Cramped city

Tokyo’s population has reached an astonishing 13 million (13.1 million as of 1/4), packed into a dense urban area of 2000 km² (Victoria, in contrast, has 3.4 million people in nearly 9000 km²). I suppose some would say that such density is an efficient use of space, but to me it sounds nightmarish. Granted, Japan has a cultural mindset that allows people to mostly live civily in such crowded conditions (one can imagine how those from a relatively uncivilized and violent Australian culture would cope – namely, not at all!), but it is hardly a desirable way to live.

Some officials in China are pushing to ease the one-child limit, because of alarmism over an aging population. (However, the one-child limit does not apply to ethnic minorities and rural families.) The surfeit of younger people will supposedly slow down economic growth. But the population is still growing, expected to reach 1.4 billion in 2026 before shrinking – how do they expect to find employment and resources for such huge numbers? Some are opposed to relaxing the limit.

Still, not all experts agree the one-child rule should be dropped. Li Xiaoping, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, welcomes the coming population decline, saying it will ease food and water shortages and limit pollution. Writing in the state-run China Daily newspaper, Li said the government should stand firm on the one-child limit while finding ways to boost the earning power of a smaller work force.

“Taiwanese solution to soaring house prices: don’t have kids”, The Age, 27/4. Like Australia’s housing market, Taiwan’s is also out of control, no thanks to investors, and one inadvertent result has been a decline in fertility. Its population at over 23 million is only a little more than Australia’s, but crammed into a small island, so such a decline is a good thing – but not according to the writer, who raises the usual ageing population alarmism.

But not having children creates even bigger costs ahead. Right now, Taiwan has 6.8 people of working age for every retiree. But preschools are already closing for lack of children, and the population is set to shrink dramatically. By 2032, demographers project, Taiwan will have just 2.5 potential workers for every retiree – and by 2056, just 1.4. If nothing changes, Taiwan – like China, Japan and Korea – will slowly become economically unviable.

“The shock of the old: Welcome to the elderly age”, 8/4. This article states that an ageing population is not necessarily a bad thing, and even a positive thing in many respects – one being that the pathological social obsession with youth might abate. Society will need to make some adjustments, such as being prepared to employ older workers, but it won’t be the disaster many doomsayers predict. Another positive aspect not mentioned: with fewer young males around, violence should also lessen.

“Too many people packed into dirty, crowded cities”, Daily Telegraph, 11/2. An opinion piece by businessman Dick Smith, who has become an opponent of population growth (one of the good guys, in other words!). Australia should not seek to emulate the megacities of the world, which are horridly overcrowded.

Crowding us in

“Two good to be true”, H-S, 14/3. Some scientific evidence demonstrating that smaller families (one or two children) are better for parents’ health!

“Overpopulation the great unmentionable in Queensland politics”, Courier Mail, 16/3. Queensland is one of the most populous states and the strain is showing (as with Victoria), yet its deluded politicians still promote growth.

One of the comments below that article:

Well, SCOTTY OF QLD, have you ever lived in China? Or that skyscraper capital of the world, Hong Kong? Have you any idea what effect it has on people’s psyche to live like crabs in a basket? To constantly fight over resources and space? To bring up children in a tiny flat situated a hundred or more feet up in the air? Nah, I thought not. Well, you might want to live like that, but I’m damned sure I don’t want to. Nor do I want this for my kids and grandkids. Instead of comparing Australia with Third World countries (and saying, god forbid! that we should ape them), why not look at examples of intelligent population and lifestyle and resources management, such as we see in the Scandinavian countries? It is not our fault if countries choose to overpopulate. Likewise, it is simply RUBBISH to say that if overpopuilated Third World countries can scrape along, Australia (which has more than 76% desert, in case you hadn’t realised!) should be able to manage a huge population too. Why do you think migrants want to come here? To escape the overcrowded, chaotic countries they are leaving behind – duh!

Various developers have been making the usual alarmist statements about housing and land shortages (of course, they stand to profit from this). In “High-rise push to halt urban sprawl”, 16/3, some are promoting high-rise towers as a solution – not a desirable one for reasons stated in the comment above. I certainly don’t want Melbourne and its suburbs to end up as nightmarishly crowded concrete canyons. “Australia faces housing affordability ‘time bomb’: developer”, 17/3 – another developer pushes for smaller and more dense housing. There is only so much land, and covering it with housing estates is not acceptable – open space is necessary for environmental and mental health reasons. Crowding people into towers is not acceptable either.

Greens leader Bob Brown is pushing for a population strategy inquiry – at last his party seems to have realized it is a simmering issue that won’t go away.

“For a new generation, Alpha will be better”, The Age, 20/3. The generation born this year has been dubbed Alpha. Their future could be difficult, and shows how misguided encouraging a high birth rate is – it means more strain on resources, and competition for jobs.

The last of the Alphas will be born in 2024. Australian National University head of demographics Peter McDonald says they may be our biggest generation yet. He says the number of births could be higher in the future because of large numbers of migrants having babies.

In 2050, when the eldest Alphas turn 40, the population is predicted to reach 35 million. Professor McDonald refers to the “echo effect” – if there is a larger population that will trigger another baby boom because there are more people to have babies. Mr McCrindle, however, predicts one in three Alpha females will not have children. Professor McDonald says the bigger generations generally face greater competition in the labour force, but with Australia’s skills shortage this is less of an issue.

“The aging population scare debunked” at PublicPopForum. Quoted below:

Pamela Kinnear’s 2001 study for the Australia Institute, “Population Aging: Crisis or Transition?” concludes:

Conclusion: Alarm over the ‘ageing crisis’ is not justified by the evidence. The transition to an older population can be facilitated by promoting the well-documented benefits that accrue in societies that have equitable access for all citizens to healthcare, education, employment and retirement income. Policies should also focus on overcoming discriminatory attitudes to older people, ensuring security of employment over the life-course, and making a commitment to gender equity in both public and private spheres. Population ageing is not a threat to Australia’s future but an opportunity to ensure decent living standards for all.

Judith Healy’s Study for the Australia Institute 2004, “The Benefits of an Aging Population”:

Far from being net receivers of help and support, older people are, in fact, net providers, at least up to the age of 75 years. They provide childcare, financial, practical and emotional assistance to family members including helping people outside the household with the tasks of daily living. Such unpaid caring and voluntary work adds up to a significant proportion of GDP, around seven per cent on some measures (Ranzijn et al. 2002; De Vaus et al. 2003). Grandparenting has become an important social role in an age when people tend to have more living parents than children. Not only does it benefit grandparents themselves who find that grandparenthood is an important aspect of their lives, but it also appears to benefit grandchildren substantially.

In addition, it is likely that older communities will be more law-abiding communities since older people are less inclined to commit crimes against property and people. The Australian Institute of Criminology (2002b) estimates that homicide rates will fall by around 16 per cent between now and 2050 and there is likely to be less crime altogether resulting in substantial savings in prison and policing costs in the future. Older people are involved in the community as active members of clubs with a large Melbourne survey reporting that one-third of men and one quarter of women aged 55-75 years belonged to a sporting club (Howe and Donath, 1997). They also attend musical concerts, theatres and art galleries more frequent ly than younger people, read more and visit libraries more often. Thus it is probable that the arts will benefit from an older Australia.

Letter from the H-S, 19/3:

I agree with Ian Thomas (50/50, March 17), the world should be practising zero (or even negative) population growth. Governments promote population expansion purely for monetary reasons, not the environment. The world cannot sustain such a large population.

– J. Meulblok, Buckley

Ageing alarmism

The topic of Japan’s shrinking and ageing population seems to be brought up on a regular basis in the news. This lengthy article (via) at a Japan blog is a somewhat gloomy portrayal of a town with a declining population. But the country’s population is still over 127 million crammed onto 4 small earthquake-prone islands, so surely a population decline should be viewed positively! As for the ageing component: “Japan is the robot capital of the world. They will be fine in my opinion” remarks one commenter.

“The Singapore Solution”, National Geographic, 1/2010. On the success of Singapore.

Perhaps the most troubling problem facing the nation is a result of its overly successful population control program, which ran in the 1970s with the slogan “Two Is Enough.” Today Singaporeans are simply not reproducing, so the country must depend on immigrants to keep the population growing. The government offers baby bonuses and long maternity leaves, but nothing will help unless Singaporeans start having more sex. According to a poll by the Durex condom company, Singaporeans have less intercourse than almost any other country on Earth. “We are shrinking in our population,” the MM says. “Our fertility rate is 1.29. It is a worrying factor.” This could be the fatal error in the Singapore Model: The eventual extinction of Singaporeans.

“Overly successful”? Again, with a high population density – nearly 5 million crammed into a small living space – a successful birth rate reduction program should be cause for celebration. But the “aging population” alarmist hype has led them to unwisely encourage an increased birth rate again.

“Congestion the ultimate cost of people ingestion”, The Age, 28/2. The dismaying fact that politicians are addicted to growth because it makes the economy look good. The immigration rate last financial year was an absurdly high 285 000.

Despite changing rhetoric, the reality is our leaders remain hopelessly addicted to population growth. It is a drug they are unlikely to kick any time soon. Size, for some misguided reason, has long been equated with importance. But there is another, more intrinsic reason for the addiction. Population growth is one of the simplest ways for a government to boost economic growth, which is in turn regarded as a key measure of political success. More people means more houses, more cars, more food consumed and more petrol burnt. All this is dutifully recorded by the Bureau of Statistics as an increase in Australia's gross domestic product, which is in turn associated with prosperity. An apparently circular need to feed economic growth with population growth represents a significant flaw in our political system.

Letters, The Age, 2/3:

Wonderful news for investors

Melbourne’s property market record sales (The Age, 1/3) is wonderful news for investors, real estate agents and land developers, not to mention all the stamp duty revenue for the state government. All this population growth, manipulated by Kevin Rudd’s fetish for a “big Australia”, has created a land and housing “boom”, and people in this growth industry are becoming wealthy. The demand for housing is caused by population growth driven mainly by immigration.

We used to be a land of home owners, the “lucky country”. But not any more. Even professionals are being locked out due to excessive competition. Where is the justice if a few elite become wealthy at the expense of the general public?

– Vivienne Ortega, Heidelberg Heights

Population policy now

Here’s a simple solution to the ever-deepening problems of housing affordability, suburban sprawl, high-density development, traffic congestion, over-development of our beautiful natural surrounds and an increase in Australia’s carbon footprint: an independent population policy.

– Shaun Dumbrell, Williamstown

SMH, 6/3:

Limit immigration and our traffic woes will ease

The Herald’s front page article (“Life not so great in the fast lane…but now Labor wants to fix our cities, too”, March 5) shows graphically what can happen when a metropolitan area, in this case Sydney, has an uncomfortably large population: bumper-to-bumper traffic. Thirty years ago Sydney had space. You could drive around comfortably and buy a home without selling your soul.

Opposition political parties will tell you that governments are failing to maintain and upgrade infrastructure to keep pace with need. But what they and the governments won’t tell you is that the need is generated by population growth, and the main source of that here is excessive immigration numbers. This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with numbers.

Seeing what Australian governments over the past 30 years have failed to do, and noting the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for another 15-20 million residents over the next 15 years (and be assured, the Libs intend the same), do you believe any future government will do better ? Already Rudd has raised the need for new taxes to fund hospitals. He and the opposition know that population growth creates increased demand for services but does not deliver the extra money to pay for them.

If population growth causes congestion and infrastructure problems (to name just two of a long list of negatives), why are federal governments persisting with immigration policies delivering record high numbers here?

– Vince Patulny, Kambah (ACT)

Ageing threat?

“Shanghai urges ‘two-child policy’ ”, BBC News, 24/7. China has a growing ageing population, so some cities are wanting to increase the one-child policy to two children. Big mistake! China already has nearly 1.4 billion people; the last thing they need is to increase this.

Micky Bristow, BBC News Chinese and foreign experts have been saying for some time that China needs to change its strict family planning rules. If the country continues as it is, the proportion of elderly people in society will continue to increase. This is a problem because it will leave a smaller group of workers paying for the country’s retired population.

All these extra young people will one day be old, so, using this logic, even more younger people will be needed to support them…and this keeps growing exponentially until the population reaches some absurdly high and unsustainable number. Ageing is a fact of life that countries just have to deal with; once that particular generation of older people have passed on, the population declines.

Coincidentally, there was an opinion piece in The Age, 25/7, on the issue of an ageing population, and how it is not necessarily a bad thing: “We should celebrate enhanced longevity” (originally from The Guardian).

Impeach Brumby!

That expresses the exasperation and frustration I feel with the current Victorian Government. Planning issues have been in the news again this week, and the Brumby Government (especially Planning Minister Justin Madden) continue to force their overcrowding and overdevelopment agenda, irrespective of how residents feel. Some articles from The Age:

• “Brumby tackled on urban sprawl”, 9/6. The “Green Wedge” zones supposed to retain open space are to be developed to accommodate a projected population of 5 million in Melbourne and surrounding suburbs. The Open Letter from councils is reproduced below.
• “Wedge politics”, 9/6. Some of the open areas are part of the diminishing Victorian Volcanic Plains Grasslands and include some of the last remnants of the plains grasslands, which are being smothered under housing estates.
• “Threat to grab power off councils”, 13/6. Justin Madden – whom I have come to despise (and the building industry as well), and who has been Planning Minister for far too long – is to override councils’ decisions on planning.

This Labor Government is just as bad as the previous Liberal Government under Jeff Kennett (who began the planning reforms that have led to this); I would not vote for either of them.

Dear Sirs,

Governments have to make difficult decisions. We understand that. However recent planning reforms have gone too far. In the past few months your Government has:

1. Introduced legislation to deprive local communities of their normal rights to have their own elected Councillors make decisions on development applications in their larger shopping centers;
2. Planned to appoint a government-dominated committee to
   1. make decisions,
   2. require local residents to write a blank cheque to pay for the committee, and
   3. demand Councils pay the cost of defending the committee’s decisions even where residents and Councillors may strongly oppose these decisions.
3. Removed the rights of residents, Councils and VCAT to make decisions on development applications which are deemed important economy-boosting opportunities. The normal rights of residents have been taken away. Applications are now decided behind closed doors.
4. Removed both the rights of residents to be advised of applications next door to them, and to express concern about applications involving social housing and private schools where government funding is involved.

These measures demolish the cornerstone of this state’s planning system – the rights of residents to have a say about their neighborhood. These rights are at the very heart of our democratic system of governance. The use of the economic downturn to justify the denial of these fundamental rights is short-term thinking with disasterous long-term consequences. How can communities have any confidence in a planning system where the ends justify the means?

It is time to reinstate residents’ rights. It is time to return democratic planning processes to the people who elected you to respect and protect those rights in our society.

All of this is attributable to a growing population. If the Federal and State Governments would have the foresight to restrict Australia’s population growth such pressures would be alleviated, but they are hopelessly addicted to growth.

“Australia turns back the clock to baby boomer era”, The Age, 5/6. A dismaying report of the current high rate of Australia’s population growth, due to both immigration and birth rate increase.

“The Top 10 Most Absurd Time Covers of The Past 40 Years”, Reason Online. This site has a byline of “free minds and free markets” which sounds suspiciously like it is a Libertarian site. №8 is “August 6, 1984: The Population Curse”, reproduced below:

Why So Worried? Using an upcoming U.N. conference in Mexico City as its hook, Time engages in some Paul Ehrlich-style doom-mongering about overpopulation.

Cue Ominous Music: “The consequences of a failure to bring the world’s population growth under control are frightening. They could include widespread hunger and joblessness, accompanied by environmental devastation and cancerous urban growth. Politically, the outcome could be heightened global instability, violence and authoritarianism.”

Oh, Just Settle Down: Since Time’s 1984 cover story, the world’s population has increased from 4.75 billion to 6.78 billion people. This year, the World Bank’s Poverty Analysis reported, “Living standards have risen dramatically over the last decades. The proportion of the developing world’s population living in extreme economic poverty…has fallen from 52 percent in 1981 to 26 percent in 2005… Infant mortality rates in low- and middle-income countries have fallen from 87 per 1,000 live births in 1980 to 54 in 2006. Life expectancy in [low and middle-income] countries has risen from 60 to 66 between 1980 and 2006.” According to the peace advocacy group Ploughshares, the number of armed conflicts across the globe has generally been in decline since the mid-1990s (PDF). As for “authoritarianism,” with the fall of the Soviet empire, a far greater percentage of the global population lived under such regimes in 1984 than do today. Even the massive population in China is freer (if not actually “free”) than it was in 1984.

Well, we are already seeing the consequences of overpopulation (hunger, joblessness, environmental devastation, etc.), so what reality are the article writers living in?

“Pop the Pill and think of England”, New Statesman, 4/11/2002. An older article that explains why an aging and declining population is not something to be feared.

Small is happy

“One and only: singled out for the special treatment”, The Age, 10/5. This article says that single-child families are increasing (which would seem to conflict with the increasing birth rate?). Having one child is sometimes a deliberate choice, but sometimes because parents are older. Some parents, as featured in the article, have come from large families where they were “lost in the crowd” and conversely want their offspring to have more attention. Small families should be actively encouraged worldwide as this will help reduce population growth – one way would be to provide government benefits for a woman’s first two children, but none after that (those who remarry and want more children would also not receive benefits).

The usual counter-argument is that the old will outnumber the young if this trend continues, and that there won’t be enough tax-paying young people to support previous generations, but it is a demographic trend that governments will just have to deal with. Not all old people are infirm, and they can still make useful contributions to society. Perhaps the idea of a fixed retirement age could be done away with – assuming older people can work in jobs they enjoy.

None of the above is intended to deny that we should plan carefully for the demographics of a population in which the number of older people is steadily rising (as the age-cohorts become more even-sized). But we should remember that the old are in many ways less of a burden than the young. Even in retirement, people are often highly productive, performing a myriad of useful and unpaid services, and deploying the skills and experience of a lifetime. By contrast the young, whether babies or school-age children, are too immature or too busy with their studies to be economically “productive” – and in fact need to be looked after by adults.

– Overloading Australia, page 100

This post at the Public Population Forum unfortunately brings racism into the topic – namely an overused assertion that white people are being “outbred” by people of other colors. She makes the mistake of associating skin color with culture, when they are entirely different things. Here’s how I try to express this:

Racism is defined as discriminating against or disliking a person purely because of their skin color and/or ethnicity. As all humans share the same biological makeup and heritage, such a distinction is superficial; skin color and other physical characteristics evolved to adapt to different locations and climates, and are not reflective of a person’s intelligence (or lack of it!). Therefore, on biological terms, such racism is illogical. It comes from a basic suspicion of people who “look different” from those one grew up with; such aversion can be overcome through education and familiarization.

Culture, however, is a different matter; it is not related to human biology. Some cultures are considered more desirable than others to live in, which is why there tends to be high rates of immigration to the former. Some cultures are just odious (e.g. those which regard women as chattels) and deserve to become extinct. Culture is thus not relevant to a person’s race; people of different skin colors who grow up in a particular culture will share the characteristics of that culture.

The countries with high population growth are often those described as “developing”, which happen to be places like Africa, etc. Women in these countries often do not have access to education and family planning, and their role is primarily to reproduce. This is a cultural feature, one that can be overcome when women are given access to such facilities – something that women in First-World countries (USA, UK, Australia, etc.) take for granted. Educated women will often choose to limit their family size, or decide not to have children, as they have control over their fertility.

Population disaster

“Population explosion ‘heralds disaster’ ”, The Age, 6/3. An Australian professor of reproductive biology, Professor Roger Short, gives his opinion on the overpopulation crisis: that things will get very unpleasant during this century should current growth trends continue, and that countries with high proportions of unemployable and disaffected young men make them prime recruits for terrorism.

This poster at the Public Population Forum provides an answer to the question in my last entry (2/3) of finding people to do unpleasant jobs (e.g. fruit picking) noted in my previous entry: innovate and automate!

Berg wonders whether laid-off Macquarie Bank alumni would be willing to pick pistachios, drawing on the same old tired rhetoric that immigration-as-a-cheap-labour-pool enthusiasts have used for decades. The answer to his question is that they probably would, if they were offered enough money. Which they certainly won’t be.

I know a fellow who grows nuts on a small/medium sized farm in the Southern Highlands of NSW. Using usual methods, he couldn’t gather and prepare his harvest for market by himself. Traditionally, he might have tried to employ pickers, for minimal wages, as some of his neighbours do. But the reality is that his margins are now so tight that pickers at almost ANY price would cost too much for the business to remain viable. This is where the “race to the bottom” hits rock bottom.

So, rather than sell out, or complain about a labour shoratge or how Australians won’t do certain jobs, he innovated. Drawing on his engineering background he built a machine for shaking the trees to drop the nuts ready for harvest. He built low cost and fairly low-tech machines for collecting the nuts, sorting and cleaning them, shelling them and bagging them ready for sale.

The bottom line is that he now runs the whole farm himself, without any seasonal workers. His farm remains viable. Cheap labour didn’t save it – innovation did.

The second part of SBS’s documentary on declining birthrates screened last night, this one entitled “Grey Tsunami”, about the hordes of old people who will comprise much of society in the next few decades, and the challenges entailed in preparing for this (which most governments haven’t). People will have to be prepared to work longer (which is fine if you have a fulfilling job or career, not so enjoyable if you don’t). Japan is looking at innovations such as robot helpers (I wouldn’t mind one of these!). Unless societies want to revert back to a system where women are forced to be breeders (as is the case in some countries), governments will just have to deal with the issue of aging. A society of mostly old people would likely be more peaceful and relaxed, so it is not necessarily a bad thing!

Human arrogance

“Destroy all humans!”, The Space Review, 10/7/2006. An old article that mentions the VHEMT site – the author (a spaceflight enthusiast) is not impressed, although he misses the point that the site is more highlighting the damage that human overpopulation is doing to the planet. A post on the VHEMT Livejournal explains this better (and rebukes the opinion that the thread starter made: “…but humanity has earned its place as the overlords of the earth and ultimately deserves to milk the earth until there’s nothing left.” With that attitude, there’ll be nothing left for their children either but a wasteland.)

I don’t think the majority in this group are actually seriously advocating species-wide suicide. It’s being used as a way of highlighting what damage uncontrolled population can have on a planet which has a fixed amount of natural resources. It’s trying to highlight the unsustainability of our “growth at any price” socio-economic system, and underline how sickening the whole “baby industry” is. That’s how I see it anyway.

Human arrogance (i.e. that we’re the greatest thing ever) increasingly irritates me. We can hardly regard ourselves as this when we continue to pursue activities that destroy the environment and will ultimately contribute to our extinction! This anthropocentric view is found a lot in science fiction (the “humans are special” attitude). In fact, the TV Tropes website has an entry on this theme.

On my early morning walks I look up at the stars (at least, the few I can see without my glasses and through light pollution) and ask any aliens who might be out there in that vast emptiness, Where are you? When are you going to come and save us from ourselves?

A letter from the 26/2 Sydney Morning Herald from someone with the “growth is good” mentality:

The end of growth means the end of civilisation

Those arguing for an end to economic growth seem not to understand the dangers of stagnation and decline (Letters, February 25). Unless economies grow, they stagnate. If they stagnate, the rate of profitability falls. If profitability falls, investment falls. If investment falls, there are very few new businesses, new technologies or new products.

No neat little iPods, mobile phones or the internet, or even blood pressure pills. If there are no new products, there are no new jobs. If people are already losing jobs, this will simply continue. Fewer jobs means less wealth for families, and lower standards of living now and in the future. No growth now means no pensions. And so on.

If this happens, it will make the current downturn look like a walk in the park. Governments will find it hard to raise taxes. There will be less money for environmental projects. Only wealthy societies can afford to spend on the environment. There will be less money for the arts, for schools and for health. This is how civilisations collapse, as in the Soviet Union. In the end, everyone gives up. The poor of Africa, India and Asia will remain poor.

Economic development and wealth creation are not some abstract economic theory, but affect everyone’s life. Buying, selling and trading are a part of human nature; collectivist ideologies are not. If there are no markets and no growth, there will be queuing and rationing instead.

– John Montgomery, Crystal Creek

Growth in a world of finite resources is unsustainable. And growth has nothing to do with innovation. Humans can still invent things in a steady-state economy. (Can anyone think of better counter-arguments?) A sardonic response below:

Those were the days

John Montgomery (Letters, February 26) argues that the end of economic growth means there will be no iPods, mobile phones or the internet. This is fantastic news and we can all revert to the simple life before gadgets took over. We can start writing letters again, talk face to face and even dust down the encyclopedias. The blood pressure pills will be in less demand and the jobs should pop up everywhere, complete with an invigorating dose of hard graft to improve our physical wellbeing.

– Jim Gentles, Coogee

Another letter that annoyed me, from The Japan Times of all places – on the topic of Japan’s declining birthrate:

Fruits of hyper-individualism

The Feb. 8 Natural Selections article, “City ecology explains Japan’s low birthrate,” provides all sorts of academic- sounding theories and buzzwords that make Japan’s low birthrate seem like just another inevitable result of an irresistible force. I would offer another reason.

The birthrate is tumbling in Japan and in the West because people simply expect more for themselves and view children as only part of that equation, at best, or as an obstacle to self-fulfillment. Add to this rather selfish tendency the high cost of raising children, the increasing reluctance (and inability) of women to stay home, and the ubiquitous availability of cheap birth control and abortion, and only a fool would be surprised at the outcome.

Yet, “official explainers” of this phenomenon see putting off children as a moral good since it facilitates individual self-fulfillment and protects Mother Earth from the scourges of overpopulation – a fear that has been repeatedly trumped up over the past several centuries.

Our forebears were unburdened by such reservations. If they wanted to have a good time between the sheets, children were the inevitable result. But they also had a lesser sense of self-entitlement. It was their duty as citizens, as children of God, to “go forth and multiply.” Children were considered a blessing. That’s why religious people today still tend to have many children, because they view each soul as a blessing from God, not as a personal burden or a drag on the planet’s resources. They are also fundamentally optimistic about human society, even if all the signs appear negative.

Does one sense much optimism in Japan? We are going to witness the chaos and disruption caused by viewing children as a burden. First Japan, and then many other countries, will begin to implode as the dearth of children result in an unsustainable economic model that was based on the assumption of population growth. Governments will be overwhelmed by the costs of caring for the ever-growing proportion of elderly citizens combined with the ever-shrinking tax base. Loss of productivity, bankruptcies and social upheaval will be sure to follow, making today’s economic crisis look like a passing headache.

In other words, women should do their duty and breed. As a woman, I find this insulting. One reason the birthrate is declining is that, with the availability of contraception and education, women realize they can do more with their lives and find other means of fulfilment rather than have children (or have fewer children, one or two). There is always the danger that these rights could be removed, as this story extract notes:

“Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like – like that smoke. We’ll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You’ll see.”

– James Tiptree, Jr., The Women Men Don’t See

(That story makes a point that women might be safer hanging out with aliens :-)

I half-watched that SBS TV documentary, “Missing Children” (20/2 entry), which was the usual alarmist reporting on declining birthrates, in an Italian village and in Japan (I fell asleep halfway through). See that entry for arguments why a declining birthrate is not necessarily a bad thing.

“Outcry at ‘no job safe’ blunder”, The Age, 27/2. Every month it seems another company goes into receivership or decides to relocate manufacturing overseas to countries with cheaper labor (usually China). The latest casualty is Pacific Brands, with the loss of 1850 jobs and thus more strain on the welfare system. Thousands of people have lost their jobs since last year, yet Australia’s population continues to grow (like the rest of the world’s). Where are all these people (myself included) going to find work?

Increasing people, declining jobs

Some articles on decreasing job opportunities and increasing unrest:

“As the Global Economy Sinks, Tensions Over Immigration Rise”, TIME magazine, 6/2. “And as economic pressures increase, the potential for conflict clearly grows also. ‘Traditionally […] migrants don’t compete for [the] same jobs as native populations,’ says Pandya. ‘But the moment [those native-born] people think they have to find any job, they will be in direct competition with migrants. That’s where friction arises.’ ”

“Rise in Jobless Poses Threat to Stability Worldwide”, New York Times, 15/2. Rising unemployment and prices is breeding resentment in many countries. Decreasing jobs due to automation and efficiency, combined with an increasing population is a potentially explosive combination. The only long-term solution is to reduce population growth – economies cannot keep growing indefinitely in a world of finite resources.

“Sponsorship system open to exploitation, say academics”, Herald-Sun, 20/2. A Monash University report (not online yet) recommends cutting the absurdly high rate of immigration (currently 200 000 a year) so as to protect local jobs for citizens. I could not agree more! Of course, they will get castigated for this, but quite a lot of article commentators agree. The high levels will only increase resentment toward immigrants who compete for jobs against citizens (as is seen in other countries such as Italy).

There’s a documentary coming up on SBS on 26/2 called Baby Boom to Bust, about the supposed threat to society from an ageing population and declining birthrate. I thought a declining birthrate was supposed to be a good thing!

“Missing Children” – A two-part series about one of the biggest issues of our time: our ageing population. By 2050 one out of five of us – over two billion people – will be over 65. In some developed countries there are so many elderly and so few births that the population is actually dying off. And in parts of the developing world, the numbers of old people are growing at an even more astounding rate. This series looks at the looming social, political, economic and human impact of a rapidly ageing society. Part one looks at the lack of children being born throughout the world. In most countries across the developed world the fertility rate has fallen well below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. With fewer children, who will do the work and pay the taxes in the future, not to mention care for all those baby boomers, who are living longer than ever?

(Mini-rant: the baby boomers will damn well have to look after themselves! They’ve wrecked the world for my generation and those following.)

“No Babies?”, New York Times, magazine, 29/6/2008. An alarmist article about the falling birthrate in Europe, making the absurd remark about the USA:

Which brings us to a sparkling exception. Last year the fertility rate in the United States hit 2.1, the highest it has been since the 1960s and higher than almost anywhere in the developed world. Factor in immigration and you have a nation that is far more than holding its own in terms of population. In 1984 the U.S. Census Bureau projected that in the year 2050 the U.S. population would be 309 million. In 2008 it’s already 304 million, and the new projection for 2050 is 420 million.

With a looming recession due to foolish and unsustainable economic policies, and thousands losing their jobs, an increasing population is definitely a liability!

The article does note that:

Meanwhile, in the midst of arguments about natalist and immigration policies come other voices and more elemental questions. Is it even possible to increase the population significantly? Is it even necessary? There are those who think that “lowest low” is not in itself a looming disaster but more of a challenge, even an opportunity. The change that’s required, they say, is not in breeding habits but thinking habits.

[…]

According to some, a declining population presents certain opportunities: to increase efficiency and livability, to change lifestyle and environment for the better.

[…]

But while few locals themselves may feel religiously inclined, the thinking is that if religious pilgrimage is the best card in your hand, you play it. This notion — embrace shrinkage in order to revitalize your economy, rather than trying to coax women to have more babies — is, according to more than a few observers of the European scene, the right tack. Or better said, it is one part of the best overall strategy — one that embraces population decline. For there are those who argue that low birthrate in itself is not a problem at all. Paul Ehrlich, the Stanford scientist who warned us about the “population bomb” in the 1960s, is more certain than ever that the human race is catastrophically straining the planet. “It’s insane to consider low birthrate as a crisis,” he told me. “Basically every person I know in my section of the National Academy of Sciences thinks it’s wonderful that rich countries are starting to shrink their populations to sustainable levels. We have to do that because we’re wrecking our life-support systems.”

New Scientist magazine published an article by Paul Ehrlich, “Enough already” (reproduced on my site as the NS article is, annoyingly, subscriber-only) suggesting the declining birthrate and aging population is not a bad trend.

Coping with this change will doubtless create challenges, but there will also be benefits. Whereas in a developing nation with high birth rates as many as half its citizens may be under the age of 15, in industrialised societies there are typically fewer than 20 per cent. Commentators raising alarms about ageing populations neglect to mention that with fewer children, far less of their society’s resources will be needed to support and educate them. In addition, fewer young people means lower crime rates, because crimes – including terrorist acts – are overwhelmingly committed by people aged between 15 and 30. In the U.S., crime rates fell markedly from about 1990 on – 18 years after a big drop in the birth rate. We don’t think this is a coincidence.

Not all old people are infirm, and many can still make useful contributions to society! (E.g. volunteering, mentoring younger people.) Perhaps robots will be developed as assistants for the elderly (don’t assume you will be looked after when old). There will be a “hump” to get over when the old outnumber the young, but once the old have passed on and the young contine to have fewer children (assuming a sane population policy), these concerns will be allayed. This post at PublicPopForum explains this better than I do:

Every detailed international and Australian study shows the health costs of the ageing population are manageable. Sweden and Japan are among a dozen or so countries which spend a lower portion of GDP on health than Australia but have older populations and equal or better health outcomes.

This has been known for some time. Epidemiologist Dr Michael Coory pointed it out in an excellent article in the Medical Journal of Australia in 2004.

But the scare-mongers with their own agendas are out there using this as an excuse to push measures to put more youth into the population. More of them anon.

One thing is for sure: the ageing are here whether we like it or not and their health will have to be attended to. If we add more births and more immigrants, the total health bill can only be higher.

Next misconception: Getting a younger population through immigration. When the baby boom started, it was as if our friendly python has swallowed a goat. The aging goat is slowly passing through the system. While it does that it will always be a hump. It is an idiotic mistake to imagine that as the goat’s lump passes through the python that the way to bring the python back to standard shape is to attempt to fill out the rest of it with more goats from mouth to tail.

The high birth rates of 1945 to 1960 coupled with low infant mortality was an aberration the world has never seen and most likely will never see again. We should accept that aberration. The baby boomers will die off and the shape of population graph will return to normal.

Incidentally, “normal” is not the age distribution of 1950-1980 with a big bulge of young people.

Can we afford to look after the old people without more immigration? Yes, because more immigration compounds the problem. We have a dependency ration of 75 – 75 dependants for every 100. That is projected to get to 115 in 2050. Ouch, that’s a lot of people to support, you might say. Quick, let’s have some immigrants to fix it. Well, to keep a 75 ratio through to 2050 you would need an immigration program that would result in a population of 160 million. Taken through to 2100 we would have a population of 900 million. It would be far easier to support the existing old fogeys than all those immigrants, who themselves would get old.

We should just accept the baby boomer aberration and let it work through the system.

“Solution for the world’s water woes”, BBC News, 10/2. Yet another article on conserving water, but the author does not mention containing population growth! Again, some commentators (including me!) corrected this oversight. (The BBC has a site section called “The Green Room” addressing environmental issues.)

“Gaza population ‘rising rapidly’ ”, BBC News, 15/2. A sure way to increase violence is to cram humans into a confined area, and the continuing unrest in Gaza is a prime example. As I noted in my 13/1 entry, Israel should perhaps air-drop boxes of contraceptives and condoms!

The 8/2 Guardian newspaper had some articles on women choosing not to have children:

• “Why I don’t want children”: “Guess what I don’t want? Babies. I never have and I never will. Please don’t tell me I’ll change my mind. It’s patronising, and how the hell do you know anyway?”
• “The dummy mummy decade”: how ridiculously neurotic modern parenting is
• “Twenty other reasons not to have a baby”

Enough already

This blog is for occasional rants about one of my major social concerns: overpopulation. Reducing the number of humans would alleviate a lot of the social and environmental problems that beset humanity. I actually began this in 2009, but have backposted entries from my static website blog for 2008.

Some rants about articles that promote overpopulation and overdevelopment – two of my main concerns:

“Children the wellspring of hope that nourishes a country”, Sydney Morning Herald, 19/1. The sort of article that makes me gag… The author waffling on about how children “enrich” society, how we’ll run out of future workers because there are no kids to replace them (I guess he is unaware of automation), how the oldies will have to be euthanized because there is no one to look after them…the usual alarmist nonsense. It might be notable that the author is a Catholic and has inflicted 9 children on his wife.

“Housing drought hits Victoria”, Herald-Sun, 19/1. The growing population is causing a housing shortage and various groups want more land to be released. I guess they won’t be satisfied until the whole state is smothered in urban development? “Opposition planning spokesman Matthew Guy said people would be discouraged from moving to Victoria. ‘If we can’t house people, they won’t come here,’ he said.” Well, good – please do everything possible to discourage more people from coming here! A growing population is not a good thing as it leads to pressure on resources and social dysfunction from overcrowding.

Coping with this change will doubtless create challenges, but there will also be benefits. Whereas in a developing nation with high birth rates as many as half its citizens may be under the age of 15, in industrialised societies there are typically fewer than 20 per cent. Commentators raising alarms about ageing populations neglect to mention that with fewer children, far less of their society’s resources will be needed to support and educate them. In addition, fewer young people means lower crime rates, because crimes – including terrorist acts – are overwhelmingly committed by people aged between 15 and 30. In the US, crime rates fell markedly from about 1990 on – 18 years after a big drop in the birth rate. We don’t think this is a coincidence.

Other advantages of a non-growing population include less pressure to expand national infrastructure – roads, buildings, housing, schools, hospitals and the like – or to keep creating more jobs.

– “Enough already”

I agree with this letter written to The Age last year:

Personally, I preferred Australia with a small population, plenty of water to go around, no economic growth, and high interest rates.

– Madeleine Love, Benalla, 5/2/2007