FPGA Central

Jerry Avins <[email protected]> wrote:
> Andrew Reilly wrote:
(snip)

>> Population growth was a very big deal when I was growing up in the 70's,
>> and I agree that it is clearly "the real problem" now. Why do you
>> suppose that it isn't getting the air-time (or the hand-wringing),
>> compared to the finely debatable point that is?

We had books like "Population Bomb" and 40 years to even start doing
something about it.

> Because any proposal to address the problem runs afoul of powerful
> religious interests. To my mind, interference with voluntary family
> planning by a public figure removes any moral authority that the person
> might otherwise have.

I was thinking about this not so long ago. My first thought was
a tax rate that depended on the number of kids, increasing as one
had more kids. So no interference, only financial incentive,
but not likely to work.

My second thought was to have the kids tax rate depend on the
number of kids their parents had. Parents might decide that they
can afford a higher tax, but wouldn't want to saddle their
kids with the tax.

Even so, there likely isn't the political will to do it, but it
does seem to get around some problems that otherwise occur.

-- glen

On 3 Des, 06:49, glen herrmannsfeldt <g...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> My first thought was
> a tax rate that depended on the number of kids,
....
> My second thought was to have the kids tax rate depend on the
> number of kids their parents had.

These kinds of things have been tested. The Chinese have
had their 1-child policy for decades, with the side effect
that they have a significantly skewed population profile.
It seems there have been a tendency of parents to manipulate
circumstances such that the one child they were allowed to
raise was male. Instead of 104 males to every 100 females,
which is the natural birth distribution in humans, the
Chinese population is something like 110-120 males (maybe
more) per 100 females. They will see some serious demographic
problems because of this. Imagine 100 millions frustrated
25-year-old men who have no prospect of finding a spouse.
Or, for that matter, to get laid.

And, of course, families that are within reach of the taxman
already are in a life situation where family planning is
both known and possible, and maybe even desireable. The vast
birth numbers are in the demographic segments where economic
and social factors suggest that a high number of born children
is required in order to ensure that one or two survive to
adulthood. Those demographics are likely not reached by taxes.

Rune

glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> Andrew Reilly <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:15:20 +0000, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
>
>>> Unless big changes
>>> are made very soon, there is a 100% probability that there won't be
>>> anyone around in 10,000 years to care about nuclear waste.
>
>> That's a much stronger statement than anything I've read on the subject
>> to date. Are you sure you believe it? What scenario do you see arising
>> inside of 10,000 years that is incompatible with human life?
>
>> 10,000 years isn't all that long, in the grand scheme of things. Humans
>> have been arguing about things for vastly longer than that. I doubt that
>> they'll be stopping any time soon.
>
> Exponential growth.

Ackermann's function pretty soon, then poof! :-(

Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> Jerry Avins <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Andrew Reilly wrote:
> (snip)
>
>>> Population growth was a very big deal when I was growing up in the 70's,
>>> and I agree that it is clearly "the real problem" now. Why do you
>>> suppose that it isn't getting the air-time (or the hand-wringing),
>>> compared to the finely debatable point that is?
>
> We had books like "Population Bomb" and 40 years to even start doing
> something about it.
>
>> Because any proposal to address the problem runs afoul of powerful
>> religious interests. To my mind, interference with voluntary family
>> planning by a public figure removes any moral authority that the person
>> might otherwise have.
>
> I was thinking about this not so long ago. My first thought was
> a tax rate that depended on the number of kids, increasing as one
> had more kids. So no interference, only financial incentive,
> but not likely to work.
>
> My second thought was to have the kids tax rate depend on the
> number of kids their parents had. Parents might decide that they
> can afford a higher tax, but wouldn't want to saddle their
> kids with the tax.
>
> Even so, there likely isn't the political will to do it, but it
> does seem to get around some problems that otherwise occur.

How would this be implemented globally?

Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

Jerry Avins wrote:
>..
>>
>> My second thought was to have the kids tax rate depend on the
>> number of kids their parents had. Parents might decide that they
>> can afford a higher tax, but wouldn't want to saddle their
>> kids with the tax.
>> Even so, there likely isn't the political will to do it, but it
>> does seem to get around some problems that otherwise occur.
>
> How would this be implemented globally?
>

Hmm, well, in extremis there is the Chinese model - ban parents from
having more than one child. The consequence has been that a large number
of female children have been aborted (more or less legally, often very
less), as the preference culturally is always for a male child. All
those grown-up men now have very real problems finding someone to marry.
And in some cultures status is still based on having a lot of children;
just as in others it is based on having lots of cattle. In the affluent
west it is having lots of cars, planes, TVs, designer babies, pampered
pets, and so on.

Legislation is a last resort - not the first. Unfortunately, changing
attitudes is far more difficult that writing a law, though ultimately
essential, and we remain overall a predominantly "one-marshmallow"
society - pleasure now, even at the price of more pain later.

If people were able to change their globally adolescent attitudes (i.e
"clean up your own mess"), very possibly we would not need to debate C02
or anything else, as it would feel shaming to either recklessly and
knowingly create pollution and not clean it up, or gratuitously squander
resources. Unfortunately, the case today is still very much (as seen in
quite a few responses on this thread) that many people claim the "right"
to create and leave messes, and squander resources, with no consequences
at all. Even without global warming in the equation, such things are
good not to do.

But the evidence since whenever is that the favourite rule is: - if you
can, do. And increasingly flimsy justifications are given. Yes, some
forest fires are elements of a natural cycle - the land recovers (in
time) with new growth, which absorbs C02, and does many other valuable
things. But macro-scale industrial deforestation (especially of
rain-forest) is ~not~ "natural" and the land is ~not~ naturally
recovering; over-cultivation removes nutrients from the soil that are
not replaced, just as over-fishing takes stocks below the point of
recovery; so on a global scale the balance has tipped in the wrong
direction. We don't notice until it has already tipped. This is worth
noting the next time a news story appears, from Bangladesh or anywhere
else, on catastrophic land and mud slides caused because the trees are
no longer there to hold the topsoil. Years ago we could plausibly have
defended it as ignorance; now it is just stupid. Or immoral, like
sterile rice. Or both.

Almost everything about the organism that is "Gaia" is non-linear -
stable regions but with tipping points everywhere. The more we allow
ourselves indulgences, the more tipping points we are likely to
discover. Which is, more or less, what is happening - ecologically,
politically; and everything in between.


Richard Dobson

>
> False logic. *Why not use the word "urine" instead of pollution? *What if
> I didn't view urine as pollution? *Urine controls (which you probably
> want to call pollution controls) are really economic controls and
> individual liberty controls.
>
> So either you don't mind if I come over to your house and pee on your
> carpet, or your whole argument is specious.
>
> --www.wescottdesign.com- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

if you pee on my carpet you have incresed the concentration of pee on
my carpet from near 0% up to something like 20%. That IS
pollution.

if I exhale in your yard I have increased the concentration of CO2 in
your yard from 0.02% up to 0.02000000000000001%.

Hardly comparable.
Mark