Every once in a while I'll watch one of those old WWII movies where at the end the guy will look into the eyes of the woman and say, "And we'll have ten kids and they'll all be boys." And the gal will respond, "I want at least one little girl." Hence,the baby boom.
I remember looking at one of my sons as he was in his high chair. He couldn't speak to keep up with the other kids' conversation, but I could tell that he really enjoyed the fellowship with his older brothers. Too many kids are being denied their rightful amount of brothers and sisters.
So I can just go to some nice empty piece of beachfront property along the Atlantic or Pacific coast and live there?
No?
You mean I first need to buy the land?
Well then, that means good land is being rationed because if there were enough good land, it would be free like it used to be and like air is today
(But if population keeps growing, air won't be free either--in fact, we've already begun paying for fresh air via the cost of pollution controls and laws).
Yes, certain cities are over-populated, of course.
That's interesting.
I'd like to know what, in the author's mind, makes "certain cities over-populated"--I'll guess that means when it's too crowded for the author's taste.
Yet the entire population of the world could fit inside the state of Arkansas.
Hey, you can fit even more if you make them live like in Alcatraz or Sing-Sing.
Ironically, it is western do-gooderism and partial development which now plague these nations. Basic technology reduced water-borne illness and infant mortality, and death rates plummeted. Economic development never arrived, and incentives on large families remained. Therefore population grows.
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
| PRI Review | Mar./Apr. 1998, Page 12 |
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| 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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© 1998 by Population Research Institute of all contents at this Web site. |
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).