[ExI] ai and job loss

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 6:40 AM, William Flynn Wallace
<foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have not done a study of this, but have seen it several times over the
> years:  when the income in a country goes up birth rate goes down.  No one
> knows why, but the obvious conclusion is that when people feel safe about
> their children's future, as opposed to their starving to death, they decide
> to spend their money on the ones they have and have fewer children.
>
> The usual objection to giving food away - foreign aid - is that you are just
> going to encourage them to have more children.  That seems not to be the
> case.

If the aid is kept up consistently for a number of years.  It takes
time for this effect to come into play.

> I don't know of anything else we can do to limit population.

Personally, I am of the opinion that we would all benefit from a lot
more people, if we could find ways to feed trillions or more - which
will almost certainly include utilizing extraterrestrial resources.

> What would it take to feed every hungry mouth?  Has anyone done this study?

That's a lot more mundane.  The main problem is political: bandits,
too many with the backing (unofficial or official) of the local
government, steal food or other resources meant for the poor and sell
it for their own gain.  (Some of these bandits call themselves
soldiers.  It doesn't change the fundamental pattern.)  The rural poor
could fend for themselves if left alone to do so.

There are smaller parts of poverty this wouldn't help, such as the
urban poor who grew up on welfare, never learning what work is, or the
few mentally unable to participate in reality let alone society, for
whom psychotherapy and asylums were invented.