Soylent Green is specifically in short supply, so there isn't enough for a standard ration per person. Also, Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow are still in circulation, so we can assume at best that SG isn't necessarily intended for more than a third of the diet at most.
Given the overpopulation problem, I think it's safe to assume that population is in decline, so the death rate is higher than the birth rate, so a long-term assumption based on life expectancy isn't the right calculation to make. Soylent Green isn't a sustainable product, it's a luxury product predicated on the use of a non-renewable resource pool while still available in large numbers.
I'm assuming a declining population as well. Of course, in society with tight population control, it's clear that soylent green is mostly made of aborted babies. (Bet you wish I hadn't mentioned that...)
I don't believe the population is declining, as discussed below.
I don't agree with your conclusion because aborted foetuses are tiny things, but let's think about the worst-case scenario:
It's clearly unproductive to actively farm babies, given the mothers' extra nutritional needs, but let us assume that we are dealing only with women who are getting pregnant anyway.
In the best case all fertile women of childbearing age (say, 1/3 of the population) are constantly pregnant. Given the exponential growth in foetal weight, it will be most productive to process them at birth, when they might weigh an average of 3kg, and perhaps each woman will produce once such baby per year (especially since she has to produce some living offspring who don't enter into this analysis). That represents, then, about 800g of meat per person per year. In my analysis above you can also expect to eat 800g of corpse per year.
Manifestly, of course, not all women we see in Soylent Green are pregnant, nor anything like it, and if babies are routinely taken away at birth there is no mention of it.
Hence I'm glad to observe that no, Soylent Green is not mostly made of aborted babies. Phew.
If I put this in a fanzine will anyone ever speak to me again? :-)
Everything's in short supply; I don't remember Green being in unusually short supply (on the days when it is available at all), and Wikipedia sa "It is much more nutritious and palatable than the red and yellow varieties". But my analysis suggests it forms only 1/240 of the diet - far less then your 1/3.
Also, I don't believe their population is declining. Part of the point, surely, is that things just keep getting worse - that they have got to the situation depicted because their population keeps growing.
Furthermore you would need a massive excess of death over birth to get Soylent Green available one day in 5, or one day in 3. For each person who lives 1/4 on Soylent Green, say, one other person has to die every 960 days. Their population problem would be rapidly resolving itself if that was the case.
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Given the overpopulation problem, I think it's safe to assume that population is in decline, so the death rate is higher than the birth rate, so a long-term assumption based on life expectancy isn't the right calculation to make. Soylent Green isn't a sustainable product, it's a luxury product predicated on the use of a non-renewable resource pool while still available in large numbers.
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I don't agree with your conclusion because aborted foetuses are tiny things, but let's think about the worst-case scenario:
It's clearly unproductive to actively farm babies, given the mothers' extra nutritional needs, but let us assume that we are dealing only with women who are getting pregnant anyway.
In the best case all fertile women of childbearing age (say, 1/3 of the population) are constantly pregnant. Given the exponential growth in foetal weight, it will be most productive to process them at birth, when they might weigh an average of 3kg, and perhaps each woman will produce once such baby per year (especially since she has to produce some living offspring who don't enter into this analysis). That represents, then, about 800g of meat per person per year. In my analysis above you can also expect to eat 800g of corpse per year.
Manifestly, of course, not all women we see in Soylent Green are pregnant, nor anything like it, and if babies are routinely taken away at birth there is no mention of it.
Hence I'm glad to observe that no, Soylent Green is not mostly made of aborted babies. Phew.
If I put this in a fanzine will anyone ever speak to me again? :-)
(no subject)
Also, I don't believe their population is declining. Part of the point, surely, is that things just keep getting worse - that they have got to the situation depicted because their population keeps growing.
Furthermore you would need a massive excess of death over birth to get Soylent Green available one day in 5, or one day in 3. For each person who lives 1/4 on Soylent Green, say, one other person has to die every 960 days. Their population problem would be rapidly resolving itself if that was the case.