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I've been struggling to find a template,
a template to help me imagine the future,
the future here in America,
the future of America at the middle of this century,
and the latter part
of this century,
and on into the next.
The template I've found,
to show us what it might be like,
is,
simply,
the past.
Here is a link,
to a document tracking population growth,
in America,
from 1790
to 1930,
and separating
urban growth
from rural growth.
The graph on the upper right corner
of page nine,
(I don't know how to copy and paste
from a PDF file)
tells us a lot.
(notice the numbers of millions on the left side of the graph
are scrunched closer together as you go up,
to avoid a hockey stick graph)
The growth of rural population
nearly leveled off,
and the growth of urban population
keeps going up,
until more than half of Americans
were living in cities,
not farms.
That is the trend line,
the intersection of trend lines,
we need to reverse.
But most of all,
we need to reduce the population of America
down to some number close to
the population of America
in 1930:
less than 125 million Americans.
Here is another link,
to a very light
history of farming in America.
I found what I was looking for,
mostly in the decades
before and after
the 1930's.
1862-75 - Change from hand power to horses characterized the first American agricultural revolution
1890 - Most basic potentialities of agricultural machinery that was dependent on horsepower had been discovered
1930's - All-purpose, rubber-tired tractor with complementary machinery came into wide use
1945-70 - Change from horses to tractors and the adoption of a group of technological practices characterized the second American agriculture agricultural revolution
You already knew that,
but did you know this:
1954 - Number of tractors on farms exceeded the number of horses and mules for first times
My father's father
was kicked in the head by a horse,
and died within a few hours,
in 1935,
when my father was ten years old.
My father told me the story many times.
What was that man doing with that horse,
in Hickory County, Missouri,
in 1935?
Most likely,
farm work.
My point here is that
it
is
possible
to feed 125 million Americans
using a lot of tractors,
but even more horses and mules.
Here is a link
to a diary I wrote recently,
in which I explain why I'm concerned
about shortages of oil,
shortages of diesel fuel,
leading to shortages of food:
The next thing that will happen:
there will simply not be enough
diesel and natural gas
to fuel all the tractors and trucks and trains
we have running now.
This will lead to rationing.
Once again,
if we want to make it reasonably easy
to feed all Americans,
using less diesel fuel,
using a lot of horses and mules,
we have a template,
we've done it before.
But we did it when there was only
125 million Americans to feed.
So.
We need to use contraception,
to reduce the number of Americans,
and then we'll have a job
we know we can handle,
since we did it before.
Here is a link
to a site that explains
the most effective contraceptive method I know.
The purpose of this brochure is to increase your awareness of surgical sterilization (vasectomy for men and tubal ligation for women). This is a very effective, permanent method of contraception and does not change a couple's sex life.
If we have four out of five couples
surgically sterilized,
and,
after the one couple
has the one baby,
they get sterilized, too,
then,
in one generation,
we would have the current fertile generation
only replacing ten percent of themselves.
Two babies per couple
simply replaces the couples.
I'm not good at math,
but with some fine tuning,
we can reduce the number of Ameicans
to below 125 million,
I think,
within fifty years,
if we act now.
I'll be dead by then,
so I'll be out of the way,
that's for sure.
Someone else can eat my share
of the bacon and eggs,
hot dogs and cheese,
produced by American farmers.
Next week,
if I can,
I might write about life as it was
in 1890,
and how it can be again,
in the future.
(Think lots of bicycles.)
Thanks for reading.