Book discussion: The Next 100 Years by George Friedman

I just finished listening to (available in print also) a book called "The Next 100 Years" by George Friedman, and I'd like to share a few early thoughts I extrapolated from this book. The book discusses likely events of the geopolitical variety in the next 100 years with some great understanding about the previous centuries, and the cycles that have resulted. I like the book for a few reasons. First, there is no political bias which may taint the information. Second, there is plenty of background info to support his future casting. Third, it helped me to understand the long term consequence of issues and concerns and which ones are likely to be constantly up front and which are momentary flashes that will pass by. Fourth, I now understand better why the US is always "at war" somewhere in the world, yet never seems to finish a war with the result that our leadership spout in their rhetoric. Fifth, my feeling that neither the left, nor the right have the correct answers and both are fraught with biases that while important to their base, don't make likely benefits for the majority of the US citizenry.

Something that I came to hypothesize after listening to the book and thinking about the economic situations that have created legislation that we deal with today, I came away with a hopeful vision of abortion becoming a thing of the past when the amount of workers needed will exceed the global supply of them to satisfy the consumption demand. As with immigration, abortion I believe will have a radically different view when people are needed to fill jobs, and there are financial incentives to carry babies to term, even if they don't intend to keep or raise it. In the next 20-30 years, as the need for workers falls below the economic level of consumption, future workers will prized higher than the costs associated with abortion. Essentially, by re-framing this "social" issue as an economic one, I believe much more traction can be had in the future as the nature of our population and geopolitics adjusts.

While we certainly don't have 20-30 years to wait for abortion to vanish, I'm of the mind that trying to ban it is futile in the efforts that have been, are currently, and continue to be expended to outlaw the practice. While we wait for the economic opportunity to overturn Row V Wade, I believe we can work at a much more pragmatic and substantive grassroots level that will minimize the number of abortions. What if we were to focus on preventing unwanted or unplanned pregnancies to begin with. I know contraception and premarital sex are taboos, but just turning our backs on it hasn't prevented it from happening. What about making adoption a more attractive and simple (as opposed to too easy) process that benefits both the mother and adoptive parents. 

Of course there are larger issues such as emotional health, economic incentives, and social issues that complicate the issue, but those will always be messy. For instance, how we do we craft policies that encourage abstinence, protected sex, planning and preparation of pregnancy, proper health for both parents before, during and after the pregnancy, and post delivery options if the child staying with the biological mother is not best or desired. Of course we need to do all this without bankrupting our medical system, encouraging women to become baby factories for income or welfare, encouraging out-of-wedlock pregnancies, abortions, reducing the amount of babies born to unfit mothers (quite controversial I know), or a myriad of other issues that are natural consequences of economic incentives to polices. Perhaps the best policy is to not have a national one. This is one of many that could be better handled by the states(?)

Finally, I believe we need to be PRO-CHOICE! Every female and male needs to have the right to choose to abstain from sex or have protected sex, prevent the pregnancy before conception, to seek quality prenatal care, and to choose adoption that leaves the biological mother feeling complete as another person or couple starts their life with the baby as a family.

Please feel free to share your thoughts in a constructive manner that may enlighten or guide these viewpoints. As these are my preliminary thoughts based on my years of exposure to the teachings, politics, and various viewpoints, I don't expect them to convey as complete or thorough declarations; more as starting points for discussion and possibly action.