Population Matters

A few years back in National Review, Harvard Scholar Leon Steinmetz revisited a curious debate among leaders of the French Revolution. Many of these revolutionaries asserted that France held too many people for the revolution to consummate their vision of a social utopia. One leader proposed that the population be halved; others argued that this decrease would prove inadequate and that further reductions were in order. Citizen Robespierre, not to be outdone, called for an ideal republic of 4 million Frenchmen at a time at the population of France was 25 million. Robespierre would become one of those excess citizens guillotined.

In the current debate on population and environment, many self proclaimed ecologists and even some immigration restrictionists echo the concerns of the French revolutionaries asserting that there are too many people to produce a “sustainable economy” in which equality of wealth can be shared between industrialized nations and developing nations while saving the world from global warming as well as making sure not too many immigrants enter America to keep America population at the right point to prevent further pollution.

A growing body of research challenges the notion that the population growth is the driving factor either of poverty or of environmental. The past few decades has shown that material abundance and environmental detoxification develop in tandem with institutions of liberty- a market system girded by private property rights. When per capital income of nations exceeds $4000, population growth starts to stabilize and environmental conditions improve, which is the opposite of the view that development is the enemy of ecology. The late Julian Simon contends, “The most important indication of environmental quality is life expectancy; it continues to rise” and noted that food production has more than kept with world population growth.

F.A. Hayek wrote, “I have been contending that socialism constitutes a threat to the present and future welfare of the human race, in the sense that neither socialism nor another substitute for the market order could sustain the current population growth threatens world wide pauperization is simply a mistake.” The ecology market has become the new socialism, an ill omen for the environment but worse still for humanity. The recent global warming movement goal is to shut down free market policies and much of the movement has slipped down the slippery slope advocated by Robespierre when it comes to population control.

The abortion movement is symptom of this mentality since many abortion right legislators are big government advocates. Since Roe v Wade, over 40 million have been aborted, a testament to many Americans declining faith in the future. Abortions among African-Americans are three times greater than whites and for many abortion advocates, abortion have become a replacement for sound economic policies to raise the income of the underclass. It is easier to abort the poor than to depend upon market solution to raise their income. And the average American population has aged quicker as a result. (If these 40 million plus abortions had not occurred, the average age of Americans would be 33 as opposed to 36, and if we did not have the number of immigrants coming into the United States, our population would even be older.)

In a society in which working public directly supports the elderly, the aging of America portends a future disaster as the number of workers supporter each retiree declines. As Stephen Moore observed about environmental allies, “And they are in many cases hostile to economic development and human progress, but abhor the planting of another fetus in a woman’s womb as anti-progress.”

The major question, are we really overpopulated? Stephen Moore stated, “If every one of the 6 billion of us resided in Texas, there would be room enough for a family of four to have a house and an 1/8 acre of land- and the rest of the globe will be vacant.” In developing countries, population growth has plummeted. In the past half century, famine have decreased, fewer people die due to famine and this despite rapid growth in population over the past century. If anything, population growth accompanies economic growth. Over the past two centuries population growth increased six fold whereas world gross product has increased 80 fold.

The major crisis of this century will not be population increases but the aging of the world population. People are a needed ingredient to economic growth and progress. The real problem with government attempts to control population or tolerance of abortions is that to control population means intensive government control and loss of freedom. Loss of freedom means less economic growth, thus making population a serious population. Socialism, or increased government intervention in the economy makes a population a crisis.