Posted on 11/26/2006 3:48:57 PM PST by RWR8189
Fertility rates around the world are dropping for a variety of complex reasons. While population itself continues to increase - the United States, for instance, recently passed the 300 million mark - this is the product of waning demographic momentum. The rate of increase is slowing, and, by 2080, world population will peak somewhere in the vicinity of nine billion before contracting.
Which leads us to the next question: Is population contraction a bad thing?
Some think not. There is a school of thought that argues that smaller populations are good. Population-control proponents claim variously that:
We do not have the food to sustain higher populations.
Our planet already suffers from overcrowding.
The environmental impact of increased populations will bring catastrophe either through pollution or consumption of finite natural resources.
Decreased population will lead to higher wages and a better quality of life as available supplies exceed reduced demands.
These arguments seem reasonable at first, but do not withstand scrutiny.
Let's start with food. The worry about mass starvation is a remnant of Paul Ehrlich's 1968 sensation The Population Bomb. Ehrlich wrote that, in the face of expanding populations, "the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."
As Ehrlich himself admits, this prediction proved faulty. Instead, the availability of food has greatly increased, even with growing population. Demographer Philip Longman notes that, between 1980 and 2001, the price of food declined by 53 percent. Famine, observes Longman, has become "a political problem - a matter of fair distribution, not of inadequate supply."
How did this happen? The Danish economist Ester Boserup upended the classical Malthusian model of agriculture in 1965 by proposing that population increase fosters agricultural innovation, which, in turn, spurs leaps in production. Her theories have been borne out.
What about overcrowding? Everywhere you go today, you find traffic jams and sprawl, with people packed into condominiums and crowded malls. But this is a problem of density, not population. There's plenty of land available out there. The problem is that people who used to live in the countryside have relocated to cities: There are fewer people living in the Great Plains today than there were in the 1920s.
Environmental concerns are more interesting. However, such end-of-the-world warnings are not new. In the 1970s, many scientists were concerned about a new Ice Age. But leave aside global warming, on which science is conflicted, and take the other concern principally cited by environmentalists: that the Earth has a finite supply of resources that we shall surely soon deplete.
This, too, is an argument we have heard before. As Massimo Livi-Bacci explains in his Concise History of World Population, more than 100 years ago, economists "feared that coal supplies would be used up, and about 30 years ago the Club of Rome made similar predictions regarding other raw materials." Instead, markets and human innovation stepped in to provide greater efficiency.
For instance, in the America of 1850, you needed an average of 4.6 tons of petroleum equivalent to produce $1,000 of goods and services. By 1950, you needed only 1.8 tons, and, by 1978, 1.5 tons. Markets are exceptional engines of conservation.
Which leaves us with the economy. In 1971, Simon Smith Kuznets won the Nobel Prize in economics for his theory of "tested knowledge." As Kuznets explained: "More population means more creators and producers, both of goods along established production patterns and of new knowledge and inventions."
Kuznets was codifying what others had noticed before. Adam Smith remarked that "the most decisive mark of the prosperity of any country is the increase of the number of its inhabitants." As Livi-Bacci observes, "All things being equal, population increase leads to increased per capita production."
So the proposed "benefits" of population decline are, at the very least, suspect.
On the other hand, there are worrying potential costs of population decline. Of course, this worry is theoretical because we've never seen population decline on the massive scale that's coming our way. Or rather, we've never seen it in the modern world. There are, however, two historical examples.
Between 400 B.C. and the birth of Jesus, world population increased from about 153 million to 252 million. For the next 200 years, growth slowed almost to a halt. Then, between A.D. 200 and 600, population shrank from 257 million to 208 million. It took 400 more years for the population to recover to the level it had attained in Jesus' time.
The other drop in population occurred between 1340 and 1400, when the Black Death ravaged the world. Global population fell from 442 million to 375 million. Neither of these moments were particularly pleasant periods in human history.
Or, as Mark Steyn notes in America Alone, "There is no precedent in human history for economic growth on declining human capital."
It is impossible to predict with certainty the side effects of population decline. But there is good reason to believe it will be bad for us. Innovation will suffer as the demand for nearly everything (save health care) slackens. The welfare state is unsustainable in a contracting, top-heavy population. And instead of producing windfalls of excess supply, economies will probably contract. As Livi-Bacci observes, "Historically, areas depopulated or in the process of losing population have almost always been characterized by backward economies."
And then there is the question of national character. As the Asia Times noted recently with respect to the effect population decline is having on Europe: "A people without progeny will not accept a single military casualty. If this generation is the last, there will be no children for whom to sacrifice. Today's Europeans value their distractions and amusements more than they do prospective children."
The supposed benefits of population decline are a mirage. The real question is whether falling populations will lead Western civilization to something like the fall of Rome.
One Last Thing |
This is the third article in a Jonathan Last series on population decline. Other articles in the series:
"The Population Contraction" (May 21): http://go.philly.com/last1
"Birthrate decline will be our global peril" (July 9): http://go.philly.com/last2
Women's education level is the best predictor of fertility rates. The more highly educated a female population is, the lower the fertility rate.
A drop in population is good...if you're a globalist elite. After all, it's the globalist elites in the UN who are pushing for a global population reduction of around 80%. When Codex Alimentarius (which OUTRIGHT BANS all vitamin supplements and mineral supplements) becomes 100% mandatory on December 31, 2009, the genesis of the globalists' population reduction agenda will begin. Codex Alimentarius was created for the sole purpose of getting the global population too sick to resist enslavement in the fascist New World Order.
In a way this sums it up well. Many of the places that are overpopulated are also stricken with poverty and a populace who remain largely uneducated, unskilled and unproductive --not to mention disenchanted and violent. Would the world be worse off if there were fewer of these people?
I doubt if many people would answer this question truthfully.
I understand the world harbors more than a billion Muslims ...
Where does fluoridation figure into all that? What is the present state of our precious bodily fluids?
Of Pure Essense
Artificial human capital, computers and robots, are increasing. Productivity increases are not from humans working harder but from machines slowly taking over the production of wealth. Wars will be more likely when machines do most of the manufacturing and fighting.
As I've already posted once today, there are many people here that need to give their heads a shake. Seriously people, apply Occam's Razor and a little common sense. Engage brain before putting mouth in gear.
What we are seeing is a demographic shift in the Western world. Unfortunately as many have already pointed out in various threads, the general trend is that education equals low fertility. The more educated a society becomes, the lower its fertility rate. Why is this? I could write a treatise on it, but I'll try to make it nice and simple.
Unfortunately a negative side-effect of our capitalist culture is that we have finally began to worship the almightly dollar above all else. Our culture has changed. Fortunately, those that tend to have fewer children also tend to hold more liberal views. The me-first culture leaves no room to raise children, because children require "care and feeding" which requires a person to think of someone else's needs.
I am no fan of overpopulation. At some point quality of life issues outweight the benefits of economic growth. Just ask anyone who has to commute more than two hours per day. Personally, I don't see the driving need to swell the US population.
The problem is that, in the West, the most successful among us often have small (or no)families. Its often the wrong people that are having all the kids.
That guy believes that non-binding guidelines for the labeling of nutritional supplements generated by an obscure UN advisory board is the same an outright "ban" on all supplements. Somebody's been listening to a little too much late-night talk radio.
Actually, CA can be used to ban vitamins, minerals, and supplements. CA is basically WTO-crafted international law in all WTO-member countries, and CA could be used by the WTO as an excuse to ban vitamins and minerals and supplements if the WTO were to be run by people who were in favor of widescale population reduction.
CA might not specifically ban vitamins and such, but it COULD be used to do so...much like how the Patriot Act was created to combat terrorism but used to go after sellers of knock-off Rubik's Cubes. That's why I stand against Codex Alimentarius.
Just like how the sheeple believe that sex offenders should be required to be GPS tracked for the rest of their lives...while the double-agent ACLU (whose definition of "civil liberties" actually means "equal treatment/equal enslavement") would argue that mandatory GPS tracking of sex offenders (or convicted felons period) is unconstitutional discrimination.
Depends entirely upon whose population is declining. Simply put, the good guys need to reproduce more, the bad guys less.
Very interesting column on the subject:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/149527,CST-EDT-steyn26.article
"You can't be serious. There's no way that anyone will ban vitamins and supplements."
The EU is already well on it`s way to doing just that. Or making it so that people will need a doctor`s prescription to use vitamin supplements. Big Pharma in the US would love to be able to regulate vitamin supplements. It would mean a lot more money in their pockets for their drugs.
"The European Court has decided to tighten rules on the sale of vitamins and minerals. "
"The proposals could ban around 200 supplements from sale and put restrictions on the upper limits of vitamin doses."
"Some health experts wanted to see vitamins and minerals controlled in the same way as conventional medicines."
"But critics argued the new rules were unnecessarily restrictive, and would deny consumers choice."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4670971.stm
Don't worry about overpopulation. Mother nature will take care of it.
Here in the USA, it will be just a couple decades before the boomers start dying off. This should leave a dent in the total numbers.
Bad news for home sellers. Good news for home buyers.
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