!-Comment-! - Clay and Shawn Pickering who we interviewed in depth this year made the point that population control is one of the core issues for creating a viable and balanced future. Also as we examined in recent essays for the Exopolitics Journal, the various forms of ET contact have made this issue as well as planetary ecology as a whole a prime facet of their interactions.

Related local resources from the document repository: Space Migration and Exopolitics | How Exopolitics can Solve Population Control and Other Eco Conundrums

The last hundred years has shown a rapid increase in technological development. From 1600 to 1800 not much changed. From 1800 to now, wow. However, the real question is this: Will we, as a species, continue this steep upward trend? The answer: Maybe no. There may be an inverse relationship between population growth and technological development. Here's why: As societies expand their infrastructures, a populous class of people becomes dependent on the state for its livelihood. The capacity of the state to respond to the day to day living demands is stretched thin. The profits generated by private capital are skimmed off in taxes to support the greater portion of populations. These people become mere cogs in the wheels of the modern mechanistic system. They are not encouraged to use self reliance or ingenuity to better themselves. In a sense, they become drones. The ripple effect of new technologies becomes less and less as it spreads out into an ocean of want and need. Those who seed technology must consider the multiplier effects of innovation onto a system that has become entrenched in the older technology. That system, which depends on tax dollars to fund basic needs and wants, may be resistant to new technology. The bureaucracy, built around the Keynesian Model, holds on dearly to their jobs. The elasticity (How market supply and demand responds to injection of input variables) of technological growth becomes limited, due in part by a dependent inelastic population. As the number of people increases, the rate of technological change decreases. As a result, a "least common denominator" effect takes hold to maintain a stasis.

This is clearly evident in the transportation sector of the modern world. Today, we're still hooked on hydrocarbons to fuel our cars, buses, trains, and planes. Private industry is reticent about moving onto new transportation technologies. The negative effects of switching over to green technologies quite frankly scare industrialists. It frightens those who wish to zone our world for the next century. What would become of the many who lose their jobs because the labor intensive industries vanish in whirlwind of green technological investment? The answer: New jobs will be created for some, but at a slower rate compared to labor intensive industries of the past. The slower rate is coextensive to the productive of capacity of technological capital. If fewer people existed, emerging technologies would be much more elastic in terms of satisfying the needs of market supply and demand.

Let's add globalism to the paradigm. In India , the multitudes want their first car! Will it be a hybrid? Will it be electric? Will it contain a fuel cell? How is the infrastructure going to be built for unproven technologies? How about roads? Parking? Accident insurance? Hospitals for those who are involved in accidents? What will be the social ramifications of a new mobile billion plus people? How are cities going to handle the new traffic? The capital demands, needed to satisfy new consumer demands, are pushed to unpredictable limits. The social fabric of evolving economies becomes stressed. With high populations, this stress could be extreme.

At this point, industry must decide whether or not to exploit excess labor. Historically, the capital class has almost always opted for exploitation. Under an international rubric, absent are certain anti-monopolistic structures: International Securities Exchange Commission and International Sherman Anti-Trust Act, International Occupational, Safety and Health Administration or International Environmental Protection Agency. Where is the international legal structure where people can sue for damages brought on by reckless safety practices of multi-national corporations? The function and need for these legislative safeguards becomes daunting when larger global populations come into play.

Concurrently, because of outsourcing, the economies which once held industry become stressed. Huge blocks of workers find themselves unemployed as a consequence. This kind of capital movement challenges existing economic developmental models. In terms of economic downturns, the reactive fiscal policies of governments have unpredictable or even potential deleterious outcomes, perhaps caused by budgetary deficit spending. The value of a nation's currency can be adversely affected by such practices.

The elimination of older technologies poses significant obstacles. For example, a huge stumbling block is the hydrocarbon. This energy source permeates many aspects of modern life. Everything, from the clothes we wear to the chemicals we use in fertilizers, is based on the hydrocarbon. Technology does not just answer to opportunity. It must respond to existing technologies woven into the fabric of modernity. Each innovation is not an island unto itself. It is part of a system that reaches into every quadrant of life. This system produces competing technologies, each vying for market share. The technologies can cannibalize and consequently cancel each other out in the pursuit of progress. Green energy investments such as wind, solar and biofuels are innovations fighting for market share in the same energy arena. The demands by an overpopulated world challenge these inspirations and subsequent investments by innovators who wish to wean humanity off of hydrocarbons.

Because the oil industry's veins reach so deeply into the consumers' needs, the investment into alternative sources becomes a half effort and nothing changes. Oil remains king. The late 70's, early 80's and the mid 2,000's proved that green technology has been ineffectual in gaining market share. Despite the Department of Energy plans to diversified America's energy sources, people still hold their breath that the Saudi's don't decrease their swing production of oil. Most likely, if the population were smaller, the response to new green energy technologies would be much more elastic.

Looking at this issue from another angle, technological advancement must also countenance the patent industry in order to get a foothold in commerce. The cost of research and development of any product is quite significant. Because of our litigious society, any new product must go through a battery of tests before it goes onto the consumer market. Government watch groups/regulators and consumer advocacy organizations scrutinize the introduction of any new product. The welfare of the people is at stake. Add the patent process to the mix--a process in place to protect intellectual property rights of any innovative investing entity-- a formidable gauntlet is created. Rightly so, these failsafe measures have been put in place to protect the safety of consumers; however, the rate and extent of technological innovation is slowed down. Again, its elasticity is coextensive to the size and complexity of the environment where it is created and introduced. The ripple effect of resistance to new technologies is more manageable in those societies which are smaller and more homogeneous--the like-minds scenario. Any investing entity wishes to see its intellectual property protected long enough so that it may recover the cost of R&D and earn an eventual profit over an agreeable span of time.

The effects of technological investment concerns permeate not only the domestic environs, but the international as well. If we have 7 to 9 billion people on this planet who wish to have the same quality of life that industrial nations now enjoy, the mindset will be "it’s our time, now." This desire may be a problem even with renewable energy. The global information machine will pump out the notion of the "good life" for emerging industrial states. They will embrace and strive for it. The religion of materialism will establish a beachhead on cultures newly introduced to industry and technology. Lost, will be the balance they once experienced. Yes, the good life is good. However, the technotronic life comes with a price. Rich, as well as poor, must come to grips that we exist in a world of finite resources. Waste management and water resource demands will be the most daunting challenges humanity will have to face in the forthcoming decades. Technology, in balance with nature, must be the way to go. If population size were stabilized, and then reduced, the onus placed upon resource use and allocation will be lessened; as a consequence, a harmony in ones living space can hopefully be achieved.

Issue of food is another trying example. Food technologies have been put through vigorous stress tests by the world's growing populations. From industrial caged chicken farms to genetically modified, drought and insect resistant grains, technology has tried to answer the clarion call. The bio-engineered food industries are being pushed to the limits to meet the demands of a growing world population. Consequently, innovation has been squeezed through the wringer to feed the world's growing multitudes, at the risk of humanity becoming ill. Simply put, medical science does not know the long range effects of genetically modified grains, recombinant bovine growth hormones, or industrial chicken farming as newly developed methods for food production. How much do we know about the stress related secretion of enzymes into the systems of caged chickens? Is the fowl safe to eat? What are the long term effects of animals treated with subclinical antibiotics and/or exogenous growth hormones? The notion of: You are what you eat, comes to mind. Is humanity consuming technologically designed toxins? To reiterate, over population puts stress demands on technological innovation. It becomes a reckless reactive process where a system becomes so complicated and overburdened that oversight is virtually impossible: One has only to watch congressional oversight hearings on C-Span to get an idea that the system is an overburdened hydra.

On this last point, technology must move through this bureaucratic taffy to establish itself in international commerce. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the UN organizations connected to world food and disaster relief, regional trade schemes such NAFTA, CAFTA, APEC, and the European Union are a few examples of bureaucratic inventions which stress-test technological innovation. The size of these organizations and their effectiveness is coextensive to population size. The fewer the poeple, the more utilitarian these bureaucratic structures will become. Parkinson's Law States: Consensus can be reached much more quickly with 100 people in the room, rather than a 1,000.

These are but a few issues to be examined. If world's population were smaller, transition to newer technologies will become more effective and smoother. Scientists, engineers, inventors would be constantly on the innovative move. Conversely, if the population remains high, then the movers and shakers hold back their dreams and efforts for the sure bet of proved, reliable--albeit, environmentally destructive--technologies. As an aside, perhaps the real innovation has been relegated to the black world. Perhaps, it is in the compartmentalized world of private industry where the real technology sits, waiting for the day it can be seeded usefully to the public sector. To what extent, it is hard to say.

In Zbigniew Brzezinski's Book, "Between The Two Ages" much time is spent on the technotronic era. One glaring prediction is that the demand for labor shall diminish in response to capital innovation. This certainly is happening. Mechanization demands fewer workers. We can produce many more goods and services with fewer workers. In a sense, less flesh and blood sweat equity is needed to sustain or expand global GDP. Consequently, humanity must recognize that birth rates must come down if the standard of living is to remain stable or even improved. If the slice of the pie becomes too thin, then social chaos will result; all advancement in living standards will diminish. Is this the legacy we wish to leave our children? Certainly not. The spiritual, economic, political, and metaphysical structures demand that man need not respond to the Hobbesian notion that life is short and brutish. Poverty need not be an historical inevitability.

How can we achieve the humane goal of population reduction? The first step is to realize that we're here because of many complex factors. Keep it simple is the mantra. Let's not over reach and go for reduction! Let's first attempt the effort of stabilization. If we can stabilize; then, and only then, can we set our eyes on the goal of reduction--baby steps, as it were. Do we give ourselves a timeline? Maybe yes. Hypothetically, let's give ourselves 3 generations to stabilize. With enough time, economic dislocation can be mitigated.

At this juncture, it is important is recognize the moral and religious implications of population stabilization/reduction. Nowhere in the fair-minded, moral, spiritually aware world is the desire to rid terra firma of humans in some hideous manner. Surely, the world has rejected the Nazi notion of ethnic cleansing. The good news is that 80 years ago, we maybe would not have made this statement. Times have changed. A moral imperative has blossomed; it is no longer deciduously demanded that humanity should care about all races and ethnicities.

So, is population stabilization/reduction incongruent with the current moral imperative? Scrutiny demands, no. With a little effort and discipline, modernity can reach a balance in population humanely. This can be obtained within the bounds of love and caring. The choice resides with individual empowerment. Man and woman can realize, together, that they are the only ones who have the power to choose. Through proper knowledge, they can take it upon themselves to decide to have just 1 or 2 children. This is where the moral compass should point--personal empowerment. If not, the state dictates. Draconian, totalitarian measures will plant themselves in the minds of those who wish to rush to a quick fix. War, famine, bio-eugenic actions, the use of food as a weapon is not, nor ever can be, the answer. It is anathema to man's spirit and is certainly not agreeable in a democratic, free society. The sense of brotherly love, or what the Greeks termed as Agape, must be instilled in human consciousness. Each individual’s decision must be made with the 7th generation in mind. Tomorrow's child must have a voice in the minds of today's generation. We must strip-mine the notion that a need today can be dealt with tomorrow.

What must be done to create the fertile ground upon which people willingly reduce the size of their families? In economic terms, a taste for this must be established. Taste is one of the most abstract concept in economics. How is taste determined? How is it fostered? If we look at the anti-smoking campaign, then we can plainly see how taste can be created. When the cost of smoking was hiked through taxation, coupled with anti-smoking laws, married with public health concerns, the perception of smoking began to change. Perception changed; taste was affected. Similarly, if a public campaign is waged to illustrate the need for smaller families, coupled with tax incentives for 1 or 2 child households, then a taste for fewer child households can established. Men and women will go into marriage with the expectation that their family size will be small. Certainly, so prevalent a century ago, 8 to 10 child households are rarer. Now, there is a taste for small families.

This notion of a taste for smaller families can be introduced to migrating populations into industrialized nations. The smaller household size seems to be taking root in third world societies. These migrant workers are bringing the taste for having fewer children to their native lands. They've experienced the first hand benefits of having smaller families. If public awareness of this issue was driven by the media, the process could be sped up to change the perception of procreating couples that smaller families are a good thing for everyone.

Religions should be asked to reassess the view that a smaller family size is not incongruent with God's design. It would be wise to stay away from the abortion issue here. It is volatile and unmanageable. Besides, the love for life seems to be at odds with this method of retroactive birth control. If it weren't, then abortion would have established itself firmly and without contention. This has not happened. Abstinence, celibacy, prophylactics (IUDs included) seems to be a better way to go. For married couples, perhaps legislation can be offered to give tax incentives for those couples who opt to have vasectomies after having a second child. This can be easily woven in the tax code. Maybe, grants for higher education can be offered to any couple who chooses to have a small family.

This must be a reward system, not a punishment system. Twins, triplets and quadruplets could be consider one birth, if retroactive measures are taken by the couples. The key to these measures: To ensure that society approaches it in the least intrusive way. It must be conveyed to world religions that their respective influences are not dependent on the size of their members. Population size does not have to be the main factor ensuring a belief system's survival. Religion can be pliant to current secular needs, yet still be true to each belief system's dogma: One saved soul is one saved soul. "Be plentiful and multiply" does not have a specific number attached. It is up to man to decide on the quantity, as long as the basic law of life's sanctity is not violated.

Much more could be written about this topic. However, the purpose of this essay is to offer up for discussion the essence of how technological innovation services the world's population. This does not pretend to be an academic paper; sometimes the seed of growth resides in the first drop of rain.

All the best,

Shawn, Clay & Source A.

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