In a blog post about Elinor Ostrom's sharing the Nobel Prize in economics for work on the Tragedy of the Commons and how people voluntarily reduce the size of that tragedy John Tierney of the New York Times tries to argue that people do not have children for a profit. I think he's taking too narrow a view of profit.
First, Dr. Hardin himself misapplied the fable. Declaring that “overpopulation” was a tragedy of the commons, he warned that “freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.” He and others advocated a “lifeboat ethic” of denying food aid, even during emergencies, to poor countries with rapidly growing populations. But “overpopulation” was not even a theoretical example of the tragedy of the commons. Parents are not like the cattle owners who profit individually by adding cows to the pasture (while collectively destroying it). Parents, unlike the cattle owners, have to pay to feed and house and educate their children, and the high economic costs of children are one reason that birth rates have declined around the world — without any of the coercion discussed by Dr. Hardin and some other ecologists (like Paul Ehrlich).
Parents either profit or expect to profit. Their expected profit is in pleasure and satisfaction. They really expect to get a lot out of raising children or else few would choose to do so.
Why do people in business want to earn big profits? They want to use that money for their pleasure and satisfaction. Making babies is a way to basically skip a step. Rather than making money to buy things parents just make the things (in this case babies) directly.
I expect the current decline in fertility in much of the world will turn out to be a temporary phase (assuming the human race isn't wiped out by robots or nanobots). Life extension will bring a halt to aging. People will have thousands of years in which to reproduce. Likely some will make many babies. Quite possibly some will give their offspring stronger innate desire to reproduce. Robin Hanson thinks our distant descendants will run up against growth limits due to a limited number of atoms in the Milky Way Galaxy. Click thru and read Hanson's comments in that post about the delusory era we live in today. I fully agree.
Given a similar freedom of fertility, most of our distant descendants will also live near a subsistence level. Per-capita wealth has only been rising lately because income has grown faster than population. But if income only doubled every century, in a million years that would be a factor of 103000, which seems impossible to achieve with only the 1070 atoms of our galaxy available by then. Yes we have seen a remarkable demographic transition, wherein richer nations have fewer kids, but we already see contrarian subgroups like Hutterites, Hmongs, or Mormons that grow much faster. So unless strong central controls prevent it, over the long run such groups will easily grow faster than the economy, making per person income drop to near subsistence levels. Even so, they will be basically happy in such a world.
The limits will come sooner if we allow robots to become sentient and reproduce. The limits will also come sooner if other intelligent species exist on planets around other stars in our galaxy. As for whether people will be happy: I expect they'll see the limits to resources centuries in advance and start competing with each other. Interstellar war between groups of humans and/or robots will cut back populations long before resources are exhausted.
| Share | | Randall Parker, 2009 October 18 08:04 PM Bioethics Reproduction |
Parents either profit or expect to profit. Their expected profit is in pleasure and satisfaction. They really expect to get a lot out of raising children or else few would choose to do so.
Choose?
Since when are most of the children in the world born by "choice"?
I thought the primary driver of births was the choice to have sex!
But you're right about one thing: The expected profit of sex is definitely in pleasure and satisfaction. They really expect to get a lot out of sex and many choose to do so.
Economists trying to understand what are essentially biological processes. Good luck.
I got banned from a Catholic message board for talking about Paul Ehrlich and supporting his views...
The last two posts, I praised Obama for recending the Mexico City policy, and the other I said that Paul Ehrlich will eventually be right and much of humanity would die off. I compared Paul Ehrlich to a NASDAQ short-seller in early 1999. (Ehrlich was wrong; he was right, but too early, which is wrong... he will be right eventually.)
The Malthusian argument is fallacious in regard to humans for a very simple reason - unlike animals, humans have capacity for long-term planning. When they know that having numerous offspring from an economic asset (as in primitive agricultural societies) becomes liability (as in developed countries - all the efforts of social engineers to "fix" this notwithstanding) humans start delaying and reducing reproduction.
A biologist may say that increased investment into and survival of the offspring causes change of optimal reproduction strategy from r to k. Because human reproduction is heavily meme-controlled, this change happens very quickly, in evolutionary terms.
Eventually, religion will either be disproved or one particular religious denomination will be proved correct, so we can't expect the behavior of current religious groups to continue unchanged in the long term.
If in 150 years mainstream society has an average IQ of 150, and the brain-mind can be understood in its entirety, it will be harder and harder for Amish-like folks to maintain illusions.
Well, of course, I did expect to profit emotionally by having a child, and I have. Financially? Financially, the rest of the country is a free rider on ME: The developed world under-produces children, because the financial benefits of having children have been socialized to a much greater extent than the costs. Where would the old-age pensions be, without the next generation of children?
The Malthusian argument is fallacious in regard to humans for a very simple reason - unlike animals, humans have capacity for long-term planning.
True. The economist Henry George summed it up very pithily: "Both the jayhawk and the man eat chickens; but the more jayhawks, the fewer chickens, while the more men, the more chickens."
>When they know that having numerous offspring from an economic asset (as in primitive agricultural societies) becomes liability (as in developed countries - all the efforts of social engineers to "fix" this notwithstanding) humans start delaying and reducing reproduction.
In modern urbanized societies, having children is already a liability rather than an asset. Most people have reduced their fertility, but, as the post pointed out, others haven't. Guess which ones will come to predominate? In a way they are planning for the future - eternity - because they think their god wants them to have lots of children.
>A biologist may say that increased investment into and survival of the offspring causes change of optimal reproduction strategy from r to k.
What has actually happened is that the optimal reproductive strategy has turned from K to r. Now you can have as many babies as you like and they will most likely survive to adulthood, which was not the case 100 or more years ago. In the worst case the state takes care of them. You have to accept a low standard of living which is unacceptable to most people, but, like you said, this can change quickly.
>The economist Henry George summed it up very pithily: "Both the jayhawk and the man eat chickens; but the more jayhawks, the fewer chickens, while the more men, the more chickens."
This is not incompatible with Malthus, who believed that food supplies grow linearly because of improved technology and more farm labor. The problem is that population growth, assuming the average family has more than 2 children, is exponential, so it outruns linear food supply growth.
Actually, economics can pretty easily explain these types of "decisions", but you need to think in simpler economic terms. People make decisions based on whether the perceived benefit exceeds the perceived cost. In the case of making babies, as James pointed out, for most cases it's about the sex, and procreation is accidental. For most such "decisions" having children never enters the thought process in terms of the perceived cost of sexual activity. Or, if it does, it is outweighed by the perceived benefits of having sex (symptomatic of short-term thinking that plagues many economic decisions).
And, unfortunately, starvation is built into our capitalist economic system. It is more economical for a farmer in a poor country (trying to maximize profits) to sell his goods to wealthy, non-starving people in rich countries than to scrape by selling it to his poor neighbors. At some point, it even becomes more economical to not grow anything rather than sell it for such a low price that the farmer takes a loss. As long as the equilibrium price is above what some people can pay, there will be people who will starve without food aid. Reducing demand can help lower the equilibrium price (hence the discussions of population controls) but the real issue with demand is that people in wealthy countries consume more calories overall, but also more meat, which requires considerably more land to produce the same amount of calories.
And don't get me started on how converting food to fuel (like ethanol) compounds the problem.
>" Yes we have seen a remarkable demographic transition, wherein richer nations have fewer kids, but we already see contrarian subgroups like Hutterites, Hmongs, or Mormons that grow much faster. So unless strong central controls prevent it, over the long run such groups will easily grow faster than the economy, making per person income drop to near subsistence levels."
The rest of this quote was intended to show that there are, in fact, physical limits to unchecked population growth in the physical universe. Given the assumption of unfettered population increase over very long time periods under current social and technical circumstances I suppose there is some validity to the point. (I don't necessarily grant all those assumptions and attempting to project so far into the future to prove a present point seems a bit of a stretch.)
The part of the section that I have included above, though, is obviously trying to make a different point. That is, that coercive, governmental controls should be imposed on 'subgroups' (itself a subtle imposition of inferior social position). I wish Randall would just come out and say that he supports governmental regulation of reproduction that is non-voluntarily imposed. And, just guessing here, that the above 'contrarian subgroups' wouldn't be proposed as the superintendents of that program?
Human beings on planet earth are mostly clueless about the universe and what is ultimate “reality. One thing for sure is the confidence in which we express out ignorance.
> I wish Randall would just come out and say that he supports governmental regulation of reproduction that is non-voluntarily imposed.
It's worth noting that this can be done with money incentives, not just with coercion. Such a program would be essentially voluntary - although I admit it could be considered semi-involuntary under some conditions, just as egg donation or prostitution might be considered semi-involuntary when you are severely out of both money and options. (The latter notion is of course well known as an argument against the idea of organ markets.)
You folks are missing what was previous to this century the obvious norm:
I have more children to ensure that when I'm old and unable to take care of myself there is a greater chance I'll be taken care of comfortably until I die...
(insert 'more children to help on the farm' if that comforts you)
Matt - you seem to have zero clue about capitalism. When a farmer in poor country sells his goods to rich country he gets profit. If that profit is not confiscated, the farmer will invest part of it into increased production (he'll buy equipment, fertilizers, hire more help, etc). This will increase his productivity. The independent action of millions of such farmers will increase food output and drive prices down (and, incidentally, will force less productive farmers out of business, so their land will be sold to more productive ones). Meanwhile, hired help will get paid, and the farmer himself will have disposable income to spend on stuff and services, often produced locally, thus allowing other people to earn decent living.
Now, if you do confiscate farmer's profit in order to "help" others (or prevent him from getting it by prohibiting profitable international trade), then nothing of the above will happen. The farmer will keep scraping by, with falling apart machinery and deteriorating land (he doesn't get any chance to accumulate resources allowing him to do sustainable farming) - getting poorer and poorer, while others around him are getting closer and closer to starvation. Eventually the others go rioting, kill the farmer, ransack his seed storage, and the real famine starts. That's how socialism "works".
Starvation is not "built into" capitalism. It is the direct result of socialist (or simply barbarian, but that's repeating myself) policies of the local thugs-in-power, typical in Africa. (Socialism in all its forms also creates war - and in this respect "low-IQ" Africans are, in fact, much better off than supposedly smarter Europeans and Americans; at least they didn't wage world wars).
Eric --
>> I wish Randall would just come out and say that he supports governmental regulation of reproduction that is non-voluntarily imposed.
> It's worth noting that this can be done with money incentives, not just with coercion.
Well... the "government money" incentives _are_ plain coercion. Applied to those people who are forced to part with their money to fund somebody else's eugenics program.
As much as I don't like it, Robin Hanson does have a point. It is the nature of all biological organisms to reproduce until they reach the maximum population that is in equilibrium with their environment. For humans, this means population growth until most peoples' living declines to subsistence levels.
A Calcutta version of the Milky Way galaxy. How about that.
This discussion reminds me of Agent Smith's monologue to a tied-up Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburn) in the first Matrix movie.
> Well... the "government money" incentives _are_ plain coercion. Applied to those people who are forced to part with their money to fund somebody else's eugenics program.
True, though that's not high on the list of what people would usually mean by "gov't coercion." At any rate, since I'm not radically libertarian it doesn't matter all that much to me either way. Science says it will work and science says No Child Left Behind etc etc will not work. I'm sure both you and I would like to reduce the size of government in dollars by 75%, and we would probably also agree that science has nothing much to say in support of the things we would cut.
True, though that's not high on the list of what people would usually mean by "gov't coercion."If the money is taken upon penalty of imprisonment, which taxes are, then without coercian the government action wouldn't be possible. There are also perceived legitimacy issues regarding the government's intent, which reduces other perceived risks, but taxation being treated like free money is the crux of the economic distortions and behavioral coercian.
averros,
I like your sense of humor:
The Malthusian argument is fallacious in regard to humans for a very simple reason - unlike animals, humans have capacity for long-term planning.
The funny thing about libertarians is that they like to pretend that capabilities that some people have some of the time are capabilities that all people have all the time. Otherwise their political philosophy does not make sense. They want to live in the sort of society that would be possible if people were more like them.
kurt9,
I like the imagery:
A Calcutta version of the Milky Way galaxy.
mabirch,
Higher fertility is being selected for. Natural selection never stops working. It is relentless.
Randall -- you didn't bother to learn _anything_ about the intellectual foundation of libertarian political and economic theory, didn't you?
> like to pretend that capabilities that some people have some of the time are capabilities that all people have all the time
Nothing of the sort, in fact. The basic praxeological apriori postulate - the so-called axiom of action - only states that people have _some_ capacity for purposeful action, which is undeniable fact of life - and is (surprisingly, perhaps) sufficient for logical derivation of the non-trivial body of both economics (the "austrian" approach) and ethics (per Rothbard, when coupled with norm of universailty). This is, like, on page one of every theoretical treatise on libertarianism (which is why I think my above claim about you not bothering to learn is correct - the axiom of action is impossible to miss or misinterpret for anybody who did actually read von Mises and his followers).
I'm afraid you're confusing libertarianism with neoclassical economics, which does, indeed, emphasize rationality of economic actors - which leads to obviously nonsensical conclusions. The criterion of "rationality" is something imposed from outside - it's something an observer considers "rational" given his own ideas about desirability of the goals, not what the person acting does. The austrians explicitly declare uselessness of the rationality postulate.
In cybernetic terms the axiom of action is nothing more than the statement that humans have a hidden (subjective) utility function which includes predictive inputs from some cognitive models of the reality, and which causes action (or in-action) directed towards increasing this subjective utility.
averros,
Condescension doesn't make you more convincing or persuasive.
I read a lot of libertarians. There's not a consistent political philosophy running thru libertarian writers. It is not like Objectivism for example.
Praxeological: Geez, sounds like Ludwig von Mises. I read Human Action. I was not impressed. The axiom of action: The problem is that it is an axiom. Starting out with such an axiom rather and a biological view of the human mind as your fundamental building block is a mistake. It is understandable for von Mises because he lived in an age so little was known about the human mind. But today for people to treat pre-scientific writers as capable of creating a coherent model of humans is a joke.
I'm not confusing libertarianism with something else.
see my comment here:
http://smigrodzki.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-is-subsistence.html
Randall - of course, you weren't impressed. I would also be unmipressed with an argument I completely failed to follow because I missed the starting point.
The axiom of action is an axiom for the subsequent logic theory; it is also explicitly stated to be a well-established empirical fact. Thus, as long as this fact remains unchallenged (go ahead, try to challenge it) the subsequent derivation also stands (assuming nobody points logical errors in it, which to my knowledge nobody was able to do yet).
The amount of knowledge of the inner workings of the brain does not affect the validity of praxeological arguments simply because these arguments make no assumptions (other than said axiom) about the behavior of the brain. It is a weak theory, so any stronger results (which may be possible with better knowledge) have to be consistent with it. (Though I'm rather skeptical about constructing accurate model of human utility function - it is equivalent to constructing a human-level A.I. which happens to be indistinguishable from a human).
> There's not a consistent political philosophy running thru libertarian writers.
That may have been the case 40 years ago; since the work of Rothbard (which created the first complete logical exploration of ethics, and formulated the modern libertarian theory of law) there *is* a single consistent political philosophy - and this caused the modern re-emergence of interest in libertarianism. Ron Paul is, to a large extent (where his religious and constitutionalist beliefs do not get in the way), a follower of Rothbard and Mises. Hans Hermann Hoppe took Rothbard's work further (following Habermas and Appel) to argue that ability to have a rational argument *requires* Rothbardian ethics (the so-called "argumentation ethics"). The most influential libertarian sites (Lew Rockwell's blog and Mises Institute) are soundly Rothbardian.
By now the debate is mostly around application of the basic principles in specific situations, not about the principles themselves.
> I'm not confusing libertarianism with something else.
But you certainly misrepresent the basic tenets of modern libertarianism. You're, in effect, arguing against something completely different. I'm not sure if you do that on purpose, or simply are unaware of the fact that you're fighting a straw man.
averros,
A system of political theory that does not take into consideration the inner workings of the brain is lame.
An accurate model of human utility function: The economists create a naive theory when they construct a theory based on the idea of human utility function. Basing a theory of the human mind around the idea that we act to maximize marginal utility is a bad idea.