Subject:
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Re: From Richard: "It's all bad news - Chaos is my fault"
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 28 May 2004 19:28:29 GMT
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Viewed:
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1461 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Don Heyse wrote:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
> > Well, part of the reason that people in third-world nations have 10 kids is
> > because 80% of those kids will likely die before puberty. Obviously that's not
> > an inviolable statistic, and just as obviously it's not the only cause of skewed
> > population growth, but it's a big factor. As a remedy, we first world nations
> > should probably consider other forms of aid than abstinence-based education.
> > Further, if first world nations faced a similar youth-based mortality rate, then
> > we'd see a revision of the 2.1 rule.
>
> You don't actually have to look to the 3rd world to see the problem. It
> exists in your own backyard.
Well, I was only responding to the question as it was raised in regard to third
world "per capita" breeding rates.
> The have-nots everywhere seem to reproduce faster. The imbalance will
> always exist, maybe it's programmed into our genes.
I don't know that we need to play the "genes" card right off the bat; it sort of
implies that "proles naturally breed like flies." It may be the case that
humans universally respond to economic hardship (and its attendant problems) by
upping the birth rate, but I'd need to see the experiment that verified that
theory.
Here's a summary of birth rates by country, from highest to lowest. Not sure of
the year represented, though.
http://www.ed-u.com/birth-rates-order-high.htm
It would be more expedient to correlate the higher birth rate with environmental
rather than genetic factors, since these can be more readily studied
empirically.
> You can bicker over politics all you want, but this problem is
> gonna boil over soon no matter who runs what country and how.
Yikes! The good old Malthusian food crisis. You're correct, though--the crisis
has always faced us, and likely always will until we come up with some way to
curb the birth rate or supply limitless food.
Dave!
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