DEMOCIDE

Scully documents the fact that 7.3% of the world's people have been murdered by their own governments during the 20th century - vs. 8.9%, 4.7%, and 3.7% for the 13th, 17th, and 19th centuries respectively. These numbers do not include deaths by war or by abortion.

Nor have these murders been carried out by only a few evil governments with which we are all familiar. He lists 74 countries that have conducted democides during the 20th century, including 19 communist countries and - among noncommunist countries - 19 in Africa, 15 in Latin America, 13 in Asia and the Middle East, and 8 in Europe.

Scully thinks that democide will diminish as governments realize people are more valuable alive than dead. He supports this hypothesis with graphs of democide vs. productivity. Worldwide, however, the century by century decline in democide has been sharply reversed during the 20th century - a century of rising per capita productivity.

The lesson is that governments do not hesitate to kill their own people when those in control decide that this is in their personal interests. We like to believe that the United States is different (except for occasional small incidents - which have been rising in frequency recently), but world energy rationing is a planet-wide program. We cannot expect its morals and objectives to be any better than the the lowest common denominator of the many governments involved - most of which have engaged in democide during the 20th century.

Scully concludes that democide is associated with about a 20% loss of national wealth and is the result of dominant group and authoritarian rule. A 20% loss - not personally affecting the rulers - is a small price to pay for power. Moreover, world energy rationing is obviously a program associated with authoritarian rule - on an international scale.

As always, our technology coexists with the character of man - and has no meaning separate from its effects upon mankind. We build for fun and for usually noble reasons, but we must never forget to "watch our backs.'' The ignoble characteristics of man are always there.

It is wrong to knowingly kill a child every 12 seconds from malaria by banning the use of DDT as we are doing now. It is even worse to increase this killing by orders of magnitude through energy rationing.