!! spellx done
193  We Need Social Inventions
     To Deal With Overbreeding
     The Washington Post,  February 7, 1970

     In a recent issue of Science magazine, John R. Platt a well-known
biophysicist who is now associate director of the Mental Health 
Research Institute at the University of Michigan, exhorts scientists 
about "What We Must Do."

     After a gloomy inventory of national and world problems, he calls
for a mobilization of scientific task forces for highly coordinated,
large-scale work on the, major issues. (The Manhattan Project is
inevitably thought of as a parallel; it may be mischievous to recall
that it was rationally founded on a premise later proven false, namely
that Hitler was racing to produce a Nazi superweapon. That mobilization
thus generated a magnificent technical solution to a nonproblem,
and has, in turn, changed world history in ways we have still to
fathom.)

     By far the most interesting part of Prof. Platt's essay is a list
of social inventions including Keynesian economics, opinion polls,
operations analysis, game theory, input-output economics, credit cards
and income tax withholding.  Some remarks about these might be 
unprintable, but they can indeed have a large, quick impact.

     Overpopulation is near the top of anyone's list of social 
problems.  However optimistically we dispense with other aspects of it,
we cannot evade its pressure on an irreplaceable natural heritage and
the accumulation of our garbage and other pollutants.

     But typical American couples (as shown by Judith Blake's studies)
still expect to produce between three and four children for an ideal
family.  We have found no humane way to regulate this market, to 
restrain a couple from hogging than its fair share of the common 
resource-- human living space on the planet.  We begin to hear demands  
for a radical solution, and before these are irresistable, we should 
seek out and try new social inventions,  We do not want a nightmarish
secret service of genetic and demographic police.

     Our difficulties are compounded by a pattern of social injustice
that leaves an underprivileged class that believes it has nothing to
lose, so lacks a motive to refrain from breeding more.  Widespread
poverty also turns any hypothetical punishment of irresponsible
parents into penalties on innocent children.

     The recent proposal by Sen. George S. McGovern (D-S.D.) for a
universal family allowance based on $50 a month per child suggests a
constructive approach to a meaningful but compassionate social 
experiment.

     But it was promptly and, I believe, correctly criticized on the
floor of the House by, Rep. John B. Anderson (R-Ill.) as an aggravating
stimulus to population growth, an irresponsible birth incentive.
It is also totally unrealistic to expect an appropriation of $35 
billion for a program that might help the poor to continue to outbreed
the rich.

     We have surprisingly little information to support guesses about
the impact of children's allowances on population growth.  Regardless
of a long history of such allowances, for example Canada's birth rates
have tended to fluctuate in close parallel with those of the U.S. in
response to major economic and social trends.

     Sen. McGovern's proposal should be amended so as to start with 
allowances only for the first two children of a giving mother.  It 
might also make the same allowance to a married woman before and after
her first child, so as not to hasten child-bearing.

     It would not take long to determine statistically whether this
approach could have a significant effect on family policy.  If it did,
we should soon count relatively fewer third and fourth births per 
family.

     Programs like this are not as expensive as they appear at first.
We do not mean to turn our backs on the welfare of the young, and by
one route or another we must provide essential services and food to
needy children.  The McGovern proposal, with the suggested amendment,
carries the possibility of managing the limitations in our resources
in a way that would allow experimenting with solutions to the 
"incidental" problem of overbreeding.

     At the very least, a considered debate on these proposals would
expose the realities of our needs and pretensions on designing a 
future with a manageable population.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------