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Because in the United States if an infant is born weighing only 400 grams and not breathing, a doctor will likely spend lot of time and money trying to revive that infant. If the infant does not survive — and the mortality rate for such infants is in excess of 50 percent — that sequence of events will be recorded as a live birth and then a death. In many countries, however, (including many European countries) such severe medical intervention would not be attempted and, moreover, regardless of whether or not it was, this would be recorded as a fetal death rather than a live birth. That unfortunate infant would never show up in infant mortality statistics.

As for Cuba specifically, why should we believe their health statistics any more than their election results?

I don't deny Cuba does a lot with what they have, which is shit. They are certainly at the top of the heap for a poor country. Besides, Cuba almost literally set out to be a nation of doctors. Kind of hard to do unless you're, you know...a dictatorship?

The problem is this myth that Cuba is a world leader in health care quality. They simply aren't. Let's address a few of the supposed Cuban wonders.

Infant Mortality

The measurement is shit. Furthermore, Cuba has a high rate of abortions - literally somewhere between 3 and 4 times the rate in the US [this is easy enough to google]. Aborting nonviable babies certainly helps you publish some propaganda about wonderful infant mortality rates.

Breast Cancer Survival

See the Concord study for some details on this. Cuba's numbers are shit, and nobody believes it. Also, it seems they don't count secondary causes, e.g. if breast cancer metastasized to other parts of the body and caused death.

It all boils down to common sense. Cuba is dirt poor. Sure, they've trained a lot of doctors but they are _poor_. They put on a dog and pony show to convince the world they have great care, but nobody can prove it. You have foreigners who visit and get enchanted, but no hard facts.

How about a nationwide census of hospital quality? Reliable (not state provided) survival rate data for major illnesses? Fucking _nothing_. Just glowing reports from foreigners who visited a few times and were wooed or from people who trust bad data provided by the Cuban government which is completely contrary to basic common sense.

This is a pretty interesting take on it. I haven't done a lot of checking to see if the numbers in the article are accurate, but it does make logical sense. The long and the short of it is that children in the US are more likely to receive medical care when they're in dire circumstances compared to some other countries. Since those children have a very low long term survival rate, it skews our numbers because doctors try and fail. In other countries, they wouldn't bother trying and the children wouldn't live long enough to be counted toward infant mortality.

In the U.S. there is a great deal of money spent keeping preterm babies alive. Some even as small as 500g. "The primary reason Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States is that the United States is a world leader in an odd category -- the percentage of infants who die on their birthday. In any given year in the United States anywhere from 30-40 percent of infants die before they are even a day old." http://www.overpopulation.com/articles/2002/cuba-vs-the-united-states-on-infant-mortality/ Just one data point sometimes doesnt make a point at all.......Cuba's health care may look better from this point but it doesn't tell the whole story......

So you're getting all excited about a statistical tie, when we're spending $6700 per head and they're spending $251? Not to mention the fact that they have an infant mortality rate that's lower...

"It's a hard point to argue if you had only two options, food, or a laptop, the food seems a better choice. Of course there's no reason it can't be both."

Yup; he's using the logical fallacy of the false dilemma, or false dichotomy. Sending an OLPC to Africa or Latin America does not deprive a kid of a bowl of rice. I also think that Dvorak has the images from those Christian charity ads stuck in his head. In many places where the OLPCs are going, the kids already have access to decent diets and shoes and schoolhouses and all that -- they're just in relatively poor communities, and they cannot afford notebook PCs. Dvorak would do well to spend some time in the third world; he'd see that poverty doesn't necessarily equal starvation.

"Also, how many sites are in SiSwati or isiZulu these days?"

Well, an interesting bit of trivia is that Wikipedia has 100 pages in isiZulu, but 10,000 in Esperanto. Reminds me of that Onion piece about Klingon speakers outnumbering Navajo speakers. But, that's not as relevant as many people might think. My girlfriend's native language is Kikuyu (Wikipedia article count: jack shit), but she also learned Swahili and English in school -- most people in Africa speak one or the other, just as many Europeans speak English. Were she in school today, an OLPC would have done her just fine. Dvorak is supporting the perception that Africans are just too damned stupid to learn an 2nd or 3rd language, even though Europeans are quite capable of doing so. If Dvorak can understand the value of donating English-language software to Belgium, or get the concept of French citizens using English-language web sites, then he should be able to understand the potential benefit of allowing Africans to access an Internet which is mostly in English. If not, he's simply a bigot.

Dvorak claims that more PCs for students would be wasted in a place like Niger where the literacy rate is low. His choosing of Niger was no random example: he simply went to this page and chose the African country with the lowest literacy rate! In other word, he's -- surprise -- being intellectually dishonest. And, Niger's low literacy rate is sort of the point of why Niger needs more computers in the hands of students.

So how come the home of Olive oil, Italy, has one of the highest infection rates in Europe? http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/hiv-aids/hiv-aid s-infection-rate-by-country-europe-and-the-new-ind ependent-states/

The reason Americans have this attitude is because of space and population density. Those that live in areas with a great deal of open space and are more sparsely populated tend to think that the world has infinite resources and nothing we do can blemish it. People who live in more densely populated environments are more painfully aware of how we affect the environment and also care more about preserving that shared environment. Thats why we see most liberals in the west and the north-east. http://ite.pubs.informs.org/submissions/example/im ages/la1.gif
The population density of europe is much higher than that of the US so people care more about how they affect others as well.
http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/Basic_Informatio n/population_density/maps/europe.html

On top of that, a more dense population usally also means a better education infrastructure. Historically, the conservative areas of the US have had very poor schools as compared to the liberal areas. In other words, many are just ignorant.

the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds.

The primary reason Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States is that the United States is a world leader in an odd category -- the percentage of infants who die on their birthday. In any given year in the United States anywhere from 30-40 percent of infants die before they are even a day old.

Why? Because the United States also easily has the most intensive system of emergency intervention to keep low birth weight and premature infants alive in the world. The United States is, for example, one of only a handful countries that keeps detailed statistics on early fetal mortality -- the survival rate of infants who are born as early as the 20th week of gestation.

How does this skew the statistics? Because in the United States if an infant is born weighing only 400 grams and not breathing, a doctor will likely spend lot of time and money trying to revive that infant. If the infant does not survive -- and the mortality rate for such infants is in excess of 50 percent -- that sequence of events will be recorded as a live birth and then a death.

In many countries, however, (including many European countries) such severe medical intervention would not be attempted and, moreover, regardless of whether or not it was, this would be recorded as a fetal death rather than a live birth. That unfortunate infant would never show up in infant mortality statistics.

The infant mortality rate of the US comes up a lot. And the reason the US is so "high" is because of differences in how it's measured. Here are a couple of links for you: Op ed piece and something more scientific.

Actually, North Korea seems to be better off in terms of mineral/industrial resoucres than South Korea. North Korea _does_ have less agricultural land, but an industrialized nation with significant mineral resources should be able to trade for food.

North Korea is a failed state because Kim Jong-Il is a moron. That's really the long and short of it. Kim Jong-Il is a tyrannical dictator who chooses to micromanage his economy, employing few/no autonomous buercrats. Even an genius would have significant problems micromanaging a command economy, and Kim Jong-Il is no genius; rather, he's a spoiled rotten brat with a tough secret police.

In otherwords, he doesn't care if his people starve to death, as long as they don't blame him.

Did you know that Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States?

Turns out for some things regulation is better - look at how a poor country like Cuba has better healthcare (with lower infant mortality rates) than the wealthy US.

"Recently released statistics on the infant mortality rate in the Western hemisphere yielded an odd conclusions -- Cuba's infant mortality rate, 6.0 per 1,000, is now lower than the U.S. infant mortality rate, at 7.2 per 1,000. Given Cuba's poverty level, its 6.0 rate is very impressive, but is it accurate to say that Cuba now has an infant mortality rate lower than the United States? No."

Cuba vs. the United States on Infant Mortality

Summary: The U.S. counts premature births as a live birth. Cuba, and most European countries, counts a premature birth and death as a fetal mortality, and doesn't add it to their statistics.

See also Health Care in Cuba: Myth Versus Reality.

Wait, you're saying our telecom and cable industries are unregulated? Sheesh, things are hopeless for libertarianism if anyone thinks the US is unregulated.

Of course, I'm not saying everyone would have cheaper internet access if the telecom were truly deregulated. The point of a free market is effeciency, not cheap internet. And, of course, TANSTAAFL. Max marginal tax rate in 1990: Sweden: 65%; US: 33%.

Oh, and regarding Cuba: http://www.overpopulation.com/articles/2002/000019 .html

Marginal tax rates: http://www.econlib.org/library/enc/MarginalTaxRate s.html

What are you smoking? Over population hasn't been a problem for years now. The new bogeyman is overconsumption; aka, SUVs, $3 gas, plastic+paper packaging, disposable diapers, etc.

Don't believe me? Look at the CIA factbook for Japan, US, and China:
Japan's birthrate is lower than it's deathrate. It's fertility rate is only 1.4.
China's birthrate is higher than it's deathrate for now, but it has a below 2.1 fertility rate. That means they too will have a smaller population in the future.
The US also has a below 2.1 fertility rate (at 2.09), so it too will be seeing population decline were it not for immigrants.
See Overpopulation.com for more about the fertility rate and population growth.

Our infant mortality is high because our pre-natal survivability is quite good. Many babies are "born" today who would have been still-births in other countries. When a doctor fails to keep them alive, we count that as an infant death; in other countries they either die before birth or are not counted as an infant death for statistical purposes. Under those circumstances, as medical technology advances this measure of infant mortality can rise. See also. In general, infant mortality statistics are not comparable between countries or across definition changes within the same country.

Life expectancy I have no easy answer for, although our diet has some serious problems, and I believe our "scientific" nutritionists have gotten stuck on some bad memes and no science, and have merely made the problem worse.

And as for dying of the mumps, there are several old diseases that are making a comeback. Some jackass started spreading the unsubstantiated rumor that vaccines cause autism (even if they did, the effect would have to be undetectable if it went unnoticed this long and lots of things have little undetectable effects), and as a result a large number of people have been "saving" their children from vaccination. As this passes a critical percentage, the disease begins to resurge. Measles are also doing this, from what I understand. Unfortunately, correcting this problem is quite difficult as it plays into the paranoia meme; anybody with the authority to tell people this isn't true are themselves part of the conspiracy. But it has more to do with freedom to not vaccinate than the health system per se. (A freedom that may well be taken away at some point if the diseases continue; public health tends to override a lot of other rights.)

The US does have an obesity problem which I believe is caused more by diet and the lack of true science than anything else, and that hurts some of the statistics. Other than that, if you want the best treatment, you by-and-large come to the US. (There are some exceptions, mostly in treatments that have not passed FDA approval. One can argue about the FDA's thresholds, but it's hard to find an objective standard there.)

It's fashionable to bash the US, and fashionable to bash "Western Medicine", and bashing US Medicine gets you two for the price of one. But that's all it is: fashionable, built on anecdotes. Not terribly well grounded in data.

What orifice did you pull your numbers out of?

My, my, you really don't like when people disagree with you, do you? Orifice? I get just about the same stuff out of my orifice as you do from yours.

But to answer your question, THIS LINK gives the value of 28.7 people per square km for Europe.

Anyway, the place I got my original numbers from was here.

In comparison, AIDS and the Bubonic Plague significantly effect (or effected) large populations over a long period of time. For example, the death rate from the initial Bubonic plague was supposed to be somewhere around a third with far greater death rates in certain very unfortunate areas. Bubonic Plague remained endemic in Europe for at least three centuries. HIV appears that it will have a similar impact. There are many African countries with 10% or greater HIV infection rates amoung young to middle aged adults. Two countries, Zimbabwe and Botswana have a quarter of this age group infected with HIV. Also, HIV is still going strong with significant growth in Asia and Eastern Europe. While true HIV cures may be discovered (or the current drug cocktails may already cure on an inconsistent basis). HIV is also notable since it preferentially effects in the Developed World groups with certain characteristics (eg, male homosexuals and long term heroin users, both may have some degree of genetic correlation).

I guess my point is that the 1918 epidemic was significant (it killed a significant portion of the breeding age population), but there are other diseases that are more signficant because they killed (or will kill) a greater fraction of the population that was exposed to it.

Did someone mention bacteriophages already?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage
http://www.intralytix.com/history.htm
http://www.overpopulation.com/articles/2003/000044 .html
http://www.phagetherapy.com/ptlinks.html
http://www.bacteriamuseum.org/niches/wabacteria/ph ages.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2572841.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A471575

Well, the first thing you have to realize is that your claimed fact (an assumption by Thomas Malthus, I might add) is wrong. The population is *not*, in fact, growing exponentially, as fertility rates in developed countries (and increasingly, in developing countries) is falling from the previous rates we have seen throughout human history.

And the second thing you have to ask yourself is: in an ever-expanding universe (or so physics has assured us), are the resources actually finite? Whatever happened to the idea of colonizing other planets? Whatever happened to renewable resources (e.g. agriculture (genetically-modified, if we want, to be even more-productive) for food; wind, solar, and ocean currents for electricity)?

You have to start thinking in terms of the gains in efficiency and discovery of resources due to technological progress. That is the reason Julian Simon won his 1980-1990 bet on commodities with Paul Ehrlich.

Why do overpopulation chicken-littles keep believing the economically-untrue argument that economics is a zero-sum game? It is not, and this becomes increasingly-apparent as time goes on...

We won't be able to sustain civilization by allowing supply and demand forces to shift us to accepting a lifestyle on little oil. Hopefully, the prices for oil will increase at a slow rate, slow enough that economies manage to struggle along while the high price on oil increases the economic profit of developing alternative energy sources.

There are 8 acres of land for every person in the US. There is just about the same amount for every person in Africa. That figure includes each area's respective amounts of desert/mountains/grassland, which are surprisingly similar.

And, while the US is dependent upon resources from all across the globe, 8 acres really is quite a bit when you think about it. On 8 acres, any American should be able to heat and cool a reasonably sized house, produce a reasonable amount of fuel for a small car, feed himself grains and vegetables and meats, produce all manner of household chemicals, and generally maintain a level of prosperity beyond that common in the US just a century ago.

All this can be done without a drop of oil or an ounce of coal.

So, in a sense, you're right. But, in another sense, you're still an asshole if you're driving a Hummer :p

Overpopulation?

You obviously don't understand economics and haven't heard about the famous 1980s bet between economist Julian Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich.

Long story short: if overpopulation were a real problem, prices of commodities would rise over time (rising demand on a constant supply). Instead, prices fell. Simon won the bet, and the Malthusians like Ehrlich went home crying to mommy and haven't been taken seriously since. Why did the bet go Simon's way?

My theory is that increasing efficiency in using those commodities allowed more and more people to have a usable slice of the same physically-fixed pie, and allowed us to find more previously-unknown reserves of those commodities in the Earth.

Both exploration and consumption efficiency improved such that demand, relative to known world supply, fell -- and thus, so did prices.

Actually, it's not even correct to say it.
% of population infected in many african countries is >20%, with 8% overall. Among the north american population it's around 2%:

Africa:
http://www.prcdc.org/summaries/aidsinafrica/aidsin africa.html
http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/health/infectiou s_diseases/aids/africa.html

North America:
http://medicine.indiana.edu/news_releases/archive_ 00/mm6F_STDs.html
http://www.tgsrm.org/HIV-AIDS.html

Most recently, there was a famous bet between Julian Simon and Paul Erlich on the price of copper... Erlich bet the price of copper (and other rare metals) would rise... and lost.

http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/People/julian_si mon.html

From the article:

"In 1980, economist Julian Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich decided to put their money where their predictions were. Ehrlich had been predicting massive shortages in various natural resources for decades, while Simon claimed natural resources were infinite.

Ehrlich agreed to the bet, and chose copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten. By 1990, all five metal were below their inflation-adjusted price level in 1980. Ehrlich lost the bet and sent Simon a check for $576.07."

I've heard this tune before.

You might find this article interesting. According to Ehrlich, in The Population Bomb, we should have all died of starvation a couple of decades ago.

Also read this. Make sure you note, "According to the most recent EPA statistics, pollution of the air and water is not increasing, it is decreasing..."

Unfortunately, Greenpeace's position on this one shows ignorance.

Now, would it be good if the 4.5 billion euros were used for some other purpose, say saving starving children, or building wind generators? Quite possibly. Will the sponsors of this project give 4.5 billion euros to starving children in Africa? I'll leave that for you to answer.

People are greedy for (electric) power. Until we have a fundamental culture shift, or the population growth levels off (projection: 70 years), world power consumption WILL grow, period. I'm not even including the fact that power consumption per-capita is going to go up.

So, in answer to greenpeace, yes, I wish that humans had their priorities straight, too, and yes, this power plant will not make an immediate dent at a measley rate of 500MW (France alone consumes 500 billion kWh. Wind farms would give us a more immediate bonus. I would like to see more windfarms, too, but in the long run, I think that fusion will give us a better energy output per square kilometer used. We need to do it eventually, and I'd rather we start now. Hopefully some political genius could use the existance of fusion power to get countries to lower their stockpiles of nukes (fission-based). Well, I can dream, anyway.

Generally, the economic argument is that as the supply dwindles, new technology will reduce consumption, promote substitutes and improve extraction. This means we'll need less per unit, get more out of the ground than we currently estimate and reduce dependence on a particular good. It's not like alternatives don't exists; they just can't compete on price. It's not a bad theory, overall. It's just that they neglect to tell you that this will likely happen in lumps rather than a smooth transition. Like the Oil Embargo, which crushed American manufacturers, who were slow to respond to the drastic pricing increase (adjusted for inflation, the price of gas was close to 4.50 at the worst of it).

Certainly, there are some strange theories out there. The discussions this spawned are very relevant to your argument, and I think you should consider it carefully. And just to spoil thing for ya, the economist won handily. Even without adjusting for inflation, the price of raw commodities fell.

Look, this "population growth is a problem" myth has been around for decades. It's also wrong.

See the Julian Simon vs. Paul Ehrlich bet. Basic supply/demand theory suggests that if there is an increasing demand for a limited supply of resources, the price on those resources ought to rise, correct? This was the premise by which biologist Ehrlich made a bet with economist Simon -- that increasing population growth increases the demand on a limited set of resources, and thus the price of those resources will rise.

But Ehrlich was wrong. Prices of a basket of commodities in the bet decreased quite markedly over 10 years. Why? Technology and efficiency gains. Simon won the bet: prices of each of the 5 bet-on commodities fell, despite the population around the world rising over the same period.

Why do some enviros continue playing the overpopulation card? Who knows. Economic illiteracy and retardation, I guess. IMO, a a more-legitimate environmental challenge to solve is that of urban sprawl and the crowding-out effect it has on natural animal habitats... and those of air and water pollution...

That said, I think the idea that we don't have enough resources for everybody is probably wrong. Julian Simon's famous bet with Paul Ehrlich suggests as much.

But that doesn't mean our military-wielding politicians would realize that view or understand the arguments in that vein...

To the contrary, all available evidence shows that Malthus was mistaken to extend his results to humans. Julian Simon, the Doomslayer, proved the folly of applying Malthus to human population.

advances in technology over the past 150 years or so have simply forestalled what is otherwise inevitable.

More than mere forstalling, advances in technology have radically improved the quality of human life with no end in sight.

stop creating new North Americans / Western Europeans).

Your prayers have been answered, at least in Europe (and Japan). The U.S., though, is projected to see about a 50% population growth over the next 30 years.

Got that, Chinese bigot?

According to This rather outdated government document, which was by it's own admission based on pre-recession numbers, even in the relatively good times of 1996-1999, 34% o

hey thicko swaziland and brazil are two different countries. brazil hardly rank the highest these days - US rates are not way far off by comparison.

hey thicko swaziland and brazil are two different countries. brazil hardly rank the highest these days - US rates are not way far off by comparison.

non-conventional means of energy shall soon be required since there aren't that many natural resources available anymore.

(The oil based economy's best days might be gone, though. Changing to something else is a good thing, anyway -- if the transition is carefully handled...)

I think [overpopulation is] already a problem in many parts of the world.

See e.g. this.

Poor subsistence farmers are the population problem because when they get enough food which makes their large number of children survive.

So the best way forward is to make the world a better and richer place for everybody -- for both moral and logical reasons. This is happening now in India and China, which have large part of the total poor world population. (This optimism hurts for an old misanthrope. But what am I to do if my mind leads me somewhere?)

I'm sorry, but you seem to not have considered your opinions enough. You just bought some well chewed propaganda without looking seriously at all sides? I did the same when I also was a teenager a long time ago...

Actually, the growth rates have dramatically declined in the last 20 years, so much so that the likely world population in 2050 is expected to be around 9 billion people, reaching a plateau of about 10 billion people in the late 21st century before beginning a decline.

Paul Ehrlich's first predictions were in his book The Population Bomb, originally published in 1968. In it, he warned of massive famines in the 70s and 80s, when hundreds of millions would die of starvation. (Here is a good critique of Ehrlich, and a good book review of The Population Bomb.)

He has more than 30 years of dire doomsday predictions, none of which happened. Truly the epitome of the boy who cried wolf. But what's really baffling is how so many people still hang on his every word. Somehow he's still a huge celebrity among environmentalists.

Maybe next time you should check google before asking.

False statement. In the majority of cases where "socialism" was implemented, the country had just come out of a major war. What exactly was the fat Lenin's, or the Communist East Europeans lived off of? Or China, which had been ravaged by the Japanese and a two civil wars in a row?

Time for some history:

Soviet Famine and Chinese Famine

Yes, there was war on those countries, but agricultural traditions--the fat of the land--survived intact. Then they were destroyed by the Socialists/Communists whatever you want to call them. Very idealistic people can go tragicly wrong.

Also, I said GPL software was inferior, not free software (*BSD vs. Linux).

Re-read my statement.

When GPL software dominates a market, we are left with low-quality free packages on one end and expensive "industry standard" or "specialized" software on the other.

There is nothing there that says proprietary is always better or that free software is inferior. I said that when a particular class of free software license dominates, the proprietary packages in that market become fewer and more expensive.

I have to give you some credit though--many of my statements are not backed up, and I can't cite references. Unfortunately, I don't get payed to research these things. I'm an amateur pundit, but if someone wanted to pay me to work at a think tank, I think I'd enjoy it.

I also have to give you credit for not forming your argument based on your desire to noun a verb. Why do so many Free Software advocates center their arguments around trying to change the language? Perhaps it's just a bad habit they picked up from RMS and the PC speech movement.

As for my statements about the government stepping in to fund a GPL project, it's not fortune telling: it's history. Of course that's just one example. The "sneaky funding" through grants and diverted effort on the part of government workers (which is illegal since works created by US gov. workers in the course of their daily business are supposed to be Public Domain) is a much bigger problem right now. I have little doubt we will hear even more of this in the future.

Exploring the rest of my statements with an open mind is left as an exercise for the reader.

That's enough for me tonight folks. Peace.

False statement. In the majority of cases where "socialism" was implemented, the country had just come out of a major war. What exactly was the fat Lenin's, or the Communist East Europeans lived off of? Or China, which had been ravaged by the Japanese and a two civil wars in a row?

Time for some history:

Soviet Famine and Chinese Famine

Yes, there was war on those countries, but agricultural traditions--the fat of the land--survived intact. Then they were destroyed by the Socialists/Communists whatever you want to call them. Very idealistic people can go tragicly wrong.

Also, I said GPL software was inferior, not free software (*BSD vs. Linux).

Re-read my statement.

When GPL software dominates a market, we are left with low-quality free packages on one end and expensive "industry standard" or "specialized" software on the other.

There is nothing there that says proprietary is always better or that free software is inferior. I said that when a particular class of free software license dominates, the proprietary packages in that market become fewer and more expensive.

I have to give you some credit though--many of my statements are not backed up, and I can't cite references. Unfortunately, I don't get payed to research these things. I'm an amateur pundit, but if someone wanted to pay me to work at a think tank, I think I'd enjoy it.

I also have to give you credit for not forming your argument based on your desire to noun a verb. Why do so many Free Software advocates center their arguments around trying to change the language? Perhaps it's just a bad habit they picked up from RMS and the PC speech movement.

As for my statements about the government stepping in to fund a GPL project, it's not fortune telling: it's history. Of course that's just one example. The "sneaky funding" through grants and diverted effort on the part of government workers (which is illegal since works created by US gov. workers in the course of their daily business are supposed to be Public Domain) is a much bigger problem right now. I have little doubt we will hear even more of this in the future.

Exploring the rest of my statements with an open mind is left as an exercise for the reader.

That's enough for me tonight folks. Peace.

We might be nice and borrow Pakistan's airspace just long enough to send over B-52s to drop leaflets warning civilians near targets to get out of the way, but that's it.

Except that more than 66% of the population can't read!!! (three references, I got bored finding more good ones...) Less than 16% of the women can read, they can't have an education, they can't hold a job. Propaganda won't work unless it's by word of mouth.

All of these statistics were gathered before the Taliban (who executes anyone that tries to teach women) was firmly in place. It has become even worse since...

The average citizen is quite ignorant about most scientific issues, and a single charismatic scientist can be highly influential in persuading people to pursue wrongheaded ideas. For example, Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, has been arguably the most influential person in spreading the idea that the earth is "overpopulated." In the early 1970's he predicted many dire consequences as result of population growth. Among other things, he predict that ten's of millions of children would starve in countries like India.

Ehrlich supported rather drastic measures to prevent the catastrophe he believed to be inevitable--including such things as the forced sterilization of all Indian men with three or more children, and adding contraceptives to food and water supplies.

Julian Simon, an economist at the University of Maryland, challenged Ehrlich's theories. He argued that humans were the "ultimate resource" and that the results of human ingenuity--better fertilizers, new crop varieties, more efficient farming techniques--would allow humans to keep pace with expected population growth.

One of Ehrlich's predictions was that the price of limited resources, such as elemental metals, would rise as more humans competed for the same resources.

Simon offered Ehrlich a wager centered on the market price of metals. "...Ehrlich would pick a quantity of any five metals he liked worth $1,000 in 1980. If the 1990 value of the metals, after adjusting for inflation, was more than $1,000 (i.e. the metals became more scarce), Ehrlich would win. If, however, the value of the metals after inflation was less than $1,000 (i.e. the metals became less scare), Simon would win. The loser would mail the winner a check for the change in price.

Ehrlich agreed to the bet and chose copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten.

By 1990, all five metal were below their real price level in 1970. Ehrlich lost the bet and sent Simon a check for $576.07. Prices of the metals chosen fell so much that Simon would have won the bet even if the prices hadn't been adjusted for inflation..." (see Brian Carnell's overpopulation.com for more details about the wager.)

Robin Hanson took the idea of wagering about scientific questions a step further, proposing to create an idea futures market. "...Imagine a betting pool on disputed science questions, where the current odds are treated as the current intellectual consensus. For example, people might bet on whether cold fusion will be used to produce power by the year 2020. Right now the odds would be fairly low - say 20-to-1 against. But as the results of new research became known, and if more people became convinced that cold fusion worked, the odds would rise. And if cold fusion became a reality by 2020, those early supporters would make a bundle.

Such betting markets would become "idea futures" markets - like corn futures markets, except you'd bet on the future settlement of a scientific controversy instead of the future price of corn. The system could increase the public's interest and role in science, and betting odds could serve as a scientific barometer to guide mass media and public policy...."(Idea Futures: How making wagers on the future can make it happen faster by Robin Hanson. WIRED, Sept. 1995, Idees Fortes section, p.125 )

State gambling laws unfortunately prohibit the formation of such markets. As a result, a potentially very valuable mechanism for eliminating dangerously unfounded ideas is thwarted.

It's unfortunate to see Stallman mentioning issues about which he does not appear to be terribly informed in a message about free software. I'm referring specifically to his points about overpopulation, environmentalism, and the ACLU.

First, by associating himself with left wing causes such as these, he immediately alienates those who might not share his views on them. Interestingly, he once criticized a free software paper of mine because it used a gun control analogy. The disagreement was not with the issue per se, but rather that a controversial topic simply creates un-necessarily creates division where none should exist. (It's also worthy of note that many people consider Stallman himself a type of religious fundamentalist!)

The second problem is substantive. Overpopulation is not nearly the problem that the doomsayers claim it is. In fact, the biggest problem facing us by the mid-21st century will likely be underpopulation. We already see in the US the affect of a large aged population with fewer working people to support them. This problem will only get worse if population flattens or declines. This is likely to be a particular problem in China, where the long run affects of the one child policy have yet to be seen.

A posting such as this simply cannot do justice to the matter of population. I highly recommend that everyone concerned about this issue read the Overpopulation FAQ and also read Julian L. Simon's tour de force "The Ultimate Resource 2". By all means also read the other side of the issue from Paul Ehrlich or the Club of Rome. But please do read Simon with an open mind, consider the arguments, and reach your own conclusion.

I won't even go into the complicated matters of the environment or the ACLU!