I'm a Malthusian on American Society
The long dead economist Robert Malthus was not a happy guy. About the only premise of his that I remember from college is his prediction that populations grow geometrically (2, then 4, then 8, then 16) but agricultural production only grows arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4). His conclusion: Mass starvation on a global scale.
He was proven wrong and I hope that I am also.
In the last couple days post, I moved more into the camp of a Malthusian when looking a our society. Here's what I mean:
The woman who got killed while trying to kill another woman for her baby came from a horror of a household. I'm sure her mother and raping father did also. I read about these families all the time, have known them growing up, and am distantly related to a few of them. They scare me. I stay away from them.
My concern is that these families never have just 1 kid. They have 4 or 5. They rape, damage, abuse these 4 or 5 and then release then onto society. These kids in turn do these same. So the dysfunction grows geometrically.
Healthy families (I'm generalizing here, but believe I'm right) tend to limit themselves nowadays to replacement quotients of 1 - 3, usually 2.
The Malthusian in me comes out when I look at this and realize that the numbers just won't hold up. Soon the nut cases are going to far outnumber the healthly people, or do they already?
It seems that there's nothing promoted on tv but white trash. I remember growing up groaning when Donahue was on because he always spoke so boringly. It was always politics or something of great cultural import. I click on Springer and the dysfunctional are paraded before us for entertainment. Where societal norms at least ostricized these people and relegated them to background of society, now they are raised up. It seems that the freak show quality is in every bit of entertainment.
Are abused kids in turn abusers? Definitely not. The human animal is amazingly resilient and as parents we get far better kids than we deserve most of the time.
But how long can we keep going on creating fatherless or parentless or abusive families in this society, hold them up for our entertainment and not feel the Malthusian consequences?
Stay You.
Back to Main Page
He was proven wrong and I hope that I am also.
In the last couple days post, I moved more into the camp of a Malthusian when looking a our society. Here's what I mean:
The woman who got killed while trying to kill another woman for her baby came from a horror of a household. I'm sure her mother and raping father did also. I read about these families all the time, have known them growing up, and am distantly related to a few of them. They scare me. I stay away from them.
My concern is that these families never have just 1 kid. They have 4 or 5. They rape, damage, abuse these 4 or 5 and then release then onto society. These kids in turn do these same. So the dysfunction grows geometrically.
Healthy families (I'm generalizing here, but believe I'm right) tend to limit themselves nowadays to replacement quotients of 1 - 3, usually 2.
The Malthusian in me comes out when I look at this and realize that the numbers just won't hold up. Soon the nut cases are going to far outnumber the healthly people, or do they already?
It seems that there's nothing promoted on tv but white trash. I remember growing up groaning when Donahue was on because he always spoke so boringly. It was always politics or something of great cultural import. I click on Springer and the dysfunctional are paraded before us for entertainment. Where societal norms at least ostricized these people and relegated them to background of society, now they are raised up. It seems that the freak show quality is in every bit of entertainment.
Are abused kids in turn abusers? Definitely not. The human animal is amazingly resilient and as parents we get far better kids than we deserve most of the time.
But how long can we keep going on creating fatherless or parentless or abusive families in this society, hold them up for our entertainment and not feel the Malthusian consequences?
Stay You.
Back to Main Page
posted by Howard McEwen, CFA at Wednesday, February 16, 2005
<< Home