Saturday 1 September 2007

A Modest Proposal 2 - This time it's personal

We are, as you may have heard, doomed- too much food in some places, not enough in others, world population doubling in fifty years, definitely not enough food then, big asteroid hitting Earth- not kill loads of folk with the impact but making vast dust clouds that will result in years of failed harvests across the globe, definitely definitely not enough food then.
Well you don’t have to be Dean Swift to see the answer is staring us in the face-cannibalism, not the ad-hoc dilettante cannibalism the young uns and zombies go in for these days but a properly structured and centrally organised programme of resource management.

Firstly, for efficiency's sake, I propose people are relocated around the globe due to their body mass index, people with a few pounds to lose from the West where food is routinely wasted would be much more sensibly placed in areas where food is scarce and they have to work to subsist, allowing a number of the starving to take their place in the food rich areas of the planet. This is much more practical than sending food to the starving, send the starving to the food- it’s certainly more efficient in food miles.

To prevent the Jack Spratt scenario which would see couples of differing BMI split up, I propose a married couples fat allowance, which would allow you to share your fat designation with a partner.

Once this efficiency relocation has taken place- the International Food Lottery will be instigated, and weekly lucky individuals will be selected for death for the greater good and then cooked and eaten, or if they’re terribly disease ridden or unappetising just killed and disposed of. More food, lowered population- this has to be good.
Smaller prize winners lucky enough to be in possesion of a spare tyre may just have some of their body fat turned into nutritious shakes through liposuction, allowing them both to live and relocate to less food poor climes as their BMI is reduced. This system would have the advantage of not massively altering our lifestyles, forcing us to have fewer babies or addressing the underlying causes of our problems, and so is clearly better than any of those less palatable alternatives.

If we're lucky though, we won't even have to bother with my scheme because a nice big war, handy pandemic and/or dying out will intervene and do the Malthusian dirty work for us before we reach crisis point.
Good luck everyone.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

What's going on, why is it suddenly 1985 again? This is taking the whole retro thing entirely too far...