Donald A. Collins | 23 November 2015
Church and State
On Monday, November 23, 2015, the Wall Street Journal began on page one a series of articles, the first entitled, “The World’s New Population Time Bomb: Too Few People” in an editorial-like attempt on its news pages to make the case for importing more cheap labor immigrants and more growth, which of course means more reckless use of renewable and non renewable planetary resources in the face of accelerating climate changes.
This initial piece reminds me of the old adage which offers the wise advice that “when you have dug yourself into a hole, stop digging”. Human numbers have almost quadrupled since my birth in 1931 to nearly 8 billion and as the WSJ article points out will likely grow another couple of billion by mid century, to which it is saying would be great. The question of course is for whom. The story of King Midas comes sharply to mind. He got all the gold but turned his daughter into a gold statue.
The entire WSJ article dredges up the old false claim about the need for endless growth which sees more and more as better even as the finite planet aches with over use of all its natural resources.
The author does mention automation as useful and indeed that must be a key replacement for manual human labor. However, as machines replace people and you have more people where are those jobs coming from? Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.
The population bomb as Paul Ehrlich has often explained has already exploded, but calling for more mindless growth on a finite planet while ignoring the urgent need to give all families the means to stop unwanted births shows that human greed for more, including immigrants no country can absorb, borders on insanity.
In responding to the article one of my colleagues noted that this is what one might expect from Mr. Murdoch’s relentless pursuit of growth and profits at all costs. Clearly another example of ignoring the facts of global warming, environmental disfigurement, and reckless endangerment of all humans along with the plants and animals needed to sustain lives.
But I have stated my position without giving my readers the chance to comment. Read the article and then let me know if your agree or disagree! I love to hear all opinions even when they don’t agree with mine.
Don’t fail to post your views on the WSJ website beneath the article. I doubt that you will slake the appetite for more more more, but you will likely feel better after taking action against this already arrived sea of troubles and in so doing to at least alleviate some of the dire consequences already evident in the deteriorating world situation.
After all getting leadership to identify the problem of excess population growth has been the main hindrance in working toward a solution for decades.
For those of us in the developed world, life has been improving, but the status of many very desperate people in much of the world is clearly sustaining the recruitment of ISIS oriented people. Such a rise will not be eliminated by force of arms, but by intelligent use of education and application of resources toward helping those in dire living conditions.
The WSJ’s article offers an errant doxology of more, more, more wealth and power for fewer and fewer which will not allow sustainability and of course will not bring peace and prosperity.
It is certainly worth mentioning that the power blocs of organized religion and ethnic advocacy have chimed in to influence increasing numbers.
For example, don’t fail to read on this site the explosively accurate analysis of this site’s Chairman, Dr. Mumford about how the Vatican has impeded efforts to bring population growth a humane reduction.
Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC., has spent over 40 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013.WSJ Page One Series: Other Articles by Don Collins
- WSJ Series Notes Decline In Cheap Chinese Labor! Solution: Add More People!!!
- WSJ’s Prescription For 3rd World Manufacturing Failures Forgets History
- Wall Street Journal Cites South Korean Demographic Success But Ignores Emphasizing the 2 Main Reasons For Why It Happened
- The WSJ’s 5th Page One Series On Demography About Africa Suggests Rolling The Dice On Human Numbers: Very Bad Advice
- WSJ #6, Japan Becomes A Perfect Model For Solving The Population Bulge
During the formative years of the World Health Organisation (WHO), broad consensus existed among United Nations member countries that overpopulation was a grave public health threat and would be a major cause of preventable death not too far in the future. One of the founding fathers of the WHO, the late Prof. Milton P. Siegel, who for 24 years was the Assistant Director-General of the organisation, speaks to our Chairman Dr. Stephen D. Mumford in 1992. He explains how the Vatican successfully stymied the incorporation of family planning and birth control into official WHO policy. This video is available for public viewing for the first time. Read the full transcript of the interview here.
Professor Paul Ehrlich: Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?
Al Bartlett – Democracy Cannot Survive Overpopulation
Amazon Warehouse Robots : Mind Blowing Video
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Coincidentally, a friend of mine emailed me this and asked what I thought about it. Here is what I told him:
The first question for me is whether the article is scientifically sound. Unfortunately, it appears that the author is scientifically ignorant, as are most economists, who never acknowledge the necessity and/or the increasing scarcity of resources for producing economic output. This blindness to the role of resources is typified by the standard Cobb-Douglas production function. The article does not contain the word “resources” even once. Nor does it acknowledge what scientists have said about the ecological carrying capacity of the US and the planet, which they have shown is about 50% of the current US population and about 60% of the current world population, respectively. (That analysis considers only biological resources; these percentages would of course be even smaller if the analysis were to include non-renewable resources such as minerals and fossil fuels.) That is why the biologist Ehrlich and other scientists were and are right in saying that our most important problem is overpopulation. To translate that into economic terms, total GDP is greater than what our biological and geological resources will be able to produce for future generations of humans, in the case of the US by a factor of at least 2. So increasing total GDP moves us farther away from sustainability.
Did you ask yourself the question, “And then what?” In other words, if the population were to increase more rapidly as the article recommends, would that solve the “problem” of less than maximum possible GDP identified by the author? Of course, it would not, because at the end of the period all the same issues, such as an aging population would still be present. We would simply have postponed their solutions, such as a modest increase in the starting age for Social Security and Medicare benefits. Have you been to Japan? If so, did it look underpopulated to you?
Nowhere does the article demonstrate that GDP growth would be higher than the recommended growth in population. That means that it does not demonstrate that the recommended growth in population would result in higher per capita GDP, and isn’t that more important than increasing total GDP? It also does not demonstrate that there would be more equitable GDP per capita. In fact, it’s most likely that economic inequality would continue to increase, as investors would benefit at the expense of workers by increasing the value of capital relative to labor due to the larger labor supply.
Arguments for higher population have been debunked for decades. For example, here is a scientist debunking the “birth dearth” claim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyWJUTTX5wg
And here he is debunking the claim that Malthus was wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe2gLSqismk
Under the current “more is always better” paradigm, the world and the US are being destroyed for all future generations, so this is not an academic exercise. If I can help with more information or answers to questions, please let me know.
The only conclusion I can come to is that they really believe there will be a second coming and it is right around the corner. Or they believe that an mass extinction is about to take place and they will survive in their billion dollar bunkers our government has built them with our pentagon budget. Or, they simply don't care. Occam Razor – they don't care!