In their conversation with the Social Justice government representative, Don and Avis Bell make some pointed remarks about the North American public. Since there is mass unemployment, why can some people not work as domestic servants? Some might but that would be a big adjustment even for the wealthier citizens who have become used to gadgets and appliances that no longer require them to employ servants. In any case, merely returning to master-servant relationships is no way forward for a technological society.
Don:
"'If they'd bred a little less eagerly, they wouldn't be so hard up today...'" (p. 129)
Sure. Birth control can be encouraged. My understanding is that births do decrease when standards of living increase.
IIRC, conditions on Earth generally improve later in this volume.
Mainly, "Ramble With A Gamblin' Man" is a problem story.
5 comments:
Actually, that "birth rates diminish with inceasing standards of living" is sort of obsolete -- it turned out to be a coincidence. Living standards rose at the same time as Western women acquired more rights.
Actually it's women's rights and choices that diminish the birth-rate. For example, Kenya had a TFR of 8 children per woman when I lived there in the 1960's and early 70's.
It's now 3 and dropping by about 1.5%-2% a year; that's a drop of more than half.
Now, certainly the standard of living in Kenya has risen -- but not by all that much. Most of the population are still peasants who raise their own food and farm laborers. The percentage who are urban has definitely increased, and birth-rates are lower in urban areas, but that's a function of increased female power in urban centers.
It's more a matter of women getting control over their reproduction.
I suspect that this story was written before it became obvious that developed-world birth rates were falling everywhere.
And I wasn't sure whether my facts were up to date on that point.
Three-quarters of the world's population lives in areas with sub-replacement fertility -- India and China, for example, though India's is only barely below the replacement level. Still, it's dropping fast. Africa started later, but rates have dropped extensively there too -- in the 1960's and 70's, dozens of African countries had rates of 8 or more; now the highest is 6.95, and only two countries have that rare and they're very backward.
The later the fertility rate starts dropping, the faster it seems to go. Turkey now has a rate about equivalent to Germany's, for example. As recently as 2001, it was 2.38.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Except you are overlooking a very important point, one made by Anderson himself in the story. If an infuriated N. America had seriously threatened war with the Asteroid Republic over the Odysseus asteroid, the Republic would have backed down and not annex Odysseus.
As Stirling said, quoting another writer: "violence is always the ultimately decisive means of political action." This time, however, N. America chose not to take recourse to arms.
Mr. Stirling: I am not happy about that increasingly worrisome drop in childbirths. Taken too far it will become globally catastrophic. You reminded me of the truly grotesque demographics of China, and the population crash it faces.
Ad astra! Sean
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