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Would I be speaking in drug terms? No, most certainly not.
When something is considered better if it is smaller, that thing is often a bad thing. Like salt. Not that salt is bad, but too much in your food definitely is. Less salt in your food is better than more. So am I referring to salt in the title?
No I am not.
Murder is also a bad thing. But why stop at 1/8 of current levels? Why not cut them out completely? Does the title speak about murders?
No. It doesn't.
I could go on all day, but instead I'll throw out one more teaser.
Weight. American's are too fat. Should we become one-eighth of our current selves? If we're all thousand pound behemoths, yes, definitely. Is that what I mean by the title?
Seriously? You're really asking me that? Of course you aren't... I'm controlling the conversation, and with apt douchery, I must say.
I'm referring to the current human population of Earth, set to reach 7 billion later this year.
Seven BILLION. By the way, that's too many fucking people.
Seven BILLION. By the way, that's too many fucking people.
When I was a boy (read: in the last 50 years) Earth's population was half that. 3.5 billion.
A hundred years ago it was a quarter of today's population: in 1910 we had 1.75 billion worldwide.
We'd have to go over 250 years back to find human population below a billion: In 1750 the world's population was 875 million, one eighth of what it is today.
So how did it get this so horribly bad? Why are there so, so many people? With all the illnesses and accidents and pollution and natural disasters, shouldn't we be DIMINISHING as a race, not expanding (at a rate of more than 75 million people a year)? That rate of increase would refill the entire USA in just four years. In other numbers, that's 205,480 people a day, or 8,562 an hour... or 143 a minute. Every second, two more people are born. Two, tic. Two, tic. Two, tic. Holy crap. Appalling.
Here are a few reasons why we're proliferating:
One-- human beings are what's known as superpredators. We're on top of the food chain. Precious few of us are taken out by other animals. Sure, there are lions and tigers and bears (oh, crap), but they are mostly kept away from us with cages or preserve fences, or the animal's survival instinct. Yes, there are sharks and manta rays and schools of piranha... but there are very few people floating in the water at any given time, population-wise. And of course we have weapons that would turn a whale into blubber rain with one RPG. So we have a handle on other predators.
Two-- we're not naked babies left in the snow. We are able. We can protect ourselves with clothing and protective garb, artificial environments and strong, solid buildings. No matter what the planet throws at us, we have the ability to affect our environment... some of us do, anyway. And in the most rare cases, we can even leave Earth if it gets too cranky (at least temporarily), taking a little holiday on the International Space Station, or on the moon.
Three-- In days before the advent of modern medicine many children died before the age of 2. Therefore, it was only survival to make as many children as possible, since the number reaching adulthood (if any at all) would always be in question. That behavior has become ingrained in many, especially in rural areas, and are still creating families with 6 or more children. Except now almost all of them make it to adulthood.
But probably the biggest cause, and not one to be trifled with, is religious proclamation. In most religious texts there is a passage (or many passages) referring to the fact that humans should make many babies, 'Be fruitful and multiply' being one oft-quoted axiom. Too bad their books never considered the day when there would be too many people on the planet. Never thought about a time when arable land would be diminishing to urban sprawl and the world's huge oceans would become fished lean while human pollution kills the rest. Had nothing to say about humanity's ability to cause the worldwide extinction of the plants and animals we depend on. Couldn't imagine a world where people would be standing shoulder to shoulder... because there's just no room. Maybe the axiom should have read: 'Be fruitful and multiply... but don't be stupid about it.'
Like I said, an eighth of current world population is where I'd like to see the world be, and stay. So if I give everyone a gun with 7 bullets, we could get this done today.
Here are a few reasons why we're proliferating:
One-- human beings are what's known as superpredators. We're on top of the food chain. Precious few of us are taken out by other animals. Sure, there are lions and tigers and bears (oh, crap), but they are mostly kept away from us with cages or preserve fences, or the animal's survival instinct. Yes, there are sharks and manta rays and schools of piranha... but there are very few people floating in the water at any given time, population-wise. And of course we have weapons that would turn a whale into blubber rain with one RPG. So we have a handle on other predators.
Two-- we're not naked babies left in the snow. We are able. We can protect ourselves with clothing and protective garb, artificial environments and strong, solid buildings. No matter what the planet throws at us, we have the ability to affect our environment... some of us do, anyway. And in the most rare cases, we can even leave Earth if it gets too cranky (at least temporarily), taking a little holiday on the International Space Station, or on the moon.
Three-- In days before the advent of modern medicine many children died before the age of 2. Therefore, it was only survival to make as many children as possible, since the number reaching adulthood (if any at all) would always be in question. That behavior has become ingrained in many, especially in rural areas, and are still creating families with 6 or more children. Except now almost all of them make it to adulthood.
But probably the biggest cause, and not one to be trifled with, is religious proclamation. In most religious texts there is a passage (or many passages) referring to the fact that humans should make many babies, 'Be fruitful and multiply' being one oft-quoted axiom. Too bad their books never considered the day when there would be too many people on the planet. Never thought about a time when arable land would be diminishing to urban sprawl and the world's huge oceans would become fished lean while human pollution kills the rest. Had nothing to say about humanity's ability to cause the worldwide extinction of the plants and animals we depend on. Couldn't imagine a world where people would be standing shoulder to shoulder... because there's just no room. Maybe the axiom should have read: 'Be fruitful and multiply... but don't be stupid about it.'
Like I said, an eighth of current world population is where I'd like to see the world be, and stay. So if I give everyone a gun with 7 bullets, we could get this done today.
Tick... tick... tick...
Yes, yes... I agree that's not a very good plan. Because then you'd have to bury 7 bodies, and you'd have to do it alone... everyone else would be busy with their own seven bodies which need burying.
And there would be 8 times too many homes, and 8 times too many cars. Too many businesses, and trains, and roads, and stuff. And all of this cleanup would have to be done with 1/8 the labor force.
So much work!
Maybe if we all decide to clean up the world first, make it all neat, pre-dig the graves... and then shoot 87.5% of us.
I can see this will be an organizational nightmare. Maybe a different plan?
Okay. Someone suggested attrition, which would be allowing the population to drop naturally, over time.
Well, that's a lot of guns I no longer need to buy and distribute. A load off my mind, I can tell you!
So every person dies of their natural course. The only change we'd make is to destroy the sex organs of seven-eighths of all people using white-hot pokers. Or elevate their sacrifice at painful public flaying ceremonies. Or maybe do it with a competition, like a fun battle scenario, where the winners get to sterilize the losers with a hand drill.
Hold on...
I'm being told that isn't the plan at all. My bad.
Instead, we try other forms of incentive first. We offer financial motivation to people who agree not to have children. We limit the number of children each family can legally have, and burden larger families with taxes and fines to pay for the incentives smaller families are receiving. Mathematically, we can reduce the population, every generation, in several ways:
• The people who do not make children will end their own family lines with their deaths. No more progeny.
• Parents that have only 1 child cut their family human load by 50% with each passing generation.
• Parents that wait before having one child for 10-20 years stretch the length of generations, contributing fewer children over time than families who have their child at a younger age.
• We can shoot people who don't understand math.
Okay, apparently I'm feeling just the slightest bit murderous today. Maybe that's because I'm writing this during International Blasphemy Day and I feel obliged to say things like that. Or maybe it's because my editor is taking a week off in the Bahamas with his super-fat wife.
Definitely the second thing.
So, no shooting.
Getting back to math, let's do an example. I've always loved examples (if I can understand them) so I'll try to make this one dumb enough for even me to follow:
Say we start off with 100 couples. Each has 1 child. And every couple in this chart gives birth at 20, and everyone dies at 79. Now my brain won't hurt so much when I do the figuring. Let's begin the example on a nice round year, 2000, with 50 couples all 20 years old.
Say we start off with 100 couples. Each has 1 child. And every couple in this chart gives birth at 20, and everyone dies at 79. Now my brain won't hurt so much when I do the figuring. Let's begin the example on a nice round year, 2000, with 50 couples all 20 years old.
Year Gen 1 Gen 2 Gen 3 Gen 4 Gen 5 Gen 6 Gen 7 Totals
(parents) (kids) (grandkids) (great) (great 2) (great 3) (great 4)
(parents) (kids) (grandkids) (great) (great 2) (great 3) (great 4)
2000 100 50 150
2020 100 50 25 175
2040 100 50 25 12 187
2060 0 50 25 12 6 93
2080 0 0 25 12 6 3 46
2100 0 0 0 12 6 3 1 22
2120 0 0 0 0 6 3 1 -
2140 0 0 0 0 0 3 1 -
In 2000 the 50 couples (100 ppl) are 20 years old and each make 1 baby (50 ppl) for a total of 150 people
In 2020 - 50(100) are 40 - (50) kids are 20 and make 25 babies for a total of 175 people
In 2040 - 50(100) are 60 - (50) kids are 40 - 25 gkids are 20 and make 12 = 187 people
In 2060 -50(100) are dead - (50) kids are 60 -25 gkids are 40 - 12 ggkids are 20 and make 6 = 93 people
In 2080 - (50) kids are dead - 25 gkids are 60 - 12 ggkids are 40 -6 gggkids are 20 and make 3 = 46 people
Seems like, using this chart, in 100 years and 7 generations we'll be at the population I recommend. In reality people won't be divided into petri-like dishes of 50 couples, so there will always be a wide assortment of partners, so don't worry. We're not going to dissolve into a world of sisterbangers.
Can we make it happen faster? What about stretching the birthing rate? Let's rechart the same data, using 40 as the age to have children instead of 20. People still die at 79 in this chart. Boo-hoo, no kids have grandparents. It's just an example... get over it.
Year Gen 1 Gen 2 Gen 3 Gen 4 Gen 5 Gen 6 Gen 7 Totals
2000 100 50 150
2040 0 50 25 75
2080 0 0 25 12 37
2120 0 0 0 12 6 18
2160 0 0 0 0 6 3 9
2200 0 0 0 0 0 3 1 4
2240 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 -
2280 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -
In 2000 the 50 couples (100) are 40 years old and each make 1 baby (50) for a total of 150 people
2040 - 50(100) are dead - (50) kids are 40 and make 25 babies for a total of 75 people
2080 - (50) kids are dead - 25 gkids are 40 and make 12 = 37 people
2120 - 25 gkids are dead - 12 ggkids are 40 and make 6 = 18 people
2160 - 12 ggkids are dead - 6 gggkids are 40 and make 3 = 9 people
So with more years between generations, the population drops faster. Still, when we reach our goal, like with a dieter, we don't want to fall too dangerously below. A 'decree' will go out on that wondrous day when computers calculate the world population at 875 million, a decree which states,"Oyez, oyez..."
I don't even know if that's a real dinosaur. But the point is made. People will start making babies. Still, there is an eye to sensibility and the idea of doubling the baby load seems extreme, until they realize that just means going from one baby to two... so they proceed, cautiously. It looks like this:
Okay, that's just ridiculous. we're not returning to the year 1750 just because we're at the population level of that time. Starting over, "The Great Pop-Drop is Over! O-V-E-R! You are now all free to bang like bunnies, to romp like rhinos, to pluke like plesiosaurs..."
I don't even know if that's a real dinosaur. But the point is made. People will start making babies. Still, there is an eye to sensibility and the idea of doubling the baby load seems extreme, until they realize that just means going from one baby to two... so they proceed, cautiously. It looks like this:
Year Gen 1 Gen 2 Gen 3 Gen 4 Gen 5 Gen 6 Gen 7 Totals
2100 100 100 200
2120 100 100 100 300
2140 100 100 100 100 400
2160 0 100 100 100 100 400
2180 0 0 100 100 100 100 400
2200 0 0 0 100 100 100 100 400
2220 0 0 0 0 100 100 100 [400]
2240 0 0 0 0 0 100 100 [400]
And with 2 kids per family, we've finally attained ZPG. At least as far as this wildly inaccurate chart is concerned, which omits a thousand important figures and a whole host of potential stumbling blocks. It'll work, I tell ya! Believe the Hypno-Toad.
Moving on.
Okay, now we've reached our desired population goal, and now everybody's car is made by Caterpillar so they can double as building-knocking-downers and junk-clearers. And that's our first task... cleanup! First to go are the dilapidated and banned buildings... we huff and puff and blow 'em down, and clear 'em away. Now the garbage structures -- 'squish' go temporary buildings that look like tractor-trailers and 'fold' go cheaply-made buildings utilizing any material that resembles pants. After that we turn a destructive eye towards all that awful junk housing-- no more cinder block tenements, no more cardboard subdivisions. Finally we're knocking down the wretched mini-mansions and security-booth-protected gated communities, both symbols of the realized horror called Capitalism with a big C. See ya, C.
All those newly disappeared neighborhoods don't need local roadways... no more street names ending in 'circle', 'drive', 'alley' or 'mews'. Good riddance. Scrape 'em clear. Horrible mini malls with fetid chain stores like 7-11s and BP gas stations go crunch, crunch, bye under our metal tractor treads. We can either shove it all into the ocean to form manmade barriers to tsunami and call them the Great Atlantic and Pacific Reefs, or maybe build a new mountain range in overly flat Kansas, going East-West for a change. It all returns to nature anyhow... might as well look pretty while doing so. Blanket it with every kind of seed and come back in 100 years to a beautiful man-made forest. People making forests? Well, that's new!
With 1/8 population, resources will suddenly be plentiful. If we couple our careful population culling with widespread free education (concentrating in subjects which don't doom society, like exploration and discovery, the arts and sciences, creativity and the humanities), then our resultant population will begin to make wiser choices about how to coexist with the planet. Now following the advice of careful scientists will make tremendous sense as people stop arguing lies to reach empty political victories. Clean energy will become de rigueur, smooth quiet sensible public transportation will become the preferred method of travel everywhere, and interacting with others becomes a cooperation, not a competition.
Political organization becomes pointless as people realize they can get more done in groups transparently than all the smoke-filled, back-room, secret-laced, political dope-dealing venal methods in practice before. They begin to use a now-ubiquitous piece of Internet software that would be called FluidWorld or something equally inspirational, which assembles and categorizes every one of humanity's needs (both personal and public), assigns predicted resources and labor to each, then requests a vote on each... but only from those people who would be affected by each change.
For example, a town needs a new light rail line and requests it. Everyone from that town gets to vote, but nobody from another state does. Or a neighborhood wants a new street sign, so everyone who would be able to see that sign gets to vote on it, but nobody else. With a yes outcome, resources and labor is allocated. No politics, no monetary remuneration, no hierarchy. In this way there are far fewer jobs needed, far less resources wasted, and far more free time. Jobs of a hard nature like farming would benefit with tenfold labor increase, allowing each person to put in just a couple of hours a day but the farm would experience increased output. There would be no subsidies, no wasted crops and no payments not to grow-- it would be a system that finally makes logical sense.
With nobody receiving any kind of unfair advantage, and more importantly, nobody being placed in a continuing disadvantage, human interaction stops becoming adversarial. Anger and frustration dissipates with the elimination of pointless and overstuffed yet watered down laws pushing humanity into an unnatural mold of perfection. Instead a few simple rules are put in place: Don't hurt people. Don't force your beliefs on them. Let the community help raise children. Share equally. Don't be greedy or selfish. Accept facts as truth. With these guidelines, people naturally become more tolerant and helpful, more unselfish and kind, more creative and enterprising. The world blossoms with the loss of pollution and senseless acts.
Yes, an eighth is definitely best.
All those newly disappeared neighborhoods don't need local roadways... no more street names ending in 'circle', 'drive', 'alley' or 'mews'. Good riddance. Scrape 'em clear. Horrible mini malls with fetid chain stores like 7-11s and BP gas stations go crunch, crunch, bye under our metal tractor treads. We can either shove it all into the ocean to form manmade barriers to tsunami and call them the Great Atlantic and Pacific Reefs, or maybe build a new mountain range in overly flat Kansas, going East-West for a change. It all returns to nature anyhow... might as well look pretty while doing so. Blanket it with every kind of seed and come back in 100 years to a beautiful man-made forest. People making forests? Well, that's new!
With 1/8 population, resources will suddenly be plentiful. If we couple our careful population culling with widespread free education (concentrating in subjects which don't doom society, like exploration and discovery, the arts and sciences, creativity and the humanities), then our resultant population will begin to make wiser choices about how to coexist with the planet. Now following the advice of careful scientists will make tremendous sense as people stop arguing lies to reach empty political victories. Clean energy will become de rigueur, smooth quiet sensible public transportation will become the preferred method of travel everywhere, and interacting with others becomes a cooperation, not a competition.
Political organization becomes pointless as people realize they can get more done in groups transparently than all the smoke-filled, back-room, secret-laced, political dope-dealing venal methods in practice before. They begin to use a now-ubiquitous piece of Internet software that would be called FluidWorld or something equally inspirational, which assembles and categorizes every one of humanity's needs (both personal and public), assigns predicted resources and labor to each, then requests a vote on each... but only from those people who would be affected by each change.
For example, a town needs a new light rail line and requests it. Everyone from that town gets to vote, but nobody from another state does. Or a neighborhood wants a new street sign, so everyone who would be able to see that sign gets to vote on it, but nobody else. With a yes outcome, resources and labor is allocated. No politics, no monetary remuneration, no hierarchy. In this way there are far fewer jobs needed, far less resources wasted, and far more free time. Jobs of a hard nature like farming would benefit with tenfold labor increase, allowing each person to put in just a couple of hours a day but the farm would experience increased output. There would be no subsidies, no wasted crops and no payments not to grow-- it would be a system that finally makes logical sense.
With nobody receiving any kind of unfair advantage, and more importantly, nobody being placed in a continuing disadvantage, human interaction stops becoming adversarial. Anger and frustration dissipates with the elimination of pointless and overstuffed yet watered down laws pushing humanity into an unnatural mold of perfection. Instead a few simple rules are put in place: Don't hurt people. Don't force your beliefs on them. Let the community help raise children. Share equally. Don't be greedy or selfish. Accept facts as truth. With these guidelines, people naturally become more tolerant and helpful, more unselfish and kind, more creative and enterprising. The world blossoms with the loss of pollution and senseless acts.
Yes, an eighth is definitely best.
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