A commentary entitled “Humanity is going to shrink” recently crossed our desk here at TPOL. (Warning: most of the article is behind a type of paywall.)
At first, based on the headline, we thought we would agree: Inhumanity seems to be growing exponentially, so of course humanity – concern for one another, the ZAP or Golden Rule – is shrinking. Not just here in the States.
But of course, that is not what Noahpinion is pushing: in the grand (and sick) tradition of Malthus and Gore and other doomsayers, we are told that the number of humans will decline. Indeed, is already declining. And of course, that will result in a world of misery and even horror.
The population Chicken Little types have already pointed out that the total number of humans alive at the same time on this planet will hit “Peak Population” soon. (In relative terms.) Wikipedia provides a good summary of the various opinions about this: most recently the UN claims that population will peak at 10.4 billion in 2086. Other claim the peak will come at a lower number as much as 20 years soon. After that, “it’s all down hill.”
Does this smell like what we are daily bombarded with? How runaway carbon dioxide and methane emissions will result in runaway global warming? How countries building more and more nukes will result in a global war of annihilation? That if Republicans (or, according to some, Democrats) are not suppressed and exterminated, a new Hitler will enslave the States?
It is the opposite of “pie in the sky by and by” – it is “the sky is falling” screamed by Chicken Little as she zooms across the barnyard. And of course, the opposite of Erlich and the doom-saying of The Population Bomb.
And we believe it is just as valid as those claims and proclamations of destruction and doom.
Earth is NOT a closed system – and we are closer and closer to actually being able to reach and use the resources of more and more of the Solar System. It is no longer science fiction: we have more people living outside the atmosphere than ever – if numbers are increasing more slowly than many of us hope. Based on current efforts underway (as much or more private and not government), that number is going to rapidly increase. But the resources from other pieces of rock orbiting old Sol will flood back to Earth, to the bottom of the gravity well. And as the “discovery” and colonization of the New World starting in AD 1492 demonstrated, the populations of the old lands and the new lands grows rapidly. For social and psychological reasons, it seems.
Frontier societies grow in populations. Even on Earth, there are still many areas that are true frontiers and which government does not suppress as much as the urban morass. Just as in the late Middle Ages and, for that matter, the cataclysm of the Twentieth Century.
Second, mankind and our societies are not based on the equivalent of the (now disproved and rejected) Uniformitarianism theory. No doubt certain cultures and societies will disappear: how many Amorites or Etruscans do you run into nowadays? (However, Assyrians and Armenians are still around.) Yes, Japan, Korea, China, and apparently most of Europe seem (for now) to be on a steady decline to extinction. But don’t hold your breath.
There are many reasons for depopulation of regions and nations and cultures: we can often (if not quite always) blame governments for that. Consider the depopulation of the Rus and much of Eastern Europe courtesy of the Mongols in the 1400s. Or the collapse of population in Britain, Gaul, and Iberia in the 400s and 500s. Mostly but not entirely due to invasion and war and mass murder. But do not forget the Soviet efforts in Belarus, Ukraine, and much of European Russia back in the 1920s. Or Mao’s work in China in the 1960s and 1970s. Or even the (surely unintended) consequences of the conquest of the Azteca by the Spanish in the 1500s. Or the Black Death in Europe – or Justinian’s Plague back in 541 and decades after. It is not just war, but many other governmental actions that enabled the reduction of population in those eras.
And it is no different today. It is China’s own Communist regimes that have put China (according to people like Peter Zeihan and many others) on the path to demographic doom. Governmental interference in socio-economic systems and conditions mean that fewer resources are available for people who want larger families: it is government that pretty much forced women from home out into the workplace, making children less desirable. (And as some will point out, government either does or promotes the mass murder of unborn children: reducing population increase.)
The point is simple: government has NO MORE business doing central planning for populations and demographics than it does centrally planning economic affairs: controlling manufacturing, rationing purchases and consumption, or setting wages and prices. Such things are far too complex to let them be in the hands of clueless politicians or ham-handed bureaucrats.
Whether we are worried about needing to increase or reduce population, it must be kept out of government hands. Like religion, schooling, caring for the needy, and everything else important.
Enough is enough.
About TPOL Nathan
Follower of Christ Jesus (a christian), Pahasapan (resident of the Black Hills), Westerner, Lover of Liberty, Free-Market Anarchist, Engineer, Army Officer, Husband, Father, Historian, Writer, Evangelist. Successor to Lady Susan (Mama Liberty) at TPOL.
The Price of Liberty 
Is the human race in inevitable decline?
A commentary entitled “Humanity is going to shrink” recently crossed our desk here at TPOL. (Warning: most of the article is behind a type of paywall.)
At first, based on the headline, we thought we would agree: Inhumanity seems to be growing exponentially, so of course humanity – concern for one another, the ZAP or Golden Rule – is shrinking. Not just here in the States.
But of course, that is not what Noahpinion is pushing: in the grand (and sick) tradition of Malthus and Gore and other doomsayers, we are told that the number of humans will decline. Indeed, is already declining. And of course, that will result in a world of misery and even horror.
The population Chicken Little types have already pointed out that the total number of humans alive at the same time on this planet will hit “Peak Population” soon. (In relative terms.) Wikipedia provides a good summary of the various opinions about this: most recently the UN claims that population will peak at 10.4 billion in 2086. Other claim the peak will come at a lower number as much as 20 years soon. After that, “it’s all down hill.”
Does this smell like what we are daily bombarded with? How runaway carbon dioxide and methane emissions will result in runaway global warming? How countries building more and more nukes will result in a global war of annihilation? That if Republicans (or, according to some, Democrats) are not suppressed and exterminated, a new Hitler will enslave the States?
It is the opposite of “pie in the sky by and by” – it is “the sky is falling” screamed by Chicken Little as she zooms across the barnyard. And of course, the opposite of Erlich and the doom-saying of The Population Bomb.
And we believe it is just as valid as those claims and proclamations of destruction and doom.
Earth is NOT a closed system – and we are closer and closer to actually being able to reach and use the resources of more and more of the Solar System. It is no longer science fiction: we have more people living outside the atmosphere than ever – if numbers are increasing more slowly than many of us hope. Based on current efforts underway (as much or more private and not government), that number is going to rapidly increase. But the resources from other pieces of rock orbiting old Sol will flood back to Earth, to the bottom of the gravity well. And as the “discovery” and colonization of the New World starting in AD 1492 demonstrated, the populations of the old lands and the new lands grows rapidly. For social and psychological reasons, it seems.
Frontier societies grow in populations. Even on Earth, there are still many areas that are true frontiers and which government does not suppress as much as the urban morass. Just as in the late Middle Ages and, for that matter, the cataclysm of the Twentieth Century.
Second, mankind and our societies are not based on the equivalent of the (now disproved and rejected) Uniformitarianism theory. No doubt certain cultures and societies will disappear: how many Amorites or Etruscans do you run into nowadays? (However, Assyrians and Armenians are still around.) Yes, Japan, Korea, China, and apparently most of Europe seem (for now) to be on a steady decline to extinction. But don’t hold your breath.
There are many reasons for depopulation of regions and nations and cultures: we can often (if not quite always) blame governments for that. Consider the depopulation of the Rus and much of Eastern Europe courtesy of the Mongols in the 1400s. Or the collapse of population in Britain, Gaul, and Iberia in the 400s and 500s. Mostly but not entirely due to invasion and war and mass murder. But do not forget the Soviet efforts in Belarus, Ukraine, and much of European Russia back in the 1920s. Or Mao’s work in China in the 1960s and 1970s. Or even the (surely unintended) consequences of the conquest of the Azteca by the Spanish in the 1500s. Or the Black Death in Europe – or Justinian’s Plague back in 541 and decades after. It is not just war, but many other governmental actions that enabled the reduction of population in those eras.
And it is no different today. It is China’s own Communist regimes that have put China (according to people like Peter Zeihan and many others) on the path to demographic doom. Governmental interference in socio-economic systems and conditions mean that fewer resources are available for people who want larger families: it is government that pretty much forced women from home out into the workplace, making children less desirable. (And as some will point out, government either does or promotes the mass murder of unborn children: reducing population increase.)
The point is simple: government has NO MORE business doing central planning for populations and demographics than it does centrally planning economic affairs: controlling manufacturing, rationing purchases and consumption, or setting wages and prices. Such things are far too complex to let them be in the hands of clueless politicians or ham-handed bureaucrats.
Whether we are worried about needing to increase or reduce population, it must be kept out of government hands. Like religion, schooling, caring for the needy, and everything else important.
Enough is enough.
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About TPOL Nathan
Follower of Christ Jesus (a christian), Pahasapan (resident of the Black Hills), Westerner, Lover of Liberty, Free-Market Anarchist, Engineer, Army Officer, Husband, Father, Historian, Writer, Evangelist. Successor to Lady Susan (Mama Liberty) at TPOL.