[extropy-chat] Gandhi and EP was Bushido

[Keith Henson]

At 09:23 PM 4/25/2007 +0100, Billk wrote:
>On 4/25/07, Keith Henson wrote:
> > The trick to keeping humans out large scale violence is to keep their
> > "bleak future" detectors off.  The modern equivalent of game and berries is
> > income per capita.  Steady or rising income per capita keeps a population
> > out of "war mode" unless they are attacked.
> >
> > Population growth faster than economic growth, the "per capita" term, is a
> > formula for a population going into war or if they can't into related
> > social disruptions like terrorism.  That's where the IRA came from.  And
> > because a generation ago Irish women cut the number of children they had to
> > about replacement, economic growth got ahead of population growth.  That's
> > why the IRA eventually went out of business.
> >
>
>This is a misleading interpretation.
>
>The Northern Ireland women had the same birth rate reduction as the
>rest of the UK. And a similar birth rate reduction occurred in the
>modern states in Europe as well. The birth rate reduction had nothing
>to do with the IRA terrorism.

You missed the important part of the sentence, "economic growth got ahead 
of population growth."  It doesn't take low birth rate to do that, for 
example, Ireland could have discovered oil and that would have had the same 
effect.  But it is easier for economic growth to get ahead of population 
growth if the population growth is low.

How do you account for the fact that the modern states of Europe have gone 
so long without a war?  I claim the root cause is population growth below 
economic growth.  If you have an idea that fits the facts better, please 
speak up.

>Re-arranging the politics and administration so that the Catholics
>didn't feel as much victimisation as before, caused reduced popular
>support for the IRA.

Did this happen before or after income per capita started up?

snip

Keith