At 04:03 PM 6/23/2002 -0400, Rick Castello wrote: > >... > If you think about it, it would only make sense- if they > don't die as quickly, high birth rates would quickly lead to > overcrowding and poor conditions. I haven't yet seen any spot > in the books where Dragaerans live in squalor- even Teckla. > > It's only the short-lived Easterners who live like that. > > Methinks this is just another way that SB has put excellent > thought into the society and balance of Dragaera at large, > without having to hit us over the head with it. :) They also have good contraceptive sorcery (munged by Vlad into thinking that Dragaerans can only conceive voluntarily). Access to reliable contraceptives tends to be correlated with a lower birth rate, increased greater gender equality, etc. Hmm... you'd think Vlad would have figured out about the whole contraceptive sorcery thing during his marriage to Cawti. (Before that, he was mostly dealing with Dragaeran prostitutes, IIRC, and they're not interfertile with Easterners anyway.) Unless they weren't using it, or Cawti was handling that end of things (at least for a while) and Vlad was just being sort of clueless. Mike