Collected letters

Some recent letters concerning population growth projections in Australia (see my previous entry):

Escape to Australia

“Greek community flies flag to help homeland”, The Age, 14/2; “Melbourne in a Greek rush as new wave of migrants arrive”, H-S, 19/2. Greece’s economy continues to implode, so guess where many citizens there are looking to escape to? Yes, the far-off paradise of Australia, where despite having our own problems with hundreds of people losing jobs every week, the Victorian Premier urges Greeks to migrate to Victoria:

THE Baillieu Government wants Greeks hit by the economic crisis to migrate to Victoria. Greek-born Multicultural Affairs Minister Nick Kotsiras yesterday put out the welcome mat for his former countrymen and women. “It’s important that we build this nation and I think that migrants add to our capacity to grow and develop and to provide jobs,” he said. “And so I encourage people from all over the world, including Greece, to apply.”

Mr Kotsiras said the Victorian Greek community’s Antipodes festival this weekend would be a chance to show solidarity with the ethnic homeland. He said it was estimated that thousands of Greek Aussies based in Greece had returned to Australia because of the country’s debt crisis.

The Baillieu Government has given the Greek community more than $3 million to build a cultural centre and to spruce up Lonsdale St’s Greek precinct.

There is a similar situation in Ireland, as noted in my 15/12/2011 entry. I guess you can’t blame people for wanting to escape bad situations, but what happens if Australia is beset by a similar crisis? There would be nowhere else to go. I doubt I would want to leave, even if I had the means (which I don’t).

The whole “nation-building” ethos is so anachronistic (along with colonialism and slavery); I can’t believe some still espouse it. An alternate slogan I would like to see adopted for Australia: “Small, smart and sustainable”.

Australia as a relief valve

“When leaving home is the only way out”, The Age, 15/12. Economic migrants deserve no sympathy in my view. They should stay at home and fix their own problems!

Emigration has long been the Irish escape at times of greatest hardship. More than 2 million people fled the country during the Great Famine of the 1840s; half a million in the 1950s; and 200,000 during a downturn in the late 1980s. The Irish diaspora – of emigrants and their descendants – now vastly outnumbers the Irish at home and is estimated at more than 70 million people.

Critics say this history has taught Ireland’s policymakers to rely, like Aesop’s lazy donkey, on a lightening of the load through emigration whenever times get tough. A study of 90 young unemployed people by the Youth Council of Ireland this year found that 70 per cent thought they would emigrate and many believed the government was relying on it.

“It’s a handy way for them to export the problem and to cut the costs [of welfare payments],” says one. Another says: “I am sure it is built into the economic projections for the next five years because there doesn’t seem to be any meaningful policies being developed to help young unemployed people.” Youth unemployment is running at 24 per cent.

It’s a similar situation with the financial crisis in Greece – “Call for visa reforms to attract Greeks”, 25/6/2011: a lot of people there are wanting to emigrate to Australia in hopes of securing jobs here. But why should they get special treatment, or expect to come here at all? Australia has its own problems with unemployment; having a huge number of migrants come only exacerbates the problem and breeds resentment. Countries should be made to suck it up and take responsibility for their own situations rather than expect to send their “surplus” citizens elsewhere. (Incidentally there was an article addressing the issue of surplus workers, “The Age of the Superfluous Worker”, NYT, 24/11 – no, it’s not a nice term but the brutally unpleasant truth is that quite a lot of people, myself included, could be regarded as expendable; another symptom of an overpopulated world.) Ireland’s situation also demonstrates the fallacy of a growth-based economy, in this case one based on an overinflated property market (as is the same situation in Victoria).

“Taxpayers wear burden of 60,000 illegal immigrants”, Herald-Sun, 21/11. It’s no wonder the welfare system is overburdened if this alarming report is anything to go by; the main culprits being visa overstayers. I would be extremely harsh with such parasites: if caught, they would be fingerprinted, DNA recorded, then expelled from the country and banned from returning. This is where I diverge from the more liberal types, who seem to want to throw the borders open to all. I get so exasperated with their views on this issue; they are idealistic fools. (An example in other places is at MetaFilter, a long-running U.S.-based community weblog; the clueless majority there are in favor of leniency towards illegal immigrants coming into their country despite the huge costs in terms of jobs and welfare.)

Most illegal immigrants arrive on tourist or temporary work visas. Documents released to the Herald Sun under Freedom of Information show three-in-four illegals came here on visitor visas. One-in-seven arrived as students and one-in-15 disappeared after winning temporary residency. Monash University migration expert Dr Bob Birrell said they were the extreme of an even larger group, mostly students, who gained bridging visas as they sought to extend their stay beyond their original visas’ expiry. Dr Birrell said many of the 332,000 overseas students had expected to gain permanent residency once they finished their courses, only to discover that rule changes in 2010 meant this was more difficult, or impossible. Those with bridging visas were allowed to work and were “ferocious competitors” with local youths for low-skilled jobs, particularly in a tightening market.

Can you blame citizens for being resentful of immigration when it means increasing competition for resources? I am not anti-immigration, but the current too-high rate (200 000+ per year – “Migrant arrivals numbers to rise”, H-S, 15/11) should be drastically reduced. The international student program should also be curbed (it is often used as a “back door” to immigration). If the universities, who rely on their fees, don’t like it – too bad.

A broken society

The madness of last week’s London riots appears to be mostly contained, but the many issues that provoked it are unlikely to be resolved soon (if ever). Some of the rioting was simple criminal opportunism, but a lot of it was a venting of frustration from people who have few prospects and no say in their society. Is overpopulation one of the contributing factors? I would argue, yes – in my 18/7/2009 entry I said that crowding thousands of people together leads to more stress and thus violence, as humans are not evolutionarily adapted to live this way. This was the opinion given in the article “London’s a rat hole” (21/1/2009 entry).

It is hardly surprising that many rioters seem to live in the ugly, inhuman, modernist housing projects that afflict London like the plague.

– David Thomson, St Kilda, 16/8

A counter-argument might be that countries such as Japan are even more overcrowded and their populations do not riot, but their pathologies merely are expressed in different ways. Their culture insists on extreme self-control, necessary for living so closely, but the suicide rate has long been one of the highest in the world, and the hikikomori phenomenon amongst mostly young people – extreme withdrawal for years on end – is well-known. Anger is turned inward rather than outward.

Many of the rioters are unemployed, and there are little in the way of jobs for them. It is simply impossible to provide meaningful jobs for everyone in a growing population, especially as many businesses and industries are “downsizing” to become more efficient, and outsourcing a lot of work to cheap (slave) labor in developing countries. Such frustrations were also a factor in the “Arab spring” uprisings earlier this year (which are still ongoing), and the Israeli housing protests over the rising cost of living (Israel is very overcrowded). Too many people competing for dwindling resources, living space and jobs.

An article in Business Week from earlier this year, “The Youth Unemployment Bomb”, looks at the social consequences of having a large, unemployed and educated youth population, and the inevitable disorder this creates. The article, though, somewhat unhelpfully suggests that the solution is to create entrepreneurs – start one’s own company. But not all people have the aptitude for that (I don’t), and there are only so many products and services that can be created; the market is arguably saturated with “stuff”. The article does not address the basic issue: that there is simply a massive overpopulation of young people (who will one day become old).

So that’s the situation in this year of 7 billion – how much worse will things get if and when the population reaches 8, then 9 billion?

Water is a right, not a privilege

I have a collection of saved-up articles, so I will go through them here:

“Extreme Motherhood”, Newsweek, 17/3. Report on a rather disturbing religious fanatic organization called “Quiverfull”, whose aim is for its women members to bear as many children as possible. The Duggars (18 children and counting…) are the most notorious example. They forego all forms of birth control in the misguided belief that their deity wishes women to be primarily breeders. Aside from the obvious overpopulation issues this raises, such constant childbearing is deleterious to a woman’s health and body.

“Earth population ‘exceeds limits’ ”, BBC News, 31/3. Comment by a U.S. science advisor, Dr. Nina Fedoroff.

Next, a 1/4 Herald-Sun article on the mass worldwide unemployment resulting from the recession caused by financial greed and stupidity. This shows the disadvantage of a growing population when such a preventable event happens – there are simply not enough jobs for everyone, so social unrest and crime will increase. It also demonstrates that governments can’t see past the entrenched “endless growth” mindset. I could not find the article online, so I have reproduced it below:

Millions to join jobless queues

Bank chiefs say we will fare better than most

An extra 25 million workers could be thrown on the scraphead by the world’s leading devel oped nations, one of the world’s economic power- brokers has warned. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development boss Angel Gurria spoke of a “fully blown social crisis” unless decisive action is taken to halt the global economic crisis. “Restoring global growth is an economic and political priority, but also an ethical, moral, social and human imperative,” he told G8 labour ministers in Rome.

The bleak assessment came as the Reserve Bank admitted for the first time that Australia will fall into recession. But Australia’s unemployment rate is not expected to sink to the disastrous 10 per cent plus levels of other OECD countries. OECD chief economist Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel said jobless numbers in the Group of Seven rich nations would nearly double to almost 36 million and would rise by 25 million across the OECD as a whole by late 2010. The sombre analysis came ahead of G20 Summit talks in London starting tomorrow.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last night told a business forum in London the financial system cracked after decades of worshipping the “false god” of unfettered markets. “The truth is, sometime last September, something almost audibly cracked in the public’s trust in our financial markets,” Mr. Rudd said. He condemned “an ideology that says government intervention is, by definition, bad”. Mr. Rudd called for a balance between individual enterprise and the common good. “Over the last quarter of a century this balance has been eroded. Unfettered markets became worshipped as a god – and we now know that god was false.”

In its interim report, the OECD does not make a prediction on Australia’s unemployment rate, which is officially forecast by Treasury to reach just 7 per cent. Growth is expected to shrink by an average 4.3 per cent this year in the 30 OECD nations, while the world economy will shrink by 2.7 per cent. Deputy Reserve Bank governor Ric Battelino conceded Australia would go into recession. “There are limits on how much we can insulate ourselves from what is happening abroad. GDP is likely to fall in 2009,” he said.

But Mr. Battelino maintained Australia will fare better than other countries and says the worst of China’s economic problems have passed. Treasurer Wayne Swan agreed negative growth was inevitable. “The significant downgrade in global growth from the OECD and World Bank reflects just how severe this global recession has become,” he said. The OECD said China will grow by just 6.3 per cent and India by 4.3 per cent. “The world economy is in the midst of its deepest and most synchronized recession in our lifetimes,” it said.

“Time for rethink on water: adviser”, The Age, 3/4. A Victorian State Government adviser, David Downie, belives water should be treated as a commodity, not an essential service. The fallacy of this view is appalling – water is not a frivolity people can do without, and it is listed by the United Nations as one of humanity’s basic rights (see quote from the linked document below). A society should not have its essential services held hostage by rapacious private corporations! Unfortunately Victoria is one state that is in this situation, no thanks to Premier Jeff Kennett’s traumatic reforms and privatization through the 1990s. A disaster it has been, with prices constantly rising.

“Privatization” of water services is often a controversial issue, and the involvement of the private sector in water delivery has accelerated over the past decade. In many countries, private sector involvement has extended beyond selling water from trucks and supply of infrastructure to the full operation and management of water delivery systems. While governments under international human rights law may permit private sector involvement, their responsibilities remain the same. Steps must be taken to ensure that the sufficiency, safety, affordability and accessibility of water are protected from interference as well as ensuring that everyone will enjoy the right in the shortest possible time.Where it is involved, the private sector should be encouraged by governments to participate effectively in ensuring people’s right to water.

– The right to water

I commented about this on a 2007 libertarian blog entry, “Government’s water shortage”, (can’t directly link to the comment, but mine is #218). A few of the libertarian types sought to correct me (they believe privatization solves all problems), but I stand by my opinion. Some letters from The Age, 4/4:

Just another way to make money

A top State Government water adviser, David Downie, is asking Victorians to see water as a commodity rather than relying on our “traditional belief” that it is an essential service (“Time for rethink on water: adviser”, The Age, 3/4).

What a remarkable insight into the thinking of the State Government. Mr. Downie was one of the architects of the 2007 water plan that includes desalination and the north-south pipeline.

Let’s consider how well that plan has played out – cost blow-outs with both projects, a multinational company set to take over the desalination plant, the possibility that only a fraction of the intended water will flow through the pipeline from our inland rivers, billions of litres of water a year pumped out to sea rather than being used in industry, and our water-guzzling power stations relying on excellent-quality drinking water from the mountains near Mount Baw Baw. To pay for these projects, our water bills are set to go through the roof.

If this is what happens when you consider water as just another commodity, then maybe it’s time to revert to our “traditional beliefs” and demand the Government treat it as an essential resource that must be managed for the public good and the benefit of the environment, rather than just one more way to make money.

– Cam Walker, campaigns co-ordinator, Friends of the Earth, Fitzroy

Essential service

David Downie, there can never be any doubt that the supply of water is an essential service. Would you have water dribble out of taps according to one’s ability to pay? Would you have a company with the efficiency standards of Connex and the relevant minister controlling the on/off valve? Other countries have gone down this fraught road only to regret it. Water may be treated for our health but it is not a manufactured product to be sold according to whatever the market will bear. The true character of big business has been exposed by our current global financial difficulties, yet you advise that the supply of water be endangered by the gambling habits of brokers.

– Roger Green, Ferntree Gully

Selling hot air

It appears that David Downie, who is employed by the State Government, which theoretically represents the interests of Victorian residents, wants to hand over the sale of water to private industry, the same type of people that misrun our suburban rail network.

The excuse is that we should “consider water as a commodity rather than cling to our traditional belief that it is an essential service”. Try doing without water or anything containing water for a week and see how essential it is. Next they will probably try to sell us the air that we breathe.

– Lance Fishman, Upwey

“EcoGeek of the Week: Author, Paolo Bacigalupi”, Ecogeek, 4/4. An author who has some blunt opinions on overpopulation. I found this via an io9 entry – “The Best Green Technology Is Population Control”. The topic annoyed a few commentators, who voiced the usual asinine opinions (much of the commentary and articles on io9 tend to be such).

“G20 missed consumption, population issues: lobby group”, ABC News, 5/4. Statement by Sustainable Population Australia that “the G20 summit has failed to recognise that over-consumption and overpopulation are the reasons for the global economic turmoil.”

Some collected letters:

Swamps help to keep us all cool

Denise Gadd’s article on Phillip Johnson’s wetland ecosystem for the Melbourne garden show (Metropolis, 1/4) is a timely reminder of the effect of wetlands on lowering temperatures and guaranteeing moisture to surrounding areas.

It’s a wake-up call for governments, which have allowed the infilling of these systems in the past 30 years for housing and commercial purposes, in particular the western wetlands and those at Edithvale. Those under the West Gate Bridge, in which enormous numbers of waterfowl nested in 1992-93, are largely gone, with only two unappealing greenish ponds remaining. Ditto for much of the Laverton marsh areas and, if the Planning Minister has his way, those at Point Lonsdale soon.

I contend that this disregard for our natural waterways has added to the drying out of Melbourne in general and increased the impact of high temperatures on surrounding suburbs. Certainly it has contributed to the demise of waterbirds, few of which now have a wide choice of habitat to resort to in times of climatic stress.

– Loucille McGinley, East Brighton, The Age, 2/4

Less people, more power

What a waste of effort and what hypocrisy in 1 billion people switching off their lights for one Earth Hour. In that time, there were approximately 10,000 new consumers added to the planet.

From just one hour’s net increase in human numbers, and assuming they live in a Western lifestyle as they all wish to do, our tiny planet must provide in one year a princely 7 billion litres of water.

For this hourly net increase of 10,000 humans, there will be a carbon footprint of about 15,000 tonnes in the first year, and about 1.2 million tonnes in their collective lifetime. And this is only one hour’s production of our species.

Cessation of population growth will give our species a chance to compute a sustainable number of us depending upon how we wish to consume. Any other fix must end in disaster, as has occurred in many past civilisations as they overpopulated themselves into oblivion, no doubt with the blessings of their political leaders, economists, planners and other population zealots.

– Geoff Rankin, Brighton, The Age, 4/4

Lawns breathe life into environment

It seems the Brumby government spin doctors have people believing watering lawns is a waste of water. One per cent of water is used on gardens yet 10 per cent is wasted because of broken water mains each year.

Lawns cut and maintained at 50 mm or more provide three times more oxygen than trees and absorb three times more O₂ than Australian trees. Green grass is an outdoor “climate control”, able to lower ground and air temperatures by up to 20 degrees. Lawns of 240 m² provide enough oxygen for a family of four a day (at ground level). Grasses act as a dust and erosion filter for cleaner air and prevention of water runoff. Green grasses are fire retar dant, but dry, burning grass adds tonnes of CO₂ to the air.

As there are many thousands employed in the long-suffering horticultural industry, it is time for those who profess to be green to realise where the solution to global warming really is. Green is cool.

– John Bird, (Supporter of Vic Coalition for Sustainable Water Use), Somerville, Herald-Sun, 6/4

Keep migrants coming?

“Despite job fears, we must keep migration door open”, The Age, 1/3. An apologist argues that we should keep immigration levels high despite fears from some that this will increase jobs competition.

Critics of immigration conveniently forget that immigrants do more than just work – they buy houses and consume products too. Hell, they even pay taxes. Adding more people into the economic mix is a recipe for long term growth – this is as true when the economy is slowing down as it is when the economy is booming. After all, there are a lot of things to do in an economy, even during a recession.

But those extra immigrants will require taxpayer-funded health care, social security and so on, too. Growth in a country of finite resources can’t be infinite. And, yes, it is reasonable for citizens to resent the extra competition from immigrants in a time of increasing unemployment.

He does have a point that undesirable jobs (e.g. fruit-picking) tend to have high job vacancies. I don’t know what the solution for this is.

Sure, there are now a lot of people actively seeking work since the global financial crisis really hit six months ago. But there have been unemployed people since before then, and those jobs in the fruit-picking industry have long been unfilled.

Only when the finance industry’s brightest sparks begin seeking agricultural employment should we start denying farmers the labour force they need – and denying eager migrant workers the opportunity to earn. Ever since the First Fleet landed, Australia’s most pressing economic problem has been our population size. Our labour force has always been small, our consumer base small, and the size of our national market small.

Small is beautiful! Australia is mostly infertile land (desert) and cannot support a high population – it is already straining to support the 21+ million now occupying it.

Compounding this has been the fear of an inexorably ageing workforce. But the credit crunch has presented long-term opponents of immigration with an opportunity to flog their favourite dead horse. Even more erroneous is the belief held by many opponents of immigration that we should limit the entry into Australia of certain non-Western religions because our cultures are incompatible.

Probably because religious fanatics who advocate blowing others up with suicide bombers tend to make citizens rather nervous!

Anyway,we have a moral necessity to maintain a high immigration intake. Much more than foreign aid, charity, Live Aid wristbands, and even the bulk-purchase of fair trade coffee, the most effective way we can help somebody living in the third world to crawl out of poverty is allowing them to move to the first world.

An even more effective and preventative method would be to help those impoverished countries become normal functioning ones so their citizens don’t feel such a pressing need to emmigrate.

“Young mums grab bonus”, Herald-Sun, 2/3. This reports the not-very-surprising news that the baby bonus has encouraged teenage pregnancies. Obvious solution: ban the BB for under-18s! Even better: scrap it altogether. I would instead not object to, say, government-funded 6 months’ maternity or paternity leave at minimum wage, which seems a reasonable compromise to me (a year, as some want, is too excessive to fund).

Also annoying is that IVF gets a Medicare rebate!

“Medicare rebates for IVF births in the same period were $295,000, which works out at less than $20,000 for each baby,” said Professor Robert Jansen, a director of Sydney IVF.

Infertility is not a painful, life-threatening or disfiguring condition, and should not be government-funded! The money could be much better used elsewhere (e.g. funding the health care system).

“Despair and rage among Gaza’s youths”, BBC News, 27/2. Another not-very-surprising report on the overcrowding in Gaza, this focusing on the Angry Young Men who are a symptom of this, and the social unrest that results from boredom, hopelessness and unemployment among such – and who are prime recruitment material for militants. Israel should start air-dropping contraceptives (or put them in the water supply, if there is one)!

“How to survive the coming century”, New Scientist, 25/2. A worst-case scenario of how climate change might affect the environment this century, if the temperature rises by 4°C.

The good news is that the survival of humankind itself is not at stake: the species could continue if only a couple of hundred individuals remained. But maintaining the current global population of nearly 7 billion, or more, is going to require serious planning.

Well, obviously, we shouldn’t – it’s overpopulation that has got us into this mess!

So if only a fraction of the planet will be habitable, how will our vast population survive? Some, like [James] Lovelock, are less than optimistic. “Humans are in a pretty difficult position and I don’t think they are clever enough to handle what’s ahead. I think they’ll survive as a species all right, but the cull during this century is going to be huge,” he says. “The number remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less."

Others believe that the large population can be relocated to still-fertile areas of the world and crammed into megacities:

Imagine, for the purposes of this thought experiment, that we have 9 billion people to save - 2 billion more than live on the planet today. A wholescale relocation of the world’s population according to the geography of resources means abandoning huge tracts of the globe and moving people to where the water is. […] These precious lands with access to water would be valuable food-growing areas, as well as the last oases for many species, so people would be need to be housed in compact, high-rise cities. Living this closely together will bring problems of its own. Disease could easily spread through the crowded population so early warning systems will be needed to monitor any outbreaks.

That does not seem like a desirable way to live, though!

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”

Skewed priorities

From yesterday’s Herald-Sun: just what Australia doesn’t need – more people!

Skilled migration scheme expands

February 18, 2008 12:00 a.m.

The Federal Government is to expand the skilled migration program.

Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Chris Evans said the government aimed to increase the program by 6000 places in 2007-08, bringing the total number of visas to 108,500.

“Employer-sponsored visas are the highest priority because they put a migrant worker directly into a skilled job,” Senator Evans said.

The minister yesterday unveiled a package of measures designed to address the nation’s skills and labour shortages.

The government will also work to expand the working holiday visa program for young people.

Senator Evans said the package had the potential to provide thousands of additional workers in the short term and would help address inflationary pressures.

This while every month, it seems, some company closes down leaving hundreds of workers unemployed (recent examples being a steel mill and a car manufacturer).