Too Many People (SKIL video series 1–5 in one)

An 11 minute video short by Jack Alpert, Stanford Knowledge Integration Laboratory

For this and other videos in the order Jack would have them viewed, click for a list.

Transcript

0:10
The human predicament and what to do about it in five short stories. Story one, overpopulation means I murder.

0:20
Almost two thirds of the people on earth don’t receive enough food to fully develop their minds and bodies.

3 billion people live on less than $2 a day and a billion of those live on less than $1.

Because we are exhausting oil, degrading soil, dumping CO2 in the atmosphere are supporting resources are declining.

0:42
Markets channel those remaining towards the rich. Combined with the previous conditions, overpopulation means the poorest billion will not be able to afford the rising costs of their daily bread and will perish.

0:57
When the cost of energy spikes and the cost of food triples, 2 billion more will perish. Overpopulation means more scarcity, which means more conflict which diverts more resources, which means more scarcity, which means more conflict again, and another billion perish.

1:17
What process puts 4 billion people at risk? Consider, each person needs space to create his or her well being. Each has to push others away to use that space. The pushing propagates through the community until the person closest to the edge is pushed off and dies.

1:39
When will this happen? I estimate in the next 10 years, increasing scarcity will push a billion off the plate. In 20 years, the pushing expanded by anarchym migration confrontations, and resource wars will kill 3 billion more.

1:56
Demographers think the global population in 20 years will be 8 billion. Are they in denial about these four? Demographers are not the only people in denial. Most of us deny we have any role in the killing. But I know I kill because how I traveled to lunch and what I ate consumes the food that could feed this child.

2:23
For me. Overpopulation means I murder.

2:30
Story two. How can I stop the murder? Scarcity causes two types of killing, the indirect kind where a person living a normal life unintentionally starves a distant person and the direct kind killing your neighbor and taking his food to feed your child. The only way to stop this killing is to decrease scarcity.

2:52
And the only way to adequately decrease scarcity is to decrease population. To stop the killing, we must implement rapid population decline.

The earth community during the next few decades, but as to have very few births. When population drops enough, when scarcity is reduced enough, the scarcity killings will stop.

3:15
It’s a simple concept. However, it’s one that’s pretty hard for this couple to appreciate. The benefits of their child far outweigh the hidden liabilities of killing this little guy. For them. This does not equal this. Civilization prevents them from seeing the connection.

3:34
So the little guys death didn’t influence their reproductive choice. These people are my friends, they work hard to reveal overpopulation problems and to find ways to address them. They know overpopulation means we are all involved in killing. However, they are two kinds to tell the couple not to have children.

3:58
Instead, they promote other solutions like women’s rights, women’s education, improved access to birth control, redistribution of resources, more efficient use of resources, stopping growth, better leadership, better institutions or improved economic design. Even though they know these activities successfully accomplished won’t end the killing.

4:23
Only rapid population decline prevents scarcity driven killings. The fewer the children, the fewer the killings. While it’s common sense to not have children. People cannot figure this out. Experts won’t talk about it. People that understand it won’t change their behavior.

4:47
Story three, how do we change an individual’s adopted behavior? When I discovered that preventing starvation and conflict deaths depended on rapid population decline. It was second time in my life, that I experienced a disconnection between the knowledge of good behavior and getting people to take it. So let me tell you about the first time and what we did to overcome it. In 1968, when seatbelts were introduced, they worked so well, wearing them was the intelligent choice.

5:22
However, it was decades before seatbelt wearing became common. Why? People believe good drivers did not have accidents, and believed if they were in an accident, they would not be injured. In competition with these fantasies wearing a seatbelt was worthless, to get people to wear seatbelts society shamed and then coerced them to wear seatbelts with laws.

5:49
Today, rapid population decline produces a world without the killings created by scarcity. Very few births implements rapid population decline. Not having kids until scarcity stops promoting death should be everyone’s choice. However, like getting an individual to wear seatbelts, not having kids is countered by incorrect beliefs.

6:12
For example, the future will be wonderful no matter what reproductive decisions I make. I’m not killing anyone, and my kids won’t be killed. With these beliefs, there is no motivation to not have children. To reduce overpopulation, global civilization will have to limit how many births happen each year.

6:37
Civilization must tell individuals who can have a child.

6:46
Story four. Can civilization dictate reproduction? Can civilization tell individuals who can have a child? Well, civilization told individuals they could not have slaves and civilization told husbands and institutions they could not subjugate women and civilizations told smokers they cannot smoke on airplanes and civilization told drivers they could not speed in school zones.

7:11
And in all these situations, a benefit justified a law that limited personal behavior. In the case of overpopulation, to stop the killings, civilization can pass laws, or civilization can create social pressure that determines who can have a child. Two processes allows societies to take control of a citizens behavior.

7:41
First, a process that creates a new social consensus, and second, the Democratic ballot box. For example, if a majority of the people believe slavery is wrong, they can say you cannot have slaves. In the case of overpopulation, if a majority can say overpopulation kills, then society can dictate or a democracy can have a law that says, have a child by permission only.

8:11
Our task is to create a majority that believes overpopulation means we are all killing one another. Our task is to create people who believe we need rapid population decline to stop the killing. This task conflates to, how do we get this individual to replace his fantasy, ‘This course is wonderful.’ with reality, ‘This course kills children’. How do we get them to believe the killings are increasing? That today while scarcity kills only the poorest of the poor, tomorrow, increased scarcity will kill his child.

8:54
Story five, building majority to change course. Before we try to create a majority to address scarcity killings, we should understand what changes we are asking which people to make. Let’s distinguish between the challenge of changing a person’s beliefs and the challenge of changing a person’s behavior.

9:15
It is easier for a northerner without slaves to change your beliefs on slavery and thus pass a law or create a consensus that no one can have slaves, than it is to convince a southern slave owner to change his behavior, and free his slaves.

9:34
Thus, if we are going to use rapid population decline to stop the killings, we have to understand that it is a difficult and exhausting task to convince an endless stream of newlyweds that the act of having children kills. Stopping the killings is more easily accomplished if each couple does follows the new consensus or obeys the new law.

9:56
So the candidates for believe If change are not newlyweds, they are the parents and grandparents who don’t want to be killers. They don’t want their kids killed, and their reproductive agenda is buying them.

10:11
The task is to get them to see the Earth as too many people, bad things are happening, worst things will happen. And to avoid them, we have to implement rapid population decline. This requires a small number of global birth. And once they get this view, it is not their job to preach to their own grandchildren. Instead, it is their job to create a social consensus of civil law that implements that number of births.

10:45
In summary, overpopulation makes each of us responsible for killing.

10:51
Stopping the killing, requires convincing several billion parents and grandparents that they should intervene in everyone’s reproductive decisions.

11:01
Our task today is to create the stories that change the beliefs of grandparents, stories that help them adopt the new belief that because there are too many people for the available resources, we are all unintentionally killing one another. With their range of starting beliefs, there will have to be many different stories. This video series tells those stories