From: Dani Eder (danielravennest@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Nov 09 2004 - 11:01:36 MST
Kieth Henson wrote:
> Worse yet, it is hard to see how
> Islamic culture could change enough to accommodate
> the rise in the status
> of women needed for them to reduce the birth rate.
> For example, birth
> control is illegal in Saudi Arabia.
Despite that, the fertility rate in that country
has fallen by half a child (4.65 to 4.11) just since
1996. If you check this data source:
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbnew.html
You will find that fertility rates are dropping
in pretty much every country where they are high.
Absolute population level is not what I worry about
so much, since there might not even be one more
doubling in human population. It's a situation
where 1% of the population owns the robotic
factories, and the other 99% are unempoyable.
That could happen starting in the next decade,
with up to several decades before a Singularity
renders the issue irrelevant. That's plenty of
time for irrational behaviour on the part of the
unemployable to make things difficult.
Daniel
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