The Overpopulation Myth

I wont question your logic, cause I really dont care, but at least try to make sense in the future.

Children are like flowers, how can you have too many flowers?

I guess they can all live in your house because you can't have too many of them.

In either case, it will then go into a sharp decline. The world may soon be facing an under-population crisis -- a prospect that has all but escaped media scrutiny."

Not nearly soon enough.

Underpopulation?
Can anyone tell me why we would need a lot of people?
The century of work done by millions of drones is past. There are a finite number of resources, why would we want to share with more people rather than less?
Yes, I know there is "enough" for all, but who wants just enough.Why shouldn't we all have enough room that no one had to live within sight of anyone else?
The only reason for more than say a billion people on this planet is stupidity and ignorance. They are no longer needed, surplus population, eaters, breeders, good riddance

So9

Here is a related item on the economic fallacies of the overpopulation idea. Anyone interested should loook into the works of Julian Simon.

http://www.pop.org/reports/rv049808.html

PRI Review	Mar./Apr. 1998, Page 12

In appreciation of Julian Simon

By Steven W. Mosher

I first met Julian Simon in 1984. I was visiting Washington, DC, spending my days explaining to incredulous Senators and Congressmen that the government of China was deadly serious about its one-child policy, to the point of dragooning women into poorly equipped health clinics for abortions, sterilizations, and IUD insertions they did not want and which, sometimes, left them dead. "What should the US do?" they asked. "Ban any and all US population funds from being spent on this immoral Chinese policy," was my standard response. "The United Nations Population Fund, which receives tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars each year, has been involved in the one-child policy from the beginning. They should withdraw from China or face a funding cut-off."

Julian Simon called and suggested we have lunch together. I accepted immediately, knowing from friends that Simon had written extensively on the relationship between population growth and development, that he was known as a clear thinker, and that he would likely prove an ally in this struggle. However, I was not at the time familiar with his writing.

As we ate, I described the grisly scenes I had witnessed in China, and voiced my opposition to such coercion. "The Chinese government may need to reduce the birth rate as a precursor to economic development," I concluded, "but in doing so they have run roughshod over the rights of the Chinese people."

In mentioning the economic rationale for population control, I thought I was merely stating the obvious. After all, I had been taught at Stanford University that there are powerful reasons for limiting the numbers of people in developing countries, economic development and environmental protection among them.

To my surprise, Julian took exception. "The Chinese government is mistaken," he said. "Population growth does not have a statistically negative effect on economic growth. We know that from many years of careful quantitative scientific studies. Because human knowledge allows us to produce more finished products out of fewer raw materials, natural resources are becoming more available, not scarcer. Human beings are the greatest resource. You need more, not fewer, of them for economic development."

I listened spellbound. Up to this time I had been objecting to China’s one-child policy on the grounds that it was immoral: It denied Chinese couples their individual liberty in an extremely important area—the number of children they will have—and it does this in a way that involves blatant coercion and massive violations of human rights. Now I was learning from this brilliant economist that there was a powerful economic rationale against population control as well.

That day I learned from Julian Simon that human beings are a valuable resource and their wanton destruction through population control is not a help, but a hindrance, to economic development. "If you rank order countries by population density," I recall him saying, "we see that the more densely populated countries, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Holland, Japan, are growing at a faster rate than less densely populated countries, such as those in Africa."

This was, as it were, only a corollary of his central thesis. In his own words, "More people and increased income cause problems of increased scarcity of resources in the short run. Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity, and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to search for solutions. Many fail, at cost to themselves. But, in a free society, solutions are eventually found. And in the long run, the new developments leave us better off than if the problem had not arisen. That is, prices end up lower than before the increased scarcity occurred. . . . But as can be seen in the evidence of the increasing availability of natural resources throughout history as measured by their declining prices—especially in food, metals and energy—there apparently is no fixed limit on our resources in the future. There are limits at any moment, but the limits continually expand, and constrain us less with each passing generation. In this, we are quite unlike [the] animals."1

In the years following, Julian and I stayed in touch as he wrote book after book on population questions. Such works as The Economics of Population Growth, Population and Development in Poor Countries, and Population Matters never made the bestseller list—such success seems to be the reserved for environmental scare stories like Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb—but they were solid, fact-based contributions to our knowledge about the positive interplay between population growth, development, and the environment. Unlike Ehrlich’s screed, which now reads like a third-rate horror story gone awry, Simon’s stock will stand the test of time as future generations of scholars build on his contributions.

Simon’s views are already widely accepted, especially among his fellow economists, who are trained to understand price as a measure of scarcity. Simon’s central insight—that declining prices of food, metals and energy mean that natural resources are becoming increasingly available—is for them self-evident. Simon’s views are becoming respectable in the world at large as well, putting his ideological opposition increasingly on the defensive.

When challenged on these questions, environmentalists and population controllers of late have taken to responding by mouthing pious nothings about the infinite value of "biodiversity" or the fabulous benefits of "healthy ecosystems." Such assertions are technically irrefutable, since the presumed "values" and "benefits" cannot be quantified. They are often nonsensical as well. What in Heaven’s name is one to make of the claim that "Transforming the earth’s biosphere into frivolous commodities cheapens the value of life itself."2 Is it "frivolous" to feed, clothe and shelter humanity? Is it frivolous that we transform sand into silicon chips to store and transmit knowledge? Does it "cheapen the value of life" that wheat must die in order than man may live?

We at the Population Research Institute pledge to continue to put Julian’s foundational contribution to human knowledge to good use. We often speak of promoting economic development that respects human dignity. By this we mean not only that couples should be free to decide for themselves the number and spacing of their children, but also that, with Julian Simon, we see people as the ultimate resource.

Endnotes

1 Julian Simon, "Simon Said: Good News!" Yomiuri Shimbun, 27 February 1998.

2 Scott Carlin, "Letters to the "Editor," WSJ, 3 March 98, A19.

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This article has some interesting points, but essentially it is a bunch of hock! Just distilled BS. And let me explain before i start getting flamed!

First of all it starts by saying that 97% of the world's land surface is uninhabited! That is true ......but there is a solid reason for that. The reason is because over 90% of the Earth's land surface is unpopulable .....the conditions are not optimal nor condusive to human survival (which is why you do nto see settlements in the antartic, nor in the sahara, nor in the australian outback ad infinitum)! Just because there is a whole lot of land does not mean it can be inhabited.

Maybe soon the article will be saying that over 75% of the total Earth's surface (not just land but everything) is uninhabited ....and then forget to say the reason for that is because humans do nto have gills and hence cannot dwell in water with any degree of efficacy.

Secondly you have to look at the supplies of fresh water. This is not a myth ....fresh water is a major problem. Without effective water linkages Las Vegas (and several other places in Nevada, New Mexico and California) would just cease to exist. The Sahara is said to possess extremely fertile soil (several feet under the shifting sands and gravel that cover the whole darn place) ....and with some water can sprout forth bountiful harvests! Which is why where water is close to the surface the oasis' in the Sahara seem like mini-jungles (an actual oasis is much bigger than what they show on cartoons for the 1950s, which usually depicted 2 trees and a well. They are lush and extend for quite some distance). However the problem is water, and where there is no water there is no life. (By the way in the Israeli arid/semi-arid areas they have used pipes to make the deserts into blooming farms, and in some parts of Australia ....by the way virtually all of Australia is uninhabitable apart from near the coasts ....they ahve used aquifers to get water from).

Basically 97% of the land surface may be lacking humans ....but there is a reason for that in the first place.

Going onto the population growth the pragmatic upper limit is being reached. The pragmatic upper limit means the limit in the REAL world not in some theoretical paradigm. Theoretically the US alone can be able to feed the entire world and we can be able to 'melt certain polar areas and use the water to irrigate arid areas.' Itis also theoretical to set up de-salination plants all over the globe and turn the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans into massive sources of fresh water by using huge de-salination vats that churn out large amounts of water! However in the real world the fact is that most people in the world do not ahve sufficient nutrition, and the arid areas of the earth are increasing (even in the US for the last 10 years aridity has been increasing in the SW).

As the population increases most nations will start to notice they cannot handle their exploding populations ....and i am not just saying Africa but also the whole of Asia and parts of Eastern Europe. Conditions will be rife for famine, and especially for epidemic malaise on the level of the black plague.

The ironic thing is that in Western Europe the population is falling so fast that it is no longer self-sustainable, and some say W. Europe may become populated by non-europeans in the future due to their low birthrates (for the US the birthrate is basically at parity with the death rate so it is not a big problem ...but in W Europe things are dire).

I wont question your logic, cause I really dont care, but at least try to make sense in the future.

Do you really believe that romantic crap that mankind nobly set forth to explore the earth and to devise complex technological "marvels" because the human spirit blah, blah, blah.

B.S.

Mankind overpopulated the regions in which he evolved.

It was then either fight bloody wars to the death or run away to some less inhabited but more hostile climate.

From that moment onward, life for men became a battle against other men or against the scarcities of a shrinking planet.

And so it has been since.

And so every war since.

First of all it starts by saying that 97% of the world's land surface is uninhabited!

No, it does not say 97% of the world's land surface is uninhabited.

It says the land suface is empty--whatever that means.

That is true ......

Is it?

Is he counting the spaces between my toes?

There is not much of a natural water problem in the western United States. There is tons of room for improved pricing of water, and for more efficient usage.

Paying for water is rationing water--think of your dollar bills as rationing coupons.

What's next, air?

Displaced Californians are trash? And you live in the glorious smut filled state run by the casino scum, what should we call you?

One of the problems with crowding, is that it shortens tempers and causes people to coalesce into small warring factions.

It must be an inborn, evolutionary, adaptation.

The problem with displaced Californians is that they try to make the place they go to just like California, anybody that's watched the "LA freeway system east" (aka the Phoenix Metro) grow more and more annoying and bizaare has seen this in action. If they'd learn to leave California behind when they left everybody else wouldn't hate them so much.

His premise seems to be that if it is empty then it can be inhabited. Putting forth an assertion like '97% of the land surface is empty' insinuates that if it were filled then overpopulation would be a vestige of the past.

And that is faulty logic because there is a good reason all that area is empty .....because it is nardly inhabitable.

So true. While in Denver over the holidays, I had an interesting conversation with my step-dad over the "sod police". They are the people who cover the city in the summer and make sure you don't water on the wrong days. This is to preserve water.

My solution was simple: if the supply of water is going down, then the price of water should go up. Eventually, a balance will be found. If it costs a fortune to water your yard, you will quit watering your yard.

No so out west. There's little if any climate/ terain differences between the inhabited places out here and the empty places. Just nobody bothered to settle there, or the people that did settle there were free range ranchers that caused a very thin population. In the more mountainous areas of course you'll get place that aren't inhabited for good reason, but pretty much the rest of the country can be inhabited if we want to. Just look at Chicago, the city that exists because some dip decided to put a city there (horrible climate and terain for a city, swamp land, wildly shifting weather, just nasty).

My solution was simple: if the supply of water is going down, then the price of water should go up. Eventually, a balance will be found. If it costs a fortune to water your yard, you will quit watering your yard.

How about we just stop importing a gazillion immigrants?

Then you won't have to choose between water police or water poverty.

One more thing, the article deals with the whole world not just the US. The United States can theoretically have a population of 1 billion plus and still manage to feed everyone (although social services and other ammenities would be hard hit).

However the rest of the world is overpopulated, even when the nations have populations less than that of the US.

Overpopulation is a relative quotient.

I support a bifurcated population policy. Leftists should remove their reproductive organs and practice total sexual abstinence. Conservatives should have as many children as they can love, imbue with positive values, educate, and support.

Some of the SW doesn't have enough water for any quality kind of life and much of the Midwest and South and other places shouldn't be paved under because we need farm lands. I can't see having the USA become one big city.

To me it seems much of the problem is the middle classes are not growing in numbers but the dependent people who must be supported by them are.

Over population is relative to infrastructure. By and large though the world simply isn't over populated. There are some areas (like eastern China) where the density of the population is actually getting in the way of improving the infrastructure to be able to handle the people. Other than those few places (I actually can't think of any other than what I mentioned but I'm sure there's at least one more) the world simply isn't over populated, not even close. Most of the disaster we think of when the phrase comes up are actually deliberately made disasters using famine as a weapon (like Etheopia, and Somalia).