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Catholic Discussion Ping!

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[thebaron512]

When the two of the largest population nations have a tendency to abort Females leads to many males not having a chance to find mates.... Must be rough...

[cripplecreek]

Is there some reason I should believe that we need more people?

[raybbr]

I don't buy this for a minute. Unless there is a catastrophic disease or war there will be no population decline.

Here in the U.S. we are expecting a dramatic increase in population.

From our own census bureau:

I am in no way trying to hijack this thread.

[staytrue]

ping

[conservative cat]

I was out with my 4 (well behaved) children at a store a few weeks ago, and a women loudly told her husband "she should have had her tubes tied."

The hostility is amazing, but I am not sorry. I am raising educated, independent, conservative future adults.

[Mr. Peabody]

China will be interesting. I think their one child policy will be a disaster.

[Alberta's Child]

Interesting ping.

[sit-rep]

Part of me says this is the Crux of the immigration debate. The reason why our Politicians are so soft on it...or, a good part of the reason.

With the amount of national debt accumulating, they are going to need a heavy tax base in years to come to pay for it. Not saying this is true, but it has crossed my mind time and again when the "migration" debate sparks up....

[Gritty]

Maybe the overall population of the world is decreasing, but the overall population of the Muslim world is increasing.

That's the number I worry about. And so should all other non-Muslims.

[RightWhale]

Population is not declining.

[Christopher Lincoln]

During the sixties and seventies, massive famine due to our dwindling ability to feed ourselves was supposed to be just around the corner.

Make no mistake, there have been massive famines and will be more. In the early 1960s there was a famine in China in which (as the Chinese government admitted long afterward) some 30 million people died. Although this figure greatly exceeds the death toll of the Holocaust, I am convinced it's well short of the truth. This was not caused by overpopulation; it was caused by Communism.

[verity]

"Population Is Declining"

That is a good thing.

[peggybac]

The title reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode where the nurse/flight attendant says, "Room for one more, honey."

[gcruse]

Every sperm is sacred was a joke, not meant to be a doxology.

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

Nonsense. There is severe overpopulation in some parts of the world. The parts of the world that would like to overrun civilized countries.

[wouldntbprudent]

I believe my tagline says it all.

[M203M4]

Despite some minor disagreements on several points, this article touches on a lot of good stuff, and I want to add to it (arguing from a complimentary angle).

Our health, standard of living, and REAL progress (not the meaning of the word that has been hijacked by socialists, degenerates, and perverts) is not tied to population density (we are nowhere near this bottleneck, which is less optimistic than the author suggests, but not by much) - it is mostly tied to advancing technology and free markets.

Our available resources are not fixed, but are a function of technology. And the rate of technological advancement is a function of the number of people involved in research. The major flaw in fatalistic calculations underpinning the "overpopulation" debate is that technology is assumed fixed. At best, there are a few studies that attempt to correct for this flaw by assuming technological progression at the present rate - but even this is still flawed. The pace of progress continually hastens, and as much as the thought hurts to some some people, we can thank population growth, not just worldwide improved access to and quality of education.

We NEED more people, not fewer. We can grow at a high rate, for at least another few thousand years, while enhancing our standard of living, as long as there is access to education, and unhindered research; most difficult of all, however, is to garner another critical ingredient - less failure-rewarding, success-punishing socialism in all forms. The elimination of competitive forces in markets, in research, in laws, and through entitlements, via arbitrary compulsory redistribution, generally acts to cause long-term harm. Another major lesson from the last several hundred years is that central planning is ruinous - the more expansive the scope, the more disastrous the results.

Anyway, personally, I hope to raise as many children as the author. :)

[Psycho_Bunny]

There are plenty of people on the planet and considering that at least 70% of them are morons, it could be stated that there are already way, waaaayy too many people here.

[Arthalion]

Reality check. The modern American economy is based on the assumption that both members of a two parent household are working. You cannot have five, eight, or ten kids when mom and dad are both at work 10-12 hours a day. Returning to 18th century birthrates means taking women out of the workplace, which would cause some fairly severe economic contraction in the United States (think about it...most households in the US would take an immediate 50% pay cut). That would impact everything from tax rolls (goodbye big military budgets) to the economic sustainability of many businesses. The real estate market in particular would take an unparalleled hit, as land values were halved.

There is no solution to the problem of declining population, it's just going to have to be dealt with as it comes. In this case, as in many, the solution is just as harmful as the original problem.