Ive been told that some of my posts are too long and even pedantic. Heres something from my very distant past to emphasize that penchant. The following was my contribution to the Presidents Commission on Population Growth and the American Future while in law school. To the extent that climate change represents the greatest threat to humanity, we may want to consider the driving force behind climate change: the growth of the human population. While I have moderated many of my views, I remain convinced that the basic premise regarding population growth is correct. I acknowledge the assistance of the commission staff in writing this separate statement. Separate Statements of James S. Rummonds to the report of the Presidents Commission on Population Growth and the American Future. The Immediate Goal I do not agree that “the policies recommended here all lead in the right directions for this nation, and generally at low costs.” It seems to me that too many of the policies we have recommended, both explicitly and implicitly, are in the wrong direction and have heavy social-psychological-environmental costs associated with them I believe that it is critically important that population growth be stabilized. To this end, I concur with Dr. Lee A. DuBridge, President Nixon’s former science advisor, who wrote: “The prime task of every human institution should be to halt population growth. . . the first great challenge of our, time is insuring that there are no more births than deaths. Every human institution, school, university, church, family, government, and international agency, should set this as its prime task.” In addition to this concern for population stabilization, I must go beyond and say that the present size and distribution of the population in the United States is inconsistent with the traditional values of individual freedom, individual justice, and the true spirit of democracy. Thus, the population problem has a broader dimension. As stated in the introduction, the population issue raises profound questions of what people want, what they need, and what people are for. It is against this broader perspective that we have to measure the cost and direction of our population policies. A common thread which underlies many aspects of the “population problem” is the rapid growth of urban areas of unprecedented size. The rapid rate and extent of population concentration is clearly illustrated in the growth of urban areas of one million or more people: Year Number of such areas Percent of total population 1940 12 28 1960 23 38 1980 39 54 2000 44+ 63 If we had wished to avoid this massive concentration of people we could have done so by avoiding, not only population growth, but economic growth. Our huge urban areas are essentially creatures of economic forces evolved for economic ends. The motivating forces have been economies of scale, specialization and division of labor, profit to the developer, and efficiency in production. Thus, there is a direct linkage between our economy and population problems. The result of these unbridled economic forces has been the creation of an almost totally man-made living environment—built initially by economic necessity and now reflective of only a narrow portion of the full range of human needs and concerns. As we rapidly become a nation that is almost totally urban-industrial, our man-made environments will increasingly shape our individual and collective behavior. Since we are presently products of environments of our own uncertain and narrow making, it seems obvious we had best be sure we are “making man” deliberately and consonant with his highest human potentials in the future. In earlier times, our deference to economic forces for ordering our existence was necessitated by the struggle for subsistence. The pressure for sheer physical survival in an agriculturally based economy made a virtue of pursuing one’s own competitive self-interest. However, our rapidly increasing affluence makes survival concerns more and more inappropriate as goals around which to order our lives. The decreasing importance of survival concerns is reflected in the growth of our real family incomes which were roughly $2,400 in 1939, $9,400 in 1969, and are expected to be in excess of $21,000 by the year 2000. Another indication of our new-found affluence is shown by the fact that the proportion of the population in poverty has dropped from roughly 60 percent in 1929 to 12 percent today. It seems clear, then, that a few select nations are rapidly entering a new age of human history where an increasing majority will live far beyond subsistence. However, our present values and institutions have been evolved for the express purpose of coping with the problem of marginal survival. Now, man has suddenly been deprived of his traditional economic purpose. We have been caught off guard by our success. We have only begun to realize how far we have come, let alone to think what might lie beyond. Thus, the fundamental question of our time arises: Are our contemporary values and institutions, inherited from a subsistence era, adequate or even desirable in coping with the problems and potentials of relative affluence, sophisticated technologies, and huge population agglomerations? There is mounting evidence which suggests that our continued reliance upon traditional economic forces will lead us into a population distribution future, as well as a larger American future, that is neither wanted nor desirable. Economic—Research data show that our larger urban areas are growing because of the momentum of natural increase and in-migration rather than because of any significant economies of scale associated with their size. It appears that an urban place of 200,000 people is as efficient as one of several million. Therefore, the economic rationale for allowing the size of our urban areas to increase is marginal at best. Political—We value our democratic processes; yet, other things being equal, it appears to be more difficult to exercise our democratic prerogatives as the size of the political unit increases. First, as the number of citizens increases, the time that can be spent with any one of them by a government official decreases. Second, as urban size increases, there is a more than proportionate increase in public service demanded; thereby putting an even greater burden upon the democratic processes. Third, with size comes a complexity which makes it increasingly difficult for the average citizen to maintain the “relative political maturity” necessary to effectively participate in the decision-making processes. Fourth, the trend toward metropolitan government will aggravate the first three impediments to a “grass-roots” democracy. Social—We tend to judge the “goodness” of our urban concentrations by whether or not they seem to induce such behavioral extremes as criminality, mental illness, high divorce rates, etc. The few crude studies that have been conducted have been largely inconclusive but the implicit conclusion has been: since our big cities don’t produce much bad behavior, they therefore must be good places to live. However, since man is so highly adaptable, he can tolerate very undesirable environments without exhibiting pathological behavior. Clearly, reliance upon crude “tolerance” indicators to measure our social well-being will insure our living in an environment without the beauty and serenity of the countryside, without the stability and sense of community of a small town, and within the culturally desolate confines of a homogeneous suburban social layer. Environmental—It has been conclusively documented in the Commission’s research that large population agglomerations aggravate environmental problems. This includes increasing air pollution, increasing noise pollution, decreasing access to open spaces, increasing travel time to work, increasing respiratory ailments, and adverse climatic changes. To make things worse, our research has also shown that it is oftentimes more expensive to cope with these difficulties in a larger urban environment. Diversity—We value diversity as a precondition to freedom since freedom of choice is meaningless without something to choose from. And yet, a continuation of present distribution trends will largely narrow living choices to large urban agglomerations and will’ thereby eliminate a major element of diversity from our lives. Opinion Polls—We are becoming an increasingly urban nation against the will of an absolute majority of the population. Our opinion poll survey showed that 53 percent of the population preferred a small town or country environment. Over 50 percent wanted the federal government to slow the growth of the large urban areas and over 50 percent wanted the federal government to encourage growth of smaller places. Implementation of policies consistent with these preferences would give people a greater diversity of living environments to choose from. It seems clear, then, that we are blundering into a population distribution pattern which is unwanted by the majority of Americans. Historically, the pattern of urbanization has been a by-product of the economic imperatives of industrialization. Thus, we have trusted the control of our population distribution patterns largely to the workings of the marketplace. Only now are we learning the central weakness of the market system: The market has no inherent direction, no internal goal other than to satisfy the forces of supply and demand. With increasing abundance the market system continues to direct human activities into accustomed economic channels—yielding an increasing production and consumption of an ever larger volume of ever less valued goods. Robert Heilbroner notes that the danger exists that the market system, in an environment of genuine abundance, may become an instrument which liberates man from real want only to enslave him to purposes for which it is increasingly difficult to find social and moral justification.” What is required, then, is a realization that to solve the population problem” requires us to create a new relationship between the economic aspects of existence and human life in its totality. Our affluence not only makes it possible but makes it imperative that we go beyond strictly economic concerns and become creative architects rather than passive pawns of our own environment. What we need as a starting point are national goals or guiding principles which go beyond a concern for mere quantity—in short a quality of life manifesto. I present the following as a suggestive listing of those individual and collective goals we might want to pursue as we become a post-industrial society: 1. Efficiency: Efficient production is desirable but not so desirable that in an affluent society it should take precedence over higher human values. In other words, we should be willing to accept some economic inefficiency as an inevitable but necessary price in realizing noneconomic values. 2. Growth: Just as population growth can reach disastrous proportions, so can economic growth. For example, if the rest of the world were consuming at our level, we would quickly exhaust available resources. Our continued high rates of growth are predicated upon continuing disparities among nations of the rest of the world. Therefore, we need to moderate our growth ethic and begin to create the society envisioned by John Stuart Mill: in which while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward... There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on. 3. Equity: Elimination of poverty in an affluent society through overall increases in real income is too slow and unjust. Further, large disparities in income will only serve to encourage further demands for economic growth as those less advantaged note their relative rather than absolute income position. A reduction in inequity is a necessary precondition to justice as well as to the gradual attainment of a dynamic, steady state economy. 4. Democracy: Big business requires big government to control, big unions to bargain effectively, and big cities as productive economic mechanisms. In each case, the individual comes to feel that he just “can’t make a difference” as his political power is swamped by huge, complex organizations. Therefore, if we prize our democratic processes, we had best be willing to seek a population level and design our institutions so that they are compatible with democracy. 5. Environment: We can no longer assume the arrogant role of mastery over nature; rather, we must learn to live in balance and harmony with our environment. This means we must be sensitive to the possibility of world wide depletion of resources and to the domestic aspects of environmental degradation— particularly in our large urban areas. 6. Life Style: Finally, and perhaps most important, we need to insure a physical environment that is conducive to a variety of life styles. Underlying this is a recognition of the supremacy of the individual. This was well stated by the Eisenhower Commission on National Goals: “The first national goal to be pursued . . . should be the development of each individual to his fullest potential.... Self-fulfillment is placed at the summit.... All other goods are relegated to lower orders of priority.. .“ But what conditions are most conducive to self-fulfillment? Do the expressed and implied policies in this report enhance the creation of a physical and social environment compatible with human actualization? Too often they do not. The following points will briefly illustrate why. Work—We have become a very productive society but at great expense to the fulfillment to be gained through our work. Most people are now alienated from their work, viewing it only as a means of acquiring the money to satisfy other needs. The excessive specialization and division of labor deprives the worker of a sense of completion and purpose in his productive process. Nature—Our man-made environments have isolated man from his historical habitat and thus deprived him of an important life perspective. Whereas the agrarian environment forced a realization of man’s finitude in relation to the ecologic totality of the earth, the urban environment allows an arrogance of power since man is living in a world of his own making. Seldom is there a sense that man has not created all. The hubris engendered by this anthropocentric environmental perspective may help to explain our current despoliation and disregard for that seemingly outside of man’s created domain. Community—In our search for personal identity through goods acquired and occupational status achieved we have been willing to move to wherever there were the greatest economic opportunities. These high rates of geographic mobility in search of social status have destroyed our sense of community. Family—With the transition to an urban-industrial economy we have had to forsake the extended family since it was no longer an economically productive mechanism. With its economic reason to exist undermined, the social rationale was not insufficient to insure its continuity. With further industrialization came specialized demands for education and the traditional educational role of the family was subsequently lost as well. Now, with further economic “progress” we have a developing interest in child-care centers for working mothers. Although I can grant the pragmatic desirability of such institutions within an urban-industrial context, it saddens me to think that we may soon see the day when the last significant role of the family—the love and warmth of the mother—will soon disappear just as did the economic and educational roles. In conclusion, as a rural-agrarian society, we had many of the life style elements that we now look for in vain: our sense of belonging to, and finding identity in, the family and community, knowing that there was understanding, concern, and compassion deep felt by our peers and neighbors, and being able to exert influence on the political and economic institutions of our community and society. These parts of our lives and more are being lost in our passion for affluence and in the overwhelming surge of sheer numbers of people. Surely it is time for those in control of our political and economic institutions, our leaders, to begin to create conditions wherein the highest qualities of human existence can more fully come to fruition. The Economy The Commission asks, what effect will slowing population growth have on the health of the economy? It concludes, with minor exceptions, that slowing population growth will not be detrimental to the economic interests of the American people. The Commission does not ask what effect the American economy has on the noneconomic interests and values of the people of this country and the world; a world increasingly characterized by overcrowding, resource depletion, ecological imbalances, and individual alienation. Put another way, is an economic system predicated on the principles of productivity and efficiency and characterized by ever-increasing concentration of the ownership of the means of production, capable of responding to the individual’s need for security, purpose, and dignity? Is an economic system motivated by profit and oriented to mass consumption as an end in itself capable of guarding the values of individuality, family, and community? While the Commission is correct in concluding that slowing population growth will not necessarily prejudice economic interests, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the system itself is destructive of a broad range of values closely held by the American people, including the job security of significant numbers of people. Unemployment will continue to be a difficult problem for the next several years. The reason is that the rate of increase in the supply of human resources will be high, and continuing competitive pressure for efficiency will reduce demand for labor per unit of work output. The best predictor of the increase in the labor supply each year is the number of people born about 20 years earlier. In 1950, about 3.65 million people were born in the United States, and these people entered labor force pool about 20 years later, in 1970. By 1955, births had increased to 4.13 million, so the labor force will have to accommodate more new laborers in 1975 than in 1970 if the unemployment rate is to stay constant at its present level. By 1957, births had reached 4.33, so by 1977, the labor force will have to accommodate an increase of almost 20 percent over the number of new workers as in 1970. The problem of absorbing this increasing number of new workers into the labor force each year will be rendered particularly difficult by the strong pressure for efficiency. Each year, the work output per worker is expected to increase. This means that the number of workers required for a given amount of work is constantly dropping. Thus, at the very period in the nations history when a great many new jobs are required, the pressure for efficiency is reducing the demand for new workers. The magnitude of the drop in demand for workers over the last several years is quite surprising. For example, in 1950, scheduled air carriers employed 8.1 personnel for every million revenue passenger miles of transportation provided. By 1968, only 2.6 personnel were employed to provide the same mount of transportation. From 1950 to 1968, the number of men employed in the oil and gas industries to deliver one quadrillion British Thermal Units of energy dropped from 28.4 to 11.5. From 1950 to 1969, the number of people employed on farms to deliver 100 units of farm output decreased from 11.6 to 3.8. This tremendous reduction in number of workers required per unit of work delivered in all existing industries and businesses means that there must be a tremendous increase in the number of new enterprises in the next 10 years if unemployment is to be kept at a level of six percent of the labor force. The problem is compounded, because not only will here be continuing reduction in the number of workers per unit work output, but, in addition, there are a number of major industries in which there will be a reduction in the amount of work output, because of market saturation. A particularly striking example is the aerospace industry. In 1970, the total number of jet aircraft used by all scheduled airlines in the world was only about 5,000 Boeing 707 equivalents. In 1972, at least seven major new models of large jet aircraft are being manufactured in several countries. The number of copies of these models that would have to be produced in order for the manufacturers to yield to a reasonable return on invested capital is very large. In fact, the world jet fleet would have to be at least doubled from present size. Since load factors (percent of seats filled) in commercial scheduled airlines had dropped to less than 50 percent in the early 1970’s, and domestic demand for seats only increased two percent in 1971, it is difficult to see how demand for new models of aircraft can hold up. Consequently, there will probably be still more layoffs in the aerospace industry in the next few years. This could have an important effect on the entire economy, for two reasons. First, the industry uses about 60,000 workers for each new model of aircraft manufactured; this is about one-tenth of one percent of the entire labor force. Second, jet aircraft is the most important single export item of the nation. Slackening of sales would intensify an already deteriorating balance of trade situation. These problems are compounded by the prospect of increased costs resulting from environmental deterioration and escalating demands on our social and political institutions. What this suggests is that demographic trends, like environmental pollution, impose costs that the market economy traditionally has externalized or failed to take into consideration. That the present economic system is no longer representative of the beneficial interests of the American people and in fact, in conflict with the material conditions of the modern world, should not be discounted. Government The Commission has asked: “Can government adapt to the new realities and fragility of our existence as the pace of our lives accelerates, the world grows more crowded, technology multiplies life’s complexities, and the environment is increasingly threatened?” It concludes, “. . .slowing down the rate of population growth would ease the problems facing government in the years ahead: . . .“ This is not a particularly responsive answer to the question posed. Perhaps the Commission did not intend otherwise. Government has been defined as, “that form of fundamental rules and principles by which a nation or state is governed, or by which individual members of a body politic are to regulate their social action.” Accordingly, the question posed by the Commission cannot be answered by statistical projections or cost benefit analysis. Rather, we must ask if the rules and principles of government and social behavior are adequate to meet both the just demands of the people and the dictates of demographic and ecological imperatives. This question can profitably be viewed as three distinct inquiries. First, what are the rules and principles of government in the United States; or, in other words, what is government for. One response to this question has been given by Arthur S. Mifier of the George Washington University Law faculty and a contributor to the Commission’s research project: “The raw material of -modern government is business, taxation, utility regulation, agricultural control, labor relations, housing, banking and finance, control of the security market—all our major domestic issues—are phases of a single central problem: namely, the interplay of economic enterprise in government. . .“ While it cannot be denied that modern government undertakes programs to accomplish noneconomic objectives, it can readily be seen that there is considerable truth in the observation that, “the business of government is business.” Indeed, the dominant analytical perspective taken throughout this Report supports a predominantly economic interpretation of the role of government. The second question is to what ends are the rules and principles of government applied. This can be answered in a number of ways. For example, the ends can be equated with “values.” It is generally agreed that one of the primary stated goals or values of government in the United States is the promotion and enhancement of individual freedom for all the people. Thus, the “government” pursues the goal of “freedom” through the vehicle of the “free market” and the maintenance of competitive economic conditions. Fundamental to this particular notion of “freedom” is a reliance on the “invisible hand” or classical laissez-faire economics. Another end or goal of the rules and principles of government can be ascertained by analyzing the distribution of wealth in society. By this standard, the end of “government” can reasonably be understood as seeking to maximize the satisfactions of the dominant forces in society, that is, the owners of the means of production. However, it has been forceably argued by the sociologist Max Weber that freedom and wealth are, in fact, one in the same: The exact extent to which the total amount of ‘freedom’ within a given legal community is actually increased depends entirely upon the concrete economic order and specifically on property distribution. In no case can it be simply deduced from the content of the law. The final question is, can the present political economy (government) of the United States cope with the demands presently being placed upon it. A. E. Keir Nash, formerly a director of research and now a consultant for the Commission, responded to this question as follows: There is good reason to doubt the capacity of the American governmental system to accommodate a third 100 million citizens in the final decades of the 20th century. There are strong grounds for doubting the ability of the government both to maintain political order and to attain social justice among a citizenry of 300 million. Dr. Nash goes on to note two fundamental failures of American government. First, is an historical failure to fulfill its basic promises of freedom and equality. Second, is the failure of government, “to shift government actions—so as to make them appropriate to the increasingly crowded world in which we live.” Legislative and executive policymaking continues largely to be based upon log-rolling and incremental solutions to problems in the society and the economy which are not genuine solutions at all. Such pseudo-problem-solving may work respectably when the basic structures of the economy, the society and the environment are not in flux. They may be admirable in a largely empty and unsettled country, half slave and half free. Yet they are wholly unsuited to the problems which confront Americans today. The politics of yesterday is simply not suited to the needs of tomorrow. The Commission chose to reject the evidence militating toward this conclusion. I cannot.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 05:06:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015