World population collapse?

[JimG]

Just ordered the book Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits by Steven Mosher. I heard him on EWTN Radio today. The book is hard to order. Both Amazon and B&N did not have the book. I had to go to Borders to order it.

You can also get the book here.

Here is a Steven Mosher video about the book.

And a Steven Mosher video explaining how he became involved in China’s one child policy. “Women were arrested for the crime of being pregnant.”

 

[rwoehmke]

It is that I disagree with just like many don’t want to keep handing out welfare to let poor families keep having children.

Yes! Margaret Sanger had a solution for that problem. If one reads poor to mean “untermensh,” Hitler also had a solution.

The forecast that I read said that world population would continue to increase till about 2050 and than level off or decline.

 

[goofyjim]

Yes! Margaret Sanger had a solution for that problem. If one reads poor to mean “untermensh,” Hitler also had a solution.

The forecast that I read said that world population would continue to increase till about 2050 and than level off or decline.

But if that happens through purely natural means, what right does any government have to manipulate it back up? It must be the decision of individual couples to have more children to compensate for those who freely choose not to get married and have children. And that must be done through existing tax structures which give them equal deductions for dependents but not special ones that will require an extra tax on the single people.

 

[rwoehmke]

But if that happens through purely natural means, what right does any government have to manipulate it back up? It must be the decision of individual couples to have more children to compensate for those who freely choose not to get married and have children. And that must be done through existing tax structures which give them equal deductions for dependents but not special ones that will require an extra tax on the single people.

Well some European and Asian Governments have either considered or have paid a “bounty” to families to have children. That certainly isn’t using force. What good would force do anyway when there are people who just can’t conceive?

It is a canard that taxes on singles are of no benefit to them. One needs to think more broadly then some immediate satisfaction. The elderly in the states, for example, no longer have children in school, but are required to pay school taxes anyway. What is good for a society or the family as a whole benefits everyone. The common good is a valuable Christian concept that has enlivened the secular world.

 

[goofyjim]

Well some European and Asian Governments have either considered or have paid a “bounty” to families to have children. That certainly isn’t using force. What good would force do anyway when there are people who just can’t conceive?

It is a canard that taxes on singles are of no benefit to them. One needs to think more broadly then some immediate satisfaction. The elderly in the states, for example, no longer have children in school, but are required to pay school taxes anyway. What is good for a society or the family as a whole benefits everyone. The common good is a valuable Christian concept that has enlivened the secular world.

They should be entitled to no more deductions per family member than I have for myself. If they are going to claim a deduction equalling the poverty level for each dependent then I should be able to calim that same single deduction for myself. After that the tax should be a flat percent.

 

[goofyjim]

I see it coming. The single penalty tax. If you’re single pay more for the other people.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have occasion, in my occupation, to trace family trees in order to determine heirship. It has, for years, amazed me to see how frequently families, even large families, die out completely, or massively shrink in membership after only a couple of generations. It is much more unusual to see families expand exponentially, as one might expect them to do.

It’s sobering to realize that 50 years of total childness would mean the end of the human race.

I do not expect 50 years of total childlessness, so don’t go off on that. My purpose in saying it is to underline how precarious human populations really are.

I recently read an anthropological work in which the authors argued that the Indian population of the continental U.S. was thought small by white explorers and settlers ONLY because Eurasian diseases preceded them. The explorers and settlers were not seeing the “forest primeval” but the “neglected, but formerly well-tended forests and glades”. The same appears to have been true in the Amazon Basin.

It is obvious that population replacement is slowing down almost everywhere. In many places, it is soon due for dramatic decreases. That die is already cast. It is hard to picture a rapidly aging population as a good thing. It is hard to picture a dramatic population reduction as a good thing. The decades following the Black Death were terrible. European population collapse is soon to reach Black Death proportions. How can anyone possibly imagine that abandonment of well-tended fields, well-manned factories and inhabited buildings could possibly be a good thing?
Just a small thing, but I have seen towns in which the sewage systems no longer worked because shrinking populations do not put enough water into the system to allow them to operate. Water in water lines has to move along rapidly as well or it will become dangerous to drink. How will people handle it when substantial portions of power grids are no longer in use? Re-loop them all? Let them short out in abandoned neighborhoods? Everyone has surely seen what bypassed and abandoned segments of highway look like in only a few years. Does anyone really think an infrastructure designed for, say, 300 million will work properly and be properly maintained if the population goes to, say, 200 million? It won’t. Will police, fire and sanitation departments have to expand or contract when populations thin? Will some areas simply not be served by either, or will reduced recruit numbers result in everyplace being underserved? I don’t think population control people really realize how much of the infrastructure will have to be rebuilt if they have their way.

 

[Contarini]

Well, I have to disagree. If you look at the link below, you’ll see that of the major western nations, the United States has the highest fertility rate, 2.1, which, in the western world, is the bare replacement rate. EVERY OTHER major industrial nation has a lower fertility rate.

cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html

The replacement fertility rate of 2.1 applies mainly to the western world. In geographic locations with higher infant mortality and lower life expectancy (i.e., the third world) the replacement fertility rate is significantly higher. In some places it is as high as 3.3.

It’s true that the world’s population rate is still increasing. However, this is due to “population momentum,” which refers to the percentage of a population that has not yet reached their childbearing years. The higher this percentage, the more time it will take to reach peak population, even though the fertility rate for the population may have dipped below replacement levels.

Western Europe is particularly at risk. The math just isn’t there to support much hope that much of Western European culture will survive past this century.

Well, that’s sad, but lots of other cultures have disappeared as well. There’s something odd, even racist, about equating a Western European population collapse with a world population collapse. Western Europe is not the world, you know!

I think there are ways to mitigate or even prevent the disappearance of Western European culture, which I do care about–I don’t care tuppence about the disappearance of people who look just like me, though obviously I have the normal human desire to see my genes continue. I think that Europeans (not so much Americans) have good and just reasons to insist that immigrants should take on the values of the native culture. Immigrants who are clearly unwilling to do this should be willing to go and live somewhere else. If it were up to me, in the English context for instance I’d give serious incentives to Anglicans to immigrate to England, and put serious restrictions on non-Christian immigration. I would have no problem with an England largely populated by English-speaking, Shakespeare-reading African Anglicans in 2100–I would be very sorry to see it largely populated by Muslims. Of course, the chance of such measures being adopted any time soon is pretty small. But perhaps less drastic measures designed to preserve cultural identity can be taken.

In short, we need to separate the racial question from the cultural question. There’s nothing disturbing about the idea that most people living in Europe in a hundred years will have dark skin. There is something disturbing about the idea that they will not share or value the cultural heritage of Europe. And I think something can be done about this latter, though admittedly it would be chancy at best.

Edwin