He was before my time, but I have always had an interest (perhaps a morbid one) in the writings of Paul Ehrlich. Although it isn’t fair to blame him for all of the ills that his positions naturally led to, he shouldn’t be absolved. He was a wicked man, who advocated for some of the most wicked ideas, laws, and goals in the world today. And he did so in the name of compassion.
This article is a very good retrospective on Ehrlich’s life
So God tells us in the book of Genesis to “Be fruitful and multiply.”
This Antichrist figure comes out in the 1970s and says, “Do not have children. It’s unpatriotic to have children.”
He says, first we’re going to incentivize people — we’re going to discourage them culturally. Say having kids is bad, you should just drink good wine instead.
All these arguments you hear today — Don’t you want to travel? Don’t you want to have experiences? Don’t have kids.
And if that doesn’t work, we’re going to pay people not to have kids. Give women bonuses. Subsidize it. Say instead of having kids, go work at the widget factory, do spreadsheets, we’ll give you money.
That doesn’t work? Okay, now we punish you. Forget the carrot, now it’s the stick. If you have kids, we’re going to tax you. We’re going to make you pay for the privilege.
And if that doesn’t work, we’re just going to stop you from having kids.
What does that mean in practice? Because China implemented this. It means forced abortion. The government comes in and kills your child. You want to keep your child? No. Government kills your child.
It leads to policies like in India, where people were told you can only get access to food and resources if you sterilize yourself.
That happened because of this guy. Because of his book. Because of his ideas.
This guy got everything wrong. Not a little wrong — perfectly wrong. And he never paid a price for it. He kept his positions, his prestige, his influence. His policies were implemented. They led to enormous harm. And the institutions backed him up.
