Meh, I wouldn't be here without massive medical intervention, but I still think it would have been kind of a waste to flush me on those grounds. I'm not exactly unproductive, and anyway, since when did "productivity" become the chief metric for the worth of an individual? I can hear Thomas Carlyle screaming from beyond the grave now (and what he's screaming is "That's not what I meant!")...
Empirical evidence seems to suggest that the better people's standards of living are (to within fairly broad tolerances), the less inclined they are to have overly large families. Make sure everyone's got a roof and a full belly and basic medical attention every now and again, and you've gone a long way towards ameliorating the problem. Get rid of fundamentalist religion, and you've gone most of the way towards solving it.
My very superficial readings would seem to indicate that large families are a rather recent phenomenon. They emerged in the 1800s when mechanised agriculture was producing considerable surplus. Earlier, the mortility kept the family size small despite the number of births.
i suspect you're defining 'productive' much more narrowly than i do. if you're able to communicate and add value to lives other than your own, i consider you productive.
i wouldn't have survived into adulthood without modern medicine. and i wouldn't be able to function in any useful way without modern medicine. part of me thinks that people like me are exactly what's wrong with the world -- allowed to survive to perpetuate bad genes (even though i choose not to). other times... well, that depends on whether i'm having a really bad day or not.
Social Darwinism *still* sucks...
Empirical evidence seems to suggest that the better people's standards of living are (to within fairly broad tolerances), the less inclined they are to have overly large families. Make sure everyone's got a roof and a full belly and basic medical attention every now and again, and you've gone a long way towards ameliorating the problem. Get rid of fundamentalist religion, and you've gone most of the way towards solving it.
Yeah, like that's going to happen, eh?
Re: Social Darwinism *still* sucks...
Re: Social Darwinism *still* sucks...
i wouldn't have survived into adulthood without modern medicine. and i wouldn't be able to function in any useful way without modern medicine. part of me thinks that people like me are exactly what's wrong with the world -- allowed to survive to perpetuate bad genes (even though i choose not to). other times... well, that depends on whether i'm having a really bad day or not.