In Response: Should There Be A Right To Have As Many Kids As You Want?

| June 15, 2016 | Leave a Comment

Jason G. Brent provides additional thoughts in response to the recently published post to the MAHB Blog: Should There Be A Right To Have As Many Kids As You Want? by Paul R. Ehrlich. The original post can be found here.


Every human right, except the right to produce an excess number of children, is in some manner controlled by society when the exercise of that right harms another person. You have the right to swing your arm, but you do not have the right to swing your arm such that smashes another person in the face. You have the right of free speech, but you cannot yell fire in a crowded motion picture theater when fire does not exist. There is not a single reason why the right to produce an excess number of children is not controlled by society when the exercise of that right will cause the deaths of billions and the total collapse of civilization never to rise again above the level of the early Stone Age.

Since the planet earth is finite, at some point in time population growth will cease. Infinite population growth cannot and will not occur on the finite earth. There are three, and only three ways, that population growth will cease:

1) War (most probably with weapons of mass destruction),  disease, starvation and other horrors beyond the imagination;

2) Voluntary population control; and

3) Coercive population control.

I defy anyone to set forth another method by which population growth will cease. No one on the face of the earth can guarantee that voluntary population control will reduce population growth to zero, or  make it negative (if that is required) such that population growth does not result in the population being controlled by number 1 above. To put the concept in different words— there is a chance that voluntary population control will fail resulting in wars with weapons of mass destruction, killing billions and totally destroying civilization.

Without writing a 10 page essay, I can state that the chance of failure is greater than 10% by the year 2100. If the previous statement is correct, the failure of intellectuals and college professors to demand that society immediately evaluate, discuss, and debate coercive population control in relation to voluntary population control, is an act of potential mass murder.


The original post by Paul R. Ehrlich can be found here.

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