A falling population is a good thing!

[puntnomads]

Falling World Population And The New Economic Prosperity

 

TWO PARADIGMS

The years (1948-1975) of fast economic growth, low annual budget deficits, almost zero unemployment, cheap oil, small or zero national trade deficits, innovation and liberty in the Western countries - was also a period of population growth. Ever since, political thinking confused this result - population growth - with its causes which included fast economic growth. Still today, nearly all western countries have "natalist" policies trying to grow the national population, despite the reality of slow or no economic growth, sky high unemployment, and all the diseconomies of high population.

 

Talking about population decline is "defeatist". Government aids and incitation, even under austerity conditions, are still channelled to an attempt at stopping population decline by forcing or cajoling the national society to have more babies - even if they don't have a job or any prospect of it.

 

National politicians who claim that "the market will decide" when it concerns finding a job for their citizens use non-market means to incite those same citizens to have more babies. Youth unemployment in several EU countries is now more than 50%, and averages 27% across the EU27 bloc, but parents are incited to have another baby and young couples to have a first baby. The natalist quest is blind faith.

 

With no signs of any rebound coming, the result of this mega-trend is simple. National populations are ageing, have fewer children and outright decline of population is already in place in a rising number of countries.

 

NATALISM AND THE BABY BOOMERS

Natalists pretend that Collapse of Civilization and fewer babies are tantamount to the same thing - but their only real interest is finding future working age persons to pay the national pension payment fixes needed to keep still-able-to-vote Baby Boomers from the last population bulge, onside and consuming, voting and thinking the right way. Generational envy and strife, between have-not younger persons, and the "entitled" Boomers is rising.

 

THE LAGGARDS

The step down in annual increments of world population has been constant since the 1980s, and coming decrements will be as large as current, or larger, due to so few countries still exhibiting the former paradigm of low income-fast population growth. These last hope countries for the natalists include small but still fast growing Somalia, Zambia, Congo DR, Uganda and Rwanda.

 

These are all societies of extreme poverty, high illiteracy, unemancipated female populations and short life expectancy. They do not represent the future, but the past.

 

But after what we can call the New Dark Ages of runaway population growth in the 20th century, civilization is ready again to rear its head - with a declining population. Smaller populations are a tribute to human good sense, a reduction in arrogance, less hubris, more humility - a better use of natural resources, more respect for the environment and other living things. The sustainability movement and the use of renewable energy can be seen as advance signals that the constant race to produce more babies has been abandoned by Humanity. The natalists have lost.

 

AN UNEXPECTED CHANGE

We now know a lot better that the blind instinct which brings too many babies does not create the conditions for sustained economic growth, but does bring us the problem of excessive consumption and unnecessarily rapid resource depletion, stress on the biosphere and natural living systems, the growth of regimented conformism, and the rejection of innovation. We now have the cultural phenomenon of thinking that too many children is inconvenient, unproductive and desperately expensive.

 

This is culture change. At least at first this change was neither wanted or programmed by governments and elites in Europe, the US and East Asia, with a few but large exceptions of national anti-natalist policy, as in China and Singapore. Improved medical services that previously enabled populations to explode now allows us the confidence of having small families of wanted children. Drivers of lower birth rates such as improved education and income-equality for women have run alongside advances in birth control methods.

 

Today, especially in Africa south of the Sahara we have the paradigm of failed states, poverty, civil war, endemic malnutrition and life expectancy of under 50 years - and rapid population growth. Economic growth is not delivered by uncontrolled population growth, in fact the exact opposite. In the rest of the world, outside the remaining regions of runaway population growth and its linked poverty and civil wars, there is substantial and still growing affluence, forming a single market for resources and global trade. Also linked with the globalized economy, globalized decline in population growth has run alongside the economic convergence caused by globalization.

 

As recently as year 2000, forecasts by UN agencies for world population in year 2050 were typically in the range 10 to 12 billion. By 2100, the same forecasts projected world population at 15 billion or more. Today, even the more "natalist" UN projections and forecasts say that world population will be peaking at around 8 billion in 2050, then declining to about 6 billion by 2100, the population of 1998. Today's population is about 7.1 billion.

 

To be sure, these forecasts may be too "anti-natalist" but they show the intensity of global demographic change. Added to the well known and sometimes flagrant over-reporting of national populations, especially for aid receiving countries whose aid inflows are tied to their population number, the New Demographic Revolution is a major hope for the future, completely marginalising the previous and menacing "15 billion by 2100" forecasts.

[puntnomads]

"Youth unemployment in several EU countries is now more than 50%, and averages 27% across the EU27 bloc, but parents are incited to have another baby and young couples to have a first baby. The natalist quest is blind faith."

 

What has always bothered me is Somalis blind faith in the "natalist quest". Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against people having as much children as they want. It is their problem. But what is annoying is how they try to make having a lot of children as the best thing in the world, regardless of the circumstances or your personnel views on the matter. Some Somalis have accepted the "cultural phenomenon of thinking that too many children is inconvenient, unproductive and desperately expensive." When will the majority of Somalis begrudgingly tolerate the new mindset?

[OdaySomali]

This is what I said in another thread:

 

OdaySomali;738402 wrote:

(in the context of poor/underdeveloped countries, including African countries, poor people with large families are not poor because they have large families but they have large families because they are poor. If you are poor and have few children, you are more likely to remain poor [particularly in old age] and you may still lose your few children. Furthermore, if you are poor, you are less likely to have access to birth-control.

 

You see, children are only an economic burden up untill the age of ~6 after which they are seen as an asset in two ways. (1) Children will work i.e. tend the animals, beg etc. and thus provide livelihoods for the family more than the parents alone would be able to provide. (2) In old age, those children that do survive, and

the idea of having many children is that at the least

some

will survive

, will provide for and care for the parents as there are no social security systems to fall back on.

 

Take a typical nomadic Somali family for example. without many children to look after your livestock, are you more or less able to rear and grow your livestock? Same if you are a farmer.

 

It is a known fact and this has been proven by statistics worldwide, that as people become more affluent, they have fewer children.

 

There might be a marginal benefit in having fewer children [if you are already relatively well off] but you are overstating the likely impact. Technically speaking, children are affected by poverty but they are not the cause of it; thus there is no guarantee that you will be wealthier by having fewer children and nor is there a guarantee that you will reduce the affects of poverty [let alone the causes of poverty].

 

In other words (1) by reducing the population you may increase GDP per capita but overall GDP remains the same and (2) by reducing the population you might actually reduce GDP (lower productive capacity, fewer consumers etc.) and hence GDP per capita.

[OdaySomali]

I think what's a far more important and quite frankly more valid debate that we should be having is the currently accepted idea/definition of prosperity or affluence, which is dominated by an inherently inefficient material dimension of excess and wealth hoarding. Rather than prosperity per se, it is the currently accepted idea/definition of prosperity or affluence that is unsustainable. We need to reconfigure the perception of prosperity. This through the use of education, information provision, media. Through legislative and structural redesign we need to gear the Somali consumer, private sector and public sector's perceptions of prosperity and affluence to be one of a sustainable and equitable kind.

[Hobbesian_Brute]

So why are relatively well off urban somalis still having large families ?

[Mad_Mullah]

Having large families has nothing to do with only some surviving or that nonsense. It's culture. Even in the west we have large families. Whether they're well off or not.

[Hobbesian_Brute]

Mad_Mullah;971432 wrote:

Having large families has nothing to do with only some surviving or that nonsense. It's culture. Even in the west we have large families. Whether they're well off or not.

is it a good thing in your opinion ?

[OdaySomali]

Hobbesian_Brute;971412 wrote:

So why are relatively well off urban somalis still having large families ?

Because they are still 1st generation immigrants. 2nd and 3rd generation tend to have fewer children.

 

Mad_Mullah;971432 wrote:

Having large families has nothing to do with only some surviving or that nonsense. It's culture. Even in the west we have large families. Whether they're well off or not.

Of coursr its all realtive. Part of it is culture, no doubt, but culture comes about from environmental factors (economic/social/political/natural environment). Reasons why Somalis traditionally have many kids include:

 

- Lack of birth-control methods

- Perceived religious duty to have many kids (increase number of Muslims)

- Increase the clan numbers (for wealth and times of war)

- Economic reasons (children as labourers, to tend and rear the livestock)

- Succession & survival (unspoken truth, due to high infant mortality, if you have many kids at the least some will be boys and some survive

[GaraadMon]

Having smaller families is direct consequence of urbanization, but it's not immediate as there is typically a gradual reduction in the fertility rates of urban families. I'd be surprised if second generation Somalis had anywhere near as many children as their parents.

 

The only reason why Somalia's population is seeing any growth is due to a mixture of food aid and remittance, which is just as much an unnatural social engineering policy as providing birth control and sex education. In the past population booms were the direct result of agricultural and economic progress, what opportunities will be afforded to the children who are born in to a society that has nothing more to offer them then it did the previous generation?

[Fermi]

The idea that a small population is vital to economic prosperity is a Malthusian myth that has been propagated by capitalism. A small population is not conducive to economic progress, contrarily it may deter it in developed countries. If you look at the population pyramid of all first world nations, minus the U.S, you will notice retirement age groups, between 50-75, form a larger part of the population than the working age group, 15-65. This means there aren't enough workers to support the pensions of retiring/ed workers. Countries such as Japan, Germany and Italy are facing this problem.

 

Natalist policy ebbs and flows according to the specific population needs of a given nation. however, the advent of contraception, urban development, and women's rights has created a linear trend toward smaller families that is nearly impossible to control/combat.

 

Population has very little to do with resource depletion as a mere 16% of the world uses more than 80% of world resources. This discrepancy tells a clear story of resource mismanagement and injustice. Environmental organizations and governments alike have engaged in a malicious campaign to paint the developing world as a problem population. Their campaign was so successful that population is now, erroneously, synonymous with environmental degradation.

[Fermi]

<cite>

@Hobbesian_Brute

said:</cite>

So why are relatively well off urban somalis still having large families ?

 

Somalis continue to have large families (though it is worth mentioning family size is decreasing) because of a reluctance to adopt contraception.

[DoctorKenney]

<cite>

@Fermi

said:</cite>

Somalis continue to have large families (though it is worth mentioning family size is decreasing) because of a reluctance to adopt contraception.

 

Why in the world would Somalis want to adopt contraception? I mean, if a Somali couple wants to use birth control, then that's up to them. It's their choice. But to adopt population control as a policy, why on Earth would you want that?

 

Somalia is an extremely underpopulated country. We are more than twice the geographic size of Germany, with less than 1/8th the population size. Just look at the population density figures. Somalia's population could increase to 100 million people and we'd still have the room and resources to accommodate more.

 

Don't fall for this B.S. Liberal propaganda. There's enough food, water and resources for everyone in this world. We just need to learn how to utilize our resources and maximize production, while making sure that this has no adverse effects on the natural environment.

[xabad]

<cite>

@DoctorKenney

said:</cite>

Why in the world would Somalis want to adopt contraception? I mean, if a Somali couple wants to use birth control, then that's up to them. It's their choice. But to adopt population control as a policy, why on Earth would you want that?

 

This is exactly the attitude hobbesian was alluding to. here you have a so called urban educated somali who still doesn't get it.

 

<cite>

@DoctorKenney

said:</cite> Somalia is an extremely underpopulated country. We are more than twice the geographic size of Germany, with less than 1/8th the population size. Just look at the population density figures. Somalia's population could increase to 100 million people and we'd still have the room and resources to accommodate more.

 

1)the population carrying capacity of germany a fertile, green temperate country is vastly different from that of arid and inhospitable somalia and 2) somalis are no germans, they can barely feed themselves as they are. how could they possibly grow food for 100 million ??

 

<cite>

@DoctorKenney

said:</cite> Don't fall for this B.S. Liberal propaganda.

There's enough food, water and resources for everyone in this world

. We just need to learn how to utilize our resources and maximize production, while making sure that this has no adverse effects on the natural environment.

 

This applies to first world countries adeer who have no trouble providing all these for themselves. it a different matter when it come to third world countries and peoples like somalis. the most rapid population growth is happening in places that can't feed themselves to begin with like somalia, mali, niger, burkina faso. one thing you can blame liberals for is not allowing nature to take it course and level off populations in third world famine spots.

 

 

[DoctorKenney]

Clearly you fell for Malthusian propaganda which has been debunked a LONG time ago.

 

In the 1700's, the world population was under 1 billion. This guy named Thomas Malthus believed that the world population increasing would create a shortage of food and water, and result in catastrophic famine (killing billions of people) and that food prices would increase dramatically as a result.

 

He was wrong.

 

The world population is now 7 billion, but food prices have dropped dramatically in the last 200 years. People are living longer, people are healthier, and people have a higher standard of living than they've ever had in their history.

 

Why was he wrong?

 

Because he (as most Liberals) don't understand economics. When food becomes more scarce, it becomes more expensive. As a result, businessmen seeking to make a profit start to innovate and think of ways to maximize production of food, which brings costs down.

 

Why do you think farmers in 2014 are like 100 times more productive than farmers in 1800? Better farming practices, fertilizing, and mechanization all contributed to the drop in food prices, which allowed more people to leave the farms and start working in the cities. In 1800, most of the world's population was farmers. Even in America, most of the people worked in farms. Today, 2014...less than 2 percent of the people work in farms. The rest of the people work in the cities, doing OTHER stuff. And now the average human has access to much cheaper food when compared to his ancestors.

 

The global poverty rate fell from 50% of the world's population in 1980.......to a 21% poverty rate in 2010. It's obviously not perfect, there are still people extremely poor today. But this fall in poverty is dramatic. The world's population increased from 4 billion in 1980 to 7 billion today, and the poverty rate FELL BIG TIME.

 

And it's because of mechanization, maximized productivity and lowered prices. Technology and free markets literally made all of this possible. This whole bullshit about carrying capacity is revised every year. Carrying capacity only means the amount of humans the Earth can carry with a given amount of technology and investment. We're already in the process of creating vertical farms, where glass skyscrapers are constructed in major cities and inside the tall buildings, food is grown. Artificial farms grown in a skyscraper. This was unthinkable a couple generations ago.

 

Stop falling for this Liberal B.S. They're always panicking about the global population increasing, but humans today are less wasteful than they've ever been. Food has never been cheaper, even though there are 7 billion people.

 

Fly over Africa, fly over Somalia. You'll see literally millions of square kilometers of unused land. Empty land. Land where you can grow all sorts of fruits and vegetables. Where you can raise cattle and grow wheat. Where you can maximize production and feed the population.

 

Somalia and Burkina Faso and all these countries just need proper economic policies. Our country can easily handle 100 million people. The bottom half of Somalia is fertile and we can definitely grow enough food to feed the population.

 

We live in one of the emptiest countries in the world, and you wanna talk about limiting the population. Somalia is a large country with a tiny population. Give me a break.

[Coofle]

وَلَا تَقْتُلُوا أَوْلَادَكُمْ خَشْيَةَ إِمْلَاقٍ ۖ نَحْنُ نَرْزُقُهُمْ وَإِيَّاكُمْ ۚ

 

Many people argue that, Increasing world population will cause widespread shortage in food, water, and other necessities. China and India are living proof to refute that claim, combined, they almost contain one third of the planet's population. Despite that, the food prices is record low in both countries. On the other hand, certain countries with small populations tend to have high price tags when it comes to food.

 

At the same time, that does not mean our produce should remain the same. We need to proportionally increase food production with population growth. Technological and scientific development have had huge impact on the methods and ways we produce food and provide water.

Nowadays, one hectare produces 10 times more what it did centuries ago. seasonal change is no more a factor in farming due to greenhouse farming.

 

 

Globalized greed remains the single most driving factor behind the calls for population control. countries that propagate such fears remains to be those with highest food security.

 

Somalia, our beloved place!...Albeit having no population problems, but food insecurity is constant threat. Famine breaking out every now and then (annually). drought and in some cases too much rainfall are the focus of scrutiny and blame. I believe that Somalia is good case study to the disproportionate population growth to food availability. our country tries to sustain a quadrupled population with the same farming and herding methods. Modernizing agriculture sector in somalia (& Africa) will make food shortage a thing of the past.