X-Message-Number: 22684
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 08:12:23 -0700 (PDT)
From: Randall Burns <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #22680 - #22682

Charles Platt wrote:
>the US is listed with 2.07 children per female 
>lifetime. This is near replacement level. 
>Therefore the population growth that still 
>exists in the US is caused almost entirely by
>immigration. If an agricultural crisis develops 
>(which I find totally implausible) obviously
>immigration quotas will be revised downward.
Well, since the overwhelming portion of immigration at
this point is illegal immigration, the quotas aren't
especially relevant(see numbersusa.org).

I don't like the term "overpopulation". IMHO the
proper term might be something more like
"under-pioneering". The question is what portion of
the agricultural and industrial activities are of a
purely extractive nature and what portion are by some
measure sustainable. When I look at stuff like
salinization of the soil in California-I tend to class
that as extractive agriculture. The big failure
though: there exist technologies to substantially
increase yield of the oceans (seeding areas with iron
for example). The main barriers to that technology is
essentially legal-noone wants to seed an area they are
unlikely to harvest.

Another important factor. While the birth rates of
Americans as a whole are stable, they vary accross
various groups. What that means is that US
demographics are changing profoundly. In 1900, the US
was about 60% of British descent. By 1970, that group
had dropped in absolute numbers by about 1.5-3
Million-despite the surrounding population
boom(basically if you look at the US census figures on
ethnicity and factor in  immigration from Britain.

Also, the US used to be more or less isolated from
diseases like leporasy-which isn't the case now
largely due to uncontrolled borders. The basic science
necessary to understand the health impact of
immigration in the US is basically taboo. Open borders
advocates in major foundations-both places like Cato
and Brookings work in unison on this issue. It is
quite plausible that at some point, the US will
experience a serious and visible epidemic related to
open borders.

The US now has about a quarter of the world's prison
population.

These factors combine to make me question the long
term political stability of the United States-they
strike me as the type of thing that could lead
eventually to another incident like the Civil War. We
have never yet seen a Civil War fought in a country
with a high tech infrastructure and nuclear weapons.

A while back, I wrote a claim, USgn that is hosted on
www.ideosphere.com

That claim was an attempt to project the chance of
major destabilization in the US by 2025. 
(Hyperinflation at the level no government has
survived, civil war, breakup)
At present it trades at 20-25%

If we assume these are realistic odds, then the chance
of the US maintainnig its present form in 66 years, is
only 42% or so.




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