"Larry Niven and Isaac Asimov - On the Marching Morons v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

What follows is neither an editorial or a debate, but something in between:
Mr. Niven submitted his point of view, Dr. Asimov replied, and so on. We
rather like the format, and we hope that we'll be able to present dual essays
in later issues of the magazine.




ON THE MARCHING MORONS
by Larry Niven & Isaac Asiniov art: George Barr


THE MARCHING MORONS PROBLEM
by Larry Niven

Isaac Asimov is a man with a mission. For many years he has been trying to persuade humanity (or the subset of humanity that reads or hears Isaac Asimov's words) to impose birth control on itself. He is not alone in his crusade. The proponents of Zero Population Growth (ZPG) are numerous, and vocal, and eloquent.
But I distrust their solutions.
Consider ZPG activity as an evolutionary pressure. Evolution depends on those members of a species who are able to survive and breed. Inmost cases, evolutionary pressures act to improve a species in relation to its environment. Wolves pull down the slowest calves in a herd, and the cripples, and the elderly. (But hunters kill the best-looking stags.) When groups of humans moved north from Africa, when they had to cover their skins against the cold, those with the darkest skins died because they couldn't make enough vitamin D. The pale-skinned survived best. (But men interbreed dogs or horses to fit whimsical standards, until the breed is ruined.)
Traditionally, mankind is not good at improving a species. For us, the arguments used by ZPG proponents select for:
1) People who don't listen, or don't read...
2) People too stupid to understand Dr. Asimov's arguments.
3) People who understand, but don't give a damn.
4) People too stupid, clumsy, hurried, eager, or careless to use contraceptives correctly. (Remember the woman who couldn't understand how she got pregnant? She took her birth control pills regularly. Except on Sundays, of course.)
5) Those too cowardly to face an abortion or tubal ligation or vasectomy, or those who get lost on the way to the clinic, or forget their appointments.
6) Those who disagree with Isaac's arguments for one reason or another. Their reasoning may follow my own arguments; or they may have read The Marching Morons, a classic short story by C. M. Korubluth, whose premise went like this:
For several generations dating from now, reasoning people post-, pone having children, or have too few, for a variety of reasons. Children are expensive. (They used to help out with the farm work, or pick pockets for their parents/guardians.) You can't travel as much when you have children. Some apartment houses bar children. It is unkind to bring children into a world that has problems yet unsolved. World population increases by tens of thousands daily. All good, sound motives...
People who don't understand any of this continue to have children at the usual rate.
In five or ten generations, the average human being is as smart as a smart dog. The remaining intelligent ones are frantically busy keeping the world going. Too busy to have children themselves...
The solution, as per The Marching Morons, was unpleasant and expensive. Never mind. Getting back to basics-
Except in case 6), the ZPG proponents are breeding their audience for stupidity or lack of altruism. Let us call that approach Choice B for carving ourselves a future. Choice A is don't do anything. Dr. Asimov is eager to tell you the results of that. War, famine, pestilence, or crowding to the point of universal madness.
Choice C is, "We have done our best to solve the problem of unwanted children. We may have to consider restricting wanted children."
Consider the do-it-to-him contraception, in two scenarios.
In the first, the State offers citizens a license to breed. The license or 'birthright' has to be earned... by extraordinary health or intelligence, by service to humanity, by paying a fee, by bribery, by the winning of a lottery, as on Earth in my own Known Space series, or in any of scores of other projections to be found in science fiction. The laws would have to be hellishly restrictive for this to work.
But a halfway measure might be enough. Try this: on reaching puberty, every female citizen gets a shot. It immunizes her against sperm. To get pregnant she must take another-temporary-shot...must do something, with full knowledge of the consequences, rather than forget to do something. Notice that the women make all the decisions in this case; a would-be-father has nothing going for him save persuasion.
(This possibility is brand new - information, which I learned straight from the researcher, Jack Cohen! I suggested that he could be in line for the first obscene Nobel Prize. Remember, you read it here first!)
Perhaps we would prefer to restrict populations not our own. According to General Patton, "The trick is to make some other poor bastard die for his country-" except that nobody actually dies when we drop contraceptive bombs into Iranian water sources. A war in which no living being gets killed or injured sounds good in principle. Trouble is, Such a war could escalate. Nuclear weapons do exist, and a people who have been robbed of their fertility may be less fearful of radiation.
So let's look at Choice D.
Make the whole world rich. Go heavy on the space effort. Orbiting solar power collectors, mines on the moon and asteroids, polluting factories moved into orbit so the Earth can become one gigantic park. . . like that. That future has been mapped out for us for decades now. (Everyone I know knew exactly where they wanted Skylab to hit. It was supposed to land on the man who blocked the funding that would have kept it up: Senator Proxmire.) Of course it all has to happen fairly soon-say, over a thirty-year period. Otherwise the world population will expand to absorb the new wealth.
Nations have become suddenly rich in the past, and the result is predictable. The population jumps, for one generation. Then it stabilizes. Sometimes it even goes down. It's dropping in France; it will drop here, after our population becomes age-heavy-a peak that is still a few decades away.
Choice D is worth a try. It's worth every effort we can put into it. Even if it doesn't work, it'll be a lot more fun than the Population Wars. -


MY MISSION-STATED CORRECTLY
by Isaac Asimov

Now, now, Larry: in your very first paragraph you throw a curve ball. You say about me, "For many years he has been trying to persuade humanity (or the subset of humanity that reads or hears Isaac Asimov's words) to impose birth control on itself."
Inserting that parenthetical phrase, Larry, is uncommonly like a kick aimed at the groin. I have always made it quite plain that limiting the birth rate is for everyone, and not just for the subset of humanity that reads or hears me.
Here, for instance, is what I said in my article "Stop!" in the October 1970 issue of F & SF: "If the population increase must be halted, let everyone agree to and voluntarily practice the limitation of children. Everyone might simply agree to have no more than two children."
Do you notice I say "everyone"?
I mean exactly what I say. Everyone. I don't want any exceptions. I don't want special dispensations for college graduates, or for nice suburban types, or for my friends and relations. Nor do I want to impose special restrictions on people who are different from myself and who don't share my physical appearance and culture.