continue to be debated by philosophers and 4. The individual is psychologically able to 6. Having chosen an alternative, the individual The elements outlined above flow from the notions of capacity and opportunity in the working definition of freedom. The concept of incentive is also included in the definition to emphasize the interaction between social structure and personality in human freedom. It is worth noting that people sometimes require social rewards and support to do what they "want" to do. Unless society provides sufficient incentives for the individual to make reflective choices, the capacity and opportunity to choose may not be exercised. Man is self-starting only to a point. Freedom and Population Policy Two implications of the foregoing analysis of freedom for the formation and implementation of population policy may now be suggested, keeping in mind that in any discussion of the relationship between freedom and population policy, the general definition and the specific dimensions of freedom should be clearly specified. Unless this is done, freedom will continue to be an all-purpose legitimizing symbol which will only. confuse serious analysis of the issues at stake. Close attention should be paid to the psychological side of freedom. First, an evaluation of any population policy should take explicit account of the possibility of differential effects on the freedom of subgroups within the society. These "constituencies" include the participating individual or family, the society at large, the "elites" or "ruling class," minority groups, unborn children, and future. generations. The task of deciding which subgroups should receive greater weight in arriving at a general population policy is as much a political as an ethical. question. It should, however, be faced openly and explicitly. Second, different questions of freedom are raised by (1) the methods used to introduce population control, (2) the substance of the control measure, (3) the enforcement apparatus required, and (4) side effects such as bribery or political cynicism. All four areas of potential impact on freedom should be considered in evaluating any proposed population policy. Justice2 It is difficult to imagine any population policy or program which would not, in fact or perceived appearance, impinge upon some groups or individuals more than others. This is probably true of any public policy on any matter, but it will have a particular pertinence. for population policy, where demands for equity and equality will be strong. What is "justice," and what are the conditions for a "just" policy? The Western history of the concept of justice has been marked by three major threads. First, humans have desired to live in a well-ordered society, a theme developed by Plato in his attack on the pure relativism of the Sophists, and elaborated by Aristotle in his analysis of the philosophical foundations necessary for legal order and in his distinction between distributive and retributive justice. Second, a major intent of Plato and Aristotle's analysis of justice, that of giving each. man his due, was taken up and developed in the Western legal tradition, centering most prominently on the requirement of individual equality before law. A still more modern thread has been a constant joining of the concepts of freedom and justice; justice has come to be inherently linked logically and in our tradition with freedom and is at least as basic. In the philosophical literature, John Rawls has stated two principles of justice showing the close connection between liberty and justice. The first is a principle of the distribution of liberty: "each person ... has an equal right to the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all." The second principle relates justice more directly to the basis of distribution: "inequalities are arbitrary unless it is reasonable to expect that they will work out for everyone's advantage and provided the positions and offices to which they attach, or from which they may be gained, are open to all."3 Terms such as "everyone's advantage" and "open to all" are ambiguous. A distribution may be to everyone's advantage in the sense of contributing to the preponderant or sum total good, even though it permanently maintains inequalities arising from inequalities in natural assets. On the other hand, a distribution with social and economic inequalities might be considered just by some people, only if those inequalities best improve the situation of the least advantaged in the long-run as well as the more advantaged. "Open to all" could be interpreted to mean formally open in the sense of without physical or legal constraint or, more subtly, open in the sense of having equal chances of culture and education for those with similar endowments irrespective of social class. Fairness situations arise whenever there is a question about distributing goods or harms in a society. This may occur when there is not enough of a good for everyone. A basis of distributing must be determined. It may also occur when there is enough of a good which, when distributed to all would not be harmful, but, when distributed to only a few, would be harmful to those deprived (for example, food, clothing, shelter). Another type of situation (which could be called a "threshold" situation) arises when we have something to distribute which, when distributed to a smaller number, is intrinsically not harmful at all, but when distributed to all who desire it produces great harm. Examples would include the failure to vote or walking on the grass. This "threshold" type of fairness situation may be readily applicable to the distribution of opportunities to bear as many children as one desires (as suggested by Garrett Hardin's analogy of the tragedy of the commons). Justice is thus a complex concept with many dimensions. Two of the most important are (1) the goods which are being distributed and (2) the bases for distribution. One must ask at the outset how different groups perceive the concept of justice, what goods and harms they want distributed justly, and upon what bases of distribution they make their claims of justice? Exactly what is being distributed when one speaks of a just distribution? The following is a partial working list of possible proximate goods and harms of relevance to population policy which may be the subject of distribution claims: income, the right to bear any children, the right to bear a desired number of children, burdens on parents, burdens on children, necessities of life, knowledge, changes in fecundity, the right to immigration, and migration. The basis for distributing these rights must also be determined. Among those methods which will be advocated will be: (1) every individual getting the same amount (as in "one man, one vote"); (2) in proportion to use (as with current fees for medical services in the private sector); (3) need; (4) desire (as in the case of distributing two different items to two individuals when one desires each of the items); (5) ability; (6) effort or merit; (7) the needs of society; (8) willingness of the individual to serve society; and (9) what society owes the individual as a result of past injustices. There will be real and dramatic differences in what various individuals and groups emphasize as the just basis of distributing various goods. Welfare4 In order to live, and live decently, people need many things: air, water, natural resources, good health; many would say they also need beauty, space, privacy, art, and culture. The list can be very long, and the many items on it grouped under the general heading of "welfare." Welfare, as a social value deployed in government policies that might affect population growth, usually means general, as opposed to merely individual, welfare. But the term "general welfare" is peculiarly resistant to analysis. To be sure, we frequently hear that the passing of some law would promote "the general welfare," or "the common good," or "the public interest," or "the public welfare." Implicit is a contrast between these and merely private interests. But neither the meanings of the terms nor their relations are usually explained. What classes of individuals have the standing to have their welfare considered in government policy? Certainly every living citizen of the nation does. But this by itself is too narrow an answer. The very problem of population growth implies that future citizens should also have their welfare taken into account. This is true even though caution is needed in predicting what welfare might be for future generations. And in addition to citizens and their successors, resident aliens have a claim to have their welfare considered. If all these individuals should, in fact, have their welfare considered, how does the welfare of each of them relate to general welfare? We shall lay out these issues with a comment first on individual welfare, and then a typology of competing conceptions of general welfare. Individual welfare can be understood as anything an individual might justifiably claim to need or profit from. An important feature of this definition is that for something to be in one's welfare is not the same as being merely wanted or desired. The normative addition—that is, that the potential claim be justifiable is necessary because one may want something which would not promote one's welfare. The qualification in the definition limiting welfare to what an individual might claim recognizes the fact an individual can be ignorant or misinformed about his welfare. Once we talk about justifiable desires, normative considerations are already firmly entrenched. With this interpretation of individual welfare we may now flesh in a typology of approaches to general welfare, following the classification of Professor Virginia Held. Of the three types, only the first two are relevant for practical consideration regarding population policies. Preponderance Theories According to preponderance theories, the general welfare is what a preponderant number of the people justifiably might claim as in their individual welfare. The members of the preponderant group have (common) individual welfares. But the welfare of any given individual in the larger population need not coincide with the general welfare. Nor is there anything that must be in the welfare of all the people. This position is attributed in differing forms to Hobbes, Hume, and Bentham. General Welfare as Common Welfare This view holds that the general welfare is to be found wherever the welfare of all individuals in the relevant population is, and ought to be, held in common-the common interest view. Something promotes the general welfare if it is justifiably desired by all the people. This is not to say that individuals cannot justifiably disagree; but it is to say that the general welfare is exhibited when: (1) they do agree, and (2) they ought to agree. A variation on this position is to relax the requirement that the people in fact agree, requiring only that they ought to; sometimes Rousseau is interpreted as holding this variation. This qualification is important for considering the welfare of future generations. Pareto, among others, supports the double requirement of justifiable and actual agreement on welfare. Unitary Conceptions of the General Welfare According to this approach, the general welfare is part of a unitary scheme of moral judgments in which the individual welfare of each person is related consistently to the welfare of every other person. It is not possible, under this conception, for an individual's welfare to justifiably conflict with the general welfare. According to the other approaches to defining general welfare, it was always possible for the welfare of the body politic to be in real and direct contradiction to at least some aspects of the welfare of an individual. But, in the unitary conception, there is a single good, relevant in different ways to different people, but obligatory on them in common. Plato and Aristotle are sometimes said to be proponents of this view, as is Rousseau, given certain interpretations of his "general will." Although most arguments that something is in the general welfare represent themselves as holding to the unitary conception, this approach will be operationally useless in our analysis of population policy because the fundamental agreement about values, which is practically necessary for using this notion, is not present in our society at this time. So we will deal with population policies as they relate to common welfare theories and preponderance theories. One type of population policy follows from a conception of welfare which is held in common, that is, those interests which for all practical purposes are shared by all rational members of society. These interests tend to support public policies having to do with defense ("or survival") because the preservation of life is an interest common to all members of society. In terms of population policy, the kind of justification based on the welfare of all individuals could be offered when it became clear that certain trends in distribution and numbers become dangerous to the health of this and future generations. Other kinds of welfare relevant to population policy likely to be held in common are prevention of pollution (at least at certain cost levels); prevention of social deterioration; promotion of economic growth, assuming it is distributed fairly and does not generate excessive side costs; and prevention of deterioration of the gene pool. Another type of policy is that derived from the interest of a preponderant number of citizens. These kinds of policies are less likely to be concerned with vital needs than with the satisfaction of interests held by only some of the citizens. These are likely to be policies such as social security, medicare, and other programs which involve the socialization of risk. The policies obviously benefit only a certain segment of the population since some citizens do not benefit from them at all-if they die prematurely, or otherwise fail to become eligible. Examples of aspects of welfare relevant to population policy likely to be of interest to a preponderant number of citizens are preservation of outdoor recreational possibilities, preservation of unique historical landmarks, wise long-term resource management, long-term protection of the gene pool, day care centers and other services and protections sought by the women's liberation. movement, and public employment in times of economic hardships. The concept of the general welfare does not stand alone as a moral foundation for public policy. Many policies pursued as national goals and commonly defended in the name of "welfare" cannot be justified either on a common or preponderant interest view. Some, like aid to dependent children, may derive their justification from distributive justice. Others, like prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure, are based at least in part upon considerations of freedom. Similarly, the policies designed to deal with the population problem can be expected to be based upon many dimensions of moral justification. Security/Survival 6 The earth is a finite globe and the United States a finite nation. In terms of present rates of population growth, it is conceivable that both the nation and the world could produce more people than their environmental and ecological carrying load could support. At that point, basic dangers would be posed to the life and safety of human beings; their survival and security would be threatened. As values, security and survival occupy both a specific and an ambiguous place. Unless human beings. survive, it is impossible for them to pursue and achieve other values; existence is the indispensable condition for the realization of values. At the same time, it may be doubted that people want to exist merely to exist; they live in order to pursue goods other than that of sheer survival itself. The drive for security, which may be understood as a freedom from fear of extinction or reduction to a subhuman condition (physical or psychological), undoubtedly gains its power because of its close relationship to survival. Insecurity is fearful because it forces people to live in the physical and psychological presence of extinction, in itself an intolerable state. Yet, as with survival, it is questionable whether mere security, apart from the possibility of realizing other values, would be accepted by most human beings as a satisfactory kind of life. In the case of both security and survival, then, we are faced with a paradox-they are both the highest and the lowest values. They are the highest because they are indispensable for the realization of all other values. They are the lowest because, by themselves, they are insufficient for anything approaching a fully human life-they must be complemented by other values (e.g., freedom, justice, welfare) to have any real significance. We do not believe this paradox can be adequately resolved; from it springs the ambiguity of the concepts. We will focus here on "survival," since what is said of survival can for the most part be understood as well of "security." A two-fold distinction is fundamental to an understanding of the concept of survival. A distinction must be drawn between the benefit at issue-just what good is at stake-and between the beneficiary of the value-just who profits from a realization of the good. Concerning the benefit at issue, a number of observations are pertinent. The Benefit at Issue First, as a value, survival is not likely to be abandoned as readily as other values. While an individual might be willing to sacrifice his own survival for the sake of some other value, or for the survival of others, it is not likely to be given up as a value in general. Second, it does not seem to make much sense to speak of raising the aspiration level of survival as a value. One might seek more freedom, but if survival is understood in a strict sense ("mere survival"), then it is not evident how one could seek more of that primitive state of existence. In a word, the difference, strictly taken, between a minimal and a full realization of the value of survival is small or nonexistent. Third, the gravity of violations of the value of survival are nearly uniformly severe. The violation of the value, even in the case of killing in self-defense, is always a matter of deep seriousness. Fourth, as mentioned above, there is a respect in which survival is the most important and the least important value. The Beneficiary These general remarks about the benefit at issue in survival need to be complemented by a specification of the different possible beneficiaries of the value, especially within the context of population policy. Personal survival, the survival of an individual, is clearly one important element, bearing on those minimal physical and psychological conditions necessary for the wellbeing of an individual. At quite the opposite pole is species survival, that is, the survival of the human race. The value of survival is also invoked in other respects. In particular, there is group survival, which can be understood as the continued physical existence of an ethnic, racial, religious, or sociocultural group. The black concern about "genocide" would be a case in point, where the fear is that in the American nation, blacks would either be systematically annihilated or, less violently, be subjected to pressures which would reduce either their absolute numbers or their proportion in the population. Cultural survival is a variant on group survival, with the emphasis laid on the preservation of values and folkways important in a group's heritage and distinct identity as a group. National survival, by contrast, refers to the continued existence of the nation and all the groups which together constitute it. In the national context, survival can also be understood in the sense of cultural survival. It is perfectly clear, of course, that the value of survival is invoked in a variety of population discussions-for example, that excessive population growth could lead in the end to the extinction of the human race. Our judgment, however, is that the force of arguments based on the value of physical survival, at least at the national or species level, are more rhetorical than real in their cogency. If “survival" is taken in the physical sense, then it is implausible that any given population policy, or the absence of a policy, could pose a direct threat to physical survival of the nation or the human race, which is what the term literally means. While this statement might be arguable for the world as a whole in the long run, it seems defensible in the narrower context of the United States. Thus, it appears unlikely, for instance, that the absence of a population policy would, quite literally, pose a threat in the foreseeable future (30-50 years) to the mere survival of individuals, groups, or the nation. It is possible, however, that certain policies could jeopardize the survival of certain cultural identities. Nor does it seem at all likely that the absence of an American population policy (or even the existence of an implicitly pronatalist policy) could threaten the mere survival of the human species in the foreseeable future. We are not implying here that excessive population growth, or harmful patterns of population distribution and migration, could not have devastating effects on the quality of human life or on the survival of some or many individuals. Nor are we implying that the concern felt by some minority groups for their survival as a cultural group is irrelevant. Rather, our point is directed against loose invocations of the value of survival, particularly when they carry the implication that human existence itself, taken in a physical sense, is necessarily at stake. It is more pertinent to speak of threats to other values, especially those of well-being or general welfare (closely related to the quality of life) than of literal threats to mere survival. At least for the United States, the conditions under which life itself, for all inhabitants, would be directly and clearly threatened by population pressures are so problematic that it becomes almost impossible to give the value of survival a leading place, much less one capable of any kind of clear analysis, agreement, and verification. The other values we have discussed provide a better basis for discussing American population problems. Other Values While the four values already discussed have been at the heart of the Western and American intellectual and legal traditions, others have had an important role also. The value of truth-telling, for example, lies at the heart not only of social relations in general (which requires a presumption of veracity for discourse to go forward), but also of government-citizen relations in particular. Beauty, whether natural or man-made, is another value with an honored place in the tradition, as are aesthetic values on the whole. If values of that kind may be said to be generally recognized (even if more cherished by some individuals than others), there are still others important to particular groups in the society. Minority groups need political power to establish their own rightful claims for power and respect. Cultural styles and values, usually a heritage of immigrant traditions brought over from the "old country," are an important consideration to many ethnic groups, who may want assimilation in American life but not at the total expense of ways of life traditional to their historical heritage. Religious values, of course, represent still another source of group values; "freedom of religion" will usually mean more to a religious group than simply the absence of state coercion. It will also mean public respect and toleration for different religious convictions and a fear of not only legal but also covert cultural encroachments. In the instance of American Indians, tribal values will be prized. For many ethnic, racial, and religious groups, kinship ties and familial values will have a high place, including a special emphasis on children and childbear ing. Though most of these values will be discussed where pertinent below in the analysis of different groups in American society, a few general remarks are in order. It is a safe assumption that while all American subcommunities will have a concern for the four key values of freedom, justice, welfare, and security/survival, the way they interpret and rank these values-how they understand them and which they take to be comparatively most important-may be greatly influenced by the place they give to values special to their own group. Indeed, precisely because they are "Western" or "American," some of the key values may, for some groups, be overshadowed in importance by values more idiosyncratic to them. For that last reason, it is by no means a certainty that an American population policy which managed (somehow) to maximize in some judicious way the four key values would automatically commend itself to all subcommunities. The values any particular group will want protected or maximized might be (and often are) values important only to them. Moreover, even the key values (as indicated above) are subject to a variety of interpretations, and one place this variety shows itself is in the different way in which particular groups understand the value. Species survival, for example, appears a far less important value to American blacks than to many white ecologists; for blacks, group survival and justice will count as far more important in their eyes. The combination of general values shared by all (but not necessarily interpreted in the same way by all), together with other values important to one or another subcommunity, is the source of the greatest difficulty in determining the ethical acceptability of policy proposals. It is a banality to say that individuals look at the world |