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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (9614)	3/9/2010 3:17:00 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15994

Sure some people make great contributions, others become psycopathic killers. Short of those extremes some lead very productive lives while others mooch of the public teet as much and for as long as possible. But its the average or they typical person, that's relevant here, not the full spread of possibilities. Normally the average and the typical (the distinction being that average weighs in everyone, if Bill Gates walks in to a conference room the average person in the room is a millionaire), are both positive. That can change in extreme cases - An unusually massive birth rate can potentially disrupt society (imagine the average woman having 15 children), an unusually crowded place could make more births problematic (although Hong Kong does fairly well compared to much of the rest of the world) and a very strong welfare state could make the typical new birth a net negative (although probably not the average new birth, if it did that, than the society would be on its way to collapse).