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People should be banned

They never give up. An article nicely slams attempts by UK neo-Malthusians to get us all frightened about the terrible idea of people wanting to have babies. Selfish, cruel to the Planet Earth, a drain on “resources”: you know the litany. Here’s an excerpt from the article, which I recommend:

Of all the bogeys you might have thought well and truly nailed in the past decade or so, the population control movement seemed most obviously to have a stake through its heart. At a time when we – I mean, anyone over 35 – are all horribly conscious that there won’t be enough taxpayers to support us in gin and cigarettes in our old age, the very last thing we need to worry about is excess population growth. On the contrary: as seen from the dinner party circuit, the real crisis is the difficulty for female graduates in getting anyone to breed with. Forty per cent of women graduates don’t have a single baby at the age of 35.

Quite. The obsession with their being “too many” people (quite how anyone can work that out is a mystery) is something I find rather malevolent. In any event, as the writer quoted makes clear, it seems a bit weird for the population worriers to go on about supposedly high birthrates when in fact a lot of recent commentary – from the likes of Mark Steyn – has tended to suggest quite the opposite. Indeed, Steyn and others argue that the indigenous population of western Europe, or parts of it, is stagnating and birthrates have fallen below the replacement level (the level required to maintain a stable level). And of course, to enforce strict population controls, even if it makes any kind of sense (it does not) begs the question of how. Does it require China-style policies that lead to mass abortions and an imbalance between girls and boys? I ask these questions now because while watching the BBC television show this morning as I got ready for work, I saw some middle-aged, white-haired woman, a sort of genteel Rosa Klebb, arguing very emphatically against large families. The BBC hosts gave her only the most gentle of grillings. Sitting next to her on the couch was a black couple with 8 children (and very happy and relaxed they looked). The grey-haired lady made all kinds of claims that big families “put too much stress on the planet” and completely dismissed any idea that low population growth, or decline, was a problem. The issue of how to pay for an increasingly ageing workforce and the pressures on pension systems was also dismissed.

In the end of the day, rational debate works only so far with these fanatics. Some of them look quite nice, they wear suits or woolly jumpers, but their demand for state power over the most intimate aspects of your life – having children and raising a family – is implacable. They haven’t gone away.

74 comments to People should be banned

  • Surely this is no shock as most of those envirofascists are merely marxists in disguise. They want the West to have fewer people so the rest of the world can have more power.

  • I see it as all part of the self-loather mentality.

  • Ham

    It’s Final Solution to the carbon footprint problem.

  • michael farris

    What the hell is wrong with Britain that you produce so many world class meddling idiots and all round wankers?

    Is there no area of life safe from self-appointed Brit knowitalls who want to tell the rest of the world how to live?

    One nice thing about life in post-commie central europe is that if you mind your own business most people and institutions will return the favor. Some media do have pet causes that they occasionally try to get people worked up about but it’s blessedly easy to tune them out (as does 99% or so of the population).

    But in Britain you seem bombarded by it 24/7, sick, sick sick.

  • Nick M

    michael,
    We no longer have a car industry but when it comes to prognostications of doom we are truly world class.

    Ham,
    Very Good.

    AID,
    That’s pretty much on the money.

    Well, how about if all these left-wing, uber-green, zero-growth types decided to sign “non-child” pacts? That would keep the population down and the rest of us wouldn’t have to deal with their self-hating piety a couple of generations down the line or their or their obnoxious sprogs right now.

    That’s win/win.

    I’m surprised this one has returned from beyond the grave too. I wonder what’s next?

  • 1) Value is determined by supply and demand, therefore a world in which human life is precious is a world in which human life is scarce.

    2) The world’s human population cannot grow without limit, therefore it will not grow without limit.

    3) The world’s human popu;ation will stop growing when either…
    3.1) the birth rate falls to meet the death rate or
    3.2) the death rate rises to meet the birth rate.

    4) Event #3 will occur as a result of either
    4.1) human agency or
    4.2) non-himan agency.

    5) Human agency is either
    5.1) democratically determined or
    5.1) not.

    Your choices are limited.

  • I forgot to include (should have been #4): voluntary methods of population control selectibely breed non-compliant individuals.

  • I forgot to include (should have been #4):…

    4) voluntary methods of population control selectively breed non-compliant individuals.

  • There is nothing to stop the enviro -nazis from donating their carbon to Gaia,these buggers should set an example.

  • Julian Taylor

    Might I presume that the “middle-aged, white-haired woman, a sort of genteel Rosa Klebb, arguing very emphatically against large families” fell into the ‘40% without children’ bracket – i.e. malevolence, envy and spite are her reasons, rather than pragmatics.

    I would guess that her reaction is most likely as a result of Ian Duncan Smith’s damning report into the state of our society – Labour and its official BBC mouthpiece would want nothing more than to discredit any and all parts of a report that suggests that the family unit concept has been all but eradicated by Blairism.

  • Chris F

    Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Logan’s Run (book and film) – it depicts a future society that is very permissive where sex and recreational drugs are concerned. Tobacco, however, is a banned substance, and police are known to raid places where cigarettes are smoked. Population and the consumption of resources is managed and maintained in equilibrium by the simple expediency of demanding the death of everyone upon reaching a particular age – 21 yrs old in the book and 30 in the film – thus neatly and inhumanely avoiding the issue of overpopulation.

    Or then there is always Soylent Green, where widespread government-sponsored euthanasia is encouraged to control and reduce overpopulation.

    Personally I would rather leave it to nature, but unfortunately any plague or pandemic is unlikely to take these policy makers with it.

  • nick

    Even the most fanatical nutters don’t seem to think that overpopulation/global warming/bird flu et al are going to annhiliate all of us in our lifetimes. So they deem we should act now for those not yet born. But then they don’t want us to breed? It’s all just a variant on spending other people’s money.

  • Paul Marks

    I know of know of no Western nation where women (on average) have even two babies each. Even Ireland is slipping below two babies per average women, and in the United States immigrants from Latin American distort the stats.

    Yet rather that worrying about our extermination the “liberals” worry about a mythical population explosion in the West.

    All their cultural concerns seem stuck in the past. I had the misfortune to listen to B.B.C. Radio Four the other day and heard the adverts for some of the future shows.

    There is a show on Monday night talking about the shock revelation of a plot for a military coup against F.D.R. (i.e. the same “shock” that has been presented every couple of years since the 1930’s – i.e. General Butler’s story that “right wing businessmen” approached him to lead a coup, the “right wing businessmen” choose a known friend of the communists who spent most of his time denoucing his own former service in the Marine Corps as simply being a slave to the evil corporations – errrr how does this make sense?)

    And there are various up comming 1960’s style agit prop plays (“criticically acclaimed” of course) on such matters as the trial of Mr Blair (for his evil aggression against the peace loving Saddam), and the environmental destruction of Nigeria “it was so beautiful before we destroyed it” (the B.B.C. does not need writers – I machine could produce this stuff for them).

    As stated above the left (the B.B.C., the schools and universities, the other media people that this “education system” produces….) are stuck in the past – obsessed with problems that either do not exist any more (such as the vast rise in Western population) or never did exist (such as the rape of the environment by private property – when, in fact, private property is the only way of protecting the environment).

    As for the end of the West. I suppose a way round the (quite understanable) horror that many women have of having babies (after all we men would not like to go through the process) would be the artifical creation of humans – or beings better than humans.

    After all if the newly created beings were (say) blue that would get rid of a lot of racial problems.

  • emdfl

    Most of the population control freaks in the West only have a problem with “white” folks having kids, because “everybody” knows that the “wogs” can’t control their behavior. BLAAAHH.

  • emdfl

    Most of the population control freaks in the West only have a problem with “white” folks having kids, because “everybody” knows that the “wogs” can’t control their behavior. BLAAAHH.

  • RAB

    Perhaps the Optimum Population Trust
    should show us the way by amalgamating with The Shakers.
    There’s a Religion with a future!

  • David Roberts

    The only limit to humanity is our imagination. Those of us, who are less well endowed in this area, don’t know the half of it. For example: what happens if average human life expectancy becomes a thousand years?

  • Chris Harper (Counting Cats)

    Many years ago I caused great frustration down the pub, when a companion wished to make a point. She started out by laying down the premise that “There are too many people in the world”, and intended to go on from there. I immediately asked her to point out those people who were superfluous, which she was unable to do, apart from pointing to me. My response was “Well, that is one, care to name the others?”, which shut her up.

    This whole position is NAZIism, pure and simple.

  • Midwesterner

    Come on you guys! There is only ? to the ? galaxies in the entire known universe. Pretty soon the whole shebang will be full up with humans. Then where will we put them?

    Seriously, I think (contrary to many people here like emdfl) that these people divide into two categories. One category would commit the human branch of the DNA tree to suicide. The other branch (like possibly the woman on BBC) are covert racists. They are specifically wanting less of the people who’s populations are growing the fastest.

    As far as I can tell, Malcolm only got one thing right. “Value is determined by supply and demand.” And these people are demanding less of a supply.

    All that is needed to ‘control’ population is protection of savings and personal property. That means no compulsory redistribution by any means at all. The population problems in all countries seem to track pretty closely the confiscating and redistibutionary behavior of the society. When you can’t stockpile material possessions, all you can stockpile is children. As each state achieves respect for life, liberty and property, the population problems cease.

  • Nick M

    Mid,
    Malcolm only got one thing right…

    You understood what his posts were about?

    I just thought it was gibberish.

  • Southerner

    I don’t know if there are too many people in the world, I don’t really care either way. But there are certainly too many people in the south-east of England. Too many people, too many cars, and too many ugly new buildings. The quality of life here is noticeably worse than it was 10 years ago, and another 10 years of Labour mismanagement is sure to see the downward trend continue.

  • Chris Harper (Counting Cats)

    there are certainly too many people in the south-east of England

    Southerner,

    Would you care to name those individuals who fall into this category?

    Are you one of them?

  • Nick M

    I mean for example:

    The world’s human population cannot grow without limit, therefore it will not grow without limit.

    is pure tautology. Or is it? I have asked my linguist wife and she was flummoxed too. What the hell was that about Malcolm?

    (if) x must a therefore x will a

    surely means the same as:

    x will a.

    Well, I dunno.

  • freeman too

    It’s fairly obvious that the only people who should be banned are the unwanted ones, and dear old socialism strives hard to identify those.

    Fewer capitalists and free-marketeers, less opposition to state control, reduce the number of heavy carbon-footers, minimise independent thinkers who will object to indoctrination… You get the idea. Please add your own here.

  • Midwesterner

    “… therefore a world in which human life is precious is a world in which human life is scarce.”

    I ran up against the assumed collectivism in this statement before I ever got that far, Nick. I don’t care how many humans there are on the planet. I think my life is ALWAYS “precious”.

  • RAB

    Well I’ll cut him a bit of slack with that one, until I’ve got his range.
    What Malcolm meant ,I think, was that the earth is finite and so are it’s resources. We humans can expand only so far until famine etc forces the population back down again.That’s fine if you plan on hanging round Earth till the Sun goes out, or bang, sharing and careing for each other in a rationed dwindling hopeless sort of way- Or
    Now my solution is the Star Trek one.
    Let’s get the fuck out of here asap!!!!
    Then there can be as many of us as our ingenuity and supply of likely planets can achieve.
    The people we’re discussing think humanity is a disease.
    They’re right!
    Atchoo Universe!!!

  • Dan Badham

    Johnathon,

    This post stirred a warm sense of nostalgia for me, the last time I heard about Malthusian pessimism was in a high school geography lesson 16 years ago. My files form that period make for great reading now, offering a time capsule view of scaremongering circa. 1990 (all C.F.Cs, rainforests and imminent overpopulation crisis). I recall being given a photocopied lesson aid that stated (without equivocation) that the world would run out of tin by no later than 1988 – this was lesson was taking place in 1990. When we pointed this out to our teacher and enquired if tin had in fact become ‘extinct’ she simply replied: “look boys, there are too many of us and something has to be done!”

    It was quite a moment of awakening for me, realising that you are being taught a load of rubbish supported by ‘facts’ that are already out of date. I also recall the same teacher suffering a serious loss of humour when we suggested – in response to a question to see how we could waste less paper – that she might not be so reliant upon photocopied hand outs to teach her lessons. It was worth a lost lunchtime to see the look on her face.

  • Brad

    Malcolm’s point seems simple, either “nature” will bound human population or humans will do it themselves. Both can, and will, cause misery to differing individuals within the population. The question is do you allow individuals free reign in their own lives and actions which MAY cause a strain on the resources or be a breeding ground of contagian and therefore misery and death, or do you turn the “management” of the population over to bureaucrats who, when their axiomatically determined limit is hit will herd the extras into gulags and camps.

    I think he’s simply saying there are going to be finite upper limits one way or another, it’s just whether people are free and curbing elements are “natural”, or are people controlled and the curbing elements enforced by bureaucrats.

    The a priori difference is that those who honor individualism above all would pick the former, and live with the risks of approaching the upper limit and letting things be as they will, or those who look at everything through a collectivist prism would pick the latter, and who are committed to the belief that through measures of behavioral control everything will work out fine.

    If it is feasible that at some time resources will be stressed to a breaking point, and man’s ability increase wealth well being through economic expansion, I’d much rather live and die free through such a time, than to live as a slave and perhaps avoid it.

  • Tedd McHenry

    1) Value is determined by supply and demand, therefore a world in which human life is precious is a world in which human life is scarce.

    But that value is created by humans, ergo supply and demand of humans rise and fall together with the population, making value a constant in this case.

    …voluntary methods of population control selectibely breed non-compliant individuals.

    “Voluntary methods of population control” is an oxymoron. If it’s voluntary it’s not control and if it’s control it’s not voluntary. Remove the oxymoron and you have “lack of population control selectively breeds non-compliant individuals.” If that were true it would be best argument against population control yet!

    5) Human agency is either
    5.1) democratically determined or
    5.1) not.

    Human agency is individual. That’s what agency is. Democracy has nothing to do with it.

    Your choices are limited.

    Always. But they are my choices.

  • Nick M

    Well, to be honest folks I was being a hint rhetorical though I was confused by Malcolm’s peculiarly pseudo-logical presentation of the bleeding obvious.

    Off course there is a limit to the population this planet will support. What it is nobody knows. Fortunately, so far this has always been a moving limit. I cannot imagine us even beginning to feed 6+ billion with pre-C18th agriculture, or even pre-C20th agriculture. “Organic” fans take note!

    Dan, I must be about the same age as you and I have similar memories. Resource depletion – especially metals is a real problem – note the skyrocketing prices. But those are technological problems that are soluble.

    What I hate about the Greens is that whenever I suggest exotic technologies or scientific ways around various problems they stick their fingers in their ears and mutter the mantras about over-population, over-consumption, too much energy use. Try selling something like a pebble-bed reactor to a Green and you’ll see what I mean.

    Mid, I noticed that too. I almost asked him if that meant the people he cared about would matter more if the global population was smaller.

    He’s a link that might be curious…

    vhemt.org/

    Unfortunately I couldn’t find the url for somebody from the extreme(!) end of neo-primitavism (basically going back to hunting and gathering) who claimed that where we all it it wrong wasn’t agriculture or even herding but speech. Completely fucking raving.

  • Midwesterner

    Speech is definitely where we went wrong. That’s why I type.

  • RAB

    Singing and Dancing, in the Acid Rain…

    Whatever happened to that one by the way?

  • (Brad): “The a priori difference is that those who honor individualism above all would pick the former, and live with the risks of approaching the upper limit and letting things be as they will, or those who look at everything through a collectivist prism would pick the latter, and who are committed to the belief that through measures of behavioral control everything will work out fine.”

    It’s not a “risk of approaching an upper limit”, it’s a certainty.

    (Tedd): ” ‘Voluntary methods of population control’ is an oxymoron. If it’s voluntary it’s not control and if it’s control it’s not voluntary. Remove the oxymoron and you have ‘lack of population control selectively breeds non-compliant individuals.’ If that were true it would be best argument against population control yet!

    We volunteer to be bound by laws all the time. If you suppose that the State should protect property and prosecute theft and fraud, and you vote for politicians who agree, you have volunteered to be bound. There’s nothing self-contradictory at all about it.

  • Malcolm.
    You might volunteer to be bound by laws, but I don’t even recall ever being asked.

  • Juliet: What must be shall be
    Friar Lawrence: That’s a certain text.

    Maybe we could make these nutters happy by hiring irresponsible Shakespearian Clergy to fake a couple of billion deaths.

  • Richard Easbey

    Ever notice that the perpetually unhappy gloom-and-doom crowd is never willing to put its money where its mouth is and throw themselves in front of a bus? (Somebody PLEASE correct my grammar! that sentence doesn’t look right no matter how I phrase it!)

  • (malcolm): “Value is determined by supply and demand, therefore a world in which human life is precious is a world in which human life is scarce. ”
    (Tedd): “But that value is created by humans, ergo supply and demand of humans rise and fall together with the population, making value a constant in this case.”

    Years ago, I made this argument on the google group sci.econ. At the time, my i.d. was handle was “panther” (not my choice; someone hacked my account).

    The following exchange occurred:…

    (Malcolm): “Value is determined by supply and demand, so if you want a world where human life is precious, you want a world where human life is scarce.
    (David Lloyd -Jones): “This is insane. Extra people adds to the demand as well as the supply.”
    (Atany Dey, http://www.deeshaa.org/): “I am not sure what demand and supply dlj is talking about. panther surely pointed out an obvious empirical fact, it seems to me. Consider an over-populated third world country such as India or Bangladesh. In 1971, approximately 3 million (give or take a million or so) were slaughtered in about 3 months in East Pakistan. Have you heard of even a single person being charged for the crime? Have you even heard of the crime? Every time there is a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal, about 40,000 to 50,000 get washed away to sea. This happens practically every year. Do we even care? Do they care? Not bloody likely! There is more where they come from. If 50 million of India’s wretched were to die overnight due to some mysterious illness, will that make the slightest bit of difference to the economy of the world? Not in the slightest. Those 50 million neither have any demand from any market nor supply to any market that is of any consequence. There is a perfectly elastic supply of humans ready to do manual labor in subhuman conditions. Why? The bloody supply is anything beyond whatever you could conceivably demand. The price for their labor and therefore their lives is essentially zero.

    Twenty thousand casualties in the Union Carbide plant accident in Bhopal are still waiting for some sort of compensation. Contrast that with a 3 million dollar settlement in the McDonald’s spilling of scalding coffee in the lap while driving case.

    That life is ‘valued’ irrespective of the supply of and the demand for humans is patent nonsense. In certain parts of the world, over supply drives the ‘value’ to zero. Lawrence Summers honestly admitted that fact when he said that it is economically efficient to export pollution to third world countries because they have less to lose.”

    (Tedd): “Human agency is individual. That’s what agency is. Democracy has nothing to do with it.”

    Tedd’s use of “agency” is unusual. I use it to suggest that humans will control their population or something else will. However, Tedd’s usage does not conform to the language of economics either.

    “Pots and Kettles: Governance Practices of the Ontario Securities Commission” by Joel Fried

    Working Paper # 2005-6 July 2005
    “2. The Government’s Principal – Agent Problem”

    The principal-agent problem for the private sector is well known: the owner/principal delegates to a manager/agent the responsibility to provide some services for the principal. The problem is one of structuring contracts and institutions to insure that, in carrying out her duties, the agent acts in the principal’s interest rather than her own. Citizens of a country also face a principal – agent problem. Citizens “own” the machinery of government and employ bureaucrats to act as their agents in running this machinery. To reduce the costs of monitoring, the principals choose a legislature/board of directors to oversee the agents. Monitoring mechanisms are similar to those in the private sector: there are financial accounting standards that are met for each budgetary unit, and an external auditor checks these internal accounts. Transparency is maintained, in part, through freedom of information regulations. Compliance with procedures and other regulations are met both through internal monitoring and checks by units external to the bureau. Finally, contracts are structured, at least in a limited manner, to align the incentives for agents with those of the principals. There is, however, an additional problem in the public sector that does not exist for
    private firms. The firm has a well defined objective function – the maximization of profits – whereas the apparent objective for the government is the maximization of some index of a (weighted) level of welfare of the electorate. An unambiguous index of social welfare has been impossible to construct and, in its absence, monitoring the public sector is further complicated because data is generally lacking on whether or not the objective was actually approached and/or achieved and what the costs are that are linked to any specific objective. In effect, because of distribution issues and public goods, the cash
    flows measured with traditional accounting procedures will be, at best, only superficially correlated with that objective. Thus, looking at cash flows will provide the principals an extremely poor method of monitoring their public sector agents.

    http://economics.uwo.ca/centres/epri/wp2005/Fried_06.pdf

  • As long as technology keeps improving, it is by no means obvious that population cannot also keep increasing, which does rather crimp the crypto-fascist agenda of some who feel we need to selectively breed ‘better’ (i.e. more controllable) people.

  • Oxford researchers are threatening to tighten that grip around our throats even further: they’re proposing a “fat tax” on junk food. They’re claiming it’s going to save over 3,000 lives a year…. Chocolate is going the way of the cigarette, people!
    You can read the Reuter’s article here: http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSL1254236520070712?feedType=RSS&rpc=22&sp=true

    thedailyslant.com

  • An error: value is not determined by supply and demand.

    1) Value is a subjective judgment made by individuals.
    2) Demand is the aggregate of individual values.
    3) Supply is determined by marginal cost of production
    4) Market price is determined by Demand and Supply

    Market price != value.

  • Tedd McHenry

    Malcolm:

    We volunteer to be bound by laws all the time. If you suppose that the State should protect property and prosecute theft and fraud, and you vote for politicians who agree, you have volunteered to be bound. There’s nothing self-contradictory at all about it.

    Well sure. But we also volunteer not to be bound by laws all the time, yet we are still forced to comply with them. The law is a “control” only in the sense that it can be used to force compliance. So “voluntary control” is equivalent to “voluntary forced compliance” — an oxymoron.

    But the important point here is that the state has no legitimate authority to tell anyone how many children they can have. Certainly, the state can pass such a law and enforce it, but they have no legitimate authority to do so. Regulating the world that way is just a dressed-up version gang warfare — whoever forms the strongest gang rules.

  • Frederick Davies

    The problem with Malcolm’s whole argument is point 2: the assumption that human population cannot grow without limit.

    Q: Why not? There is a limit on how many resources are available to us.
    A: Because resources are not limited by their quantity, but by man’s ingenuity to find them.

    Q: How can that be if a limited amount of currently-exploitable resources has to be shared among a rising population? There will come a time when no one will have enough to search for more.
    A: That assumes those resources will be shared equally among peoples, but that is not only historically and economically false, but undesirable. Those inequalities are the ones that allowed the Europeans to expand beyond Europe and start trading with the World, or Britain to start the Industrial Revolution and “create the modern World”. Those inequalities are the ones that permit the few to break through the barriers the many cannot afford to challenger and find new resources. There is a reason why it was not the billions of people in Africa and Asia who went to the Moon, but the 200 or so million Americans.

    Q: But as we use up the most easily found resources, we will have to spend more and more to exploit the more difficult to extract ones; will we not eventually incur in diminishing marginal returns?
    A: That assumes that technology only advances in progressive steps (making it easier to exploit deeper resources), but History shows that Science has a knack for explosive expansion in the resources we can utilize by discovering resources we never thought about, resources that, being unutilized till then, are easy to extract.

  • knirirr

    Oxford researchers are threatening to tighten that grip around our throats even further

    Blackguards. That sort gives those of us who want to perform useful research a bad name. There seems to be a lot of dodgy looking research springing up these days.

  • Nick M

    Q: Why not? There is a limit on how many resources are available to us.
    A: Because resources are not limited by their quantity, but by man’s ingenuity to find them.

    Ah, but not just that… Technology changes the commodities that actually matter. Up until the late C19th that black stuff oozing to the surface in the ME was a nuisance. And one day it’ll seem quaint that anybody ever subsequently gave a toss about the stuff.

    That life is ‘valued’ irrespective of the supply of and the demand for humans is patent nonsense. In certain parts of the world, over supply drives the ‘value’ to zero.

    You are so off beam, Malcolm. The fact that I value my life has nothing to do with the number of Nick Ms out there. D’ oh! You’re talking about ‘life’ in terms of the number of people who you can send to work down on the collective farm. We are not interchangeable widgets. Are you, or have you ever been…

    RAB,
    The solution to acid rain was more efficienct scrubbers in South Yorkshire.

  • “You are a guest on private property and we reserve the right to delete anything we want to. Have fun but please be civil and succinct.”

    “…(I)t is by no means obvious that population cannot also keep increasing, which does rather crimp the crypto-fascist agenda of some who feel we need to selectively breed ‘better’ (i.e. more controllable) people.”–Perry

    ” Malcolm’s peculiarly pseudo-logical presentation of the bleeding obvious. “–Nick
    “I just thought it was gibberish.”–Nick

    “This whole position is NAZIism, pure and simple.”–Chris

    Let’s be civil: You all might mellow out if you stepped away from the computer and enjoyed a little feminine company.

    There’s a more succinct way to put that, of course.

    Let’s try again.

    Nick:

    The world’s human population cannot grow without limit, therefore it will not grow without limit is pure tautology. Or is it? I have asked my linguist wife and she was flummoxed too….(if) x must a therefore x will a surely means the same as: x will a.

    It’s not tautological. Some things grow without limit. Some things do not. Some of those things which do not, do not because they cannot. Yes, the conclusion is that the world’s population will not grow without limit. In this part of the argument, I attempt to back ideological opponents of compulsory population control into a corner, where they must assert that the world’s population can grow without limit.

    (Rich): “An error: value is not determined by supply and demand.

    1) Value is a subjective judgment made by individuals.
    2) Demand is the aggregate of individual values.
    3) Supply is determined by marginal cost of production
    4) Market price is determined by Demand and Supply

    Market price != value.”

    Value is determined by supply and demand. This is not a principle of capitalist economics or even human economics; it is a fact of life. Plants on the rainforest floor, where water is plentiful and sunlight sparse, have higher leaf surface area to root surface area ratios than plants which grow in the equatorial savannah, where rainfall is sparse and sunlight plentiful. Water hyacinth root mass is inversely proportional to nutrient concentration of the water in which it grows (“Water Hyacinth”, The Journal of the Society of Water Pollution Control Engineers). Read Dawkins. Read E.O. Wilson’s “The Ergonomics of Social Insects” (American Economic Review, Dec. 1978).

  • Tedd: “…the state has no legitimate authority to tell anyone how many children they can have. Certainly, the state can pass such a law and enforce it, but they have no legitimate authority to do so. Regulating the world that way is just a dressed-up version gang warfare — whoever forms the strongest gang rules.”

    We’re wandering far afield, but that’s al right with me.

    The State itself defines “legitimate”.

    “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master” (George Washington).
    “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” (Mao).
    “The monopoly on legitimate violence” (Max Weber).

    The Harper-Collins __Dictionary of Sociology__, and the Penguin __Dictionary of Sociology__ give similar definitions for “State” or “government”.

    I recommend…
    Randall G. Holcombe
    Government: Unnecessary but Inevitable(Link)
    The Independent Review Volume 8 Number 3
    Winter 2004

    Eduardo Zambrano
    Formal Models of Authority: Introduction and Political Economy Applications
    Rationality and Society, May 1999; 11: 115 – 138.

    “Aside from the important issue of how it is that a ruler may economize on communication, contracting and coercion costs, this leads to an interpretation of the state that cannot be contractarian in nature: citizens would not empower a ruler to solve collective action problems in any of the models discussed, for the ruler would always be redundant and costly. The results support a view of the state that is eminently predatory, (the ? MK.) case in which whether the collective actions problems are solved by the state or not depends on upon whether this is consistent with the objectives and opportunities of those with the (natural) monopoly of violence in society. This conclusion is also reached in a model of a predatory state by Moselle and Polak (1997). How the theory of economic policy changes in light of this interpretation is an important question left for further work. [Eduardo Zambrano, “Formal Models of Authority”, Rationality and Society, V.11, #2. May, 1999].

  • If some people are worried that there are too many people, why do they not help solve the problem by chucking themselves of a bridge?

  • lucklucky

    Some Maths…

    Europe 2% of Earth area 10,180,000 square kilometres
    World population 6 billions

    Population density in Lisbon(not a very dense city) 898,48 persons/km2

    If we flat Europe and put all world population there

    Population density of 589,39 persons/km2

    in 2% or earth area…

  • lucklucky

    Some Maths…

    Europe 2% of Earth area 10,180,000 square kilometres
    World population 6 billions

    Population density in Lisbon(not a very dense city) 898,48 persons/km2

    If we flat Europe and put all world population there

    Population density of 589,39 persons/km2

    in 2% or earth area…

  • lucklukcy

    Sorry for double post. Connection went down and i tought it didnt went trough.

  • “there won’t be enough taxpayers to support us in gin and cigarettes in our old age”?

    Well then, why don’t those busybodies give us our gin and cigarettes right now, and we’ll see ourselves off?

  • Nick M

    lucklady,
    I’m impressed. I believe exactly what you’ve said because you seem a savant (from previous experience) on such technical matters. I shall check later mind. Though I suspect you are right about Lisbon.

    If I may, I’ll add something else to your mix. The UK is one of the most heavily populated countries. Only 12% of the UK is built upon. That includes houses, offices, factories, shops, roads, railways and aiports etc. We still have a remarkable amount of space to build upon until we “pave the country” though my preferred option is to build high as well. Stick a mass transit station at the base of a big tower and you’ve got a synchronicity. You’ve got the same synchronicity that (privately) built the Metropoliton Railway.

  • Sure, if the only non-domesticated animals in the world you want to see are cockroaches and rats, we could pack quite a few more people on this planet, but why?

  • we could pack quite a few more people on this planet, but why?

    Well I quite like ‘people’ in a general way, that is why. Feel free to not breed if you want, but I am all for bigger cities and more technology to solve the ‘problem’ myself.

  • Midwesterner

    … we could pack quite a few more people on this planet, but why?

    Darn! There is that collective “we” again. I will only “pack”, or unpack as the case may be, on property I own. You do likewise on yours, Malcolm. Your whole mindset assumes that people and population growth need superior authority, be it the collective or a dictator, to place people in their correct place on the earth. Here is my offer to you. You don’t subsidize my children and I won’t subsidize yours.

    And if you attempt any great plans to depopulate other places with out their truly voluntary cooperation, you can expect me to act at cross purposes to you.

    Population problems do not come from governments manipulating things incorrectly. They come from governments manipulating things at all.

    Famine and disease and all of the other things you think are symptoms of overpopulation are in fact, symptoms of government run amok. How is it that nations with strong property rights do not suffer these ‘symptoms of overpopulation’ and that the worst cases of soaring populations suffering disease and famine have the least property rights? How is it that nations like Japan have an inverse correlation between wealth and population growth as they get richer. This even may even be starting to happen in mainland China and in Hong Kong, one of the most densely populated places on earth has now dropped way below the replacement rate of growth. Completely without the symptomatic conditions that you attribute elsewhere to overpopulation. Taiwan is another very wealthy, very densely populated place that has dropped well below replacement rate as its population has become wealthier.

    Exerting control over people is the problem, not the solution.

  • veryretired

    Thanks, Mid. Very concise.

  • James Waterton

    Why would anyone think that technology improvements are not able to solve the problem of providing for the material needs of a rapidly growing population? I ask, because that’s exactly what’s happened – sorry, is happening. The average world citizen today is materially better off than he has ever been, at a time when the planet’s human population is skyrocketing. I see no reason why this trend should suddenly be reversed.

  • Robert W.

    I agree Midwesterner! The cost of living should be the main limiter on family size. If an area is too densely populated, the cost of raising extra kids will rise. That’s why the welfare state should be dismantled in regards to children. The welfare checks and foodstamps artificially lower the cost of raising extra kids (extra meaning: having more than 2.1 kids per couple).

    As far as Malcom Kirkpatrick is concerned the future of the twenty-first century doesn’t belong to statists. Why? The state’s “monopoly on the use of force” won’t be worth a hill of beans as the individual becomes increasingly superempowered by emergent technological trends. Unfortunately it will be increasingly too dangerous to live in densely populated metropolises though. Look up Global Guerrillas Kirkpatrick.

  • Nick M

    James,
    …and indeed has been happening for hundreds of years. Of course it’s not going to reverese. Is not biotech and GMO food-tech* a bit hot now?

    Malcolm,
    You wilfully disregarded my comment. Considering that I said we are 12% built over in the UK might I suggest that if that was taken to 15% we’d still not quite have built the dystopian concrete jungle (fit only for the ant and the cockatrice) of your nightmares. This is especially true considering the amount of set-aside we have!

    The Greens seem to perennially think we’re all huddled in the life-raft well into the urine-drinking phase and about to cast lots to see who gets eaten first. I think our original sturdy vessel isn’t even shipping water. Did you know that a study just concluded that UK air quality is the best it’s been for 109 years? Well, you’re not going to see Sir Jonathan Porritt trumpeting that from the highest parapet are you? Because you brush things like that aside if you’re a true believer in the idea that We’re Doomed!.

    *Despite the unholy alliance of French farmers, the green-meanies and Jamie Oliver we’re gonna need GMO. Bloody hell! Just as I dropped it biology starts looking cool.

  • Frederick Davies

    Population problems do not come from governments manipulating things incorrectly. They come from governments manipulating things at all.

    I agree. As I said in the Zimbabwe comment: people should suffer the consequences of their own stupidity; if you let a bunch of socialists rule your life you deserve to suffer what they do to you.

    Why would anyone think that technology improvements are not able to solve the problem of providing for the material needs of a rapidly growing population? I ask, because that’s exactly what’s happened – sorry, is happening.

    That is what I have been saying all along.

  • (Robert): “the future of the twenty-first century doesn’t belong to statists. Why? The state’s ‘monopoly on the use of force’ won’t be worth a hill of beans as the individual becomes increasingly superempowered by emergent technological trends. Unfortunately it will be increasingly too dangerous to live in densely populated metropolises though. Look up Global Guerrillas Kirkpatrick.”

    I tried tp track that reference, Global Guerillas, thrpugh Amazon. No luck. We agree: advancing technology empowers everyone. Been there. Done that.

    From google groups, Mar. 2003 (malcolm): “Government is a business, the major dealer in force in a given locality. The size of this business is determined by the speed of transportation and communication. In these terms, the world today is smaller than Han Dynasty China or the Roman Empire. There is only room for one State. Current boundaries are like defects in a crystal lattice left over from too-rapid cooling. They yield a higher-energy state that will take time to dissipate. It may take 200 years for the
    coming World State to gel, by which time everyone in the world will be light brown and most people will speak a mutated form of English (the world’s rulers may speak Hindu or Chinese, though). Likely the coming World State will have no “center”, so as to avoid presenting anything more than a symbolic target to aggrieved chemists and engineers. Technology empowers everyone, including unstable, angry people who would retaliate when an uncaring world ignores the death of their pet cat.”

    The State is not doomed. More likely a far more intrusive State will emerge, where one will need a security clearance to study chemistry or electrical engineering, where the State closely monitors library loans and purchases of books and ordinary household chemicals.

    Whether this scenario appeals to someone depends on what s/he considers as likely options. How’d you like to lose your right leg? Depends. If the alternative is to remain bipedal and mobile, and win a date with Uma Thurman, no, thanks. If the alternative is to die painfully of gangrene within three weeks, slice away.

  • Paul Marks

    As I mentioned above, private property is the way to protect the environment – not crusades against evil Western people breeding.

    Indeed private property (in the full sense of civil society) is the way to lead people to seeing having lots of children as the only way to be looked after in their old age.

    It is no accident that “rich countries” have fewer children than “poor countries” (really it is individual women giving birth – not countries). If mothers and fathers understand that their children are very unlikely to die in their early years and that they themselves will have financial resources in their old age – a lot of things tend to change.

    In short the “controlled population growth” comes AFTER not BEFORE economic development.

    There is also another point:

    The sort of police state that Malcolm Kirkpatrick talks about above tends to undermine itself in the end – economically.

    For example, various Emperors in Chinese history have (sometimes without warning) turned their power against the economy (nationalization, price controls, “land reform” and so on) – thus undermining it.

    Police states do not tend to “just” attack certain parts of civil society – they go after economic relations in the end as well.

    And such action undermines economic life (and the strength of the very goverment that does it).

    But the process is too slow – much too slow.

    A police state can be slow to attack the economy (although it will in the end) and even statism takes time to destroy an economy (especially if there are large supplies of natural resources).

    It is possible that a country that had a semifree economy in the service of a police state could (if the country is big enough – and it only faced other semi free economies) undermine freedom all over the world.

    Of course, in the end, such a country would destroy itself – but that would not help the people it had destroyed years or decades before.

    The Soviet Union was a threat because of its vast natural resources (it was indeed the “treasure house of nations”) and China will be a threat because of its semifree economy (remember it is not up against the America of 1907, or even 1947 – the modern United States only has a semifree economy itself).

  • Nick M

    Malcolm,

    What the fuck are you on about?

  • Robert

    I’m wondering what is blocking my posts?

  • Robert

    Something was blocking me for some reason. Here, I will repost:

    Malcom Kirkpatrick:
    “I tried tp track that reference, Global Guerillas, thrpugh Amazon. No luck. We agree: advancing technology empowers everyone. Been there. Done that. ”

    Really? You don’t seem to have much knowledge in using search engines on the Internet. Here, I will help you.

    http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471780790/ref=nosim/globalguerril-20

    Malcom Kirkpatrick also said:
    “The State is not doomed. More likely a far more intrusive State will emerge, where one will need a security clearance to study chemistry or electrical engineering, where the State closely monitors library loans and purchases of books and ordinary household chemicals.”

    HA HA! Why should one obtain a security clearance to obtain chemical or electrical engineering knowledge! It is simple to just ignore the clearance requirement and simply obtain the knowledge through the internet. After all, as stated in an earlier post on this blog, a small group of chinese hackers where able to pierce the multi-billion dollar “Great Firewall of China”. Iraq simply proves you wrong day after day, Kirkpatrick (cellphone + IED, cellphone + IED, cellphone + IED, cellphone + IED!) . There will never be a World Government. It’s enforcers will simply be killed every time they try to enforce. Your ideology is OBSOLETE.

  • Robert

    As much as I do not desire a Fifth-Century outcome in the future, the technological trends of the Twenty-First Century is pointing to a latter-day version of the Fifth-Century. Just look at 11 September 2001. A complex plan was made through the Internet and a multi-billion dollar skyscraper complex was easily destroyed. The World State is dead.

  • (Robert): “Your ideology is OBSOLETE”.

    What ideology? You make an enormous presumption. So have all the other morons (back at ya) who were so quick in this thread to toss around terms like “crypto fascist” and “nazi”.

    “Ideological” is an uncomplimentary way to say “systematic”, and I try to be systematic. If you hold a gun to my head and compel me to put a name to my political ideology, I’ll say “liberal. In the 19th century sense of the term”.

  • Robert

    Since I’m a dumb moron Kirkpatrick, tell me how this supposed World State will come about despite the technological trends of the Twenty-First Century? Who’s going to establish its set of values? Who’s going to use the deadly force necessary to establish it?

    Kirkpatrick said:
    I’ll say “liberal. In the 19th century sense of the term”.

    Really, you’re a classical 19th century liberal? That’s not what I see in post:The State is not doomed. More likely a far more intrusive State will emerge, where one will need a security clearance to study chemistry or electrical engineering, where the State closely monitors library loans and purchases of books and ordinary household chemicals. What I see is (drumroll!!), a “crypto fascist”! TA DA!

    Kirkpatrick also said:
    In these terms, the world today is smaller than Han Dynasty China or the Roman Empire.

    Hey Kirkpatrick, you’re right about that one. The world is “smaller” than the Roman Empire, the Fifth-Century one that is.

    Since you called me a moron and you’re so smart, why couldn’t you find out about Global Guerillas? It wasn’t hard for me to find it at all. Hmmm, your name is familiar to me, I think you had a similar problem finding stuff on the Internet in an earlier thread on this blog. Of course, I might be wrong.

  • I just realized who scarce humans are precious to. Obviously, the purpose of the ZPG movement is to increase the price of human slaves on the slave markets of Zeta Reticuli. A large part of contemporary liberalism makes more sense once we realize that it comes from extraterrestrials. As another example, the claim that humans are irrational and need regulations only makes sense if the regulations are not written by those irrational humans.

    BTW, would the decreasing rate of starvation in places like Bangladesh mean that they’re no longer overpopulated?

  • {Robetrt): “…how this supposed World State will come about despite the technological trends of the Twenty-First Century?”

    We see the same trends. We draw different conclusions.

    (Robert): ” Who’s going to establish its set of values? Who’s going to use the deadly force necessary to establish it?”

    The government apparatuss we see will coalesce.

    (Robert): “Kirkpatrick said: ‘I’ll say “liberal. In the 19th century sense of the term’.

    Really, you’re a classical 19th century liberal? That’s not what I see in post: ‘The State is not doomed. More likely a far more intrusive State will emerge, where one will need a security clearance to study chemistry or electrical engineering, where the State closely monitors library loans and purchases of books and ordinary household chemicals.’ What I see is (drumroll!!), a “crypto fascist”! TA DA!”

    What I see is someone who cannot distinguish between normative and positive statements. Someone who predicted the triumph of Bolshevism in Russia in 1917 might have been a realist, not a Bolshevik.

    (Robert): “Since you called me a moron and you’re so smart, why couldn’t you find out about Global Guerillas?”

    I wasn’t trying very hard. As I indicated, the point (technology empowers everyone) is pretty obvious.

  • Ideas
    (David Friedman’s blog)
    Wednesday, November 15, 2006

    Darwin, Reproduction and Religion

    I do not often link to other blogs, but I just came across a fascinating post in Future Pundit, arguing that Darwnian evolution will reverse both falling birth rates and declining religious belief—indeed is already reversing the latter.

    Read the comments. What I said.

    (malcolm): “Voluntary programs for population control selectively breed non-compliant idividuals.”

    Consider also that humans who can breed at high densities have a selective advantage over humans who require lots of open space.

  • Robert

    I say: ” Who’s going to establish its set of values? Who’s going to use the deadly force necessary to establish it?”

    Malcom Kirkpatrick replies:
    The government apparatuss we see will coalesce.

    You didn’t answer my questions. How will this government apparatus “coalesce” if its enforcers keep getting killed and its centralized infrastructure keep getting disrupted (systempunkt Look up Global Guerillas) by networks of superempowered individuals. You can’t enforce the law if the law enforcement is easy to kill. Anyway, I still ask, who is going to determine its values (there is no unified global value system) and how will it use the amount of deadly force needed to force the world’s differing peoples to submit (The powerful U.S. military cannot even pacify the Arab “Iraqis” thanks to networks of insurgents empowered by distributed information technology)? Simply saying it will “just coalesce” isn’t answering the question.

  • Nick M

    Malcolm,
    What the fucking hell are you on about?

  • Have fun but please be civil and succinct.