“I don’t know about your data concerning world population”
Worldwide TFR according to the CIA factbook is 2.47 children per mother.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html
Given a period of 25 years, this translate to a natural increase in the population of just .6 percent worldwide. 2/3rds of the world’s population growth is coming from natural aging, and people living longer than previous.
If we are going to be concerned about population, then we need to know what the actual facts and numbers are today, not what they were 70 years ago.
“I tell you the population of the United States has gone from 140 million in 1942 to 310,000,000 in 2012. It has more than doubled!”
Over a period of 70 years. At present, America has no natural growth, but is growing entirely through immigration. That will increase the population slowly, but your children are not going to see the population of the US double in their lifespan.
“If you think you can keep your liberty on this escalator”
Given as Americans have already killed 50 million American children - we are already paying the price for their shorsightedness. Do you think people are going to care about confiscating your property, if they have already killed their children?
“The pity is, you will take the liberty of my children with you.”
Quite the opposite. The population controllves have already done that for 50 million of my peers, since abortion was legalized. How is that liberty?
“You have absolutely no grounds whatsoever to imply that I would countenance such a thing in the United States.”
Then what do you propose to keep the population in check in order to enforce your beliefs that the US should stop growing.
“If you have followed my posts in inflexible opposition to abortion you would be aware of my position on this issue.”
Well, unfortunately your ‘inflexible opposition’ doesn’t seem all that inflexible. Arguing we need to keep the population down is exactly the same argument that they are making. Do you not see this?
“Our differences are only tactical. Sooner or later you will have to come to the conclusion that you cannot prop up the economy by pumping up population.”
On the contrary. An economy based upon supply and demand has grown, only where the population has grown, and contracted where the population has contracted.
“Sooner or later that Ponzi scheme must crash.”
And the death of 50 million young americans will ensure that this occurs sooner rather than later. That is what the population controllers have wrought. People are not just mouths to feed, they are the productive engine of a democracy.
“If the population doubled in my lifetime, will you say “enough” when it doubles from 310 million to 620 million?”
Then shoot yourself in the head. Go ahead. You say we have a surplus in population, then kill yourself.
“It will not take another 70 years.”
Right on that. It will take far longer if it ever happens.
“Understand that the free exercise of your property rights and indeed all your liberties are absolutely threatened by overpopulation.”
How so? My liberties are threatened by the population controllers who have killed 50 million Americans over the last 40 years. 1/3rd of all pregnancies in that period. This is ‘liberty’? Looks far more like tyranny.
“I submit that you want to defend those rights at the ballot box after we have sustained a deluge of population growth. Be advised, at that time we simply cannot win. Then you will have your holocaust which we both dread.”
We are already having the holocaust of 50 million dead Americans. Do you not see this?
Those who are concerned about liberty need to defend the right to life of the unborn.
Well, unfortunately your ‘inflexible opposition’ doesn’t seem all that inflexible. Arguing we need to keep the population down is exactly the same argument that they are making. Do you not see this? Arguing that we need to stimulate population growth is exactly the same argument that we should force women to submit to insemination in order to increase the population of the state.
Outrageous? Of course it is. But it is exactly the kind of argument you are using against me. There are many ways of stimulating population growth without forcing women to become pregnant and they include opening the gates to immigration, subsidizing parents with tax deductions for having children, or putting unwed mothers in the baby business with welfare.
You ask:
"Then what do you propose to keep the population in check [I suppose you mean other than abortion] in order to enforce your beliefs that the US should stop growing."
I think you have three reasonable answers before you and not one of them includes abortion.
It is a logical non sequitur to insist that one cannot be in opposition to abortion and at the same time stand in opposition to population growth. The only oxymoron is in your persistence in connecting the two.
When will you say that the population of America is high enough? If you say there is no limit you are advocating an absurdity. If you admit that there is a limit, for example, that you are comfortable with the limit we have now reached, might I conclude from your logic that you have suddenly become at ease with abortion? So long as you mindlessly persist in connecting the two you are in a trap.
Whether the population explosion in America in my lifetime has occurred because of organic growth or because of unsustainable immigration, the baleful effects on our liberty are the same. The baleful effects on the economy of immigrants who cannot cope in a 21st-century environment are not positive for the economy, too many studies have confirmed that. Uneducated, poverty-stricken, illiterate, socialist minded, culturally alien, illegal (or legal) intruders cost more than they contribute.
The absolute number of people competing for space on the highways, for public services, for a hearing in our courts, our fish stocks, our beaches, our waterways, our land-use, all compete against one another for these resources. Inevitably, the government must arbitrate among these competing claims. Inevitably, those free beaches will be denied you and you will lose that liberty, just as you have lost your liberty to freely fish, to hunt, to build on your own land, to visit our national parks, to maintain animals on your property, etc. Do you really think your right to drink soda from a 16 ounce cup is in jeopardy in sparsely populated North Dakota as it is in densely populated New York City? Do you really think in a society of 310 million people we can survive without zoning laws limiting your right to use your property? You just lost liberty. It was not so when I was a youngster with 140 million people.
There is a connection between the press of population and our freedom of action. If we are cheek by jowl with our neighbor inevitably the government will arbitrate the friction created by one rubbing against the other. This is a zero sum game. Inevitably, this is the loss of liberty.
You say:
Those who are concerned about liberty need to defend the right to life of the unborn.
I agree. But I also say: Those who are concerned about liberty need to relax their militant insistence on population growth. Liberty now requires our defense of your concern about abortion. We are rapidly approaching the point at which liberty will require us to rethink our assumptions about population growth -but not about abortion.
