Overpop Redemption

The world's many current problems are consistent with a state of overpopulation. The Reverend Malthus laid them out for us long ago: 

• The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction; and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.

Chapter 7, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798

T. R. Malthus

Nowadays (2020), we may add global climate change and global pandemics to the list. 

Clearly, people must change their ways. Governments can help, but direct actions consisting of just passing new coercive laws were tried in China and were eventually abandoned. Moreover, "The best government is that which governs least." (motto of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, founded by John O'Sullivan). By a parsimony principle I am fond of, what we want, then, is the minimum adequate response to Overpop. 

My suggestion is: Estateism.

Your "estate" is basically your net worth from all sources minus liabilities, usually considered at the time of death. By "estateism," I mean a life plan focussed on enriching your estate for the benefit of your nearest relatives after your death, as an emotional substitute for raising your own family. Is such a life plan necessarily "thin gruel," emotionally speaking? Not if you know no better--then it is sufficient, as I can testify. 

Governments can help lead the way by lifting all estate taxes from those who die childless and giving proportionate estate-tax breaks to those who die with fewer direct descendants than the national average. If near relatives young enough to reproduce are named as beneficiaries, they would pay no inheritance tax. 

The theory of kin selection by W. D. Hamilton suggests that this lifestyle makes evolutionary sense. Those who adopt it could represent the way of the future, termed "eusociality" by biologists. Many biological precedents for the workability of this idea are known, some of them in mammals. Estateists would be formally like the non-reproducing worker bees in a bee colony, but humans who adopt estateism cannot turn into insects. If you think that they can, tell me how that would happen, exactly; and no hand-waving, please. 

An estateist is free of the oppressive burdens of raising a family and need suffer no sleep deprivation due to the crying of some colicky infant. There is no attempt to balance work and family, which should make for a highly effective worker more than able to enrich his or her estate. The theory of kin selection, which seems to find an echo in the human "heart," is the intellectual anchor for such a life and suffices to give it meaning. 

03-19-2020: An objection can be raised to the foregoing that the inheritors of Estateist benefits will be tempted to expand the size of their families as a direct result, thereby offsetting the reproductive self-restraint of their Estateist relatives in fine Malthusian style. However, I doubt that human reproduction is as elastic as this scenario assumes, but the matter can be decided by mathematical modelling and computer simulations. In the event of bad news from the simulations, the effectiveness of Estateism as population control could be enhanced by testamentary stipulations on the uses to which the inherited wealth can be put, which would aim to prevent its use to support an abnormally large family instead of better nurturing of a normal-sized family. (The biological precedent for this is called "K-selection," an aspect of Life History Theory.) In that event, permitted uses of an Estateist inheritance would be such things as education, training, insurance, medical expenses, rehabilitation, and relocation.

04-14-2020: To this list I should add lawyer's fees--the sting of the Estateist.

Mooney's Malthusian Inventory

Ok, so I am not showing masses of people here, but the tone is right. (However, the infamous Rideau Street sinkhole opened up later at the base of the nearest street-light in this picture. Make of that what you will.)

_____________________________________________________________________________
The MMI

Participant number: _____________________________
Location:                 _____________________________
Date:                       _____________________________

Section I                                                                                 Disagree            Neutral           Agree

1. People often get in my way.                                              _______           _______         ______

2. I often feel impatient waiting in lineups.                            _______           _______         ______

3. I often bump into people.                                                   _______           _______         ______

4. I often have to put up with noise from children.                _______           _______         ______

5. I often have to put up with noise from adults.                   _______           _______         ______

6. I often have to put up with noise from machinery.            _______           _______         ______

7. I often have to put up with odors.                                      _______           _______         ______

8. I often see things that need cleaning.                                _______           _______         ______

9. I often feel that my personal space has been invaded.     _______           _______         ______

10. I often flee my dwelling for no particular reason.           _______           _______         ______

11. Sex isn't worth it.                                                            _______           _______         ______

12. Commuting isn't worth it.                                               _______           _______         ______

13. Kids aren't worth it.                                                         _______           _______         ______

14. A degree isn't worth it.                                                    _______           _______         ______

15. Cooking isn't worth it.                                                     _______           _______         ______

16. Wealth isn't worth it.                                                       _______           _______         ______

17. Lifestyle and personal expression are important.           _______           _______         ______

18. Politics and social justice are important.                        _______           _______         ______

19. Hobbies and side hustles are important.                        _______           _______         ______

20. Social media are important.                                           _______           _______         ______

Section II

1.   Months required to find your present dwelling: ____________  (Homeless: ___)
2.   Months required to find your present job:         ____________   (Unemployed: ___)
3.   Hours required to earn $1,000.00:                     ____________   (N/A: ___)
4.   Amount spent daily on recreational drugs including caffeine and alcohol: $___.__
5.   Number of current, known enemies:    ____________________
6.   Number of siblings, dead or still alive:____________________
7.   Number of jobs held, lifetime total:    _____________________
8.   Number of psychiatric diagnoses:      _____________________
9.   Number of suicide attempts:               _____________________
10. Number of medications:                     _____________________

Section III

I am:                                                  trans: ___    female:___   male: ___
I am:                                                  ___ y old.
Height, cm:                                        ___
Weight, kg:                                        ___
Country of origin:                              ____________________
Immigration date:                              __mm, __yy,  N/A __
____________________________________________________________________________

To the investigator: The MMI purports to measure the level of the construct "crowding stress," which is theorized to be an excellent predictor of history-making upheavals such as world wars and mass migrations [1,2]. Crowding stress, in turn, is thought to correlate with persons per hectare, with the slope of the regression line dependent on the details of housing and zoning practices. Gentrified developments, for example, would intuitively be expected to have a lower value of the slope, whereas slums would be expected to have a higher value.

[1] "The Cogs of Armageddon," in: "Theoretician's Progress" mmmtheoryblogspot.com

[2] "The Iatrogenic Conflicts of the Twentieth Century" in: "Theoretician's Progress" mmmtheory.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________________________

To the Reader: of course, the above is just a pretend-test, with nothing known about how best to score it, the test-retest reliability, the content validity, or the construct validity. I propose it to get people seriously considering that "crowding stress', or "psychological population density," as it could be called, may have an insidious effect on the course of history that flies below the radar of the conscious mind, affecting people's emotional reactivities directly. City planners may derive some wiggle room from the fact that psychological population density is not necessarily the same as physical population density. These ideas were inspired by Calhoun's overpopulation experiments on rats and mice.