Globally Rational

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We hear a lot of propaganda aimed at convincing the American people that Arabs are evil, the war is justified, and America is the best thing that ever happened to the world. Some people believe it all, and some people (i.e. the people who are probably reading this) believe none of it… but did you ever think that just some of it might be true?

All other things aside, the slogans “Land of the Free” and “Land of Opportunity” really do describe two of America’s very unique traits. We often take these facts for granted, but the amount of freedom and opportunity available to the American population is unmatched in the rest of the world. Here, we can speak out for what we believe in (although recently, we’re been losing that privilege). Here, you can be whatever you want to be if you set your mind to it. After you hear those things a million times, you tend to take them for granted… but this is the only country where it’s true.

In most countries (even in Europe), the average person does not believe they can be anything they want to be. If you’re born under a tin roof in Indonesia, you’ll probably die under a tin roof in Indonesia. If you speak out against the King in the Middle East, you’ll be detained. If you openly practice Buddhism in Tibet, you’ll be suppressed by the Chinese. If you try to leave your poor village in Pakistan to go to college, you’ll starve before anybody gives you a scholarship/loan. And that’s why the US became the world’s foremost economic and scientific power (I mentioned yesterday how we became the world’s foremost military power).

Recently, more countries have started granting more liberties and have attempted to produce more opportunities. In the process, Germany and Japan have risen as intellectual powers, while London’s financial sector is bringing economic prowess to the UK. Although the US is still leading the world, the rest of these countries are taking our strengths - our belief in freedom and our endearment of the old rags-to-riches story - and implementing them into their own policy. They’ll slowly start to chip away at our status as the world’s best country for scientific discovery and economic advancement… but it will make the world a better place.

Interesting note: the indices that measure democracy and freedom of the press both report that the US is no longer a leader in these two issues (we’ve been dropping quickly in the last few years). If we don’t fix this, we’ll destroy everything we stand for and, eventually, we’ll also lose our place as a leader in liberty and opportunity. The way to fix a declining democracy with fading freedoms is to be aware of the problem… if we know what’s going on and we follow these indices, we can prevent ourselves from slipping.

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There are plenty of social issues that are important in politics these days.  Everybody seems to be highly concerned with what everybody else is doing.  With these issues, I like to ask myself “is it really worth the effort to oppose an issue that some people care so dearly about?”  Some examples:

• Gay marriage - I agree that homosexuality defeats the original purpose of marriage, which exists (from an evolutionary perspective) for the purpose of procreation and to ensure that all children grow up with their two original parents.  So, gay marriage doesn’t make scientific sense… but why would I really care?  Allowing it would make many same-sex couples very happy and it wouldn’t really affect me in any practical way.  Just because it defeats the purpose of marriage doesn’t mean that I should prevent them from doing it… sure, I think it’s a pointless idea (if you look at it scientifically), but if they want to do it, why would I stop them?
• Abortion - I can understand that the issue here is whether or not a human life is being destroyed.  However, it seems like that should be a question that can be effectively answered only by an expert scientist in the field rather than by a politician.  Why can’t we just get a consensus from the scientists and then leave the issue alone?
• Immigration - Sure, we need to worry about securing our borders.  But what about the people who come here legally and go through the full quota process?  Why do we have to make life difficult for them?
• Religious polygamy - If polygamy were widespread, then it would be a problem for obvious reasons.  But as long as a group of consenting adults is happy (assuming that no sexual abuse is going on), why do we feel the need to separate innocent children from their caring polygamist mothers?  They’re not really threatening our society; they just have a certain preferred way of life.  Why do we let the government get involved in religious issues?

A lot of it (i.e. gay marriage, abortion, polygamy) comes down to religious issues.  Although the term “separation of Church and State” is thrown around all over the place, it seems like people generally ignore it.  Why was it such a big deal that some people thought Barack Obama might be Muslim?  Why does the government think of marriage as a holy bond between a man and a woman?  Sure, religion has a place in a person’s life; honestly, I wouldn’t even mind it if the US declared itself to be a Christian nation.  But as long as we maintain the concept of “religious freedom,” we cannot make policy decisions that involve religious values.

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About 200 years ago, the mathematician Thomas Robert Malthus famously wrote an equation predicting that the human population would soon reach the planet’s ecological carrying capacity, causing many of us to die off because of the lack of food and resources (just like what we have often seen with other species). He expected it to have already happened well before 2008 (especially because of the rapid population growth of the last 200 years), but we’ve managed to stave it off thanks to the effects of the Industrial Revolution. Recently, however, I’ve been seeing more and more articles suggesting that the hunger crisis is on its way to reaching epidemic proportions.

The UN is expecting that this lack of food will kill about 100 million of the world’s current residents, suggesting that we’re on the brink of a cap in our population. When everybody tries to share an inadequate amount of food, nobody gets enough… so this could lead to bigger problems in the future. As growth continues in some parts of the world, the increased number of mouths to feed will eventually mean that we’ll see the mass die-off that Malthus predicted. It seems like we’re following either the orange or the green trend on the graph (see right), since such a huge negative shift couldn’t possibly be on the same order as the red line.

The Malthusian catastrophe is not unexpected; we’ve expected it for a long time, but we managed to delay it with new technology. The biggest question has just been the timing of the effect, an it seems like we’re on our way there now. Odds are that it won’t directly affect you, since you’re obviously well-off enough to be reading this in your spare time, so we probably won’t bother to do anything about it. Recently, for example, Sam’s Club and Costco set a purchasing limit of 4 bags of rice per customer per visit… which is 3 more bags than I’ve ever bought.

We need to ask ourselves if we care enough to really do something about this.

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