|
| bundles of joy in a pit of despair |
|
navigational aids: News ticker:
|
28 June 05.
[Let me clarify that very little of the below is my own personal opinion; most of it is my biased characterization of the opinions of people I generally disagree with. Nor do I claim to be authority on ethics.] Easy moral calculus #1the Negative Population Group, for example, says that the optimal size for the U.S.A. is about 150 million, and the optimal size for the world is about two or three billion. As they point out in one of these cases, this is the state of the world about fifty years ago, a decade or three before the average Net reader was born.[The reader should note, by the way, that all of the action items on the NPG's front page are about stopping immigration into the USA. Their FAQ mentions family planning and education, but barring the door appears awful prominent throughout. It's a tough argument that reducing migrant flows will lessen mankind's footprint. It's an easier argument, however, to say that my team's life is better if there are fewer other people out there competing with us for resources. A basic law of the moral calculus: egocentrism makes all calculations easier. Inherent to a sadly prevalent majority of overpopulist sentiment is a certain level of racism, which I'm trying to take the high ground and not address here. Ms. MTGP of Baltimore, MD, refers the reader to the Green Umbrella as her favorite source of non-racist, non-crackpot info on overpopulation; Ms. DH of Ann Arbor, MI recommends population connection; and there's always the good ol' UN population division.] The alternative to the headcount goal is the rate goal: getting reproduction at or below replacement rates. In the moral calculus above: a new life when fertility is less than mortality is a bundle of joy, but a new life when fertility is past replacement rates only adds to the suffering that is life. The position of the overpopulist has no coherent ethical foundation. Generally, if you ask the typical overpopulist why he or she believes fewer people are better, they will list the things that are important to them, mostly including minimizing environmental footprint and resource usage and improving quality of life. All well and good, but now you need to weigh these factors against each other and some inherent measure of the well-being of the planet. If you eat and breathe, you have a footprint of environmental destruction and are getting in other people's way on a regular basis---so is your life, or the life of a comparable soon-to-be-born blob, worth the resource burden? As much math has been thrown at this problem (and the correct answer is: 150 million.), I can't place any credence on the results. I just can't see any consistent, honest ethical calculus which arrives at the basic conclusion of the overpopulist---that a new life is not worth the resource burden, but we shouldn't all just kill ourselves now. [This is sometimes modified to say that a new life in the developed world, where resources are overused, is not worth it; or that a new life in the developing world, where fertility has not yet transitioned to a low level, is not worth it.] After all, maybe life _isn't_ suffering. Maybe that little kid in the desert, so hungry and miserable in the photo, had just been playing with her brother. Maybe she'll grow up to be an adult who is happy to have kids of her own to take care of. Maybe not. More people means more smarts in the world with which to make life better. It means more opportunity to specialize in one field and really get it right. Wanna make a living designing items which cost a dime and will never be replaced? With six billion potential customers, your ten cent widget has a fighting chance of making a living for you, which would not have been the case a hundred years ago. The overpopulists ignore these issues. Life is suffering, darn it, and every new person who appears only brings more suffering to all involved. Easy moral calculus, #2On the other extreme are the economists, who are often strict humanists, and see value in the environment and resources only to the extent that it benefits us people folk. How do we balance the moral calculus about whether a new person adds more value than it detracts from the enviornment and others? Answer: the new person always adds more value.Gee, that was easy. The economist's ethics are clearly consistent, the way that any system which ignores all information and inputs will always be supremely consistent. But beyond that, the stereotypical economist is doing no better than the stereotypical overpopulist, because the humanist philosophy also assumes away the problem of how one would measure the benefits of regime A where a human exists and regime B where it does not. If you don't mind a digression which I will make a tenuous effort to link back to the main point, let me tell you about the conclusion of the Copenhagen Consensus (PDF), a vote by eight economists, one of whom I have been told is an ass, one of whom I've met personally and is an ass, and one of whom I'm told is a great drinking buddy. The intent was to pick the problems which resources should focus on, for which the bang-for-the-buck is high. The big winner was the prevention of AIDS, which I entirely agree with. Number two: provide micronutrients to those on monotonous diets; number three: trade liberalization; number four: malaria control; number five: better agricultural technology. Numbers 15-17: prevent global climate change. The consensus among these eight people is a good indicator of some of the stereotypical economist's key beliefs. The first is the belief in the ability of humans to overcome if only they have the tools---which is why trade liberalization and technology rank near the top. Conversely, the overpopulists above ignored arguments that maybe more people mean more ability to reduce each person's burden and to reduce suffering. [The economist position isn't perfectly consistent, since limited labor mobility (only for skilled workers) ranked #10, well after full trade liberalization, even though migration restrictions are a font of misery. I take this as indicative of how economics is humanism with a strong conservative bias.] Climate change ranks so low because of the fundamental humanist philosophy: climate change is bad for everything on the planet which doesn't have air conditioning, but we humans will find a way to overcome, so issues of environmental damage come low on the list. At the top of the list are issues of individual health, because we all value a longer life and more time imposing our burden on this Earth. So we have two perspectives on the questions of where value comes from, and whether adding another baby to the world expands or shrinks value. The overpopulists assume it all away by saying that life is suffering, and for every new person it is more so; the economists assume it all away by saying that there is no way to create value except by having people around to experience it. As usual, I have no actual conclusion. Nor does the lack of a coherent ethical system necessarily mean that any of these conclusions should just be written off; since the question has no actual solution, that would be to condemn us all to complete inaction. But the debate is still disappointing, because neither side has really brought anything at all to the question of where value comes from. Why is life suffering for some people who have all the resources they need? Why is it that parents the world over who clearly don't have the resources to bear children pop out two or three or eight of them and are delighted that they chose to do so? If the researchers writing policy briefs on population dynamics (I'm in that set) could answer these questions, can they ethically derive policy from their answers?
[link] [No comments] |
