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Guest Post: The Myth Of Over-Population
Submitted by Logan Albright via Mises Canada,
The world is overpopulated. The street are clogged, traffic is in a snarl, and people are living – both figuratively and literally – right on top of each other. There’s hardly enough room to swing a cat these days, right? Wrong.
The world is not overcrowded at all. There are vast swaths of unpopulated land all over the place. Siberia, Canada, Africa, Australia, even the rural USA all contain more than enough wide open spaces. So why do people labor so resolutely under this delusion? The reason is simple: most people, especially those with the time and inclination to carp about overpopulation, live in areas of high population density, a non-representative sample of the world as a whole. We call these places cities, and the reason why people live in cities, despite their complaining, is that there are benefits for large populations congregating close together.
It is convenient to live in a place with lots of other people, because each of those people can potentially do something for you, from repairing your shoes, to cooking your meals, to running entertainment venues, to, perhaps most importantly, providing you with gainful employment. Try living out in the middle of nowhere and see how easy it is to feed yourself, much less make a living and survive medical problems. The division of labor means that the more people there are nearby, the more able we are to fulfill our wants and needs. Hence, crowded cities.
This misconception of the world’s population problems has led some to celebrate the declining birth rates we now see in most of the developed world. But the anticipation of a little expanded breathing room causes them take the wrong view on the economic impacts of a declining population. This has to do with an incomplete understanding of human action.
Those who worry about overpopulation tend to view people as nothing more than consumers. Resources are finite; humans consume resources. Therefore, fewer humans will mean more resources to go around. This is the core idea behind the opposition to expanded immigration. Namely, the fear that more people will mean less work and less wealth for the rest of us. But while the two premises of this syllogism are true, they are also woefully incomplete, making the conclusion incorrect as well.
The reason is that humans are not merely consumers. Every consumer is also a producer as well, and production is how we have improved our standards of living from the dawn of man till today. Every luxury, every great invention, every work of art, every modern convenience that we enjoy was the product of a mind – in some cases, of more than one. It then stands to reason that the more minds there are, the more innovations we will have as well. A reductio ad absudum reveals the obvious truth that a cure for cancer is more likely to emerge from a society of a billion people than from one of only a handful of individuals.
More importantly, these innovations result in a multiplication of resources, so our syllogism changes to the following: Resources are finite; humans consume resources; humans produce resources; therefore, if humans produce more resources than they consume, a greater population will be beneficial to the species.
That we do, in fact, produce more than we consume is self-evident by looking at the standard of living we enjoy today versus that which we had 50, or 100, or 1000 years ago. As the population has expanded, so has our prosperity, and the reduction in human suffering has been remarkable.
With this in mind, the precipitous drop in global birth rates is alarming. In countries where there is a generous social safety net for the elderly, a shrinking population means that a greater and greater share of resources will go towards caring for the old, while younger generations have insufficient numbers to make up the difference.
As the labor force declines below the level of available capital, machines will start to fall into disrepair and disuse, factories will be abandoned, housing developments will lie unoccupied. All of this results in less economic growth, less wealth, and less prosperity for everyone. Even the aggregate demand-obsessed Keynesians should be able to understand this concept. Fewer people people means less economic activity.
The celebration of low populations largely comes from the environmentalist movement, where anti-human sentiment is frequently overt. Even in less caustic circles, however, the bias against mankind has seeped into the popular consciousness. It’s pervasive; an instinct among lefties that – for some reason they can’t quite put their finger on – people are just no darn good.
This position is only defensible if you pine for the days of smallpox, starvation, contaminated water, and a constant danger of being devoured by hungry predators. If, on the other hand, you do not view those things as part of an idyllic, all-natural existence, you might consider cutting us humans a little slack.
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It is not just population itself, it is also the rate of growth. Though the rate of growth is falling, it has been far too high for far too long.
We now have 7+ billion human beings worldwide rapidly depleting the fuels which took hundreds of millions of years to form.
Moreover, it is the official policy of the USSA to keep population growing forever through infinite immigration from Mexico, Latin America, and Asia. The USSA doesn't give a damn about its own citizens...it wants more and more (the right wing is happy because it means low labor costs and "growth", the left wing is happy because it means "multiculturalism" and sticking it to whitey).
Mr. Bush who you guys celebrate as a white hero President while you have nothing but disgust for mulatto Obama? Mr. Bush presided over 8 years of uncontrolled immigration even as he sent you to the Middle East to die for the Jews and the oil companies, and being from Texas he was completely in love with the Mexicans and even had some in his family.
In the southwest alone, 70% or more of births are to immigrant Mexican mothers, often unwed and illegal.
Truly, the USSA won't stop growing in population until the whole structure collapses.
Cities are a good thing because there are people around who can readily patch my shoe, cook my meal, or entertain me?
I'm bugging out!
PLus....more choice of hookers in the big cities, cheaper drugs and more venues to get drunk, progress...don't knock it.
This article is total bullshit - the only things we have to worry about eating us - is the fucking .01% and their minions when the food runs out. Predators? Hilarious. OK - so don't swim in the ocean and strap on a 45 when walking Alaska.
Yeah let's have more people. I love paying $5 per gallon for fucking gasoline because you fucks want my share of it.
The brutal truth is that a majority of people born today won't have any work in the future, unless it is volunteer work. Also most people born today are into poor families with little chance of an education. The whole planet should adopt china's policy of maximum one kid per set of parents.
Weirdly stupid article. With exponential growth, the trouble happens only in the end.
"innovations result in a multiplication of resources" - what a nonsence!!!
humans do not produce resources - humans mine finite resources out of the ground
humans produce goods which require finite resources in the process of production
no resources means - no goods, no work, much more poor world
The reason streets are crowded is quite simple... life in cities is good and still viable.
Try and survive a week in many of the unpopulated areas suggested in this article in Africa, Asia, America, Australia etc... and you would have no chance.
Try surviving a week in the Nullabor, Sahara or other hostile areas and you will understand why the world is getting crowded
What moronic drivel.
So let hordes of unwashed filthy natives from sub saharan Africa and the Middle Easy and Afghanistan, all with sub 60 IQa barely capably of a single rational thought, incapable of understanding anything other than wailing in a fucking mosque and fill the existing western countrys with them.
And all the libtard morons screaming that they they er re all equal.
Fucking bollox, Chinese have IQs but the majority of the mindless morons that flood into western countries are that useless that herding goats is just about the extreme limit of their abilities and they royally fuck up on that on a regular basis.
Oh yes and breding , thats something they are good at, foisting more of the filthy brats on western taxpayers.
What planet did this guy from .
Dos he not realise that until Livingstone went to Africa there has not been a single ancient monument, not a single sign of any civilisation on the entire sub Saharan continent been detected ever.
Not a single building or ruin predaes Livingstone, they lived in trees with monkeys.
Just ask the Kenyan monkey in the Whitehouse
He knows everything there is to know about monkey business
I rarely comment any more...it's simply redundant or depressing. but this time...
The author is a complete moron. Based on the assertions in this article, if human beings ate all the available food and produced a gigantic pile of shit, humanity would be no worse off. If humans then cut down all the forests, used the shit as mud to make bricks, and built hundreds of millions of huts, humanity would be better off.
If we, humanity, are in such trouble today, it is because of apathy, ignorance, and outright morons like the author. The greatest danger to people is people.
"Every consumer is also a producer as well"
What a lot of patent nonsense. Tell me what the starving millions congregated around western food aid depots in Africa produce, other than human waste.
We are very good ("productive") at stealing the real resources from the natural world and converting them into numbers on a computer screen--i.e., "money." Other than that, we don't produce a thing--all we do is consume (take from the Earth)!
Very disappointing to see this position being touted on Zero Hedge. No awareness at all of the habitat needs of the Earth's several million other species--sure, let's fill up the planet until there's a human being standing on every square meter of surface area! Not even any realistic concern as to how the billion or so humans living in desperate poverty in the swelling urban slums will improve their lives as their numbers grow to 2, 3, 4 billion. And--this is the kicker for Zero Hedge--no evident consciousness of the stark difference between real resources--not only metals and petroleum but even more importantly the products of green plants carrying out photosynthesis, the NPP of the planet that keeps all of us animal organisms alive--and the entirely abstract "dollars" that are nothing but symbols shuttled around by us human primates, the main thing that we "produce" these days. A propaganda piece written to keep us in the dark about what's really happening here on Earth?
This is the biggest steaming pile of shit I've read in a while. The more people on the planet the more problems get solved? That all depends on the qualities of the individuals. Progressive bullshit.
Yes the earth will be much better off with out humans.
NSC can start by offing himself
took my crocs to the cobbler - he sent me to goodyear to get 'em fixed.
Everyone should stand and applaud this fop albright, the best clowns are the ones that don't realize the true significance of the laughter and smiling of the crowd surrounding them after they've mounted the soap box.The real clowns are blissfully unaware that the reason everyone is laughing is not that they've told a joke but that they are the joke.
Oh, because there are large unpopulated areas, this author doesn't think we are overpopulated?
It isn't just about square footage...it's about resources, and the ability to get them to those who need them. A 3000 square foot home may indeed have room for a lot of people, but if the refrigerator is empty, and the water only runs for an hour a day, that home will not be able to support them.
great piece, traveling on a bus here in central America yesterday had the misfortunate to be seating near two obviously 'liberal' white girls, one from the United states another from the Uk, both typically loud and obnoxious. Constantly moaned about too many people (place practically empty) more worried about some supposedly endangered animals, saying constantly they were never going to have children, that people who did were selfish, my God the two were so braindead they were unaware of how they contradicated themselves, meanwhile it was obvious that daddy paid for everything, they were still attending university which lead me to think that modern university is breding not our future leaders and innovators but total and utter sheeple.
The reason there is a decline in population is the government is over regulating childbearing and child raising.
There is no decrease in population. You mean birth-rate, and it can be declining yet still produce global population growth provided it stays above replacement. Surprising that an accountant would make a numerical error like that.
Do you actually think government regulation is THE reason for slowing birth rates?
Not crippling levels of private sector debt inhibiting household formation.
Not ready access to effective contraception and the decline of religious influence that attempts to regulate against contraception.
Not the freedom of women to choose a career if they wish and delay child bearing indefinitely if desired.
Not the breakdown of extended families and the disappearance of lifelong communities as members are scattered geographically in pursuit of economic gain, thereby placing greater pressure on parents to raise kids alone. (It takes a village to raise a child and the village is gone).
Not declining infant mortality thanks to modern healthcare, education of parents and child-safe products reducing the biological need for a high birth rate.
Enough for now. Did you forget the /sarc tag?
Informed opinions require information, which requires research. The best opinions are informed by research that spans the entire landscape of existing literature regarding the topic at hand.
The worst opinions are just picked lazily out of the holder's own rectum with no recognition of the current global dialogue.
Because good opinions take time and effort to form whereas shitty opinions are in infinite, free and immediate supply, the "information" landscape is filled with bullshit. Further ruining the signal:noise ratio is the fact that informed opinions tend to be held by individuals who are cautious to express them, whereas moronic opinions tend to be held by people who can't wait to shout them out. An example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect [ http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect ].
Mr. Albright is just another incompetent talking head with a loud, useless, uninformed opinion that pollutes the information landscape.
Each year (since 1998) I read the current State of the World YYYY book for an overview of how the planet is going. The informed opinion I then form says that Mr Albright doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. Have a read and decide for yourself:
http://www.worldwatch.org/bookstore/state-of-the-world