Population Control Policy Issues

> Message: 6
> Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 17:43:03 -0300
> From: Lucio de Souza Coelho
> Subject: Re: Population Control Policy Issues

> On Tuesday 30 September 2003 16:54, victoriatangoman wrote:
> (...)
>> As to you rquestion of which society is the better model for an
>> orbital Habitat, well that depends on many things. I would take it
>> for grnted that an Orbital Society will be a technological one
>> requiring many skilled workers, therefore, ceterus parabus, a
>> Western society becomes a likely model, and with that come the same
>> behavioral dynamics.
>
> On the other hand, if automation/robotics/AI goes too far (and personally
I'm
> skeptic about that) then at some point you will not need skilled workers
> anymore, because there will be a self-sustained "ecology" of machines that
> will "magically" produce anything that humans need. In a sense, we would
go
> back to primitive societies, where there was a biological ecology that
> provided everything that they needed "for free".

Interesting ideas for sci-fi here. Imagine finding a habitat where the
builders had gone extinct, because they lost the need for technical
expertise and devolved to a primitive society - of course, (handwaving)
since they had previously been a highly educated society with a negative
population growth they wouldn't be able to maintain their gene pool, and
would die out. You'd have an "empty Eden" - a paradise for a group of
sapients who weren't around anymore.

>> Just as Europe and North America need a constant influx of
>> immigrants to maintain their populations, so too will a Habitat that
>> has the same dynamics. Therefore there will never be a population
>> crisis because the birth rate is below replacement.
>
> However, as Panamabob pointed out, maybe there will be alternatives to
> immigration in the future. For instance, I don't think that it would be
too
> far-fetched to imagine a future where a megacorporation or consortium of
> corporations decides to boost population growth by using new methods like
> paid families with 20 children or Brave New World-style baby factories, so
> that 30 yeas down the line they still have skilled workers and a consumer
> market.
>
>That would be unacceptable under most present day ethics, but ethics
changes;
>on the other hand, I don't know if economic forces change that much :-).

Is it possible that the mega-corp would be ambivalent about losing
skilled human workers? Especially postulating an advanced enough automation
tech; is it possible that the mega corp could eventually come down to just
the stockholders being human, while all the management, production,
accounting, and marketing would be handled by robots? In which case you've
got a situation where the human stockholders get paid huge dividends (all
the net profits of the Mega-Corp) and no need to work... Not really
relevant to a closed system approaching a (too darn large) population
crisis, but a fun concept anyhow.
On the subject of a closed system approaching a (too darn small)
population crisis.... While I agree that many people find "Brave new world"
style baby factories repulsive, I submit that this is a work of fiction -
ie, the author was TRYING to be as repulsive as possible. Actual 'baby
factories' (if they ever exist) may not bear any resemblance to the ones in
BNW at all - or even be called 'baby factories'. Could you please elaborate
on the subject of 'Paid Families'? Would a paid family have to have 20
children? Or would 3 be acceptable? Is there something in this concept as
you see it that is inherently repulsive? If so, what? Could every family
be a paid family, or would there be a selection process?

> (...)
>> TangoMan
> (...)
>
> Lucio Coelho

Joe