[p2p-research] from a us intelligence briefing

Sun Apr 27 20:27:24 CEST 2008

Hi Stan,

I agree, BUT:

- does capitalist society even gives a choice as to what life path
needs to be taken? many women (and men) would like to stay home a few
years to take care of the children, but cannot

- having children today, with no support system to speak off, is very
difficult and means the death of a full career option for women ...

- does not productivism ensures that any life choice that is not
geared toward material accumulation, is considered to be second rate?

So, I think your empowering story is only part of the story.

I don't agree with the analysis of the author, but an empowerment that
kills the race doesn't seem to have staying power ... We are not
facing any stagnation of the population, but a totally downward trend.

So rather than the count on technology to deal with declining birth
rates, I would opt for social policies that give true freedom of
choice, as the Scandinavians have been doing,

Michel

On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Stan Rhodes <stanleyrhodes at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think this author's cause and effect is weak, and he is blind to the root
> issue.  I submit that, actually, as women in a country are empowered
> (education, health care, rights, jobs) the birthrate goes down.  We see the
> religious trend because in "traditional religious society" women are not
> empowered.  When they are empowered, they enter the workforce.  This may be
> an oversimplification, but I think it makes far more sense then the case
> presented.
>
> As a case in point, Grameen Bank targets poor women almost exclusively with
> its microcredit loans and many other programs, and not too surprisingly,
> this empowerment has lowered the birthrate in Bangladesh, at least,
> according to Yunus.
>
> The classic captialist assumptions being made in this article need to be
> challenged.  Do we need continual growth of our current system?  Is having a
> stable population "stagnation?"  Can we create a economy that benefits all
> without requiring increasing consumption of physical resources?  Can
> countries and people think outside their borders to the need to empower the
> people--particularly the women--of these "breeding" nations?  I'm reminded
> of the quote from Vonnegut's _Bluebeard_: "The whole point of war is to put
> women in that condition.  It's always men against women, with the men only
> pretending to fight among themselves."
>
> I think we have the technology to cope with shrinking birthrates, but do we
> have the democracy and equity to apply it?  Not yet.
>
> -- Stan
>
>
>
>  On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 2:55 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > 3. Shifting Demographics of Western Civilization
> >
> > Most countries in the Western world have stopped breeding.
> >
> > For a civilization obsessed with sex, this is remarkable.  Maintaining a
> > steady population requires a birth rate of 2.1  In Western Europe , the
> > birth rate currently stands at 1.5, or 30 percent below replacement. In
> > 30 years there will be 70 to 80 million fewer Europeans than there are
> > today.  The current birth rate in Germany is 1.3. Italy and Spain are even
> > lower at 1.2. At that rate, the working age population declines by 30
> percent in 20
> > years, which has a huge impact on the economy.  When you don't have young
> > workers to replace the older ones, you have to import them.
> >
> > The European countries are currently importing Moslems. Today, the
> > Moslems comprise 10 percent of France and Germany, and the percentage is
> > rising rapidly because they have higher birthrates. However, the Moslem
> > populations are not being integrated into the cultures of their host
> > countries, which is a political catastrophe. One reason Germany and France
> > don't support the Iraq war is they fear their Moslem populations will
> explode on them. By
> > 2020, more than half of all births in the Netherlands will be
> non-European.
> >
> > The huge design flaw in the postmodern secular state is that you need a
> > traditional religious society birth rate to sustain it. The Europeans
> > simply don't wish to have children, so they are dying.  In Japan , the
> > birthrate is 1.3. As a result, Japan will lose up to 60 million people
> over
> > the next 30 years. Because Japan has a very different society than Europe,
> they
> > refuse to import workers. Instead, they are just shutting down. Japan
> > has already closed 2,000 schools, and is closing them down at the rate
> > of 300 per year.  Japan is also aging very rapidly. By 2020, one out of
> > every  five Japanese will be at least 70 years old. Nobody has any idea
> > about how to run an economy with those demographics.
> >
> > Europe and Japan, which comprise two of the world's major economic
> > engines, aren't merely in recession, they're shutting down. This will
> > have a huge impact on the world economy, and it is already beginning to
> > happen. Why are the birthrates so low? There is a direct correlation
> between
> > abandonment of  traditional religious society and a drop in birth rate,
> and
> > Christianity in Europe is becoming irrelevant.
> >
> > The second reason is economic. When the birth rate drops below
> > replacement, the population ages. With fewer working people to support
> > more retired people, it puts a crushing tax burden on the smaller group of
> > working age people. As a result, young people delay marriage and having a
> > family. Once this trend starts, the downward spiral only gets worse.
> > These countries have abandoned all the traditions they formerly held in
> > regard to having families and raising children.
> >
> > The U.S. birth rate is 2.0, just below replacement. We have an increase
> > in population because of immigration. When broken down by ethnicity, the
> > Anglo birth rate is 1.6 (same as France) while the Hispanic birth rate
> > is 2.7.   In the U.S. , the baby boomers are starting to retire in massive
> > numbers. This will push the elder dependency ratio from 19 to
> > 38 over the next 10 to 15 years. This is not as bad as Europe , but still
> > represents the same kind of trend.
> >
> > Western civilization seems to have forgotten what every primitive
> > society understands-you need kids to have a healthy society. Children
> > are huge consumers. Then they grow up to become tax payers. That's how a
> > society works, but the postmodern secular state seems to have forgotten
> > that. If U.S. birth rates of the past 20 to 30 years had been the same
> > as post-World War II, there would be no Social Security or Medicare
> > problems.
> >
> > The world's most effective birth control device is money. [I love this
> > line!!]  As society creates a middle class and women move into the
> workforce, birth rates
> > drop. Having large families is incompatible with middle class living.
> >
> > The quickest way to drop the birth rate is through rapid economic
> > development.  After World War II, the U.S. instituted a $600 tax credit
> > per child. The idea was to enable mom and dad to have four children
> > without being troubled by taxes. This led to a baby boom of 22 million
> kids,
> > which was a huge consumer market. That turned into a huge tax base.
> > However, to match that incentive in today's dollars would cost $12,000
> > per child.
> >
> > China and India do not have declining populations. However, in both
> > countries, there is a preference for boys over girls, and we now have
> > the technology to know which is which before they are born. In China and
> > India, families are aborting the girls. As a result, in each of these
> > countries there are 70 million boys growing up who will never find
> > wives. When left alone, nature produces 103 boys for every 100 girls. In
> > some provinces, however, the ratio is 128 boys to every 100 girls. I have
> > read that this creates a potentially explosive situation.  You have to
> keep
> > all these potential sources of political instability contented.  One way,
> historically
> > often used, is war.
> >
> > The birth rate in Russia is so low that by 2050 their population will be
> > smaller than that of Yemen. Russia has one-sixth of the earth's land
> > surface and much of its oil. You can't control that much area with  such
> > a small population.  Immed iately to the south, you have China with 70
> > million unmarried men who are a real potential nightmare scenario for
> Russia
> > [See my comment above.]
> >
> > --
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> alternatives.
> >
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> >
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>

-- 
The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer alternatives.

Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p

Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview
at http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU

KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN, http://www.shiftn.com/