deaths.

And as a parent, rather than having more children than you can effectively handle – and then watching many of them die – you can typically choose to have no more kids than you think you can raise well, and more importantly, you can base this calculation on the expectation that you will most likely see them all live to adulthood.

This is no small matter. If I had to give up every single other advance of our miraculous modern era to keep this one, I would.

Our society has new attitudes and values that are the product of our current life-cycle. As Noëll was saying the other day on Agnostic Mom, ideas about child safety have changed.

I think the change boils down to the following calculation:

Imagine that your children have a one-in-ten chance of dying in childhood of disease or malnutrition and a one-in-five-hundred chance of dying in an accident. In that case, massive efforts to keep them safe from harm don't improve their chances of survival very much. You improve your family's overall survival rate by focusing on more productive tasks than babysitting and by leaving the kids to roam free and fend for themselves.

Now imagine that the disease and malnutrition death risk drops to one-in-five-thousand. Suddenly the one-in-five-hundred risk of accidental death is no longer a trivial side-note. It becomes worth your while to follow the kids closely to make sure nothing happens to them, even if it means a huge expenditure of time and energy.

I don't mean to suggest that individuals are consciously making this mental calculation. But society makes it unconsciously and our customs change accordingly. That's why there's been such a dramatic increase in child-safety practices within this generation (car-seats and other safety paraphernalia, attitudes about how much supervision children require), even though our current fertility/mortality situation essentially goes back another full generation or more. It takes about a generation for a culture to learn something – in this case for people to notice the disproportionately high rate of preventable accidental childhood deaths compared to total childhood deaths – and for attitudes and practices to change.

Contraception and working women enter into this same calculation. The long and short of it is that if Mom's salary is essential to the family budget, then every single additional baby is dauntingly costly. So if you are convinced that the ones you have will live and you have a simple means of not having any more, then just focusing on your current brood becomes a very attractive option.

That's essentially how it has gone is our house. When my second was a baby, I was sure I wanted a third kid. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I mostly wanted a third as a back-up to soften the devastating blow if something happened to one of my other two. It wasn't so much that I wanted three kids as it was that I didn't want less than these two, and I've kind of decided that that's a bad reason to have another kid. I figure it would be better just to be extra careful with the two I've got.

(For simplicity I haven't mentioned my husband here, but he's on the same page.)

The other half of the calculation is that we can just barely afford to have a nanny come in and take care of them while I'm at work, and we can't keep it up indefinitely. I assume a lot of families end up doing some sort of equivalent time-and-money calculation about kids at some point. In our modern value system, the strategy is to have only as many kids as your abilities and finances will allow you to raise correctly, and make every one of them count.

I'm not saying that people in the past loved their children less. But even if you have an unlimited amount of love (which is not a guarantee), you have only a finite amount of time, energy, and resources. So it's no accident that nuggets of Victorian wisdom such as “spare the rod and spoil the child” or “children should be seen and not heard” are shocking to modern ears. Today it is seen as irresponsible to have children you don't want, and criminal to abuse or neglect them. Not so many generations ago, having more children than you want was standard operating procedure, so society was a little more lenient on the whole abuse-and-neglect thing.

Additionally, as painful as losing a child obviously was in generations past, I suspect that it is more devastating today if only because today's parents are totally unprepared for it. A few hundred years ago, you expected to see some of your children die. It was a fact of life that you learned to accept by seeing it happen to so many others. A modern parent is also less likely to have a natural support system of people who will say “I know exactly how you feel – I remember when that happened to me,” and instead may be isolated as friends have no idea how to deal with the situation or what to say.

I've heard people argue that the hard-headed, cruel-but-realistic solution to world overpopulation is just to stand by and let children in poorer countries die. For those who are heartless enough not to be offended by the cruelty of this solution, I contend that it is also wrong in practical terms, and in fact is dangerously counterproductive. The thing is that it is very difficult to persuade people that it's a good idea to have only two or three kids if the kids have a one-in-ten chance of dying of disease, malnutrition, stepping on a land mine, etc. So if you take a poor country where people are having seven to ten kids – to maximize the survival rate – you end up with quite a lot more kids total than if families there were having two kids each and every single one of them lived.

The darker calculation is that where children are likely to die senselessly of diphtheria or malaria, it's human nature for their parents to prefer to see them die honorably fighting whatever enemy they imagine caused their family's hardships...

For their own safety if nothing else, the people of the wealthier countries need to make it a priority to help the rest of the world get to a state where (1) people have access to basic health care, especially contraception and prenatal, neonatal, and pediatric care, (2) children are unlikely to die of disease, malnutrition, and violence, and (3) the mother's economic contribution is vital to the family's finances, giving her more footing to decide in family planning issues and making each additional baby more costly and hence more valuable.

These goals are far from easy. However, nothing else has been shown to reverse the trend of overpopulation and its accompanying ills.

I'm sorry this essay isn't very amusing. I just wanted to post all of my crazy theories on this subject in one coherent article to make it easier to refer to them later.

And in case this post isn't already sufficiently long, boring, and controversial, I'd like to add one last point about my generation's obsession with sex:

It's only reasonable to expect that healthy, well-fed adults who aren't busily raising more kids than they can handle would have an overactive libido. Natural selection wouldn't have it any other way.

What a miraculous age we live in!!!

So many possibilities, so many responsibilities...