CHAPTER 39 Ultimately - What Are Your Values? "Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet. I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn't true. Somewhere along the line -- at about a billion years ago, maybe half that - - we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along."David M. Graber (National Park Service research biologist) The market for cat food in the U.S. "is two-and-a- half to three times the size" of the baby food market, says Anthony J. F. O'Reilly, president of H. J. Heinz Co., a major producer of both products. "That will tell you something about our changing tastes," the executive cracks. The Wall Street Journal, January 31, 1980, p. 1. CHAPTER 39: TABLE OF CONTENTS Some Values Relevant to Population Policy The Rate of Discounting for Futurity Altruism versus selfishness Racism Space, privacy, and isolation The right of inheritance The inherent value of human life The acceptability of various methods of preventing life A value for numbers of people Animals and plants versus people Individual freedom versus community coercion Eugenics The Value of Progress Values Masquerading as Rights or Other Entitlements Conclusion If we didn't have birthdays, you wouldn't be you. If you'd never been born, well then what would you do? If you'd never been born, well then what would you be? You might be a fish! Or a toad in a tree! You might be a doorknob! Or three baked potatoes! You might be a bag full of hard green tomatoes. Or worse than all that ... Why, you might be a WASN'T! A Wasn't has no fun at all. No, he doesn't. A Wasn't just isn't. He just isn't present. But you ... You ARE YOU! And, now isn't that pleasant! Then, out of the water! Sing loud while you dry! Sing loud, "I am lucky!" Sing loud, "I am I!" If you'd never been born, then you might be an ISN'T! An Isn't has no fun at all. No he disn't. He never has birthdays, and that isn't pleasant. You have to be born, or you don't get a present. A small number of academics - many of them biologists, and almost none of them economists - have convinced a great many politicians and laymen that rational population policies with respect to fertility, mortality, and immigration can be deduced directly from actual or supposed facts about population and economic growth. The persuaded politicians believe it is "scientific truth" that countries should reduce their population growth. And the persuading academics want the politicians and the public to believe that such judgmental propositions really are "scientific." For example, the front page of the canon book of the population control movement in the U.S., The Population Bomb, says "Paul Ehrlich, a qualified scientist, clearly describes the dimensions of the crisis...over-population is now the dominant problem...population control or race to oblivion?" But it is scientifically wrong - outrageously wrong - to say that "science shows" there is overpopulation (or underpopulation) in any given place at any given time. Science can only reveal the likely effects of various population levels and policies. Whether population is now too large or too small, or is growing too fast or too slowly, cannot be decided on scientific grounds alone. Such judgments depend upon our values, a matter on which science does not bear. Whether you think that it is better for a country to have a population of, say, 50 million human beings at a $4,000 per capita yearly income, or 100 million at $3,000, is strictly a matter of what you consider important. And further, please keep in mind that if the empirical studies and my theoretical analysis are correct, the world can have both a larger population and higher per capita income. This is as true for less-developed as for more-developed countries. But the judgment about whether this is good news or bad news, and whether population is growing too fast or too slowly, or is now too large or too small, depends on values. This is reason enough to say that science does not show that there is overpopulation or underpopulation anywhere. Because of the belief that population policies can be deduced from scientific studies alone, particular values enter implicitly into policy decisions, without explicit discussion of whether the values really are those that the decision makers and the community desire to have implemented. For a leading example, because almost all economic analyses of "optimum" rates of economic growth take per capita income as the criterion, this criterion implicitly becomes the community goal and the guideline for policy makers. In some cases values are smuggled in consciously, though without discussion; in other cases the values enter without any conscious recognition. This chapter presents a list of some important values related to population policy. Some of these values are discussed in more detail in the next chapter, where I express some of my own views. A discussion of the rhetoric of the anti-population movement that appeared in chapter 22 of the first edition is related to the subject of this chapter; a central element is the claim to being compassionate, and the charge that those who do not wish to spend taxpayers' money for various welfare purposes lack compassion, with the implicit assumption that people's welfare is best advanced by government action rather than through voluntary spontaneously-cooperating systems. Discussion of various related religious values may be found in my 1990 book. SOME VALUES RELEVANT TO POPULATION POLICY The Rate of Discounting for Futurity. The relative importance given to the nearer term versus the further future affects investment decisions. It enters into every weighing of the costs and benefits of resource use and population growth. This was discussed in chapter 19. The proposition that we should focus on the short run, and not pay attention to the benefits of more people that accrue in the long run because "in the long run we're all dead" - Keynes' famous foolish phrase discussed in chapter 12 - has a curious similarity to the thinking of young children. For children there really is a free lunch - consuming without having to work to pay for the goods - for twenty years. And children are not predisposed to invest and save for the future - every parent knows how hard it is to induce children to study now in order to have the benefits of education in adulthood, and to know the virtues of saving money. But the activity that children find least natural - hard work - becomes emotionally necessary to most of us later on in the life cycle. The need to work, and to create, may be seen most purely in gardening, where the work is almost its only reward. It is as if we need to cultivate and produce in order to give back what we have earlier taken in during our lives. The psychological explanation here is mere speculation, of course, but the need to work even when the product of that work makes no material difference to the worker is as much a plain undeniable fact as is the need of children to play. The attitude that we should consume without attending to what we leave behind, and without considering how many and which persons we will leave behind, is analogous to the childhood stage of the life cycle. There is a curious contradiction in the thinking of the population control-environmentalist movement with respect to the future. On the one hand, they say they want to "save the planet" for our children and grandchildren. On the other hand, they want to reduce as much as possible the number of children and grandchildren for whom the planet is to be "saved". Altruism versus selfishness. Our willingness to share our worldly goods - either directly or (more commonly) indirectly through taxation - affects a variety of population-related policies, as has been discussed vehemently at least since Malthus. Should additional children or immigrants be welcomed into a community if there will be an immediate burden upon others (though benefit later on)? Should the poor be supported by welfare rather than left to die? Each of us has some willingness to contribute to others, but that willingness differs from person to person, and from moment to moment. In discussion, this factor usually gets tangled up with the matter of whether the transfers are a sacrifice contribution or an investment. Racism. In our private behavior we tend to favor our kin, our coreligionists, those who come from the same place, and those of similar race. This partiality is largely beneficial; charity begins at home has much to commend it as a principle of human action. But allowing such tastes to affect public policy with respect to immigration, welfare, and birth-control campaigns is another matter; certainly these tastes often do influence public policy, especially with respect to race. Space, privacy, and isolation. This is the Daniel Boone/Sierra Club value. How much of your isolation in the forest are you prepared to give up so that others may also enjoy the experience? The right of inheritance. Should only the blood descendants of the builders of a country be allowed to enjoy its fruits, or should others be allowed to come in and enjoy them, too? This issue is at the heart of immigration policy in the U.S., Australia, Israel, Great Britain, and every other country in which the standard of living is higher than in the country of some potential immigrants. The issue also arises domestically. For example: Are Native Americans or blacks morally entitled to partake of the benefits of social investments made by whites in past years? Do whites have a responsibility to repay African-Americans for the profits made by exploiting slave labor in previous centuries? The inherent value of human life. Can some people's lives be so poor in standard of living that they would have been better off had they never been born? "Humane Society and health officials say that feral cats lead miserable, disease-ridden lives and that killing them is more humane than leaving them on the streets." Many have values about poor people exactly similar to these values about cats, but since Nazi times the view is applied publicly only to the unborn rather than to people already born. A contrasting value is that no life is so poor in goods that it does not have value. Still others believe that only the individual should be allowed to decide whether his or her own life is worth living. Surprisingly to me, the issue of these conflicting values which are crucial (though usually only implicit) in deliberations about population policy, is rarely the subject of explicit discussion. At least one economist developed a model in which he made explicit the assumption that some people's lives have "negative utility" - a truly amazing piece of economic analysis, to my mind. But this technically- elegant essay raised no furor of backlash in the literature. The acceptability of various methods of preventing life. To some people, abortion or contraception or infanticide are acceptable; for others, any of these may be unacceptable. A value for numbers of people. Both the Bible, which urges people to be fruitful and multiply, and the utilitarian philosophy of "the greatest good for the greatest number" lead to a value for more people. This value may be held by those who do not believe in a personal God as well as those who do. Many people of all theological beliefs do not share this value. (It would be unsound for the reader to infer from anything written in this book that I hold any particular theological belief, though several have ventured to do so in print.) Animals and plants versus people. According to the Bible, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth.... Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth" (Genesis 1:26-28). (This does not imply that humans should treat the world about them with lack of care: "[R]eplenish the earth," says Genesis I, 28.) In sharp contrast is the view of some environmentalists. Consider, for example, the "Greenpeace Philosophy" of the whale- protecting group: "Ecology teaches us that humankind is not the center of life on the planet. Ecology has taught us that the whole earth is part of our 'body' and that we must learn to respect it as we respect life - the whales, the seals, the forests, the seas. The tremendous beauty of ecological thought is that it shows us a pathway back to an understanding and appreciation of life itself - an understanding and appreciation that is imperative to that very way of life." Many of the environmentalist views are held and expressed with quasi-religious fervor, as others have noted A sharp shift in values has occurred over the decades: Thus the nineteenth-century child was taught that nature is animated with man's purposes. God designed nature for man's physical needs and spiritual training. Scientific understanding of nature will reveal the greater glory of God, and the practical application of such knowledge should be encouraged as part of the use God meant man to make of nature. Besides serving the material needs of man, nature is a source of man's health, strength, and virtue. He departs at his peril from a life close to nature. At a time when America was becoming increasingly industrial and urban, agrarian values which had been a natural growth in earlier America became articles of fervent faith in American nationalism. The American character had been formed in virtue because it developed in a rural environment, and it must remain the same despite vast environmental change. The existence of a bounteous and fruitful frontier in America, with its promise not only of future prosperity but of continued virtue, offers proof that God has singled out the United States above other nations for His fostering care. The superiority of nature to man-made things confers superiority on the American over older civilizations. That Uncle Sam sooner or later will have to become a city dweller is not envisaged by these textbook writers, although their almost fanatical advocacy of rural values would seem to suggest an unconscious fear that this might be so. This shift in values can be seen neatly in the wonderful book Birds of America, published in 1917. The descriptions of many birds include evaluations of their effects on humanity in general and on farmers in particular; a bird that helps agriculture was more highly valued than a bird which harms it. Nowadays naturalists often evaluate humankind for our effect upon the birds rather than vice versa. The shift in values can also be seen in the 1990s call for the return of wolves to Yellowstone National Park about seventy years after Congress passed a law to eradicate them because of their danger to cattle and humans. Individual freedom versus community coercion. Another important value in debates about population. The willingness to coerce others to attain one's ends with respect to conservation, the environment, and population growth is illustrated at many places in this book. Eugenics. The beliefs that the human race a) can, and b) should, be improved by selective breeding was rife in the 1920s and 1930s. Along with these beliefs have gone the belief in the benefit of race-selective immigration policies. These beliefs bulked large in the thinking of Margaret Sanger when she began the organizational activities that led to Planned Parenthood. Earlier on, eugenics and the Eugenics Society of London had been one of the main channels of thought that led to the founding of the Population Investigation Committee in Great Britain, as important a population research center as any in the world. J.M. Keynes began as a strong supporter of eugenics, which went hand- in-hand with his then-Malthusian economic outlook. When he later invented Keynesian economics, which saw benefit in a larger market, he flip-flopped and favored larger populations for a while. He later flip-flopped again, and again came to worry about population growth. But all this time he remained a strong supporter of eugenics, serving as a director of the Society from 1937 to 1944, and being the Vice President in 1937. So the connection between Malthusianism and population control is close historically. Some of the main population institutions in the U.S., too, arose out of interest in eugenics - for example, the Population Reference Bureau and Planned Parenthood. Since Hitler's demise this idea has dropped out of public statements, and I do not assert that present officials of these groups are eugenicists (though I would like to hear them deny it publicly). But their original aim of population control in the poor countries and among poor persons continues unchanged. And the association between the ideas of eugenics and population control are joined together in the writings of such persons as Garrett Hardin. The concept of lives that are "not worth living" - used in the title of a book in 1920 by two German professors, one of law and one of medicine - is central to eugenics, and was also central to Nazi ideology; by 1941, 70,000 patients had been killed by physicians in German hospitals. It reappears in many apparently benign guises - even abstract economic analysis by a Nobel-prize- winning economist. And economist James Meade was a member of the Eugenics Society from the 1930s to the 1970s, and was treasurer in the 1960s. (He also analyzed the situation of the island of Mauritius and concluded that population growth was its bane. As was discussed in Chapter 00, in the 1980s Mauritius went from large unemployment to labor "shortage" in a handful of years by changing to a free-enterprise system.) The eugenics view was widely rejected with horror during and after the Hitler period. But it is again with us. R. J. Herrnstein entitles an article "IQ and Falling Birth Rates", and asserts that "the average intelligence of the population will decline across generations to the extent that reproduction shifts toward the lower end of the [income] scale," and he quotes with approval that "Vining tentatively infers the equivalent of a four-to-five point drop in IQ over the five or six generations spanning the demographic transition in the United States" - that is, Americans supposedly have gotten less intelligent over time. Herrnstein therefore favors policies encouraging fertility among high-income, high-education groups and discouraging population growth among others. As discussed in chapter 32, the evidence persuades me that one cannot improve the level of human intelligence by selective breeding, and hence eugenics policies have no rationale - and they would be unacceptable to me even if there were evidence in their favor. The Value of Progress Of all the values that I have long held without examining it, the value for progress - along with the value of human life, no matter whose it is - is perhaps the most important. Perhaps my unthinking acceptance of this value is at least partly a result of my being an American; the value has been associated with both political parties, in early as well as in present times. Thomas Jefferson wrote: [W]e are bound with peculiar gratitude...that [we are] permitted quietly to cultivate the earth and to practice and improve those arts which tend to increase our comforts...to direct the energies of our nation to the multiplication of the human race, and not to its destruction. A very different sort of political thinker wrote something quite similar: The settlement of this great and generous land and the development of its resources created a diverse and expansive American republic of hope, opportunity, experimentation, mobility, and personal freedom. It came as a surprise to me that many others do not as a matter of course consider it desirable that people should have greater access to educational and economic opportunity, better health, and the material goods that constitute the standard of living. Perhaps it is not surprising that the Duke of Wellington commented on the first railroad in Great Britain that it would "enable the lower orders to go uselessly wandering about the country." And the present Duke of Wellington inveighs against the birth of additional people who might share the pleasures of life in England and on the planet with him. But there are also many who are not members of the "nobility" who associate negative spiritual and metaphysical values with various aspects of progress. For example, when "progress" in painkilling drugs is mentioned, they mention drug abuse in return. And their views are in no manner inherently illogical or foolish, though they may be unpalatable to others. Values Masquerading as Rights or Other Entitlements The concept of rights - apart from any specific body of secular law - has become used widely in discussion of subjects related to people and other species (a subject introduced in chapter 10). Such rights are often asserted without explicit justification as if they are undeniable. A typical example is a letter to the editor following a (facetious) article about a man's battle with moles in his lawn: What makes him think that he owns the world and has more right to inhabit it than moles? Were your readers supposed to chuckle over his escapades of trying to poison, gas and shish kebab a helpless animal? Who really cares what Mr. Sautter's lawn looks like? Or this from the Indian ambassador to the United States: The view that the human race is endowed with the divine right to ruthlessly exploit planetary resources for its own short term benefit is no longer valid and must be decisively rejected...we must shed the quaint belief that ours is a race in some special way entitled to exploit this planet infinitum for its own selfish purpose. There is further discussion of values concerning various species in chapter 31 on species. The likening of the human species to cancer and other virulent diseases has long been a common piece of rhetoric (see edition 1, pages 000). Now AIDS has become a favorite analogy to people. "We, the human species, have become a viral epidemic to the earth...the AIDS of the earth." And "If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS." Author William Vollmann is quoted in Publishers Weekly: [T]he biggest hope that we have right now is the AIDS epidemic. Maybe the best thing that could happen would be if it were to wipe out half or two-thirds of the people in the world." The Economist wrote in an editorial: "The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable, but a good thing." And another by the eminent biologist E. O. Wilson: "The sin our descendants are least likely to forgive us is the loss of biological diversity." There is an interesting contradiction here, as Robert Nelson pointed out. On the one hand, homo sapiens is said to be no different than other species; on the other hand, it is the only species whom the environmentalists ask to protect other species. They attribute to us a special duty, but not a special privilege. CONCLUSION My aim here is not to discuss the above values, but simply to point out that they operate importantly in discussion of these matters. Their universal validities are usually taken for granted by those who assert them, though to others they may seem to be simply odd preferences which may be atypical, unhallowed by tradition, quite arguable, and perhaps no more than one person's tastes. (The status of other values discussed in this chapter may be the same as far as arguability goes.) ENDNOTES page # \ultres\ tchar39 February 17, 1994