Noam Chompski worries about the future of humans in the world., but I thinink he misses the point.”
The survival of the human species is by no means an obvious thing. There are very severe threats to survival. We learn about them all the time. The threat of environmental destruction is much too real to put to the side. The threat of destruction by weapons of mass destruction — that has come very close many times. We just learned at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, a terminal nuclear war was averted by one word by one submarine commander who countermanded the order to send off nuclear missiles.
I think he is missing the point, at the heart of the enviromental problem is that we have too many people trying to occupy the world. Every person no matter how hard they try not to, leaves a carbon foot print and causes some enviromental harm. Same with possible wars. At the heart of most wars it is a competition for resources that eventually escalates into violence. Religions by trying to out reproduce eachother add to the problem.
Just like it was obvious to anyone paying attention that the sub-prime real estate loans were going to be a problem, it should be obvious that the earth is running out of resources and space to support and over growing population; and the methods used to feed and house this large population carry with them many unacceptable consequences. If we could slow down or even reverse population growth many of the problems we are facing would be much less dire.
Rampant population growth threatens our economy and quality of life. I’m not talking about the obvious environmental and resource issues. I’m talking about the effect upon rising unemployment and poverty.
I should introduce myself. I am the author of a book titled “Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America.” To make a long story short, my theory is that, as population density rises beyond some optimum level, per capita consumption of products begins to decline out of the need to conserve space. People who live in crowded conditions simply don’t have enough space to use and store many products. This declining per capita consumption, in the face of rising productivity (per capita output, which always rises), inevitably yields rising unemployment and poverty.
This theory has huge implications for policy toward population management. Our policies that encourage high rates of population growth are rooted in the belief of economists that population growth is a good thing, fueling economic growth. Through most of human history, the interests of the common good and business (corporations) were both well-served by continuing population growth. For the common good, we needed more workers to man our factories, producing the goods needed for a high standard of living. This population growth translated into sales volume growth for corporations. Both were happy.
But, once an optimum population density is breached, their interests diverge. It is in the best interest of the common good to stabilize the population, avoiding an erosion of our quality of life through high unemployment and poverty. However, it is still in the interest of corporations to fuel population growth because, even though per capita consumption goes into decline, total consumption still increases. We now find ourselves in the position of having corporations and economists influencing public policy in a direction that is not in the best interest of the common good.
If you’re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, I invite you to visit either of my web sites at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com or PeteMurphy.wordpress.com where you can read the preface, join in my blog discussion and, of course, purchase the book if you like. (It’s also available at Amazon.com.)
Please forgive the somewhat spammish nature of the previous paragraph. I just don’t know how else to inject this new perspective into the overpopulation debate without drawing attention to the book that explains the theory.
Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”
Thanks for posting that. I thought I was a lone voice on the dangers of over-population. Good to know I am not alone.
This might be good food for thought (and for producing more food):
http://econlog.econlib.org//archives/2008/04/are_natalist_ta.html
I don’t know if it is a good way to produce more food, unless of course you plan on eating them.
Hey Mr Bettor:
I followed the link from the link you left and found this:
The entire thing seems to assume no external costs to child rearing and that both parents continue at their current levels of productivity, niether of these are reasonable assumptions.
We are back to my thesis that we should offer huge tax incentives for any male who gets a vasectomy without polluting the worl with children.
I think you conveniently stopped reading. Later in the same paragraph you cite:
Intergenerational transfers are found to create large positive externalities in industrial welfare states but small negative ones in Third World countries. Public goods lead to sizable positive externalities in both groups of countries.
What this means is that having young to subsidize the old, both privately and publicly, is very very good.
So we should all be happy to pay more into social security. I am fine with that. We don’t need to have thousands of kids to help support the older people in our society we just need to each pay a little more.
JR: The people paying into Soc Sec are approximately 22-62, while the people collecting Soc Sec are 62-92. Where did those payers come from?
Are you still playing Star Trek transporter economics?
Star Trek economics? did you hear Harlod(from Harold and Kumar) is going to play Sulu in the movie?
We don’t need to have more people paying nto social secuirity we could have more highly skilled people pay a little more into to system. This could be done by removing the cap on social security earnings, that way we can help take care of the elderly and not wreck the planet while we are at it.
JR: The Soc Sec system will be insolvent in less than 20 years. Removing the cap will disincent people from sticking around to pay. You talk about this like there’s a free lunch around every corner. If that were the case, then more kids would not be a problem.
I keep hearing that people will stop working to avoid taxes. That doesn’t make any sense. Most people still work whether they pay a lot of taxes or not. Most people have no interest in going “Galt”.
Plus I think it is more medicare that will be insolvent within twenty years and we are going to fix health care in the near future. So we won’t have to worry about medicare.
Seriously removing the wage cap on social security earnings seems like a good idea. Everyone benefits from taking care of the old and disabled as well as the orphaned. Even people who make over ninety thousand per year so everyone should pay into it regardless of their income level.