sophistibation asks:
I’m curious what your suggestion, if any, is for a long-run solution to the problem of overpopulation, given your seeming distaste for contraception, one-child policy, etc. I’m not suggesting that there is a current global overpopulation crisis, but only that eventually the population must be limited either by “self-regulation” (abortion, contraception in the case of the West today) or by war, famine, etc. Interested to hear your thoughts.
I am a Cornucopian, which is the opposite of a Malthusian. The term was coined to define the position of economist Julian Simon whose famous wager with doomsayer Paul Ehrlich in a sane world would would have put paid to the Malthusian predictions of the latter. (You can see more about the Simon-Ehrlich wager here.) A Malthusian says that population growth (especially of Irish, Hindoos and Negroes) leads to disastrous scarcity of resources, resulting in mass famine, war, and apocalyptic megadeath. A Cornucopian says that population growth, while it creates dislocations and even disasters (such as the enclosure laws of England) does not necessarily lead to the scarcity of any particular resource, nor all of them.
More people does not mean less stuff.
Let me make a startling suggestion — that we look at the evidence that overpopulation exists, ever had existed, or ever will exist.
What evidence is there?
Certainly there are crowded and miserable places on the Earth. There are also crowded and wealthy places. What factors or conditions are present in the one case and not in the other? Is population the only contributing factor, or are there others? Are there any factors that mitigate the alleged miseries provoked by population growth?
Read the remainder of this entry »
