Getting to Sustainable Population

Various experts have studied the issue of the ultimate Sustainable Human Population.  Clearly, by measure of any resource use or waste production impact, present global society is way past that, even with 80% of the global population being relatively limited compared with the rest due to economic factors.  Estimates have been in the 500 million to 1 billion persons range.

Hardly anyone seriously considers what kind of non-violent planned population reduction could achieve these levels, in order to stave off about 20 or more impending resource-use related crises.

But that's why I am here, to think the unthinkable.

I see immediately that population change rates are unfathomably difficult to estimate, initally because everthing one is interested in is not a simple thing, but a set of things, such as the set of all living people, which is people of different ages, sexes, reproduction past present and future, and lifespan, all differing per person.

So in this initial exploration, I'll just brush that all away.  This is highly simplified.  And I'm just making it up, because I find other explorations to be far too complex to deal with for my "population reduction" purposes.

I'll say this is the year 2020 and there are 8 billion people, though those are not quite true.

I'll say everyone is 20, and has a lifespan of 60, and all give birth at 20.

Under these assumptions, see what happens if the population is Replacement Rate, or two children per couple with no allowance for remarriage.

In the starting year, 2020, 8 billion more people are born, bringing the total to 16 billion.  In 2040, 8 billion more are born, and none have died yet.  In 2060, 8 billion more are born, and none have died yet.  In 2080, 8 billion more, but then the first 8 billion have died.  So the assumptions yield a condition where population finally reaches a true plateau after 3 generations, and that plateau is 4x the starting population.

I'll have to make the assumptions slightly unrealistic to account for the fact that this is an extreme simplification.

The starting population is everyone 30, gives birth at 30, and lives to 60.

Under that set of assumptions, we do actually have stasis at a "replacement rate" of two children per couple...after the first generation offspring doubles the present population.  In the real world, replacement rate does also yield something close to this, an initially growing population.  So these are more useful ficticious assumptions, despite seeming farther from the actual mark themselves.

What happens if the birthrate falls to 1/2 of replacement rate, on mean average 1.0 children per couple with no remarriage allowance?

2020  8 billion + 4 billion offspring
2050  4 billion offspring + 2 billion grand offspring
2080  2 billion grand offspring + 1 billion great grand offspring
2110  1 billion great grand offspring + 0.5 billion great great grand offspring

So, with these radical assumptions, we could almost get to sustainable rate by 2100 with a "1 child per couple" average.

In the real world, it might take significantly fewer than 1 child per couple on average, maybe 0.5, but I'm quite impressed with how much was achieved with only that "small sacrifice", wheras even the supposed "replacement rate" still represents short term growth before stabilization at higher than present levels.

A Decent Society

A decent society is one in which people are not forced to give birth to children they are going to have to be personally responsible for at great material cost for decades.

Fetuses are not children or people, they are cells developing inside people, that might become a child or might not.

Do I care about the fate of fetuses?  Only if their mothers want to give birth to them, because I care about those mothers, who are people.

Otherwise, an unwanted fetus is no more than a developmental anomaly that is best removed and destroyed.

Human Life is a term for a principle that is used by anti-abortion fascists, it is a principle they allege to be more important than the actual lives of human people.

If a woman wants an abortion because the resulting child would have a developmental problem, is that a moral issue?  Not at all, in fact I would refuse to be involved in a procreative enterprise with a woman who did not believe that abortion was a good idea under such circumstances.

If a woman wants an abortion because she plans to go to college and caring for a child would limit her success, is that a moral issue?  Absolutely not.

If a women want an abortion because the resulting child has the wrong eye color, is that a moral issue?  Absolutely not, that is a perfectly fine reason.  Any reason that does not have bad downstream consequences is fine.

If a woman wants an abortion because the resulting child has the wrong sex, is that a moral issue?  That is only tricky because it has downstream social consequences, a society could be created in which there would be far more of one sex than another, and that might be a problem.  However, in some sense, it is not that individual woman's problem, and the law needs to be fair to all woman equally in that regards, and not just limit sex-choice abortions to rich people who can go somewhere else.

If a woman wants a child, but the putative father does not, is that a moral issue?  If the man uses any kinds of threats or coercion to force an abortion, it would be, and for him alone.  If the man freely offers money, a job, etc., accepted or not, would that make an abortion immoral?  Not at all--similar to the college situation.  What if the man offers money, a job, a marriage, etc, for there NOT to be an abortion, but the woman has the abortion anyway?  It was her choice to make, perhaps his offer wasn't very good after all, and she has the final responsibility and the final authority over what her body is bearing.  Such a man has a limited opportunity to make even better offers.

Is there some developmental stage at which abortion is immoral.  No, not while the fetus is still within the mother's body.

Where does the inkling to restrict others from having abortion come from?  Not from any real concern about people, but from some sense that people need to be controlled by a Higher Power and molded to suit the Higher Ends of that Higher Power.  It was and is religion, and a peculiarly fascistic religion, from the get go.  The Higher Ends are always to the exclusive benefit of elites, who don't have to worry about such restrictions for themselves because they can evade them, but they appreciate an endless supply of slaves, wage slaves, cannon fodder, and useful rogues enhanced by abortion prohibition on their lessers.

Forced birth was a key part of Slavery.  Women in slavery would frequently try to refuse to bear another child into slavery (a perfectly fine reason to seek abortion btw).

These self-aggrandizing elites are great at applying familiar song and dance, to whip up "Human Life" sentimentalism among those who actually bear the burden of the abortion prohibition.   Such whipped up sentimentalism against one's own best interests has been the essence of religion since the dawn of "civilization," which has rarely had much actual decency.

People who understand decency and human rights should know better.

Here is a detailed and convincing analysis of the  increasing popularity of abortion rights by year, age, sex, education level, and cohort.  Abortion prohibitionism is indeed empowered by anti-democratic forces and institutions (as I just said).  Support for abortion for protective reasons (to protect mother's health, because of rape, or birth defects) has always been very high (70-90%).  Support for abortion for any reason the mother chooses (my position) has risen from 35% in the 1970's to about 50% today.  Younger and more educated people strongly tend to support more abortion rights.  Less educated men favor abortion rights somewhat more than less educated women, but that pattern reverses for those with above a high school education (where support for abortion rights is higher among both sexes, but especially among women). 

Now we have the real stories behind Russiagate

The real story is the story I said in the beginning, or at least by 2016.  It is all about the deep state perpetuating itself and the reason for itself--endless war.  It shows this goal is far more important than any other, and cannot be left to chance of any kind.  All sides can be presumed to be "controlled" in this regards.  There is no alternative, and if an alternative seemed to be appearing even its premonition must be destroyed.  (By the way, principal actors in the Deep State are intelligence officers and partners, bankers, politicos, lobbyists, currently in government or not.  The Deep State has many sides, but all sides go back to one, the one that is endless war, and the endless riches for deep state actors it brings.)

So it should always have been a kind of joke that "Make America Great Again" Trump would pursue peace of any kind with anyone.  Of course, the whole point would be "peace" on the terms of American Plutocracy/Oligarchy to which Trump--like all Presidents--aspires to, which is of course Total Dominance of Everything.  For Russia, those terms of submission would be non-starters.  The last US puppet was Yeltsin, the whole point of Putin (and the hatred towards him endlessly drummed up by western media) is that he is not another US puppet.  But even that joke--that Peace might be possible--was enough to propel the mainstream of media and discourse in the Anglo world in an absolute frenzy of Russophobia, just to ensure it barely remained less than a joke.  The noose was around Trumps neck, to be sure he never said the wrong thing in this regards only.  Everything else, he could do as he wished, the perfect devils bargain.  When have we seen this before?  LBJ comes to mind, he could do anything, except lose the war.  His predecessor didn't last long after challenging the inevitability of such wars.  The Imperialists grip on executive power has not lessened since then.

There's another thread often lost here too.  Not only did the Russiagate narrative ensure that no Peace would ever break out with Russia, it would ensure that everyone who did not see this as the number one issue above everything else, i.e., those damned leftists, would lose all their friends and social associations, as most would be swept up by the new McCarthyism, making proper allegance to the new cold war the number one litmus test of polite identification.  Question the Daily Narrative and find yourself socially unaceptible.  THAT was part of it too: rumors-of-Peace and peacniks-and-leftists in one blow.  Sometimes, but not always, peaceniks and leftists are the same people.  But for sure, every true leftist is committed to peace, and every politician will always say they are committed to peace also.  Meanwhile, all real issues, what's actually going on in the world, with fracking, CO2 release, and other factors of overgrowth, combined with continued stronger and more painful chains for workers, further encroachment of monopoly capitalist control, continue to not need discussion, with Russiagate dominating the storyline week after week.  The Mainstream Media is not only in on this--they are at the center, and win or lose, they never lose, though sometimes presumed owners mysteriously go crazy.

This was why the story broke out specifically when Wikileaks releases in July of 2016 showed how corrupt the DNC.  With no evidence (and still no good evidence) Hillary blamed the Russians.  In one day the narrative was changed--to favor Hillary again, at the expense of leftists.  I got it then for sure. I couldn't talk about what should have remained the story, how the DNC worked against Bernie.  This was already clear by then with endless sponsored derogatory stories that people like me were arguing against.  Finally, vindication, and in one news cycle it was replaced with a newly renewed McCarthyite hysteria that left Bernie behind and even suspect.

It's clear that one of the features of the entire Russiagate parade was the key role of Intelligence officers.  And one can see how this provides an additional media lockdown.  If there were any errant paid reporters straying beyond the yellow tape, they would soon find that their stories were deemed too sensitive to publish by mainstream outlets.  So why bother?  Even if the media are forced to retract some outrageous claims, they did so as quietly as possible.  But now, more than ever, not at all if possible.

Meanwhile, the gumshoe tradition continues at muckraking independent outlets like Consortium News and friends.

CIA actually began collecting intel on Republican candidates and Sanders...in the summer of 2015, presumably part of the CIA director's plan to grease the skids for his appointment by his presumed next president Hillary.  As early as December 2015, Podesta is telling an associate we will slaughter Trump over Russia.

There was a broad attempt by Obama, US Intelligence agencies, and British Intelligence Agencies, to target Trump as a stooge of Russia.  Each and every case ultimately cited by Mueller was a bungled entrapment attempt.  The people involved had deep western intelligence connections.

I don't have a link for this yet, but it's amazingly ignorant to see Paul Manafort as some kind of pro-Russia operator.  Mainly, he had no scruples at all, but to the degree he did, he was indeed operating in accordance with Western desitres to topple the pro-Russian Yanakovich government.  He advised Yanakovich to fire on demonstrators, which is what the western backed coopsters wanted.  Yanakovich ignored Manafort's advice, but the coupsters had another trick, they staged the first firings, as is now proven.  You could see that was not their first choice.  So to see Manafort as part of a Russian conspiracy is looney, he was am antagonist, not a hero, to Russia.

Consortium News' Record On Russiagate #7, Russiagate is no Watergate

Consortium News' Record on Russiagate #6, Attempting to add state election systems to it's turf, DHS pumps fears about vulnerabilities to Russia, and when that falls flat, DHS spices it up with confused and conflated stories about actual hacking.

Consortium News' Record on Russiagate #5.  The key Cold War Intelligence Paranoids at the center of it all, unmasked in July 2018: Dearlove, Steele, Halper, Hannigan, Downer, Wood, Mifsud, Clapper, and Brennan.  Details about their operations only suspected at that time have later been confirmed.

Consortium News' Record on Russiagate #4, The DNC and Clinton money behind the two things that started it all, the Steele Dossier and the Crowdstrike server analysis.

Consortium News' Record on Russiagate #3, All the evidence refutes the Manchurian Candidate theory--only hitherto minor policy enterpreneurs [later shown to be Intelligence connected entrapment engineers] who got slapped down later by senior campaign officials, and the best evidence refutes the alleged Russian Hack, since download speeds exceeded what they could have done, it had to have been a domestic source, as confirmed by US experts, quite possibly a thumbdrive at the DNC, but the Media continues to ignore inconvenient facts like these.


[More to be added still.]

All and all it gets back to one thing, that I have not emphasized enough. WE must not have "Intelligence Agencies" at all.  They do us no good, even in rare cases outside of War, and endless harm otherwise.  We can run societies without knowing everything about everyone, or trying to prevent anything from learning about anything, let alone trying to trick anyone--that never works in the long run, though that has been the aim of much such called "Intelligence" work.

As far as War we should never ever be at War, especially not now.  It's been proven counterproductive endlessly already.  Counterproductive to everyone but the but the owners of the military media industrial complex.  Benjamin Franklin said it best: have no enemies.

Even Privacy is a drummed up notion, created by security people, as a need to justify themselves, as only they can provide it, and Prohibitionists, who permit it as the last refuge of freedom for the wealthy alone.  The only people who truly need security are banks, and their activities ought to be as sharply limited as laid out by the New Deal, if such activities as banking are to be tolerated at all.

As far as Media is concerned, there should be no censorship.  This is one area where the buyer must beware.  Limits on campaign spending on advertising is, however, appropriate, and advertising should not be considered as identical to speech in being unrestrictable.  However, be it noted that modern advertising-supported media is never going to freely "speak" either--it's all really advertising.

In my view, Russians has as much right to buy not-strictly-partisan ads displayed in USA as anyone.  Their $46,000 in "devisive but non-political-campaign" ads looks more like underfunded college research project into assessing non-mainstream views in the USA than master manipulation.  All advertising is nefarious IMO, the best one can do is mostly ignore it.  The best media will always be supported by individual (not corporate) contributions.Meanwhile, mainstream political parties spent billions and billions and billions are constantly being spent on corporate political advertising, and the entire media enterprise is supported by the imperial corporatocracy.

Nobody should believe at face value anything said about Putin, or any Official Enemy (who does not submit to our Total Dominance of Everything) auch as Assad, in the western media.  Conveniently we only hear one side of every story involving Official Enemies.  One quite well known Boston commentator opines that even Milosovec wasn't so bad, he was merely reacting to western and western financed aggression.  He criticizes Chomsky for not defending Milosovec, but falling in line with the Imperial Consensus.  I have not mastered the details here, but he sounds plausible to me.  It has sometimes been correctly reported that much of the seperatist murders in Kosovo (there were also anti-seperatist murders) occurred After the NATO bombing started, but many people misremember this and the opposite was actually more often claimed or presumed in mainstream media reports.  I don't know the answer, but I do know we've only heard one side.  So believe nothing, especially about Official Enemies, it's best not to even care about them, they are getting enough mis-attention anyway, through Official Channels.

Speaking of Official Channels, it has long been demonstrated that US Cable TV is under total imperial corporate lockdown, with the range of opinion from the passionately destructive of social improvement to liberal-MIC-captive, Fox News to MSNBC.  Though LinkTV and Free Speech TV are quite good, as was, quite strangely, Al Jazeera.