General

Re: Population growth - a problem?

ryanpatgray — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:24:12 GMT

Jon Irenicus:

There is a strong correlation between lower birth rates and economic development. However, most wealthy nations also come with a welfare state, and in the early days of economic expansion the growth rate exploded, it did not decrease. So whether more wealth necessarily implies lower birth rates seems debatable to me, as the welfare state also comes with its own incentive structure.

-Jon

The People's Republic of China tried to take that correlation and work it backwards. They thought that by enforcing a one-child policy (at least with regards to most of the population) they would get more economic development. This is like thinking that if you somehow burgle a diploma from a university you will instantly have the knowledge that you would learn if you took all the classes needed to get the degree listed on the diploma.

Re: Population growth - a problem?

Jon Irenicus — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:37:41 GMT

There is a strong correlation between lower birth rates and economic development. However, most wealthy nations also come with a welfare state, and in the early days of economic expansion the growth rate exploded, it did not decrease. So whether more wealth necessarily implies lower birth rates seems debatable to me, as the welfare state also comes with its own incentive structure.

-Jon

Re: Population growth - a problem?

jason4liberty — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:09:42 GMT

It hurts a little to use a CIA web page for data, but here goes:

The sub-Saharan African nations have the highest birth rate per capita in the world, but they live in abject poverty. The more prosperous and "Western" the country, the lower the birth rate per capita. I can't explain the Eastern European nations off the top of my head, and it is late. So statistics don't make causation, but prosperity tends to reduce the birth rate (more options, less desire, putting off, etc.) Tragically, sub-Saharan Africa also has the highest infant mortality rates, highest rate of HIV infection, and lowest life expectancies.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2054rank.html

The sub-Saharan African nations also top the death rate per thousand chart. Wealthy places (but not necessarily western) and young places have the fewest deaths per 1000.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2066rank.html

Based on this evidence, and an (admittedly brief) analysis of the situation, I would conclude that on the whole prosperity brings down the rate of population growth. Richer people have more options and tend to voluntarily delay having children. Subsistence farmers and those with no access to medical devices have no will or ability to delay having children. In fact, they must have children to have workers, support the family, etc.

So an answer is to allow the free market to do what it does best, bring the most real wealth to the most people possible. If history is any guide, then a rising level of wealth can lead to a decreasing birth rate. If it doesn't, and resources do become scarce, then it can also provide the best way to economize or find new resources.

Alternatively, we can use the tool of the State, power, to affect population growth. Simply add bullets, a virus, or gas, and walaa! instant solution to the overpopulation "problem".

PS China's population problem was created by Chairman Mao's policy "The strength of China comes from the number of her people." The parents of the current generation of adults were exhorted by the state to have many children. Most of the young adults I have met in the cities are children of the one child policy. But they have 5-10 uncles and aunts, because their parents were the result of the "lots of children" policy. One step of interventionism always leads to the next, and the next, and the next. China is now very worried about the rapidly aging population, and all of the problems this causes a welfare state.

Re: Population growth - a problem?

liberty student — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:24:27 GMT

I agree, and that is why things are becoming urgent. The state is not just going to collapse, it is evolving into a self-sustaining enterprise.

Re: Population growth - a problem?

liberty student — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:21:53 GMT

Following up on this, I'm not looking for responses, but just want folks to consider.

Do you produce more than you consume? Think about how much labour and capital investment goes into the goods you own, from cars to cupboards full of food and television with hundreds of stations.

Have you paid for this? Or is it part of the fiat/debt empire, and is a chimera?

I'm guessing most folks in the west, do NOT produce more than they consume, or will consume over their lifetimes.

Re: Population growth - a problem?

Remnant — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:46:43 GMT

It is amazing how Malthus's original theory of geometric growth in population growth and arithmetic growth in food production means that the world will result in starvation keeps getting rehashed. Even Malthus rejected this original thesis later in life. What this theory misses out is that people respond to changes in circumstances rather than continuining as robots. Human Action is the key!

Interestingly, the economist Julian Simon wrote a book called "The Ultimate Resource", the ultimate resource being human ingenuity. He argues, therefore, that the more population there is, the better!

Re: Population growth - a problem?

liberty student — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:38:03 GMT

Brainpolice:
You're setting up a straw man. My reference to resource allocation refers to the fact that resources are currently mis-allocated as a result of state intervention, it's not a call for the state to redistribute resources.

Right, but you have no sure way to know how resources will be allocated under a free market, and the distribution might also end up being "mis-allocated" based upon wherever your preferences for society fall. If the state could allocate resources correctly, and everyone's standard of living went up, then the state (and it's coercive power to provide such prosperity) would be ok? Of course not.

Brainpolice:
My reference to quality of life refers to the idea that perhaps is what's important here is whether people live prosperous and comfortable lives rather than population levels.

There are a lot of theories and studies on the correlation between breeding and prosperity. I believe they are intertwined.

Brainpolice:
The idea is that it would make sense to aim at making resources readily available to raise the bar of population sustainability rather than concentrating on lowering population levels.

"To aim" = "to central plan"?

You do realize that when anarchy arrives, if you want to enjoy a high standard of living amongst 6+ billion other people, there is going to be intense competition for land, resources, jobs and opportunities? Right now, you sit at the top of the heap. Its a benefit of first being a westerner, and second an American. There are legion of third world serfs producing goods in return for subsistence, and not what any of us would recognize as a standard of living. They aren't genetically inferior, and they certainly don't lack cultural or moral values necessary to compete. You turn them loose, allowing them to compete, and survival in an anarchist world is going to favor those who can produce, not those who consume.

Everyone complains about how the state steals from them, but all of us are guilty of benefiting from the state's ability to rob from other countries through the WTO, unbalanced trade and corruption.

In a free market, where consumers compete for the best price, and the resources to buy goods, only the strong and determined will enjoy the highest standard of living, and I imagine most westerners will see their standard of living fall in the absence of a coercive state to keep them fat, happy and narcissistic.

Re: Population growth - a problem?

Kakugo — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:35:10 GMT

The problem is not overpopulation but overproduction of stupid people...

Putting the pun aside, all these "population planners" need to do is to take a little time off their schedule (I bet they have PLENTY of free time on their hands) and look at what happened when central planning was enforced, for one reason or another. You have Mao wiping out sparrows because they were believed to be cause behind Soviet China's dismal agricultural performances (because Socialism cannot go wrong, you know...). You have Stalin and his murderous gang of accolytes coming up with "five years plans". You have Mussolini and his pathetic "battle for the grain". You have Siad Barre and his forceful "civilization" of nomadic tribes. Finally you have a succession of Socialist government in India trying to "reduce fertility rates" or China and the terrible "one chil policy", which is slowly being abandoned, thank God. An history of resounding successes for mankind I may say.

Oh, by the way, I was being sarchastic!

Re: Population growth - a problem?

Brainpolice — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:17:13 GMT

Again, the issue is the state, not the consequences of state action. This is the red problem.

It only makes sense to point out the negative consequences of state action (I.E. a lower quality of life and more limited access to resources in the context I was talking about). There is nothing "red" about that.

the latent obsession with owning the state through popular democracy to steer social progress and interaction.

This isn't implied from anything I've said. You're simply grasping at straws to attack a misconception.

If I'm wrong, please spell it out for me. Is the problem the state, or the consequences of the state?

You're setting up a false dichotomy. The two are interrelated and both are important in context. It makes no sense to have a criticism of the state that doesn't include its negative consequences. It makes even less sense to proceed to defend such negative consequences or express absolute indifferance towards them. Poverty and starvation are real problems in and of themselves, and pointing out that in large part the state is either a cause or enhancer of the problem is only the libertarian thing to do.

No, it screams "Get a real job!" because only dreamers living at home or in a basement, working at best a minimum wage job, pine away for better resource allocation.

You continue to go on unrelated personalized tangents like this that have nothing to do with the issue at hand.

if you want to allocate resources differently, get off your duffs and produce resources to allocate!

So you choose to ignore the degree to which the state warps resource allocation? Pointing it out is "communist"? Jesus christ on a stick, that's silly.

Marxists take issue with resource allocation and the quality of life of the proletariat.

One need not be a marxist of any sort to think that the negative effects that state intervention has on workers and people at the bottom right is...well...negative! In fact, I would gander that this is a connection that a marxist is not likely to make, since marxists have a naive view of the state that causes them to be willfully blinded to the degree to which it is the cause of the very problems that they are concerned about. You're creating a straw man and jumping to sweeping conclusions based off of little more than antedotes. Apparently in your book giving a *** about the conditions of such people in any way or context whatsoever constitutes a red heresy.

My point, which I didn't get a chance to articulate before you immediately jumped on what I said, was that I'm opposed to the idea of deliberately lowering population levels and think it makes a lot more sense to concentrate on making resources more readily available to people so that populations can be sustained to begin with - to raise the bar of population sustainability through economic means rather than lowering the amount of people. I don't think there's an "overpopulation problem", the real problem behind what's called "overpopulation" is artificial limits on the availability of resources. The real problem is that a lot of people in certain areas live in shitty conditions that are mostly the result of central powers.

Re: Population growth - a problem?

Taylor — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:15:14 GMT

Well, let's look at it this way: In highly industrialized countries, state regulations and healthcare may be artificially extending the survival rate of people who would die off due to natural selection if left to themselves. In effect, it may be distorting the market in life-spans. The prohibition of deadly drugs could very well prevent the premature deaths of addicts who would freely choose their own deaths in absence of interference. Socialized healthcare makes calculation of how much healthcare to produce impossible, so socialized schemes may be over-producing healthcare at the expense of goods and services that consumers would prefer to be produced. Again, this is an example of the state interfering with people's own self-determination of the probable length of their own lives.

However, on balance I think states tend to have a negative effect on population growth. After all, just look at the entire 20th Century... Hundreds of millions dead at the hands of their own states, and millions more at the hands of foreign states. Also, the amount of crime that is committed directly as a result of prohibitive state action is something that cannot be ignored. Perhaps the ultimate problem is high time-preference? If we, as societies, had lower time-preferences (which would decrease over time in a truly free market), we would have more of the foresight to know not to overpopulate the planet, thus freeing up the planet for longer periods of human life.

Re: Population growth - a problem?

Brainpolice — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:09:13 GMT

Geoffrey Allan Plauche:

liberty student:

And then you wonder why people would "red bait" you.

Resource allocation? Quality of life?

Yeah. In large part because of government intervention: protectionist measures like tariffs, bans, quotas, anti-dumping laws, etc.; the entire tax and regulatory structure; and so on and so forth. Does pointing this out make one red?

Exactly. I don't get how what I said could be construed as some sort of state-socialist rhetoric.

Re: Population growth - a problem?

Brainpolice — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:08:15 GMT

liberty student:

And then you wonder why people would "red bait" you.

Resource allocation? Quality of life?

Gimme a break.

You're setting up a straw man. My reference to resource allocation refers to the fact that resources are currently misallocated as a result of state intervention, it's not a call for the state to redistribute resources. My reference to quality of life refers to the idea that perhaps is what's important here is whether people live prosperous and comfortalble lives rather than population levels. The idea is that it would make sense to aim at making resources readily available to raise the bar of population sustainability rather than concentrating on lowering population levels. There is nothing even remotely "red" about such thoughts, but unfortunately you seem to have a tendency to not understand what I'm saying.

Re: Population growth - a problem?

mtew — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:23:57 GMT

The other day, I was excited to hear from a statist acquiantance of mine that he had come around to adopt one of my positions: the freedom of people to smoke cigarettes anywhere the owner of the property allows.

Sadly, he had terribly scary reasons for doing so. "If more people smoke, that means more people will die at an earlier age, which is exactly what we need. Not only will it help to solve social security, but it would free up all resources that older people wastefully consume while helping to relieve some of the population problems we're facing."

Hell, maybe the government is going about this all wrong! Seems to me that the government should be subsidizing ads encouraging people to smoke, not leading them away from it! The thought process of some people is absolutely mind-boggling.