On The Marching Morons by Asimov Isaac

Author:Asimov, Isaac [Asimov, Isaac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

WE’VE STILL GOT A MARCHING MORONS

PROBLEM

by Larry Niven

Isaac:

Kick aimed at the groin, my foot! That parenthetical insert is there for accuracy, and it says something you ought to keep in mind. You can keep saying “everyone” till Hell freezes over; but in practice, you are shouting in the ears only of English-reading people willing to listen, and understand, and act upon their understanding.

I’m not against limiting the birth rate. It’s persuasion that sticks in my craw.

Put aside your characteristic humility for a moment, and remember that your readers are brighter than humanity’s average. Persuading them not to have children is a mistake. Persuading anyone else is impossible. (Are you seriously counting on making it fashionable to have fewer children? Don’t you know how fast fashions change? Next year it’s the pregnant look, folks—)

You mentioned a possible answer, but you’re not holding it by the handle. Our tax structure encourages children. The welfare system offers extreme encouragement to having children; there are those for whom it is a profession! You and your allies could be using your -powers of persuasion to remove that bonus. (And you are, of course; I’m suggesting that it could be the main thrust of your attack.)

But birth control by coercion isn’t just unpleasant; it could conceivably get us lynched. Whichever groups take the biggest proportion of welfare checks, won’t they be the ones to scream “Genocide?” And won’t the lawyers and the newspersons love it? In fact, they’d be right. It’s the thrust of my argument: you’re committing genocide, in your fashion, against altruists who read.

If there’s a better choice, we should take it.

And there is.

You say, “Nations have become rich in the past, but always at -the expense of other nations who became the poorer for it.” You’re dead wrong, but in this case it doesn’t matter. What counts is that there Ore no such nations now in orbit, on the Moon, or in the asteroids.

There’s nobody to be hurt out there. The wealth is there to be grabbed: sunlight, metals, oxygen loosely bound in rocks, free fall, all raw materials for creating clean power and wealth; and one more the space to dump endless pollution. You could vaporize the Earth without noticeably polluting interplanetary space. If we could move most of our polluting industries into orbit, we create considerable elbow room, not to mention drinkable river water and breathable air.

Now let’s make the whole world rich. The population might drop, and we’ve given them more room. and if civilization fails anyway, there would be populations off Earth who might be able to start it over.

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