rjenkins@.com (Robert Jenkins) (01/22/91)
Here's one way to avoid exponential growth. Suppose we have nanotechnology, and medical microbes with onboard computers which can halt or reverse human aging. This implies the ability to control pregnancy, too. Before conception, even. OK, so give every person the right to raise one child. (A married couple, being two people, would have the right to have two children.) The medical computers could enforce this right. It may be wise to require children to wait sixteen years after birth before they can have children themselves. This right could be bought and sold on a free market, or used by having a child. I think this may be a good approach because it is simple, it limits growth to linear, it is extremely flexible, it favors parents with the resources to raise children, implementation (with nanotechnology) would not be difficult, and it even provides a definition of "person" (the owner of the right, or one who used that right). Computers could buy such a right and use it to declare themselves the child, with the right to create a child themselves in sixteen years. (Whether computers would form distinct entities, or whether they would care if humans considered them to be people too, is debatable.) Another (unrelated) definition of a person is anyone who convinces you that it is wise to treat them with the respect a person is entitled to. - Bob Jenkins [Read the John Varley "Ophiuchi Hotline" stories for the kind of problems this sort of scheme can create. Basically, such a tight restriction breeds a "black market" where you have lots of "people" who fill your second definition but not your first--people without rights. --JoSH]