9-11
The Voices of Men in Praise of Jane Austen
Messages on the
Bulletin Board - c. Nov. 1, 2001
9-11
[Reference: 10/27/01]
Dear Voices,
The second chapter of P.J. O'Rourke's book All the Trouble in the World titled "Just Enough of Me, Way Too Much of You" is one of two that discuss population and famine. P.J. traveled to Bangladesh, which at the time (1990) had about 118 million people in a country approximately the size of Iowa. A density of 2130 people per square mile. Unthinkable right? No wonder they're poor and starving we say. But what about some other Asian countries? Hong Kong: over 14,000 per square mile; Singapore about 12,000. How about the US? San Francisco 15,500 and Manhattan has a whopping 52,000 people per square mile. So why aren't Americans poor and starving? What does Singapore have that Bangladesh doesn't? (Peace for one thing, and laws that apply exactly the same to Malays, Chinese, Americans, Brits, Saudis, and Israelis. What it doesn't have is farmland to grow its own food, but workers only spend about $2 Singapore per day to eat.) What about global population estimates? Al Gore's book "Earth in the Balance" predicts an eventual population of 14 billion--267 people per square mile (excluding the continent of Antarctica). Circa 1990, Pennsylvania had 265 ppsm in a state with nearly 2 billion acres of state & national forest and 9 million acres of farmland. The entire 1990 population of 5.3 billion could fit into former Yugoslavia if we wanted to live like Manhattanites. So we're not exactly talking "Make Room, Make Room" here.
P.J. O'Rourke is trying to make a few points with these statistics. First that the obvious-to-the-most-casual-observer conclusion that "the earth can only support so many people before we run out of food" may not be true in any practical sense. Food is so cheap that a bushel of wheat won't pay for the fuel it takes to plow the land. Food is so cheap that even without CRP (Conservation Recovery Program) subsidies, farmers can make more money planting wildlife crops and charging hunters to use their property than they can with traditional farming. Food is so plentiful that the US government is finding it cheaper to buy farmland at the owners' own valuation and take the land out of production in an effort to spend less money on the Endangered Species Act. Food is so plentiful that India went from a food importer to a food exporter in less than 25 years.
The second point P.J. O'Rourke is making is one I've made here before. I'll quote from the chapter:
"This leaves us with the question of what people mean when they say the earth is overpopulated. What these concerned citizens usually mean is that they've seen a whole bunch of the earth's very ordinary people up real close, and the concerned citizens didn't like what they saw one bit.
Paul Ehrlich starts the first chapter of The Population Bomb with a description of 'one stinking hot night in Delhi' which he and his wife and daughter took a taxi ride (a taxi ride that sounds, if I may say so, like a stroll in the Tivoli gardens compared to my Dhaka [Bangladesh] cab sojourn): 'We entered a crowded slum area. the temperature was well over 100 ... The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping.' Ehrlich goes on to combine 'people' with eight other verbs that describe typical human activities and winds up with this memorable sentence: 'People, people, people, people.' Says Ehrlich, 'All three of us were, frankly, frightened.'
And in Malthus too, there is a strong aesthetic element under-lying what seem to be coolly rational arguments. Although Malthus, at least, had the good grace to be concerned with the suffering of others rather than himself. He describes 'the wretched inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego': 'We cannot be at a loss to conceive the checks to population among a race of savages, who, shivering with cold and covered with filth and vermin, live in one of the most inhospitable climates in the world, without having sagacity enough to provide themselves with such conveniences as might mitigate its severities, and render life in some measure more comfortable.'
In other words, people are--present company always excepted--just awful ... Especially if those people happen to be not-quite white. [Emphasis mine.] Notice that Paul Ehrlich is not panicked by being caught in the tremendous squash and jostle of rich folks around the bar in the Churchill Downs clubhouse on Kentucky Derby Day ... And Malthus, when talking about a race of unwashed brutes who live in a miserable spot and don't have enough sense to come in out of the rain, is not discussing Highland lairds.
Fretting about overpopulation is a perfectly guilt-free--indeed sanctimonious--way for 'progressives' to be racists."
I've read that part of Malthus' reason for writing his essay on population was to explain his opposition to the "poor laws" which were intended to provide a pittance to indigent families based on the number of children. If we consider this when looking at statements such as:
"As the reasons, therefore, for the constancy of the laws of nature seem ... obvious and striking; if we return to the principle of population and consider man as he really is, inert, sluggish, and averse from labour, unless compelled by necessity (and it is surely the height of folly to talk of man, according to our crude fancies of what he might be), we may pronounce with certainty that the world would not have been peopled, but for the superiority of the power of population to the means of subsistence."
It seems as if Malthus isn't speaking in the abstract, but saying specifically that welfare breeds laziness and that a little starvation is a good motivator. It puts his opinion about hell in a different perspective as well -- the absence of hell makes standing by while people starve to death significantly less immoral.
"In the same manner, though we cannot possibly expect to exclude riches and poverty from society, yet if we could find out a mode of government by which the numbers in the extreme regions would be lessened and the numbers in the middle regions increased, it would be undoubtedly our duty to adopt it."
This, of course is precisely what we have achieved here in the US over the past 200 odd years. Not perfectly, of course, but the "middle regions" have increased beyond Malthus' wildest dreams.
In 1800 Mr. Darcy's 10,000 a year (2.5 million tax free US $ today) couldn't buy what an American consider would consider the basic necessities of life. Clean (germ-free) water, modern toilets, instant hot water, year round refrigeration, an aspirin tablet, dental care, most vaccines, climate controlled travel (closed coaches notwithstanding) instantaneous communication, clear skies nearly free of coal soot And as to luxuries that he could afford, multiple sets of clothing, year round shoes, fresh meat daily, night time illumination; we can safely say that Mr. Darcy spent more money on say, one night's worth of candles for Pemberley than I spend a year on light bulbs and the electricity to run them. In other words, he needed all of that 10,000 to maintain a lifestyle we would tolerate for about 2 weeks while on an eco-vacation to the amazon rainforest. Malthus continues:
"It is not, however, improbable that as in the oak, the roots and branches could not be diminished very greatly without weakening the vigorous circulation of the sap in the stem, so in society the extreme parts could not be diminished beyond a certain degree without lessening that animated exertion throughout the middle parts, which is the very cause that they are the most favourable to the growth of intellect."
To some extent, Malthus is right. No matter how much we all resent the obscenely rich, it's not as if they take all their money and sew it into a mattress, thereby removing dollars from the economy. Building a 10 million dollar home requires land, material, lawyers, architects, equipment operators, plumbers, carpenters, dry wall workers, electricians, landscapers, finish carpenters, painters, paper hangers, etc. And for that carpenter to work, you need foresters, lumberjacks, truck drivers, USDA and NFS personnel, more lawyers, sawmill workers, more truck drivers. For the lumberjacks you need manufacturers of chain saws, hardhats, boots, clothing, fuel and lubricants, rope, log movers, bulldozers, etc. Plus farmers and ranchers, butchers, produce workers, supermarket and department store clerks, insurance agents, doctors, dentists, school teachers for the kids, etc.,etc., etc., almost to infinity.
As for "The Poor", a wise person once said "They shall always be with us." The definition of poverty changes with each generation, a surer sign of the progress of man than any other. On average, even the poorest of the poor add about 200 calories to their daily diet every 5 years. This doesn't seem like much to bloated Americans, but add 6000 calories per month to a child's diet and see the difference in size between pre-war and post-war Japanese children. Add 6000 calories per month to an expectant mother's diet and see the difference in birth weights and number of birth defects.
"Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity. We are not patiently to submit to it, but to exert ourselves to avoid it."
Here, in its most fundamental form, is why science and religion can never,
ever hope to be reconciled. "Why did/does God ...?" is not a legitimate
inquiry. It can never lead to discovery, because it can never be
falsified. Evil doesn't exist for any "reason" neither does man, or cattle,
or seaweed. Toilet paper exists for a reason. Airplanes exist
for a reason. Fuji apples exist for a reason. Evolution has
no "purpose." The law of gravity has no "purpose." Asking why the second
law of thermodynamics works every time is reasonable. Asking what purpose
it serves is begging the question. Which is not to say that the
religious individual has no place in science or that they can't make great
contributions to science. The Catholic clergy includes any number of men who
have greatly contributed to scientific understanding. And
unfortunately, prejudice of belief (within science and without) doesn't
confine itself to religious matters.
Cheryl
One of the great wonders of the world is the number of people who are willing to explain Malthus to me and, yet, have never actually read him. O'Rourke seems to be one of those. A mystery as well as a wonder because the Malthus essay is short and very easy to read.
O'Rourke's first blunder is to associate Malthus with Ehrlich - common enough, but WRONG! It is true that Ehrlich invokes Malthus but with no more understanding than O'Rourke. Malthus would have pointed to all the weaknesses of The Population Bomb because, unlike Ehrlich (a butterfly expert), Malthus was a competent economist. O'Rourke also suggests that Malthus was a racist. Here is the origin of that. Ehrlich, and others like him, have been pronounced racist by the left wing because they propose that Third-World population growth should be brought under control. (Never mind that their darling, China, has decided the same thing.) The argument is that all these population/ecologists are capitalist wreckers who are trying to prevent the growth of Third-World economies and armies. They would hate this interpretation; but, what they are saying boils down to, "the developed counties have gained all their wealth by exploiting their workers and now they won't allow us to do the same". The truth is that capitalists are salivating over the growth of Third-World economies, which translate into Third-World markets.
I would like you, or anyone else, show me, where in his essay, Malthus suggests that the population growths of other cultures or races should be controlled - I missed that completely. In fact, I believe that no such passages exist. Also, Malthus never ever, ever said one single bit about overpopulation. As an English clergyman, he never would have advocated birth control. What he did say was that because men and women like to schmooze so much (my terminology) - schmooze this way and that way - and every chance they get, population is always kept near subsistence. However, his second axiom is that subsistence grows with time as civilization improves technology. He also recognized that "subsistence" might mean something more than food supply. These suppositions on his part answer all of the points you raise. I hope I can convince you to read Malthus because he is not Paul Ehrlich. (Incidentally, I could also defend Ehrlich to those who think like O'Rourke.) One final point, Malthus carefully explains that when population comes up against subsistence, the event need not be such a tragic thing. When it happens, so he explains, people adjust their behavior like spending more time developing their careers, taking cold showers, marrying later, and having fewer children. Sound familiar?
Your comments about population density seem to imply that those are cultural choices and it is racist of us to turn up our noses at such conditions in the Third World. I am sorry, I don't agree. The densities in Third-World cities are a result of the importation of modern health care and the mechanization of agriculture (farm workers are flooding into the cities looking for - you guessed it - subsistence.) You and O'Rourke seems to think that they have been living like that forever and that they enjoy living like that. The irony is their culture, if anything, is breaking down under those conditions. I prefer Ehrich's view of the matter.
You might want to pick up the novel, Stand on Zanzibar, written several decades ago. (You, apparently, would have everyone stand on Yugoslavia.) Well, I wonder if you appreciate the implications of a population of that enormous size. The author of Zanzibar wondered that and made some predictions in his novel that are chilling because he seems to have predicted correctly.
Finally, let me clear up some misapprehensions of Malthus's motivation. He was motivated by arguments with his father who was an admirer of Godwin and other radical thinkers. As Malthus was growing up, his home was actually visited by Rousseau, Hume, and others of that bent. That is like someone today telling us he grew up in a home visited by Dr. Martin Luther King. There was some involvement of Malthus in changes in the poor laws (that was probably the main reason he was attacked so viciously by Marx and Engels). However, the instigator was, of course, a politician who seized upon the First Essay, and then on Malthus in person, to sway his colleagues in Parliament. But all that happened long after publication of the First Essay.
Dear Ashton,
Of all the responses, I confess your particular interpretation of what I
wrote is what I least expected. Here's a quote from P.J. O'Rourke that I left
out:
"It is to be noted, however, that Malthus was not a
Malthusian. He never predicted that everybody would die in famines or
plagues or wars. Malthus said only that all societies provide checks upon
their populations because, if they didn't, nature would do it for them in a less
kindly way."
I should also point out that, while P.J. was once the editor of the National Lampoon and is a travel and economics corespondent for Rolling Stone, he also is a fellow of the Cato Institute and a weekly contributor to the American Spectator. In other words, he's a card-carrying Catholic Republican Capitalist. His view on Bangladesh is that they need to move their economy out of agriculture, give up failed socialist experiments (like the govt. owning all industry), stop persecuting ethnic and religious minorities; and give up the bizarre notion that technology is anti-Islamic.
O'Rourke's only issue with Malthus is that he disagrees with the statement that there is a: "constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment provided for it." Now, if we wish to discount Man's tendency to provide his own nourishment, I suppose P.J.'s argument is without any merit, but that's just not the case with human beings. Actually, sometimes we can discount it. Northwest Indian populations never came within millions--perhaps tens of millions--of the population that the salmon runs could have sustained.
My comments about population density were intended to imply that the sky isn't falling and that the chicken littles of the world need to get a grip.There's plenty of food, there's plenty of room. Western countries are taking more and more acres out of farm production every year while annual yields of staple crops: wheat, rice, soybeans and corn continue to rise. Famine is a man made phenomenom. Hunger is a political weapon and has been since the beginning of agriculture.
As far as racism goes, I think P.J. has a valid point. Would Ehrlich have been afraid of the crush at the concession stand in Yankee stadium? Or the frightening population density of a Who concert? Did he see anything on that street in Calcutta that he wouldn't have seen in a Chicago bus station? (People eating, sleeping, dying.) I also think there's a certain brand of racism at work when westerners consider their own luxuries more important than third world necessities. Given the choice of extinction of a native species and the extinction of my family, I'm afraid pygmy rabbits would be gone forever. Luckily, I have the luxury of giving my money to the Nature Conservancy to buy land and I can provide habitat on my own acreage. And if I want to go see tigers, or white rhinos in their native habitat, then I'd better be prepared to pony up my own hard earned cash. Not tax dollars, mind you because my neighbor might not give a damn about something that doesn't benefit him directly or indirectly. And not expect some foreign family with an annual income of US$400 to go hungry or endanger their children so I can go "ooooh".
I certainly don't think we should turn up our noses at hunger in the third world. Unfortunately, wide scale hunger doesn't have anything to food supplies. It has to do with peace. It has to do with Iraqis deciding it's more important to slaughter Kurds, or build nuclear weapons than it is to feed their children. What the world needs is western style democracy. Governments that value individual rights, equality under the law, separation of church and state, economic freedom. Pretty much the whole-sale adoption of the Bill of Rights. And the best thing the US and its citizens can do is encourage capitalism and democracy. The US hasn't perfected the system, but we're doing a better job than just about anybody else.
When you say I "don't understand the implications of population of that enormous size" you're missing what I did say. The implications are that if we wanted to turn the rest of the earth back to pristine condition we could do it, simply by building a large Manhattan anywhere in the world. You don't seriously think the world population is going to top 100 billion anytime soon, or ever, do you? At any rate, thank-you-very-much but I've already read my requisite critically acclaimed pollution/overpopulation dystopian novel "The Sheep Look Up" by John Brunner. (As well as "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep","Make Room, Make Room", "The Dosadi Experiment" "Neuromancer" and god knows how many short stories. Science fiction has an entire sub-genre of overpopulation dystopia.)
Did you really mean to say that Malthus did argue against the poor laws, but that it doesn't count because it was long after his First Essay was published? Cause that's kind of what it sounds like. You don't really need to get so defensive though...you were discussing Malthus and his influence (and that of other radical thinkers of the time) on Jane Austen's world; while I was discussing the "Population Question." I swear I'll read Malthus when I can get my hands on some. My ultimate point is that there's no population crisis. Proctor and Gamble isn't a front company for Satanists, rap music is annoying, but not the end of civilization as we know it, there are no 12 foot snakes that live inside frozen turkeys, and left over halloween pumpkins do not spontaneously transform into christmas fruitcakes.
P.S.: I did get a chance to print out the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rest of the Amendments to the
Constitution. The National Archives is one of those sites where you go to
do one simple thing and before you've looked at everything you're interested in
it's 3 in the morning. Speaking of which, it's getting pretty late right
now. Must be at my brightest tomorrow for the release of "Shrek".
Cheryl
Dear Cheryl and Ashton,
Very interesting. I've never read Malthus essay (although I've read a lot about it).
However, I saw a TV documentary on tigers a while back. The star was the conservator of an Indian National Park. The drama of the show was based on the fact that tigers would occasionally wander outside the Park and eat Indian villagers. The villagers, not, evidently, appreciating the scarcity of wild tigers would then hunt down the tigers and shoot them. According to the Conservator, they would sometimes even shoot the wrong tiger (failing to provide a State appointed defense attorney).
The Conservator quite obviously believed that there are plenty of Indians around, and not many tigers. Therefore, tigers (being a scarce resource) are far more valuable than Indians. That the Indian Villagers disagreed is, however irrational according to economic and ecological theory, hardly surprising.
Dear Cheryl,
If O'Rourke said that, then I have misjudged him. And, I have been guilty of the very thing of which I accused him - I spoke about something that I had not read myself - but let us quickly skip over that. However, I can still take exception to his suggestion that Malthus thought people to be "just awful". That is insupportable.
As you know, I am a card-carrying, tree-hugging, vegetarian environmentalist. I am not willing to give up a natural species for anybody's family, including my own. But, we only have to make that sort of decision because the world is already overcrowded. What you say about starvation being most often a political event is quite true. I have tried to agree with you on that matter on several occasions, but you will not let me; you certainly never remember that I agreed.
I really admire the Chinese. I hope they pull off this one child per couple thing. In one generation, they could reduce the number of rural families by 50%! That would eliminate poverty and reduce the strain on the environment. Everyone else will do that if they have an example. There will be a lot of intramural opposition; for example, economic interests will pressure society to increase the cheap labor supply. And, from where will come the next generation of cannon fodder? That is what happened in Japan when they sought to reduce population growth.
I believe it is true that man does not live by bread alone - I mean that "subsistence" is more complicated than food supply. Also, I believe that fact was recognized in Jane Austen's time and it is there in Malthus's First Essay. Granted, you have to carefully read the essay to find it, but it is there. To me, living wild and free on the Palouse, sipping apple wine, munching chocolate covered cherries, re-reading Pride and Prejudice, tickling Roy, and occasionally checking the fur between your toes for those irritating flecks of compost just might be subsistence level - the minimum that any woman has the right to expect. But that is not for you I see; based upon your posting, I sense that you prefer life in a mosh pit.
Dear Cheryl,
If I understand you right, you seem to think that we can estimate a possible upper limit to world population by multiplying the density of New York City by the total land area on this planet. Here is what you are forgetting: the NYC density is the number of people who reside there divided by the land area of that City. That is not the total amount of area that is required to support those people. All of their food, clothing materials, fuels, water supply, paper, metals, cocaine, heroine, etc. require an enormous amount of land area dedicated to just the needs of that city. That land requirement far exceeds the area of the city itself and gobbles up huge tracts of land from all over the world. And what about land fill? NYC has exhausted sites on the eastern seaboard and is now shipping its solid waste to Texas! And, don't forget all the land area devoted to freeways, etc. in order to provide access to the city. Also, we can wish for a world filled with New York Cities only when we consider Manhattan - who wouldn't love to live in Manhattan. But there are other sections that might make Ehrlich - or even O'Rourke - uncomfortable. Finally, there is a multiplier effect; many of the people that keep New York City humming live in New Jersey, New York State, or Connecticut. All of those folks need land devoted to the production of their food, clothing, medications, etc. Take those things into account, remember all the other megalopolises on this planet and you may change your view. I mean, you will be surprised at how much land must be dedicated to the upkeep of a single human - it is far, far greater than the area occupied by a domicile.
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