[saymaListserv] Fwd: RE: [earthcare] Future Population Decline: What Are Our Responsibilities As Friends?

[Janet Minshall]

>Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 18:48:48 -0400
>To: Wilkinson, Signe
>From: Janet  Minshall <jhminshall at comcast.net>
>Subject: RE: [earthcare] Future Population Decline: What Are Our 
>Responsi	bilities As Friends?
>Cc:
>Bcc:
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>
>Hi Signe Wilkinson,  Thanks so much for the response. It is really 
>refreshing to hear from someone who is interested in the questions 
>raised by some of the new findings about population trends.   I find 
>them just as fascinating as they are disturbing. They could serve as 
>an impetus for rethinking much of what we have been doing/saying as 
>Friends for quite awhile.
>
>I agree with you about the need to seriously reconsider the age of 
>retirement as well as providing retraining for those who, do to age 
>or disability, have become unable to do the work that they once 
>performed.  What is available now for active older people is retail 
>or food preparation work at WalMart or McDonalds at the lowest of 
>all possible wages.  That makes no sense for people like me 
>(disabled for the past 13 years since the age of 51) who can still 
>think pretty clearly, who has executive and professional experience, 
>who can use a computer, but who cannot travel to work or work full 
>time due to the untreatable pain in my body. I and others like me 
>get Social Security disability payments, but they amount to less 
>than $1,000 a month.  Prescription drugs and healthcare are going up 
>and up despite the Medicare card I carry. And I dread the thought of 
>ever having to depend on "the system" for nursing home care.  I hope 
>and pray not to live that long.
>
>I'm afraid that the newer information on the prospects of living as 
>part of an aging and declining population are not what Friends wish 
>to hear.  The amount of denial among the responses I've received is 
>great.  Pasted in below your message is my response to several 
>Friends.  Others wrote to say that my information must be wrong or 
>they would have heard about it from Friends publications or wider 
>Quaker organizations or from individual Friends whoknow a lot more 
>than they do about demography.  My comment is to remind Friends that 
>there is a real concern about panic reactions as well as a 
>disinclination among those who have been working for population 
>control to report on the realities of a significantly changing 
>situation in the world.
>				               Janet Minshall
>
>
>Signe Wilkinson wrote on 8-19-04
>
>Dear Janet Minshall:
>
>I'm just eavesdropping on your e-mail conversations and don't think 
>I've heard all of them but find the issue fascinating if, for no 
>other reason, than that we've been worried about the opposite 
>(population explosion) for so long.  I recently re-read the AFSC 
>1970-ish pamphlet "Who Shall Live?"  which broaches the issue of 
>legalizing abortion.  It argued for abortion on the most clinical, 
>least spiritual points--basically fearing a population bomb. Even as 
>an ardent pro-choicer, I winced at the mechanistic reasoning.  Not 
>only do those arguments seem sort of quaint and overwrought now, but 
>they make one ask whether there ought to be some other rethinking of 
>the Quaker perspective on life/death issues. 
>
>As to your other points about adjusting to the idea of an older 
>society, the whole Social Security debate comes to mind.  John Kerry 
>promised not to touch the retirement age but it seems to me idiotic 
>not to.  Certainly some people have had jobs that physically can't 
>be sustained at older ages and shouldn't be expected to go on after 
>their health has given out.  But most Friends and many other 
>Americans aren't in that category. You are the expert.  Perhaps you 
>could comment on whether retiring at 65 doesn't mean having 30 years 
>where other people are going to be taking care of you in one way or 
>another.  Shouldn't we be thinking about working a good deal 
>longer--even if we ratchet back the intensity of our work or kind of 
>work we do?  If you already discussed them, forgive me, but I'd love 
>to hear some ideas about how reforms now might help down the line. 
>Signe Wilkinson
>
>
>
>Janet Minshall wrote on 8-18-04:
>
>Dear Friends,
>In my previous messages, I raised the possibility that the coming 
>decline in  world population might well represent the end of our 
>current economic system which is and always has been based on a 
>growing population producing a growing economy. Amazingly, I have 
>heard from Friends who have responded gleefully "Oh good, then we 
>can move quickly on to Socialism and leave behind the evils of 
>Capitalism for good".  Aside from the widespread death, disease and 
>dislocation which might accompany any transition to another economic 
>system, the difficulty, of course, is that Socialism hasn't worked 
>anywhere it has been tried. It has been combined with liberal 
>capitalism and democracy in, for example, Scandinavia and several 
>other European countries but as the cost of social entitlements and 
>benefits such as Social Security and private pensions, Medicare, 
>Medicaid and health insurance, schools and private education have 
>grown more and more expensive, those countries have rapidly backed 
>off from Socialism in favor of liberal democratic capitalist 
>alternatives. Even Fidel Castro, dedicated revolutionary Socialist 
>that he is, is said to have encouraged workshops on Capitalist 
>economic development in Cuba to try to remedy the failures of 
>Socialism. Why is that? people ask.  "Socialism sounds like such an 
>ideal system."  Thats right, it is an ideal system, a utopian system 
>that humankind has never yet managed to achieve.
>
>Capitalism developed over many centuries.  It wasn't invented or 
>thought up.  It evolved out of the experience of our human 
>weaknesses, our greed and our desire for power.  It developed 
>alongside our common laws, it became part of our legal system, our 
>property rights, police, courts, and governments, all of which limit 
>the effects of our weaknesses.  Capitalism has incorporated those 
>constraints that kept us from too freely expressing our greed and 
>our need for dominance and power individually as well as among 
>clans, tribes and nations.  The reason we know so much currently 
>about the excesses of individuals and groups within corporate 
>capitalism is because we have laws, property rights, police, courts 
>and governments to call them to account for thier misdeeds and to 
>make them pay for their greedy power-seeking behavior. Capitalism 
>has also provided financial incentives for individual and group 
>achievement which seem to be much more powerful as motivators of 
>innovation than is the abstract concept of "the greater good". And 
>finally, Capitalism has provided unlimited access to capital even 
>for "the little guy" (finally, in the modern era, women can also be 
>included as they, belatedly, are beginning to have widespread access 
>to capital as well -- as in the Quaker Economic Development Program 
>"Right Sharing of World Resources"). Perhaps the next economic 
>transition will be to something that combines the community-building 
>and socially responsible aspects of what was originally envisioned 
>as Socialism with even wider access to capital and the necessary 
>constraints on greed and power of Capitalism.
>
>Despite all of our learning and "civilization", despite all of our 
>modern marvels, the time of transition from our present economy to 
>the next, and the time just after that transition, will likely be 
>ugly and painful.  For a time there will be considerably more people 
>than funds and resources to support them.  If history teaches us 
>anything it is that times of great change tend to be especially 
>brutal for the poorest and the weakest, the youngest and the oldest, 
>and the process of transition to a new economy may last for a very 
>long time.
>  				Janet Minshall
>
>
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