...there is only one left. Even that one will be unhappy.
__________________________________________
There was a column in the late 40s by Westbrook Pegler that I cannot find online. The following is a paraphrase from memory:
It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining and the birds were singing as the last two people on Earth sat down to breakfast.
He was a blue-eyed blond without freckles and she was a blue-eyed blonde with freckles.
That morning, he decided he could stand the sight of her freckles no longer. So he shot her.
Then he drank the coffee she had poisoned.
It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining and the birds were singing and there were no people.
________________________________________________
Westbrook is nearly cancelled on the Internet. If anyone can find a copy of that column, I’d appreciate it.
“The sun was shining and the birds were singing and there were no people.”
I have read from numerous liberals and one that I actually know that, wouldn’t it be wonderful if half the world’s human population died? Of course, they mean the little people, not themselves. But what they don’t realize is, the lifestyles we live today depend on the consumption of billions of buyers. Food is dirt cheap because it is worth raising and slaughtering, among other things, 12 million chickens per day, 360 days per year. It is worth fracking oil and building huge refineries making gasoline probably as cheap as it was fifty years ago in real terms. It is worth building entire manufacturing plants to make iPhones and laptops that anyone can buy.
Can you imagine what these things would cost if they suddenly had only half the market they have now? It wouldn’t be twice the price. It would be an exponential. Also, the consumption of that huge market drives, directly or indirectly, probably two thirds of our economy.
Cut the world’s population in half and we would all suffer. But these people see a world where they never have to wait in a line and never have to see homeless people, because, obviously, those were in the half that died. Ah, yes, the joy of driving your BMW down a city street with no other traffic; just a few tumbleweeds.