Problem One
Sam Aurelius Milam III
In
March of 1969, my father wrote a letter to me in which, commenting about
my impending marriage to my first wife, he wrote, "I can understand the
impatience of youth and the world is in a sad state so you want to do things,
however, there are too many people already so don't be in too much of a
hurry to increase the population. I am very concerned about the future
welfare of the young people now growing up. I try to never predict
because if I'm right, no one remembers it, and if I'm wrong, no one ever
forgets it. If the present trend does not reverse very soon,
I can see only cannibalism as the final conclusion." That same year,
U Thant, who was then the Secretary General of the United Nations, stated
that we had about 10 years remaining in which to solve certain problems
or, to use his words, they "will have reached such staggering proportions
that they will be beyond our capacity to control." One problem that
he included in his list was the population explosion. Whether or
not my father was right about the cannibalism remains to be seen but he
was certainly right about there being too many people. U Thant was
right to include the population explosion in his list. I believe
that human overpopulation is Problem One. It's the problem that drives
most of our other problems. Climate change, deforestation, pollution,
desertification, resource depletion, and so forth, are problems mostly
because of human overpopulation. They wouldn't be such problems if
there weren't so many of us. We've overwhelmed the planet's ability
to cope with our ill-considered activities.
U
Thant was right about overpopulation being a problem but he was wrong to
believe that we still had 10 years remaining in which to solve it.
I believe that it might have been possible, even as recently as 200 years
ago, to have solved the overpopulation problem, and even to have done so
honorably and humanely. I believe that, now, there isn't any
honorable or humane way to solve it. There probably isn't any way
to solve it at all. Worse yet, we're pretending that it doesn't even
exist. We force everybody to use every possible kind of safety device,
trying to keep as many people alive as possible. We make every effort
to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and prevent diseases, trying to keep
as many people alive as possible. We even enhance fertility for people
who can't reproduce, further increasing the population. Such behavior
might seem humane but it reduces the death rate and increases the birth
rate, enabling the overpopulation problem to get worse. Maybe it
isn't humane after all. Meanwhile, we struggle to provide the food,
water, shelter, and transportation that enables us to continue to tolerate
the ever-worsening conditions. We pretend that the conditions are
the problem, not merely its consequences. Faced with a population
explosion that can't possibly be sustained, we're doing all of the wrong
things.
China
recently abandoned its two-child policy. The policy was typically
repressive and authoritarian, but it was probably the only sensible population
policy on the entire planet. Now it's gone. Why was it abandoned?
Policy makers in China noticed that their population isn't growing quite
as fast as before. It's still growing, just not as fast.
Policy makers there, and elsewhere, are concerned that their financial
and political institutions won't be able to continue functioning unless
the population continues to grow. They're absolutely correct.
The entire socioeconomic establishment of the entire planet is a giant
Ponzi scheme. It's the same as any other Ponzi scheme. The
size of the inputs must always grow to exceed the size of the outputs.
So, the population must keep growing. Such an insane situation can't
possibly be sustained. The few instances of a slight decrease in
the rate of population growth, such as was noticed by the policy makers
in China, were the only hopeful signs that I've seen for decades.
Now, with policy makers on the alert and determined to obstruct any such
reduction in the rate of growth, it seems likely to me that we'll fail
to solve Problem One. Left to itself, the problem will eventually
solve itself. I can't say for sure what the results will be, but
I've given it a lot of thought, for many years.
In
August of 1974, I wrote, "The longer we wait to solve an environmental
problem, the fewer choices we will have. If we wait long enough,
then we probably won't have to
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Establish
a financial system based entirely on actual money, not on paper, credit,
or digits in a computer. A variety of coins, of gold, silver, and
copper, is the best option. Don't legislate the values of the coins.
Identify them according to weight and assay. The value of each kind
of coin will define itself, according to The Law of Supply and Demand.
That value, as it automatically adjusts itself, will prevent the need for
an endless increase in the money supply.
