The Unflinching Pragmatism of the LDS Church

[Scott Lloyd]

14 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

ZGP means Zero Percent Growth. Not a declining population is some area's and not in others.

SEE https://www.google.com/search?q=world+population+in+1970+&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

I was always under the impression ZPG means zero population growth or no more than two children per family. 

[thesometimesaint]

40 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I was always under the impression ZPG means zero population growth or no more than two children per family. 

Actually no more than two children means population decline. We need an average of 2.3 children per family, in the US, just to maintain stasis. But I've never seen a third of a child.

Edited September 23, 2016 by thesometimesaint

[Thinking]

48 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I was always under the impression ZPG means zero population growth or no more than two children per family. 

9 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

Actually no more than two children means population decline. We need an average of 2.3 children per family, in the US, just to maintain stasis. But I've never seen a third of a child.

Although is seems that an average of 2.3 would result in growth, the extra 0.3 accounts for those who don't marry and consequently don't have children or for those children who die before they can reproduce.

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Very imaginative, linear thinking on your part, Analytics.  Unfortunately your analysis fails to get a grip on reality.  For one thing, I did not suggest exponential growth, which is just as damaging as ZPG a la Ehrlich, and we see what his approach means in Japan, Europe, and the USA -- where we cannot even replace ourselves.  The birthrate/fertility rate here in the USA is below replacement, i.e., a couple on average is having less than two children.  This means that the population is diminishing, not remaining stable, and not growing.  I am in favor of dynamic equilibrium in large systems of this kind, and am not even concerned with some growth (based on the carrying capacity which sometimesaint has just mentioned) in areas where it can be environmentally sustained.  But that is not the problem we actually face here in America.

Your horrendous straw-man growth projections in Utah are just silly, and have to do at present with high birthrate in one small part of the overall American population, along with regional population shifts.  The only reason for any growth at all in America is immigration, which I strongly favor, even though it robs developing countries of their best-educated people.

The real problem (which Paul Ehrlich ignored) is that we face major debacles on a Malthusian scale this century in both India and China (and nearby areas), where diminishing precipitation in the Himalayas will leave most of humanity without adequate water for irrigation and drinking -- aside from industrial uses.  The resulting political upheavals will mean destabilization and war.  To think that we can simply sit the situation out is not an option.  The whole planet will suffer.

So it sounds like you do in fact agree with what I said--society should aim for an equilibrium--i.e. zero population growth.

Note that if we do that, the average age of Americans will continue to go up until the mortality rates stabilize and we reach something close to a steady-state equilibrium.  If you want to hold the average age steady before then, there are only two mathematical ways to do so:

1- Increase the mortality rate of old people (assisted suicide?)

2- Continue with the population growing exponentially

My "linear thinking" is simply the inevitable mathematical result of being against zero population growth.  If the world followed the advice of certain religious leaders that say we shouldn't limit the size of our families, exponential growth is in fact what would happen.  Illustrating the long-term implications of these teachings isn't being simplistic on my part.

 

[waveslider]

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

I understand what you are saying in detail, but it doesn't mean that growing exponentially so that the average population doesn't age is the answer. The reason the population bomb in the U.S. didn't explode is because very quickly a large number enlightened people have chosen to be responsible and have small families. People heading Ehrilch's warning and thereby averting a disaster doesn't prove that the warning was wrong.  Elrich was right, and we should collectively pat ourselves on the back for listening to him. To be clear I'm not implying that folks with large families are irresponsible--I'm saying that enough people are having small families that the system as a whole can support the large families for the folks that want them.  Further, they should be grateful to those large families--they supply the labor force that the country needs.

I understand in detail the demographic strain that an aging population is putting on Social Security.  It's partly caused by people having fewer kids, but is also caused by people living longer.  And the problem is exasperated by the high cost in medical expenses we pay in order to keep old people living longer. 

The cultural tradition of white, upper-middle class Europeans is not in any danger of being put on the endangered species list in the foreseeable future.   

Another example to consider is China.  China's one-child per family policy was drastic and is causing an incredible amount of strain on a population there that is aging very rapidly.  However, that doesn't mean that the policy was a bad one, and it certainly doesn't mean that the entire tradition of Chinese culture will die out and not be replaced.  What the policy does mean is that China averted trying to be now feeding 2 billion people, with a population quickly racing towards 4 billion and then 8 billion and then 16 billion, etc.  Dealing with an old population in China is a painful, difficult thing, but that doesn't mean that it is worse than the alternative.

Continuously having large families so that we always have a population that is young on average isn't the long-term answer.  It can't be.  In 1960, the U.S. growth rate was doubling every 35 years or so.  If we kept on growing at that rate there would still be a lot of pressure on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid because of increasing longevity, but let's assume we keep on having kids at that rate so that there is always a large and growing group of workers to pay taxes into Social Security etc.

If we plugged into that rate again, what would happen?  Just to put it into perspective, there are about 39 million people in California and 3 million people in Utah.  What's the "right" number of people for Utah?  Is there an upper-bound on how many people can live there with a reasonably comfortable standard of living?

Year       Utah Population
2016               3,000,000
2051               6,000,000
2086             12,000,000
2121             24,000,000
2156             48,000,000
2191             96,000,000
2268           192,000,000
2303           384,000,000

So if we went by the guideline that every family should have four kids on average, then in 100 years there will be more people in Utah than are now in California, and by the time Salt Lake City is as old as Boston, there will be more people in Utah than currently exist in the entire United States.  If we grow like that then the Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets could very well be mostly melted away, which implies that almost all of Florida will be under water, along with most of the major cities on our eastern seaboard.  So not only will we have hundreds of millions of native Utahns to deal with, if we get our share of people that are displaced from elsewhere in America, we might have hundreds of millions of them, too.

But say technology keeps up and we can figure out how use Utah's limited resources to feed 384 million people.  Will Utah be able to feed 800 million in another 40 years?  1.6 billion 40 years after that?  3.2 billion?  6.4 billion?

If we tried to keep the average age very young so that there wouldn't be strains on our social systems due to an aging population, that is what will happen to the population of Utah, and it wouldn't stop until we either chose to stop or nature uses war, disease, and starvation to make the choice for us.  Stopping is painful, but doing it now on our own terms is infinitely better than the alternative.

Growing exponentially so that the average population doesn't age is not the answer.  It can't be. 

The answer is enough people choosing to have small families--ideally across all cultures--so that the total population is at a sustainable level with a high quality of living for all.  Zero population is in fact the answer, my friend.

 

The problems don't lie in the population near as much as it does with the systems of economy that we are using. Socialism always ends up a failure, as illustrated by your concerns over our own social programs. If we broke away from crony capitalism (Governmental regulations only allowing select corporations to be allowed to sell their goods and services, ousting others from being allowed to compete a true free market) there wouldn't be as many problems with feeding the masses. Instead of having to go to the grocery store and get products that have been shipped from far away places, using too many resources to do so, stripping farm land of it's healthy soil by depletion of nutrients in our current corporate farming techniques designed solely for a higher profit at the expense of healthiness, and creating less healthy foods by having to introduce additives to foods to make them last the time it takes for the journey and shelf life, we could instead think about healthy alternatives. If we deregulated foods we could actually utilize smaller, local farms. We wouldn't need to pasteurize milk for instance if we were getting it fresh from the farmer who just milked his cow a few hours earlier. We wouldn't need to eat as much processed food if we were getting organic food from our local farmers. If we lived in a city, were there were no farms, we could think about creating a small aquaponics systems that take up little space and produce plenty of food, at a cheap price, if done correctly.

As far as the ice melting, that is a complete and utter lie. Have you checked the amounts of ice recently? There is definitely no need to worry about it melting anytime soon! Every single prediction of Global Warming, for the past 18 years, has failed! This is definitely not the, "hottest year ever, "as they claimed it would be when they were only going off of the hot temperatures that occur during El Nino years, in a normal cycle like this past one was, but they didn't take into account that half a year's warmth is balanced out by the other half of the year. Global temperature is dropping fast, very fast! Arctic Ice has already started growing faster than normal... a whole month earlier than normal, as we go into the Winter side of things. Florida won't be under water from melted ice. If you want, you can get caught up really fast here: https://www.youtube.com/user/MyanmarLiving/videos There are plenty of source materials cited all throughout to get you pointed in the right direction as to the real data, instead of the politically, and paid off science grant money that won't allow truly open science to be done, skewing the data in a false narrative designed to regulate everyone over things like cow farts and carbon emissions, in order to get higher taxes and exert more control over everyone by limiting food, travel and energy.

This world has plenty for everyone, if we all decide to change how things are done, instead of falling for all the fear tactics in place to get us to turn over our power to the few elite, as they try to slowly kill off the, "useless," people with more abortions, more chemicals, higher pharmaceutical medicines that often times don't even work as well as some Herbs, natural medicines and a healthier diet, higher medical costs as a result of ever more and more governmental regulations, more chemicals being used in our environment in an effort to out do nature, etc..

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I was always under the impression ZPG means zero population growth or no more than two children per family. 

I would add that it mean no more than two kids per family on average.  Ideally, people who don't want kids and wouldn't want to be parents will have fewer than two, and people that do want to have kids and would make good parents would have more than two.  As long as there is a long-term equilibrium, we won't need to rely on plagues, wars, and starvation to keep the population under control.  Hopefully this balanced can be achieved by people living their own lives the way they want without heavy handed government interference.  Linking this to the OP, I would suggest the church better emphasize that family size is a personal choice, and there is nothing wrong with choosing to have a smaller family if that's what you think is right for you.

[Analytics]

11 minutes ago, waveslider said:

The problems don't lie in the population near as much as it does with the systems of economy that we are using. Socialism always ends up a failure, as illustrated by your concerns over our own social programs. If we broke away from crony capitalism (Governmental regulations only allowing select corporations to be allowed to sell their goods and services, ousting others from being allowed to compete a true free market) there wouldn't be as many problems with feeding the masses. Instead of having to go to the grocery store and get products that have been shipped from far away places, using too many resources to do so, stripping farm land of it's healthy soil by depletion of nutrients in our current corporate farming techniques designed solely for a higher profit at the expense of healthiness, and creating less healthy foods by having to introduce additives to foods to make them last the time it takes for the journey and shelf life, we could instead think about healthy alternatives. If we deregulated foods we could actually utilize smaller, local farms. We wouldn't need to pasteurize milk for instance if we were getting it fresh from the farmer who just milked his cow a few hours earlier. We wouldn't need to eat as much processed food if we were getting organic food from our local farmers. If we lived in a city, were there were no farms, we could think about creating a small aquaponics systems that take up little space and produce plenty of food, at a cheap price, if done correctly.

As far as the ice melting, that is a complete and utter lie. Have you checked the amounts of ice recently? There is definitely no need to worry about it melting anytime soon! Every single prediction of Global Warming, for the past 18 years, has failed! This is definitely not the, "hottest year ever, "as they claimed it would be when they were only going off of the hot temperatures that occur during El Nino years, in a normal cycle like this past one was, but they didn't take into account that half a year's warmth is balanced out by the other half of the year. Global temperature is dropping fast, very fast! Arctic Ice has already started growing faster than normal... a whole month earlier than normal, as we go into the Winter side of things. Florida won't be under water from melted ice. If you want, you can get caught up really fast here: https://www.youtube.com/user/MyanmarLiving/videos There are plenty of source materials cited all throughout to get you pointed in the right direction as to the real data, instead of the politically, and paid off science grant money that won't allow truly open science to be done, skewing the data in a false narrative designed to regulate everyone over things like cow farts and carbon emissions, in order to get higher taxes and exert more control over everyone by limiting food, travel and energy.

This world has plenty for everyone, if we all decide to change how things are done, instead of falling for all the fear tactics in place to get us to turn over our power to the few elite, as they try to slowly kill off the, "useless," people with more abortions, more chemicals, higher pharmaceutical medicines that often times don't even work as well as some Herbs, natural medicines and a healthier diet, higher medical costs as a result of ever more and more governmental regulations, more chemicals being used in our environment in an effort to out do nature, etc..

I agree with you regarding the need to be less materialistic, and I appreciate your desire for locally grown food.  However, that is a luxury that not everybody can necessarily afford.  The reason we have a food system based on mass production isn't socialism--it is capitalism and free markets.  You can grow a lot more food for a lot more money if you mass produce it.  Our ability to increase crop yields do to the industrialization is the main reason starvation is going down despite population going up. 

And regardless of our disagreements on this, it doesn't change the fact that we need to reach a stable population.  If everybody had ten acres and could happily live on that, if they have on average four kids, then each generation would have a family farm half the size of that of their parents.  That can't go on forever.

Regarding global warming, you really ought to look at reputable sources.

[Thinking]

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Is there an upper-bound on how many people can live there with a reasonably comfortable standard of living?

Logistic Function

Population growth mimics an exponential pattern initially, but with limited space, resources and other restrictive factors, it eventually slows.

[bcuzbcuz]

On 22 September 2016 at 4:55 PM, smac97 said:

 

 

So here's a question: Are there other widespread social issues which you think the Church should be addressing (or addressing with greater emphasis)?  

 

Thanks,

-Smac

How about the gender gap in wages? Should women, just because they are women, be paid 75% of man's wage for doing the same job? Statistics from the US and Europe show that women, in all the major industrial nations, receive remarkablely less pay than men when doing the exact same job with the exact same qualifications. 

Is there a logical reason that such an ijustice exists? Does this make sense as a method to discourage women from leaving the home and placing themselves in the job market? Does this also make sense for women who, because of circumstances, must put themselves back in the work force?

[Scott Lloyd]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

I would add that it mean no more than two kids per family on average.  Ideally, people who don't want kids and wouldn't want to be parents will have fewer than two, and people that do want to have kids and would make good parents would have more than two.  As long as there is a long-term equilibrium, we won't need to rely on plagues, wars, and starvation to keep the population under control.  Hopefully this balanced can be achieved by people living their own lives the way they want without heavy handed government interference.  Linking this to the OP, I would suggest the church better emphasize that family size is a personal choice, and there is nothing wrong with choosing to have a smaller family if that's what you think is right for you.

I would expect and hope that the Church of Jesus Christ is going to continue to promulgate the doctrines of salvation, exaltation an eternal families without succumbing to influence from trendy politicians, Malthusians or other pressure groups. 

[bcuzbcuz]

21 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I would expect and hope that the Church of Jesus Christ is going to continue to promulgate the doctrines of salvation, exaltation an eternal families without succumbing to influence from trendy politicians, Malthusians or other pressure groups. 

Maltusians? when was the last time you a political opinion that was based on Malthusian ideology?

[Calm]

31 minutes ago, bcuzbcuz said:

 receive remarkablely less pay than men when doing the exact same job with the exact same qualifications. 

With the exact same job history as well?  (I know that some difference still remains, but it tends to be significantly diminished in some areas when time working/experience gets taken into account)

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, Thinking said:

Logistic Function

Population growth mimics an exponential pattern initially, but with limited space, resources and other restrictive factors, it eventually slows.

Exactly--exponential growth can't be sustained--that is my point.  The question is what's going to cause the growth to stop?  War? Disease?  Starvation?  Will we exhaust the resources we relied on to grow and then face a massive decline in population as we return to a sustainable level?  Will we reach a population that is sustainable, but at a level with a sub-optimal quality of life?  Or will we make choices towards living in a sustainable way and feel good about ourselves for doing it?  That last option is the best for me.

[Scott Lloyd]

6 minutes ago, bcuzbcuz said:

Maltusians? when was the last time you a political opinion that was based on Malthusian ideology?

Your question is missing a verb. 

In short, I'm saying the Church ought not be diluting doctrine by reason of secular politics, be they based on Malthusian theory or something else. 

[Rivers]

4 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I find male genital mutilation pretty unpalatable, yet my (American) culture says otherwise. 

Male circumcision is done for medical reasons.  

http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/circumcision/basics/why-its-done/prc-20013585

[Scott Lloyd]

16 hours ago, Rivers said:

Male circumcision is done for medical reasons.  

http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/circumcision/basics/why-its-done/prc-20013585

Male circumcision for many years has been a cure in search of a problem. 

Studies that purport to show benefits have been problematical and relate to maladies that are so uncommon in the first place (penile cancer in old age, urinary tract infection) that they do not justify the routine performance of elective surgery on those who are too young and helpless to give any consent at all, much less informed consent. 

Claims about prevention of STDs in Africa ignore the relatively low incidence in European nations where circumcision has been uncommon for many years.

 

Edited September 24, 2016 by Scott Lloyd

[Analytics]

32 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I would expect and hope that the Church of Jesus Christ is going to continue to promulgate the doctrines of salvation, exaltation an eternal families without succumbing to influence from trendy politicians, Malthusians or other pressure groups. 

Robert F. Smith might say that since it is the non-Mormon Americans that have sub-replacement fertility rates, secular non-Mormons are going to go extinct, being replaced by Mormons, Catholics, and Muslims.  Even if the cultures that believe in having large families take over the world and the others die out, the impossibility of sustained exponential growth will remain a mathematical fact.

[waveslider]

2 hours ago, Analytics said:

I agree with you regarding the need to be less materialistic, and I appreciate your desire for locally grown food.  However, that is a luxury that not everybody can necessarily afford.  The reason we have a food system based on mass production isn't socialism--it is capitalism and free markets.  You can grow a lot more food for a lot more money if you mass produce it.  Our ability to increase crop yields do to the industrialization is the main reason starvation is going down despite population going up. 

And regardless of our disagreements on this, it doesn't change the fact that we need to reach a stable population.  If everybody had ten acres and could happily live on that, if they have on average four kids, then each generation would have a family farm half the size of that of their parents.  That can't go on forever.

Regarding global warming, you really ought to look at reputable sources.

It isn't capitalism. It is only called that. Government regulates things too much for a true free market. It is crony capitalism that has caused this. It is the fact that a corporation is considered a person, legally speaking, so no one is held accountable. It is the very nature for a corporation to constantly increase it's bottom line, and then accordingly increase it's growth in order for it to not lose all it's income in taxes. A truly free market would put these corporations out of business, if it were only the consumers who wanted things and therefore could choose who grows big and who doesn't.

Everyone doesn't need ten acres to produce their own food. Aquaponics can produce plenty of food for a large family off of very little space. If instead of a back lawn, it was filled with an Aquaponic system, for the price of fish food a person could produce so much food that he would have to give it away to his neighbors, or perhaps sell it.

As far as reputable sources, you mean the ones that are cited all over the place from these videos? or the ones by all the scientists that don't want to lose their government funding of their research if they show the real data? .... who's predictions are so off that if they were stock brokers they would have been fired by everyone 18 years ago for failing to predict one correct prediction?

Edited September 23, 2016 by waveslider
mispellings

[Gray]

9 minutes ago, waveslider said:

As far as reputable sources, you mean the ones that are cited all over the place from these videos? or the ones by all the scientists that don't want to lose their government funding of their research if they show the real data? .... who's predictions are so off that if they were stock brokers they would have been fired by everyone 18 years ago for failing to predict one correct prediction?

Every debunked purveyor of crank science has a conspiracy theory for why their research is being suppressed. 

[waveslider]

56 minutes ago, bcuzbcuz said:

How about the gender gap in wages? Should women, just because they are women, be paid 75% of man's wage for doing the same job? Statistics from the US and Europe show that women, in all the major industrial nations, receive remarkablely less pay than men when doing the exact same job with the exact same qualifications. 

These statistics are due to a fudged p-curve. They don't reflect true data, unless you work for the U.S. government, or for a Democratic person's campaign. The same job, as in say a doctor, doesn't have the same pay rate. A family practitioner gets paid far less than that of a neurosurgeon. The fact that is missing here is that most women doctors opt for being a family practitioner or something because they are more secure in not being liable to a lawsuit, and can close easier for maternity leave, etc.. The same goes for any higher risk job. Most women choose the safer, less paying job and most men choose the higher paying, and more risky job. The actual pay for the same jobs for both men and women are not skewed like they want people to think as they push political agendas.

[waveslider]

29 minutes ago, Gray said:

Every debunked purveyor of crank science has a conspiracy theory for why their research is being suppressed. 

Well, you can check the amount of ice at our poles for yourself, if you want. The fact is it isn't melting like everyone keeps telling us it is: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ https://sunshinehours.net/category/antarctic-sea-ice/ This is pretty impressive since it is supposed to be the, "Warmest year ever.": http://www.techinsider.io/warmest-year-ever-recorded-global-warming-2016-7

 Which is debunked?

Edited September 23, 2016 by waveslider
posted wrong link

[The Nehor]

Deleted as mean. In a bad mood due to bad news and should probably not be posting.

Edited September 23, 2016 by The Nehor

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

So it sounds like you do in fact agree with what I said--society should aim for an equilibrium--i.e. zero population growth.

Note that if we do that, the average age of Americans will continue to go up until the mortality rates stabilize and we reach something close to a steady-state equilibrium.  If you want to hold the average age steady before then, there are only two mathematical ways to do so:

1- Increase the mortality rate of old people (assisted suicide?)

2- Continue with the population growing exponentially

My "linear thinking" is simply the inevitable mathematical result of being against zero population growth.  If the world followed the advice of certain religious leaders that say we shouldn't limit the size of our families, exponential growth is in fact what would happen.  Illustrating the long-term implications of these teachings isn't being simplistic on my part.

You still seem not to get it, Analytics, and are still living in the pretend-world of Dr Ehrlich.  His analysis only meant that well-educated Westerners would stop procreating, and he made a big show of his vasectomy, to no ultimate advantage or improvement in Western society.  Indeed, you have deliberately failed to respond to my comments on low fertility in the West (which spells economic disaster), immigration, and the real population bomb elsewhere.  What we have in America is not dynamic equilibrium, but even less than ZPG -- as we also see in Europe and Japan.  Countries can become dysfunctional under those conditions.

Instead, you imply that religious leaders (presumably including Mormon leaders) recommend exponential growth of families, as though every country in the world is the same in this respect as the Philippines.  That is nonsense, and there is no reason to foresee exponential growth of the American, Japanese, or European populations.  Italians, for example, couldn't care less what Roman Catholic doctrine says about birth control and abortion.  You need to go back to the drawing board and come up with a more realistic and regionalized analysis.

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, waveslider said:

Well, you can check the amount of ice at our poles for yourself, if you want. The fact is it isn't melting like everyone keeps telling us it is: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ https://sunshinehours.net/category/antarctic-sea-ice/ This is pretty impressive since it is supposed to be the, "Warmest year ever.": http://www.techinsider.io/warmest-year-ever-recorded-global-warming-2016-7

 Which is debunked?

Could you clarify your point?  Do you think those links prove that "it isn't melting like everyone keeps telling us it is", or are they examples of the debunked lies that everyone keeps telling us?

Edited September 23, 2016 by Analytics

[Analytics]

18 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You still seem not to get it, Analytics, and are still living in the pretend-world of Dr Ehrlich.  His analysis only meant that well-educated Westerners would stop procreating, and he made a big show of his vasectomy, to no ultimate advantage or improvement in Western society.  Indeed, you have deliberately failed to respond to my comments on low fertility in the West (which spells economic disaster), immigration, and the real population bomb elsewhere.  What we have in America is not dynamic equilibrium, but even less than ZPG -- as we also see in Europe and Japan.  Countries can become dysfunctional under those conditions.

Instead, you imply that religious leaders (presumably including Mormon leaders) recommend exponential growth of families, as though every country in the world is the same in this respect as the Philippines.  That is nonsense, and there is no reason to foresee exponential growth of the American, Japanese, or European populations.  Italians, for example, couldn't care less what Roman Catholic doctrine says about birth control and abortion.  You need to go back to the drawing board and come up with a more realistic and regionalized analysis.

It's quite clear that you have no clue about what I do and do not get. All I've argued is that the world ought to get to a point where it is in long-term equilibrium with the environment.   Low fertility in the West, immigration, real population bombs elsewhere, less than ZPG in some populations, immigration, the Philippines, America, Japan, the economics of aging populations, whether Catholics listen to the pope, and Dr. Ehrlich's vasectomy have no bearing on that fact.

The LDS Church has historically taught that couples should get married young, start having kids young, and have large families.  The general concept was that "multiply and replenish the earth" was the first commandment and means we should all have as many children as we can, without regard to the economic challenges of large families.  The Church has backed away from that position, and a growing percentage of Mormons are disregarding this advice anyway.  

All I'm saying is that in terms of having "unflinching pragmatism," the church should teach that how many children you have is a personal matter, and there is nothing wrong with limiting your particular family to 2 kids or fewer if that's what you think is best.  Yes, if too many people have very small families that leads to other economic problems.  But as general advice, 2 or 3 kids is a decent family size, and in general there is nothing wrong with some families having more and others having less, just as long as overall it stays in balance.  Do you disagree with that advice?