Date: Sun, 6 Aug 95 00:26:55 CST From: "jim blair" To: freddy@kepler.math.ualberta.ca,talk-environment@cs.utexas.edu,alt-politics- greens@cs.utexas.edu Cc: BCc: Subject: Sir Thomas Gresham & Proposition 187 Hi, I saw your post on a.p.greens about overconsumption being a more pressing issue than overpopulation. I thought you might be interested in this earlier series from alt.politics.economics. From: jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu (jim blair) Subject: Sir Thomas Gresham & Proposition 187 Date: 27 Dec 1994 16:13:11 -0600 Sir Thomas Gresham and Proposition 187 An earlier discussion dealt with Greshamite Systems: those that select for their own failure. The most widely known example is Gresham's Law, the economic principle that when several kinds of money are in circulation in the same place, the "bad money drives out the good". But many other examples of the principle exist. Pesticides generate resistant pests, and antibiotics produce resistant diseases. Years ago, I heard economist Milton Friedman lecture on "the invisible hand in economics and politics". The thesis of the lecture was that in ECONOMICS, each pursuing their own self interest act to also promote the general good, (as if moved by an invisible hand) as Adam Smith pointed out long ago. But in POLITICS people are often moved (as if by an invisible hand) to act against the common good as well as their own interest. An earlier post (jhanson@igc.apc.org) gave one example of this. I will suggest another. OVERPOPULATION OR UNDER UTILIZATION? If you believe that there IS such a thing as overpopulation, then this example makes sense; otherwise not. I know that some believe that a given amount of land can support an unlimited number of people, and by extension no country, nor the entire world can ever suffer from overpopulation. The resources, including human ones, are just under utilized. I know lots of evidence can be presented to support this view, and in a debate, I could use lots of statistics and graphs showing that the more densely populated countries like Holland, Hong Kong, and Singapore have higher living standards than less populated ones in Africa. The income level in Manhattan is higher than in Appalachia, etc. But I don't believe it to be true: world overpopulation is now a potential problem which may soon become the most serious problem of all. IS POPULATION CONTROL SELF DEFEATING? Even though the proposition is not self-evident, if over- population IS a problem (or potential problem),then consider: it is the industrialized nations of the world which have lower population growth rates (approaching ZPG in some cases). And it is the poor "third world" countries with the high birth rates which have most of the population and most of the population growth. With advances in transportation technology, more people from poor third world countries can move to the lower population growth, richer industrial countries. If there is a common border, as with the US and Mexico, the planes and ships aren't even necessary. Is this a Greshamite situation? The more a country or group within a country is convinced of the need to and/or is able to restrain its population growth, the more inviting is that place for the overcrowded people where there is no population control. Is this what is happening now in the US, especially California? And to a lesser extent in England and Europe? Only Japan seems relatively unaffected for now. And if this is an accurate description of the situation, what are the options? ,,,,,,, ________________ooo__(_O O_)____ooo___________________________________ (_) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 95 02:24:46 CST From: "jim blair" To: PacSer@ix.netcom.com Cc: BCc: Subject: Re: Sir Thomas Gresham & Proposition 187 Date: Sat, 10 Dec 94 11:48:31 CST From: "jim blair" To: alt-politics-economics@cs.utexas.edu,rupes@voyager.cris.com,jhanson@igc.apc .org Cc: BCc: Subject: Re: Sir Thomas Gresham & Proposition 187 Re: Sir Thomas Gresham & Proposition 187 I will introduce some more questions and summarize some of the earlier discussion with commentary. ARE WE SLOWING DOWN FAST ENOUGH? While it is true that the increase in overall human population growth is slowing, is it slowing fast enough? (so to speak) SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN December 1993 has an interesting article on The Fertility Decline in Developing Countries. The projection is that world population will double by 2050, and that 97% of the increase will be in the developing world, where over 1/3 of the population is now less than 15 years old. Another way to say this is that the earth is expected to add as many people in the NEXT 55 years as tn the PAST million years. And almost all of them will be in the poorest countries. This raises at least two questions: can the earth support twice the current population, and will the current flow of people into the industrial nations accelerate? One the first question, Jay Hanson has some evidence that we are getting close to the limit now. Even if he is wrong, is it by a factor of TWO? Related to the second question, is California's Proposition 187 a reasonable response to the situation? If not, then what is? And remember that Prop 187 deals only with ILLEGAL ALIENS. What country anywhere in the world welcomes illegal aliens? (Or should anyone who enters the country automatically be here legally? Be granted citizenship?) Can the US continue to remain a "nation" with the current very large influx of LEGAL immigrants? THEM vs US: WHO IS THEM AND WHO IS US? Rupes@voyager.cris.com voices the claim that people have lots of children because they need to (or THINK they need to) offset high infant mortality, or need the labor. And, related to that, when they move here their birth rate falls. Overall this has been true in the PAST. But then the idea was to assimilate into the US "melting pot". That is much less the case today. It is no longer "us" industrialized US vs. "them" third world countries. Today there are enclaves of third world cultures scattered about inside the US, maintaining not only their separate language but also their high birth rate. There was a TV special recently about Kurius Joel New York, the religious community where the average woman still is having 10 children, as her parents and grandparents used to. The difference is now most of them survive. Again, it may be that after several generations, diverse groups will melt into a common culture. But in the past that was the GOAL. Today the intellectual climate favors maintaining "diversity". WHAT INFORMATION? It was suggested that information is the key. It seems to me that there is a curious blind spot on the topic of population growth. It was much discussed several decades ago, but very little recently. The reason I think is that powerful players including, both the political Right and Left have a problem with the implications of recognizing that a problem even exists, or can EVER exist. The Right is committed to "pro-life" and if too many people could ever be a problem, maybe abortion would become more acceptable. Also, conservatives tend to believe that economic growth can solve all problems. Growth has certainly solved many problems and made life today better for the vast majority of people than it has ever been in the past. But can this continue FOREVER? On the Left, since the growth is almost all with the politically favored "people of color", any suggestion of a need for population control is a racist plot by the dreaded WHITE MALES. The Roman Catholic Church is still fighting contraception, and so can't admit that an overpopulation problem can exist. And the information that people act on the "local impact on ME". not the Global Impact. There was an interesting case in Madison (even little Madison) last summer. A man was being sentenced to jail for robbery on the same day that one of his sons was being sentenced in the next courtroom (touching family scene) The reporter did a nice human interest story on it. Seems the father had 25 kids by 5 women (not married to any of them as you may have guessed- and paying nothing for any of them). Most of the kids over 18 were in various stages of trouble with the law. The legal history of the younger are not open to the public in Wisconsin. When reading of this case, most reacted with "oh, he shouldn't do that." But from a bio-sociological perspective he is doing EXACTLY the right thing: he should have as many kids as WE are willing to support. He is acting on the information he is given. ALL THE WORLD A MANHATTAN? On the topic of exceeding resources and using trade to compensate: yes every city can do it and so can Hong Kong and maybe even Holland. But can the whole world? We are now seeing prime farmland paved over for urban/suburban growth at an accelerating rate. Won't the rising population curve cross the falling farm land curve sometime? Then what? Date: Mon, 2 Jan 95 09:22:12 CST From: "jim blair" To: rupes@voyager.cris.com,jhanson@igc.apc.org,alt-politics-economics@cs.utexas .edu Cc: BCc: Subject: Re: Sir Thomas Gresham & Proposition 187 Re: Sir Thomas Gresham & Proposition 187 (PS to partII) Two additional thoughts. CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSE AND EFFECT It has often been pointed out that there is a drop in population growth in many countries as they industrialize and the standard of living rises. It is usually ASSUMED that the latter is the CAUSE of the former. But the reverse could as well be argued: with fewer children, more can be invested in each, resulting in greater earning potential, and thus higher living standards. If the family farm (or fortune)is divided between fewer children the plots (or shares) are larger and better able to support each child, etc. The article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (Dec 1993) suggests that neither is the cause of the other; the correlation is just a historical accident. Industrialization and contraception arrived on the scene at about the same time. But then the authors don't really know either. IMPLICATIONS FOR NAFTA & GATT But if one assumes the conventional wisdom of "economic growth is the CAUSE of population growth reduction", I think this has implications about US trade policy. Given that the current world population explosion should be reduced as quickly as is practical, and that most of the population growth is in the developing third world, then it follows that the industrial nations must aid the spread of industrialization to the third world. For classical liberals (today called "conservatives") this is no problem: they support free trade on principle. Read the section on "comparative advantage" in any economics text. Today it is mostly the political Left (Gephart, Jerry Brown, Jesse Jackson) joined by a few nationalist motivated "conservatives" (Jesse Helms, Pat Buchanan) and Ross Perot who oppose foreign trade. (NOTE: see my post Which Way is PROGRESS?) While its advocates claim that trade benefits BOTH parties, it is also clear, I think, that the poorer nations benefit MORE. That is, imagine the earth were split into TWO planets, with Western Europe, USA-Canada, and Japan- Hong Kong-Singapore, on one of them and the rest on the other. Which "earth" would suffer more as a result of the split? Or, look at it another way. The US has a border with Mexico which realistically cannot be sealed. (Even the Florida coast can't be!) The poor Mexican workers will be doing a big share of the low-skill jobs in the next decade: the question is, will the jobs go to THEM in Mexico or will they come to the US to get the jobs? And without investment in Mexico how will the Mexicans make enough to stay home? I remember after WWII when protectionists in the US argued that we shouldn't have trade with Japan because the Japanese workers were paid such low wages that we couldn't compete. They would "take all our jobs". Companies would invest there for the cheap labor. Well, yes they did. And the Japanese wages quickly caught up. IMMIGRATION: a debate This is a delayed continuation of an earlier thread. Subject: Re: Sir Thomas Gresham & Proposition 187 From: "jim blair" I want to continue the discussion, but must first outline some general use of terms and conventions. Remember during the India - Pakistan war a few decades back, the US was "tilting" towards one side? How does a country "tilt"? The same way it "makes great strides" : namely metaphorically. Often in discussions people refer to countries as if they were people. They know that this is anthropomorphic, but do it anyway. Thus "Russia wants warm water seaports" etc. Also, people tend to identify with groups and movements. I don't like or approve of this tendency but I recognize that it exists. And it helps to explain behavior that would otherwise not make any logical sense. US vs THEM In Message Mon, 13 Mar 1995 01:16:57 -0800, PacSer@ix.netcom.com (Daniel Brockman) writes: James wrote: It is no longer "us" industrialized US vs. "them" third world countries. It never was.---db But I think that it was. Barbara Wards book "THE RICH NATIONS AND THE POOR NATIONS" written in the late 1960's clearly describes these two different kind of countries and the people who live in them. I think the book was an accurate description of the world at that time. My point is that the world has changed since then.--- jeb >>>Today there are enclaves of third world cultures scattered about inside >>the >>>US, maintaining not only their separate language but also their high >>birth >>>rate. ---jeb Like the Amish in Pennsylvania. Like Hassidic (sp?)(Hasidic--jeb) Jews in New York. Like the Germans in Cincinnati. Like Swedes in Minnesota. Like Arcadians in Louisiana. There have always been ethnic enclaves in the US.---db Your examples fall into two different categories: The first two are different from the last three. The last 3 are just Americans from various places, but they are part of a common culture. Part of the melting pot. But the first two are different (IMHO). I will outline examples of the difference. Kurius Joel, NY, is the town of Orthodox Jews that I referred to. They petitioned the state for a separate school district. The state agreed but the US Supreme Court over-ruled them, based on separation of church and state. But the issue gets to the heart of an important issue: should public schools teach what the parents/local community wants taught? Or what the larger society wants taught? Often there are important differences, as was the case here. Some of the differences are the language of instruction, theories about the origin of the universe and of the human race, and information about sex and reproduction. Should public schools teach the views of modern science to the students even when the parents and the community don't want their children exposed to them? Is education for the children, or for the parents? Your other example is the Amish, and I have two examples here: but they go in opposite directions. First, in Wisconsin the legislature, concerned about some building fires where people were trapped by using the wrong door, passed a law that all public buildings must have a lighted EXIT sign over all doors that exit the building. The Amish (many live in the southwest part of the state) protested that they should be exempt. They don't use electricity and this would be against their religion and culture. The issue of having different laws for different cultures was avoided when someone realized that the Amish buildings (mostly schools) were only one room: ALL doors are exits. So the law was changed to apply only to buildings where some doors are NOT exits. The law should have been written this way in the first place, and everyone was happy. The other Amish example did not turn out so well. Also in Wisconsin there was a law that vehicles using the roads must have lights or reflectors on the rear. The Amish objected, claiming that reflectors are sinful. To please them, the law was made to not apply to the Amish. What do you think of different laws for different people, depending on their culture? How about different laws for different races? Anyway, as was bound to happen, a car crashed into the back of an Amish horse drawn buggy one night and the driver claimed that he didn't see it because it had no lights or reflectors. I think the law suits are still going on. Who is to blame? The car driver? The buggy driver? The governor? You can make a case against any of them.---jeb I know there are parts of San Francisco's Chinatown where people speak Cantonese almost exclusively. I walk through them en route to work every day. There are also neighborhoods where people speak Spanish exclusively. There is a neighborhood where Italian is very prevalent, and another of Japanese, but these are not so pure. In Miami and Tampa, I have walked through neighborhoods where Spanish was very prevalent. In New York, I have been in Spanish-speaking, Italian and Chinese neighborhoods. I have seen maps showing that most of the people who live in Arizona, New Mexico and Southwest Texas speak Spanish as their first language.---db My concern exactly. In the 1950's and 60's people anywhere in the US could talk to others anywhere in the country that they went. Now they can't. I think this is a problem, and has the potential to become a serious problem.---jeb > >>I suppose you mean to say that there exist enclaves of 3rd >>world peoples in the US where several generations of the same >>family continue to live as did their ancestors in the old >>country. Is this what you mean? Can you give some examples? db >Yes. Other examples besides Kurius Joel, NY? Or little Haiti? or little Havana? Or places in California where the American flag was burned and the Mexican flag flown in protest of Prop 187?---jeb I doubt the people who live in little Haiti live like people do in Haiti. or that the people in little Havana live like people do in Cuba. And even if they did, there is no harm in it. Burning the American flag is legal peaceful behavior, and so are flying the Mexican flag and protesting Prop 187. All these are normal behaviors among free people. ---db I think you find that there are many who don't consider burning the American flag normal behavior; there are many who find it upsetting. Especially when done by people who came into the US illegally, are not US citizens and are displaying the flag of a foreign country.---jeb TERMS OF DISCUSSION It seems to me that there is a curious blind spot on the topic of population growth. It was much discussed several decades ago, but very little recently. The reason I think is that powerful players including, both the political Right and Left have a problem with the implications of recognizing that a problem even exists, or can EVER exist. The Right is committed to "pro-life" and if too many people could ever be a problem, maybe abortion would become more acceptable. Also, conservatives tend to believe that economic growth can solve all problems. --jeb >>You present rebuttals to arguments never made. Since no particular person has the >>belief you assert for hypothetical "conservatives", there exists >>no particular person that you criticize. The people you >>criticize do not exist except within your mind. They are >>hypothetical people that adopt any point of view your convenience >>warrants. -- db >> You think the "pro-life" movement is not a factor in Republican politics? ---jeb no----db Are you saying that Pat Buchannan or Alan Keys are not against abortion?---jeb You did not speak of Pat Buchanan and Alan Keys. You spoke of "conservatives", and of "The Right". Buchanan and Keys are real people. "conservatives" and "The Right" are models you construct. ---db Again, people think in terms of movements and positions. It is a shorthand way of conveying information. When someone claims to be "conservative" or "liberal" or "libertarian" or "socialist" etc., it tells a lot about (but not EVERYTHING) how they think on issues. I think it is fair to question whether or not a particular person is representative of a position or whether a particular position is consistent with the liberal or conservative movement. But you are questioning the entire concept of using this shorthand communication language. I am not the only one to use these terms, and I think they are useful. SO THERE!!!---jeb WHO HAS A RIGHT TO WHAT? I also want to follow up on you claim that "govts should not deprive people of liberty nor of their rightful shares of welfare benefits". Especially the rightful shares part. Just how is it that some people have a "rightful share of welfare benefits"? Recall that this was in the context of illegal immigrants. Is everyone in the world entitled to a 'rightful share of welfare benefits' from the US taxpayers? They just have to enter the country to claim them? Even illegally? Isn't there a contradiction to having a "right" to someone else's money, which you must violate the law to claim? But earlier you claim that "People are superior to govts", so how is this claim consistent with saying govts can take from SOME people to give to OTHER people? Sounds like you mean the government is superior to some people (taxpayers) but not to other people (welfare recipients and illegal immigrants). You are correct to claim that you are NOT a libertarian.--jeb LIMITS to GROWTH or LIMITS to EARTH? >>Economic growth can continue forever given favorable >>circumstances. That is, people can become wealthier and >>wealthier in generation after generation as they inherit and >>improve on the inventions of their ancestors.---db Yes, this has been true in the past. But the earth is finite. The "law of diminishing returns" will catch up to us SOMEDAY. I don't know when. I see the only hope for a future of unlimited growth to be in space. ---jeb I think you here express concern that the people will exhaust the resources of the earth, because these resources are limited in quantity. You attribute this to the "law of diminishing returns". Do I understand you correctly?----db Yes, about depleting limited resources. The "law of diminishing returns" is that as there are ever more people (an input to production) there will be a less than proportional increase in production. That is, per capita wealth will fall. Many people think this is happening now, since the 1970's. I don't agree that it is the case NOW but I think it will be someday if human population continues to grow on earth and does not expand into space.-- jeb QUESTIONS & ANSWERS (in ENGLISH) Q: Should students be required to be able to read, write and speak in English before they can graduate from public schools in the US?--jeb A: No. That is a decision for the local community or the faculty of the school, and not for the govt of the US. --db Well which, the community or the faculty? This gets back to the earlier question of who the public schools are to serve. And you favor the US Dept of Education funding education, at least in part. Doesn't that give them some say as to what is taught? And if not, why not abolish that department?---jeb You asked about my hang up with English. It is this: English is close to being the "universal language" that the educated people speak all over the world. I think it WILL be in the near future. The point of the Finnish skier story was the Finns realize this (as do most Europeans). Not to require English literacy is depriving students almost as much as not requiring them to learn arithmetic. Or Darwin's theory of evolution. On the topic of bilingual education, did you see the article in TIME April 24,95, p63? About the Hartford Conn school district. They spent $9000/year per student (among the highest in not only the state but in the country) but the students consistently score at the bottom on tests. By comparison, some school districts in Wisconsin spend around $5000/year per student and they score at the top on national tests. And what reason is given for the high cost and poor performance in Hartford? One reason given is that they "must" teach bilingual ed. Don't misunderstand: I don't think that bilingual education is the only, or even tha main, reason that Hartford spends so much on students who don't learn. But it is notable that THEY listed that as a reason. I wonder what it would take to get them to try English as a Second Language? ETHNIC CONFLICT Also, you expressed doubt that any country would send in its army into another country to protect its "ethnic own". But this has happened often in history: Germany sent troops into the Sudatenland in the 1930's. Turkey invaded Cyprus to protect Turkish Cypriots form Greek Cypriots, to name just two examples. It is unfortunate, but ethinc conflict seems to be the main problem in the world today. I don't want it to become as common here as it is in the rest of the world. SHORT TERM POLICY and LONG TERM GOALS And to close, I am not against open borders as a long term goal. But the US should do it the way the EEC did it for Europe. First remove barriers to free trade, and when living standards have become more nearly equal, them recuce barriers to migration. Also, I recommend the four different reviews of ALIEN NATION in National Review, May 1, 95.---jeb