Cain and Abel, Socialism and Capitalism
May 24, 2020
by William P. Meyers

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The Spoiled Children of Industrialism

In Bonds And Chains, I mentioned Karl Marx, "who in a way is the father of both Socialism and Capitalism, the Cain and Abel of modern, industrial society." Last night I re-watched Planet of the Humans. My wife had read a criticism of it earlier in the day, and proceeded to tell me why the movie was wrong. I had already heard the populationist arguments against the movie, and the Green non-profit industry's arguments that the movie was factually wrong in criticizing their corrupt asses. I wanted to see Jan's reaction to the movie itself. And the mote was taken from her eyes, and she saw that what Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore presented was true.

Essentially, Gibbs and Moore sided with Earth First!, which has always pissed off the Marxist left and the Sierra Club potentates. They showed, as best you can in a brief movie, that you can't create an industry to solve the problem created by industrial society. You can't have an increasing human population, and more stuff on average for each member of the population, and fuel that with solar cells and wind. Note that solar energy and wind energy are not in themselves bad, but they are not a magic wand. They need their own industry to produce, and that is more likely to amplify the problems than reduce them. Particularly since they allow people and governments an excuse to promise that idiots will get what they want: MORE. MORE is the devil.

We have already run off a cliff, but we can still minimize damage. The key ingredient is a global one-child guideline. That way the total human population, but particularly the population in high-consumption nations, will begin to decline.

We need solutions that reduce energy use, not ones that create more energy. A good example of a solution that is working is LED base light bulbs. Another is heat pumps for heating and cooling. Well-run mass transportation helps. Smaller, more fuel efficient cars help. But these will not help if the population keeps expanding.

I suspect there were already too many people when the earth's human population passed a billion. We humans managed to destroy the world, to the point of starting to melt the polar ice caps, in about 100 years, or about 4 generations. Ideally we should try to get back on track to a billion in the current generation, the children who will be born in the next 20 to 25 years. That, however, is not likely possible. One child per family is.

As to those opposed to birth control, or saying they have a right to have a large family, I wish we could render them for biofuel. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. So the reasonable plan of action is to defeat the Republicans in November. We need to make contraception free in the United States and across the globe. We need to encourage small families through education, role modeling, and nudges like not subsidizing parents after their first child.

Industry is not going to go away. Perhaps if solar cells can be made in sufficient quantity they can power the factories and homes of a billion people. I do not know.

I hope to form a political action committee (PAC) that will lobby for, and elect people who will support, a variety of measure to get us going in the right direction. First, we need a panel of honest scientists to determine what a sustainable human population could be. Working with engineers, economists, and others they could then work out a glide path to that level of population. Then we would need to get our governments to enact what is necessary to do that.

Or we could just sit like crabs in a pot on a stove, fighting with each other until the water is so hot that humans become a meal for whatever life forms are still out there.