How to motivate people to have fewer babies

Dear Joe,

You make some obvious points. But they needed to be said out loud, because to some, they are not yet obvious. Here are some of my responses:

If you don't like naughty corporate giants monetizing their mass murders (AKA "cancer clusters," and other ways people are killed by environmental  pollution, etc.) give some thought to pressing criminal charges against the CEO's. Anyone in America can bring a criminal action via our grand jury system.

If you would like to specifically address naughty corporate giants who have tried to control our elections via news black-outs on specific candidates, join the Citizen Class Action. You write that you are seriously considering boycotting the income tax.  Well, join the crowd.

Yes, Malthus, Darwin, Lorenz, et al. were right: EVERY species produces more young than will reach adulthood. Period. You can cure diseases and agribiz can produce more "food," but you can't change this fact. The only thing that happens is more humans are born. But still, not all of them will make it to adulthood. Meanwhile, as you note, we're using up the planet. There aren't 17 of them. Just one. When it's gone, we're done for.

So the question then becomes, what do the most procreative (that is the politest word I can think of) people tell you, would motivate them to, ahem, procreate LESS? You and I can come up with all kinds of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed notions, but they won't fly with anyone who didn't think them up themselves. What would motivate the people you mention?

I'm kind of hearing you say Social Security (as in retirement money, not youngsters). But what do the people around you say would work for them? Because an awful lot of Social Security receivers still seem to have procreated just as much as anyone else.

One more thing: We've got to find a way to go back to putting our natural fertilizer back in the soil, instead on overloaded sewage systems. There was an era in which farmers used to take trips into the cities, to collect the stuff. That's how revitalizing it is, for our soil.

Keep up your great writing!

Aleithia in Texas

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Aleithia,

What would motivate the people around me to produce fewer children? I hate to say it, but here it is: MONEY or some equivalent thereof, such as food or other sustaining elements. If rewarded on a short gratification schedule, weekly, and given free birth control, most I know would do it. Americans have no idea of the struggle for food, fuel, etc. Open a wallet and a thousand hungry eyes look into it. Every eye, child or adult, is constantly on the lookout for every coin, no matter how small. Leave a coin on your table and you will see attract several children at the window to watch it. Or simply deny electrical water services to families with more than one child (including Americans, if I had my way).

Having many children is not perceived as a drawback here because nobody sees a connection between their poverty and the number of children they are trying to feed. In this passive non-European culture forced and colonialized into a money based one, poverty is still seen an environmental condition, sort of like the weather and children are simply a constant that has always been there. So on one had you get all the do gooders trying tom save the old earth based culture here (because in their leisure and wealth it looks "authentic," etc. On the other hand you have people who are poor because their world has been monetized. Neither children nor money were so much a problem in an indigenous farming and fishing culture where sustenance was not so money based (although a certain amount was always needed.

Short answer: If Europeans and Americans are so damned hot on the money thing and wanna keep it rolling along, then take nine-tenths of the money away from Americans and distribute it more evenly, rewarding population decline and similar things (there will never be enough jobs on the planet for them, even in sweatshop labor). Or simply kill off all these folks and their babies by eating all their share of the food or burning it in our cars, and letting them die of diseases. Or causing them to kill each other off in wars for living space and territory.

To me it comes down to this. Are all men brothers?  Is mankind of a single spirit and soul? Can mankind exist without a planet upon which to live?

Personally, the elimination of misery is the highest of human endeavors. The rest is mere diversion, and now that our capability for said diversion has reached such astronomical earth destroying cost, mostly folly. This entire nation of Belize could easily be fed, clothed and housed for more than a year on what it costs to make a single crapola American Adam Sandler movie. Compared to most folks in this village, the citizens of Rome USA up there above Mexico are sitting in bath tubs of wine, stuffing brie up their noses and beating off all day. And they are absolutely convinced this is their god granted entitlement, their reward for reaching new levels of obesity, personal arrogance and ignorance about the world. Apparently their particular god agrees.

In art and labor,

Joe