What to think of Population Control

Today’s theme is population control.

Several months ago, I went to an End the Fed rally in Chicago. A fellow protester wouldn’t stop telling me about how “they” want to reduce the world’s population to a half billion, and will stop at nothing to do so. To be honest, his refusal to change the subject was annoying, though I accept the fact that the most passionate and most paranoid will always be first to protest – against the war, against the Fed, or for any other reason.

The theory about reducing the world’s population is also mentioned during the Alex Jones interview with Dr. Rebecca Carley below. I decided to look it up.

One source of the theory seems to be National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) directive itself, signed in April, 1974, by Henry Kissinger on behalf of President Nixon:

NSSM 200:
IMPLICATIONS OF WORLDWIDE POPULATION GROWTH
FOR U.S. SECURITY AND OVERSEAS INTERESTS

December 10, 1974

CLASSIFIED BY Harry C. Blaney, III
SUBJECT TO GENERAL DECLASSIFICATION SCHEDULE OF
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11652 AUTOMATICALLY DOWN-
GRADED AT TWO YEAR INTERVALS AND DECLASSIFIED
ON DECEMBER 31, 1980.

This document can only be declassified by the White House.

. . . . [I]ntense efforts are required to assure full availability by 1980 of birth control information and means to all fertile individuals, especially in rural areas. . . .

there is a major risk of severe damage to world economic, political, and ecological systems and, as these systems begin to fail, to our humanitarian values. . . .

While specific goals in this area are difficult to state, our aim should be for the world to achieve a replacement level of fertility, (a two-child family on the average), by about the year 2000. . . . Attainment of this goal will require greatly intensified population programs. . . .

The World Population Plan of Action is not self-enforcing and will require vigorous efforts by interested countries, U.N. agencies and other international bodies to make it effective. U.S. leadership is essential. . . .

We recommend increases in AID budget requests to the Congress on the order of $35-50 million annually through FY 1980 (above the $137.5 million requested for FY 1975). This funding would cover both bilateral programs and contributions to multilateral organizations. However, the level of funds needed in the future could change significantly, depending on such factors as major breakthroughs in fertility control technologies and LDC receptivities to population assistance. . . .

No country has reduced its population growth without resorting to abortion.

The idea of cutting the world’s population to 500 million probably does exist theoretically in the heads of some well-educated bureaucrats who want to save to world, but I don’t believe our government is planning a mass extermination. Nevertheless, this study which concludes that population is a security threat to the United States, and suggests government do something about it, is absolutely chilling.

I disagree with, though understand, Dr. Alim Muhammad’s reaction:

(He also mentions The Global 2000 Report, whose wikipedia description seems entirely benign.)

So, what to think about population control?

I love this presentation. From about 1:50 to 5:00 it is absolutely breathtaking:

Though other people have interpreted Hans Rolsing’s talk differently, to me it sounds like when people are in good health – something all people relentlessly strive for, population naturally levels off. So the solutions is . . . leave people alone. Give them nothing but the freedom to pursue their self-interest.

(I don’t mean stop conducting charity. Altruism is great so long as it doesn’t happen at the point of a gun, i.e. with money the government forcibly takes from us.)

Eugenics – Hidden History

Most Americans don’t know our country’s dark history and love affair with Eugenics – the forcible castration or sterilization of citizens deemed undesirable, made possible, of course, by the power of the state.

William Faulkner obliquely railed against these monstrous policies in many of his novels.

“Eugenics attracted the support of prominent Americans. Progressive Theodore Roosevelt summed up eugenicist theory: ‘Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce.’ Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the famous opinion upholding Virginia’s decision to sterilize a woman named Carrie Buck: ‘Three generations of imbeciles,’ he averred, ‘are enough.’

Other supporters were Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, and in Britain, Winston Churchill and Major Leonard Darwin, son of Charles, postulator of evolution. Britain originated the idea of ‘lethal chambers’ for its ‘unfit.’ . . .

Thanks to the Nazis, highly praised by eugenicists here, the movement eventually collapsed. But not before nearly 50,000 Americans were sterilized. . . .

An irony of this book is that its publisher hails itself as ‘progressive.’ As the late economist and historian Murray Rothbard wrote, ‘Progressivism’ was a movement in New England born of Yankee Pietism in the early 19th century. By the early 20th, it had matured into a Messianic ideology of pervasive social controls to better the world: prohibition of alcohol, statist government regulation of business, even the ‘war to end all wars,’ World War I. And, of course, eugenics was there, too.” (Read more from waragainsttheweak.com)

I’m wary of the over-educated. They’re the ones, when they seize the reins of power, who think the rest of us need to be saved from ourselves, who think they can socially engineer a better world through the power of the state. Freedom works best.

I see eugenics in the same light as obsession with world over-population in the 80’s, or global warming today. Politicians lead very empty lives and need problems to solve, real or imagined. Pseudo science provides an endless source of pseudo crises for which politicians can take money and power and pretend to save the world.

Argentina’s Economic Collapse

part 1 of 12:

The images of this mass uprising are downright inspiring. I fear our own government would be much better at splintering any such uprising. Much like our military studies ethnic, political, and social divides in countries we invade, similar knowledge would be used to fragment any domestic opposition to the U.S.S.A. Think of how tea party activists were labeled racist by several newsy shows.

part 2 of 12:

Pay attention to the part about mass debt being a source of impoverishment and corruption, and also of wealth for the financiers. The talk of “endless debt” ought to sound chillingly familiar to us in Amerika.

part 3 of 12:

I will point out, the crime is not inherent to the free market. It occurs when government colludes with business. The parts about nationalizing a tyrrant’s debt, and the case of the Royal Bank of Canada vs. Cost Rica are fascinating.

part 4 of 12:

Carl Saul Menem and his cult of followers is just like Obama. This is why it’s important to believe in principles first (non-intervention, sound money, the Constitution), in people second (Obama), and in phrases never ( “change” / “yes we can” ).

Portugal’s drug decriminalization ‘bizarrely underappreciated’

“Champions of harsh drug criminalization laws as the best solution to curbing drug use will be chagrined to find that Portugal’s eight year history of decriminalization has led to lower drug usage rates.

According to a new report entitled, ‘Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies,’ while drug use across the European Union has risen steadily since 2000, Portugal, which has the most liberal drug laws of any country, has actually seen its prevalence rates decrease in various age groups since it decriminalized all drugs in 2001. Prevalence rates measure how many people have consumed drugs over the course of their lifetime. . . .

Greenwald said the strongest evidence in Portugal that supports drug decriminalization is the declining usage of drugs in the crucial 15-19 age group.

In every single drug category, with the exception of the new drugs that have come into popular usage since 2001, like ketamine and GHB, teen drug use has declined. The biggest drug category declines were seen in marijuana, which saw teen drug use slip from just over 10 percent in 2001 to 6 percent in 2006.

‘Drug policymakers are ecstatic about this,’ Greenwald said.

Since decriminalization took effect in Portugal, deaths as a result of drug usage have declined significantly. Opiate-related deaths experienced the biggest drop, falling from about 275 deaths in 2000 to about 125 in 2006, according to information provided in the report from the Portugal National Institute of Legal Medicine.” (Read more from rawstory.com)

If I understand correctly, Portugal decriminalized drugs on the street level. No one will go to prison for using or possessing a small quantity of drugs. Major trafficing remains illegal. It’s a little hypocritical, but it’s a huge step in the right direction. Someone tell Chairman Obama and his statist followers that liberty (i.e. leaving people the hell alone) works.

Goldman Sachs Smells Rotten (again)

“Nouriel Roubini wrote in March that Goldman Sachs was insolvent:

So for the Treasury to hide behind the “systemic risk” excuse to fork out another $30 billion to AIG is a polite way to say that without such a bailout (and another half-dozen government bailout programs such as TAF, TSLF, PDCF, TARP, TALF and a program that allowed $170 billion of additional debt borrowing by banks and other broker-dealers, with a full government guarantee), Goldman Sachs and every other broker-dealer and major U.S. bank would already be fully insolvent today.

Yet Goldman reported a $1.7 billion dollar profit for last quarter.

How did Goldman do it?

Well, as Floyd Norris – chief financial correspondent for the New York Times – explains, Goldman simply didn’t report results for December 2008, a month in which it took huge write-downs.

Its easy to look profitable when you can cook the books . . .” (Read more from washingtonsblog.com)

Local Currencies

The interesting part comes at about 4:50, when Susan Witt corrects the host. The U.S.S.A. requires local currencies to be exchangeable with federal fiat notes so that government may more easily confiscate a share of economic activity.

What excites me is that despite the requirement of backing local currency with federal fiat notes, this is still a step toward freedom.

Local US currency strengthens community “For years now, citizens of Ithaca have been able to solve a growing dilemma: people had needs, time, and skills, but a shortage of dollars, so the Ithaca hours solved this problem. Today, the Ithaca hours have moved from businesses to banks and even the Alternative Federal Credit Union in Ithaca finds ways to incorporate these paper hours. Local currencies gained ground during the Great Depression and then became less popular, but with the economy in a tailspin, local money is once again gaining momentum.” (Read more from inteldaily.com)

Communities print their own currency to keep cash flowing “Workers with dwindling wages are paying for groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts.” (Read more from usatoday.com)

The PLENTY Relaunch! Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 9-5 (theplenty.org)

What Has Government Done to Our Money?

An excerpt from the book, What Has Government Done to Our Money?, by the great Austrian Economist Murray Rothbard (1926-1995).

“Government imposes price controls largely in order to divert public attention from governmental inflation to the alleged evils of the free market. As we have seen, ‘Gresham’s Law’–that an artificially overvalued money tends to drive an artificially undervalued money out of circulation–is an example of the general consequences of price control. Government places, in effect, a maximum price on one type of money in terms of the other.”

Me: Think of how, when the our government began debasing silver quarters in the 1960s, all the true silver quarters disappeared almost instantly.

“. . . With the name of the country’s currency now prominent in accounting instead its actual weight, contracts began to pledge payment in certain amounts of ‘money.’ Legal tender laws dictated what that ‘money’ could be. When only the original gold or silver was designated ‘legal tender,’ people considered it harmless, but they should have realized that a dangerous precedent had been set for government control of money. If the government sticks to the original money, its legal tender law is superfluous and unnecessary. On the other hand, the government may declare as legal tender a lower-quality currency side-by-side with the original. Thus, the government may decree worn coins as good as new ones in paying off debt, of silver and gold equivalent to each other in the fixed ratio.The legal tender laws then bring Gresham’s Law into being. . . .

Governmental control of money could only become absolute, and its counterfeiting unchallenged, as money-substitutes came into prominence in recent centuries. The advent of paper money and bank deposits, an economic boon when backed fully by gold or silver, provided the open sesame for government’s road to power over money, and thereby over the entire economic system.” (Read more from Mises.org)

The U.S. executed Japanese soldiers for waterboarding

Sen. McCain was right and the National Review Online is wrong. Politifact, the St. Petersburg Times’ truth-testing project (which this week was awarded a Pulitzer Prize), scrutinized Sen. McCain’s statement and found it to be true. Here’s the money quote from Politifact:

“McCain is referencing the Tokyo Trials, officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After World War II, an international coalition convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as ‘water cure,’ ‘water torture’ and ‘waterboarding,’ according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning.” Politifact went on to report, “A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps.”

This issue arose when warmonger, chicken-hawk, neo-con apologist Ari Fleischer was left momentarily dumbstruck in this debate with Paul Begala. It didn’t last long. He quickly filled the silence with boilerplate partisanship.