Isaac Asimov on Overpopulation

myself what about though the one subject you've written so much about the population explosion you know the fact that right now the population of the globe is over four billion you've said that if it's over five over five billion yes you've said if it continues and it's 2% growth rate a year it'll be what in another well actually it's down to 1.6 percent but the higher population it's the same mountain actual numbers 80 million a year so that oh by by the year 2000 is going to be it's going to be perhaps six six point five billion that's just 12 years from now yes yes it's going out very fast how many people do you think the earth is able to sustain I don't think it's able to sustain the five billion in the long run so that I mean right now most of the world most the world's living under appalling conditions and we can't possibly improve the conditions of everyone we can't raise the entire world to the average standard of living in the United States because I don't think we have the resources and the ability to distribute well enough for that we have condemned right now as it is most of the world to a miserable starvation level of existence and that'll just get worse as the population continues to go up but you can't just say to a woman don't have children well you know it's not so much that that so many people are saying have children there was such a pronatal ax Stata 2 din the world we celebrate Mother's Day so enthusiastically we we say may all your troubles be little ones we we celebrate additional children I feel sometimes that if we'd only stop pushing for children that somehow there would be fewer of them why did you say that the price of survival is the Equality of women because if women have full ability to enter into all facets of the human condition if they can enter business if they can enter religion science government on equal basis with men they will be so busy that they won't feel as it's necessary to have a great many children as long as you have women under conditions where they don't feel any sense of value no self-worth except as mothers except this baby factory still have a lot of children because that's the only way they can prove their worth something in general if you look through the world the lower the status of women the high of the birthrate and the high of the birth rate the lower the status of women so that if you could somehow raise the status of women I am certain the birth rate will fall drastically through the choice of the women themselves what do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human to the human species if this population growth continues at its present rate it's going to destroy it all I use the I use the but I call my bathroom metaphor if two people live in an apartment and there are two bathrooms then both have but bye-bye call freedom of the bathroom go to the bathroom anytime you want to stay as long as you want to for whatever you need and this to my ways is ideal and everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom it should be right there in the Constitution but if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom there is no such thing you have to set up you have to set up times for each person you have to bang at the door aren't you through yet and so on and in the same way democracy cannot survive overpopulation human dignity cannot survive it convenience and decency cannot survive it as you put more and more people on to the world the value of life not only declines but it disappears it doesn't matter if someone dies of course so many people say well the United States is bringing its population under to control that are we're going to have a stable population we're not even reproducing ourselves and what the rest of the world does we can't control the population in the United States is still going up the only time it went up really slowly was during the Great Depression when there were no laws sort of lowering the birthrate there was just an economic depression which made people think twice before they had children but the United States is doing something else which is absolutely refusing to help other nations control population so that our feeling is somehow that it's enough for us to somehow make sure that the United States is in good shape and what other nations do is their business it's not their business it's our business - in other words we can't exist as a stable economy and a stable society if the roundest is turmoil okay absolutely not right now in many nations they're they're just destroying the rainforests because they need the firewood they need the space for farms why should I care about that because without the rain forests we're going to have deserts instead the food supply will dwindle as a matter of fact there's even the possibility that we're going to lose all kinds of valuable substances we know nothing about those rainforests have an incredible number of species that are plants and animals that we know very little about some of them may be may produce chemicals of great importance pharmacologically and medically some of the plants might have properly cultivated the new line of new food sources and in addition to that nothing produces the oxygen of the atmosphere with the same intensity that a forest does anything that substitutes for it will be producing less oxygen we're going to be destroying our atmosphere to your howl now sixty-eight you've lived through a lot of this century have you ever seen human beings think with the perspective you're calling on them to think now well it's perhaps not important that every human being thinks so how about the leaders thinking so how about the opinion-makers thinking so ordinary people might follow them if we didn't have leaders who were thinking exactly the opposite way if we didn't have people who are shouting hatred and suspicion of foreigners so if we didn't have people who were shouting that it's more important it's more important to be unfriendly than to be friendly if we didn't have people shouting this somehow that the people inside the country who don't look exactly the way the rest of us look is something's wrong with them again again it's almost not necessary for us to do good that's only that's they refer us to stop doing evil for goodness sakes from the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York City this has been a conversation with Isaac Asimov I'm Bill Moyers [Music] [Music] this program was made possible by a grant from the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation [Music]

Channel: Ramen Vermicelli

Views: 33,477

Rating: 4.8769231 out of 5

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Id: qkaobW8UNXo

Length: 8min 23sec (503 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 08 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/TooAwareToCare]

Fuck sake all these years ago and not a ducking things changed

[u/Frostysuede]

Smart man, I wish we could have leaders like this.

[u/[deleted]]

Damn. I remember the first time I had considered the possibility of collapse: I was reading a book of old essays by Asimov, and he was talking about things like overpopulation and climate change. At the end, he said that he was optimistic about human society unifying and averting catastrophe, but he said that if he was wrong that in a few decades New York would be torn apart by roving gangs. My head was full of hopium; the idea that everything could just collapse like that and the fact that Asimov stated it so bluntly hit 12 year old me pretty hard.

[u/Fins_FinsT]

On the second minute of this video, he talks with obvious wonder in his voice about celebrating many children. Thus, it seems good old Isaac did not actually figure out why such celebrations are taking place - and why, in general, high birth rates are the policy of so many governments around the globe.

The truth is both simple and also sad: it's profitable to. See, any given current government / regime which is stable enough to have plans for a few decades ahead - actually benefits from higher birth rates: more babies means more economical activity of their parents, as they now need to buy all sorts of things for their kids (from diapers to school uniforms) - and all those activities means more tax money; and further on, those babies grow into tax-payers themselves, shifting the age balance of the country's population to younger side, reducing percentage of GDP spent to pay pensions to old people, reducing - for a few decades, - percentage of GFP spend for health care (younger population is more healthy overall), etc.

In other words, high birth rates policy - is a business. Nothing else.

Notably, this kind of governmental business - is most desired in countries which have the least other methods to keep themselves profitable (and thus, functional). Which is why it is indeed poorest countries which often promote and condition for higher birth rates: if not that, they well may end up failing states. Some few countries in the world are failed states already - 5 or 6 last i checked, - and obviously the rest don't want to join that sorta club...

And like any massive and massively profitable business, it is hard to stop. The people who get - collectively - trillions out of this kind of business - wield corresponding collective power to oppose any change threatening that business. You can't stop them doing the thing with activism or say mass media; much like neither truly works vs any leading international fossil fuel corporation and such, for the same reason.

And make no mistake, richest countries have a deciding hand in it - despite not being "baby-boomers" themselves, it is those richest countries which actually much prevent so-called "3rd world" from shifting away from baby-boom approach, because the richest ones keep the poorer ones poor. For centuries on end, and to this day - from the colonial past, to the present "economical killers" who come and corrupt 3rd-world governments in ways which prevent poor countries from getting up from the knees, in economical terms.

Thus, the only way to have it stop - is to have it collapsed. The business will end when it's no more possible to do it. Thus in this regard, i say don't try to postpone or resist collapse; rather, welcome it. It'd end up less total damage done if that business ends sooner than later.

[u/ietsistoptimist]

u/raphael_maelstrom u/conker99