Hi,

This time it's the actual population control. On my short vacation I spotted an interesting sociological study.

Heinsohn, Gunnar / Steiger, Otto
The destruction of the wise women
ISBN: 3899963407

(I actually read the Slovenian translation: ISBN 8673470331)

Summary
The book expands upon the idea that a higher population count in capitalism correlates with cheaper workforce and thus more profit for the same amount of wealth for owners of land (aka jobs, at the time). The hypothesis is put forth that medieval European witch-hunts were backed by the land-owners (primarily church at the time) trying to suppress or exterminate the practices of birth-control (came in the form of semi-poisonous concoctions made by older women; leading to a higher population than people would naturally produce), as well as infusing the culture of the time with bias towards un-regulated population expansion, a lot of which remains to this day.

Opinion
Appears very well sourced and is backed by many case studies with included results. The book is essentially 200 pages of direct quotes, backed with some well justified colour commentary regarding poorly supported claims made in studies that contradict the hypothesis. The book retains an objective stance throughout and the end results are not something that is assumed to be true from the start, rather the book uses a research tone, where the author looks for well-backed explanations to various anomalies.

Relevance
While a higher population count does imply cheaper and more accessible workforce for the wealthy, it also implies a lower standard of living for the general population. As we aim for a higher standard of living for all, reversing or at least restraining this trend will likely become necessary. If the idea put forth in the book is correct, attaining this may be easier than we have been led to believe, as humans freed of the cultural bias driving them to mass-reproduce would naturally settle for a sustainable or at least near-sustainable population. The focus in population control would thus have to shift to removing this cultural bias.

LP,
Jure

Looks good I agree, also this can be applied to education. It has been found that women with a good education, take a more feminist view on life choosing to concentrate on education and career first, then will settle down and have a smaller amount of children.

I don't really agree that malthusianism is offering a good overview over the dynamics of population growth or resource management. While it is obvious that any system which do not employ a concious and responsible resource management will inevitably deplete its own productive base, the assertion that higher population numbers always correspond to lower standards of life is not taking into account the effects of labour-reducing technologies which usually - when unhibited - serve to greatly increase the standards of life for all people. Just take the invention of food conservation, or irrigation for that matter.

Enrique Lescure wrote:


The claim that it does applies to capitalism, where a higher available supply of X will always correspond to lower prices of X, which when X is manual labour in capitalism always directly corresponds in less resources available for life and thus a lower standard of life.

LP,
Jure

Lower in relation to a potential standard of life or an earlier standard of life? No one could deny that people in Europe today in general have a better standard of life than in 1810.

Nah feck that. I'm not cattle.

Our neighbors had a habit of coming over to administrate population control. Hence we had a reputation for breeding like rabbits. Our population still hasnt reached the same height since the last genocide.

EOS don't support the idea of active population control. Population growth tend to sink anyway with better education and standard of life.

Well lets hope that this is true. If it ever will be an issue, then it won't be the easiest one.

Verhaeghe Pieter wrote:


Birth rates have dropped in Europe cos of the better conditions amount other factors so I don't think we need to enforce a population control just provide a good environment and the birth rate will remain at a sustainable level.

ui

methinks you assume too much. Birth rates could be dropping for a number of reasons entirely separate from a "good" environment. Most countries in Europe are no where near practicing technocratic principles or even the bare bones labour credit system model. Social inequality from monetary policy or business economics could just as well "persuade" the rational, educated and tamed population of Europe not to breed. Immigrant populations from poor, superstitious, fundamentalist religious cultures could just as well be breeding faster than the domestic population.

<strong>technatezin wrote:</strong>


"cos of the better conditions amount other factors"

Should say "cos of the better conditions among other factors".

technatezin wrote:


*sigh* Read the book this thread is about!

LP,
Jure

<strong>Dr. Andrew Wallace BEng(hons) PhD EurIng wrote:</strong>

Got any online sources for this claim (of a causal link between quality of life and birth rates)? Thanks.

<strong>Jure Sah wrote:</strong>


Isn't Technatezin's statement very racist, assuming that people are static and won't change their behaviour?

<strong>Enrique Lescure wrote:</strong>


Change here is not quite the issue. According to the book, the original hypothesis that people tend to reproduce uncontrollably if uncivilized from our perspective is not based on any particular currently known historic fact, other than people simply drawing up a curve to explain away the rapid increase in population in pre-modern Europe, by correlating population count with hygienic conditions. In fact, there is no historic record of high mortality rates in children that this model predicts in the middle ages (there are records, but they do not indicate higher mortality rates in children). The book states that the only reason for the rapid population increase was the artificial removal of the naturally occurring elements within societies, which allow these to regulate their reproduction and maintain a supportable population count (the catholic church has decided that mechanisms of population control are Evil, as they made workforce more rare and thus more expensive which hurt the establishment and thus naturally became evil to it, in fact this is how they explicitly defined satan, there are many quotes of this throughout the book, and have therefore exterminated anyone capable of implementing said control). There is ample evidence in many isolated cultures that these mechanisms exist and develop naturally.

Therefore, the information laid out in the book directly contradicts Technatezin's axioms. I guess that's a good place to start.

LP,
Jure