When I was in college all the textbooks used to suggest (if not outright state) that education, industrialization and technological advancement were the best cures for overpopulation. They may have had a point:
About That Overpopulation Problem
Whatever you do, don't tell leftists that the very free enterprise they're trying to kill is a population control panacea! For them, the answer to life, the universe and everything MUST come from government. :-)
"Overpopulation" is a code word used by people who just wanna kill something. All the people in the world could live in the state of Texas with the same density as New York City.
Remember: When we get to "standing room only", that means the rate of making babies will drop.
FWIW, the birth rate in USA is now the lowest ever recorded.
Presactly. I was hoping some of the anti-humanists would chime in.
Yep. It's now widely acknowledged - sort of as you say above.
Within one generation of free public education, easy access to contraception, and free public medicine, people decide of their own accord to have fewer children. Birth rate drops to an average 2 kids per family. In the second generation, it typically drops to 1.4 kids per family. This tends to happen irrespective of religion, except for strict Catholics. Strict Muslims and Jews and some Christians will still have two children. The most strict will keep breeding until they have at least one boy and one girl.
However, the population does not start dropping for a further 80 years, because the advanced medicine means that far more older people live much longer - the population continues to increase until the old people die.
I don't know how 'free' these services need to be in order to achieve the same ends, but yeah. The same rules apply. Ultimately, when people have access to the upper echelons of society (that to which most westerners typically refer as 'upward mobility'), they'll plan their reproduction accordingly.
And that's what worries me so much about collectivism/statism. Both tend to interfere with the normal mechanisms which people use to move from one echelon to another. A poor man or woman who wishes to climb his/her way to the top will be hindered by a system which...ahem...progressively punishes those who move into upper economic strata.
Completely free, because in the places with the highest populations, poverty is so great that most energy is devoted to subsistence.
I forgot to add reliable, clean water and sewerage.
The problem about access to upper echelons of society is that it will never be possible for a majority of people in the world to have the level of affluence that many Westerners take for granted. Such wealth is actually gained at the cost of others in ways that are invisible to us. When we wear a $5 t-shirt we wear the outsourcing of commerce and services to cheaper areas of overseas labour where the wages are below a living wage - less than 5c goes to the person who made the shirt. The conditions are so bad that in the worst incidents whole factories of workers have died in fires or building collapses. I've been in some of those places and seen them. One does not recover from the shock.
You mean one that is positive?
No.
The evidence differs. :-)
That's rather overstating it, Nimitz. I'm a bit left of Democrat (Australian Green,) but still in favour of a libertarian ethic.
There's no eveidence that free enterprise has the slightest effect on population control.
The statement in the question referred to "industrialization and technological advancement" as leading to people having fewer children. That might sound like she meant free enterprise, but that is no the case - it's not what research show, nor what academics teach. The industrialization and technological advancement refers to things like clean water systems and delivery, sewerage management and medicine. It could also refer to a diversification of means of earning a living, such as moving from hand weaving to powered looms to produce more cloth and increase wealth through trade.
There is evidence that more prosperous people tend to have fewer children - but the cause is not the prosperity. Rather they become more prosperous because they have fewer children.
"industrialization and technological advancement" could also refer to a diversification of means of earning a living, such as moving from hand weaving to powered looms to produce more cloth and increase wealth through trade.This has been shown to work providing the manner in which the change takes place does not involve a destructively usurious system of loans with compound interest.
But there are limits to this type of "progress" because the world does not and cannot provide infinite resources and so infinite growth and unending profit are simply not possible in the long term. Further, pollution is rapidly causing increasing problems in almost all natural systems upon which we ultimately depend.
Leftists are not necessarily communist or socialists- most of those changed their views when they saw the totalitarian nature of Russia and China et al.
Contemporary do not want to kill free enterprise at all - they/we only want it to be more ethical in the way it operates.
Yes. Trump for President. That will decrease the world pop by 2 billion when they nuke us.
"That's rather overstating it, Nimitz. I'm a bit left of Democrat (Australian Green,) but still in favour of a libertarian ethic."
Don't worry about me, Hartfire. Hyperbole's my middle name. :-) (And I've no major issues with Greens. Here or there.)
"There's no eveidence that free enterprise has the slightest effect on population control."
There wouldn't be. Free enterprise is a vector. It's a transmission medium. Unless you go looking there will be no apparent evidence that plumbing brings water to your house from a central reservoir, but you know there must be plumbing. The same principle applies here. :-)
As for the rest of your well-thought response, remember the first rule of science: one should not infer causation from correlated events. Not even if it appears that a correlated influence or event just might actually be causal. I'm sure it's only coincidental that an increase in collectivism within a given culture has a dampening effect on the mechanisms which drive economic motility. :-^D
See? Now you're on the right track!
:-D
There are many factors that have played into the drop below the replacement rate of western nation populations. Not only the things you (and others above) mentioned, but feminism, consumerism, the exportation of jobs, the increased necessity of having two incomes, etc. have also played a role.
In 1950 many, if not most, women aspired to be a wife and mother. Today women want a career. Most still want a family, but the trade off is usually a smaller family. In 1950, Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city in the world, fairly well-paying jobs were available to those with little education and even better pay was available to those with a skill that required vo-tech or an apprenticeship rather than a college education. A great many families could comfortably live on one income and the addition of another child or two was not the financial burden it is today. If a stay-at-home mom had another child, childcare costs and the logistics of juggling a career and family were not an issue. Nor was it automatically assumed that all children would go to college as a matter of necessity to make a decent living.
Today portions of Detroit resemble third-world cities, most manufacturing has been exported to other countries, two-income households are the norm, and college is almost a necessity (despite it being no guarantee) for a decent income.
:)
That's Soylent GREEN--no 's'. . .unless you live in the south. :-)
