When I was very young and naive, I used to assume that one difference between the Right and the Left was that the Left saw people as potential to be developed and fostered, while the Right saw them as problems to be controlled and feared. Lo and behold, the contemporary pseudo-Left, innocent to the notion of production and work, and raised for life on the public tit, see people as problems - yes/no ?

Five or seven or nine billion people possess enormous potential, but I'm easy with the notion of steadying the population - while there are parts of the world which are underpopulated - Africa, for example - I'm easy with ZPG elsewhere - Europe and the US, for example.

The question is: how to slow down the birthrate in those countries (yes, contraception, education of women, dislike of children - these would all work in that direction), and if possible start to reduce it without causing even greater hardship to our beloved Gen Ys by burdening them (at least until they reach reitrement age) with maintaining the affluence of older generations from the public purse. In turn, when they DO reach retirement age, they can live off the efforts and taxes of the next couple of generations below them, their ever-scarcer children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

My point - not very sophisticated mathematically, I'll admit - is that population reduction would have to be carried out very slowly, so much % per generation: the faster the reduction, the greater the burdens for the working generations. And we wouldn't want that for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, would we ?

So, Divergence, I think you may be dodging the issue: while you may be right about technological advances, you seem to be skirting around the issue of population reduction. All sorts of problems kick in when you go from ZPG to negative growth.

[TBC]

Cheryl “When the anti-pops talk about population, they are really talking about is people - you and me, our neighbours, husbands and friends - all of those who make up the social fabric of Australia. So far their claims have been laughable (and enjoyable) but their thinking has a nasty regressive element which needs to be exposed.”

Exactly, like most “big government” ideas, it remains a matter of them and us

- you are and I being part of the “them"

– which is reassuring if only for the fact I would hate to be considered as one of the collectivist “us”

Small government and individual choice is the right way for anyone seeking a life that is worth living,

- rather than suffering large collectivist government and an existence not worth mentioning

popnperish I see you have a grasp of “market forces”, remove the sorce of cheap oil and cheap food and population numbers collapse

sure there is an acute workforce problem, which should make finding a job for those who do survive easier but

I do believe an acute problem sure beats a chronic problem of simply more and more mouths to feed

And as for some notions like “leave a better world for our grandchildren – that sa pure motherhood notion and complete crap.

Our grand children should thank us the for copulating and giving them life…

we might not leave this world a pristine example of life without humans but we did not inherit that from our ancestors anyway.

What we will leave them is a world with many more inventions and benefits than the one we were handed by our beloved parents and we ask no thanks for that either.

'Or, we elect Clover Moore and live in a world of fluffy toys, cuddly blankets and love.'

Comment of the year.

Spoke too soon...

'I wonder too whether our schools are churning out graduates who confuse debate with a sense of entitlement to construct the most silly arguments and then howl when people don't listen.'

'But, step by step, increment by increment, as their utopian dreams prove eternally elusive, the fascists wields their power ever more nakedly and brutally.'

Col,

'What we will leave them is a world with many more inventions and benefits than the one we were handed by our beloved parents and we ask no thanks for that either.'

Amen. I cant grasp this idea about inter-generational guilt. Adverts about 'spending the kids inheritance'? WTF, it's their money. Enjoy! Spend the lot!

I love that saying 'for your children's children'. Evidently, your actual children you really don't care about, it's just the grandchildren for which you'd like a nice world?

Loudmouth,

The difference between left and right is the left are idealists, the right are pragmatists. If you want to dream about warm and fuzzy things, stick to the left, if you want to get something done stick to the right.

Yeah, I'm slowly beginning to see things your way, Houellebecq.

[continued]

Fester, I'm not suggesting any catastrophe: frankly, I don't think any sane society could countenance rapid poluation reduction, only something almost imperceptibly gradual, 0.1 % p.a. for example, which would halve a population in seven hundred years or so, and bring it down to levels satisfactory to the alarmists over a period of thousands of years.

Even so, that 0.1 % p.a. (or roughly 2.5 % over a generation, 5 % over two generations) would impose some extra burden on younger generations, especially as older people stayed old for longer, thanks to medical advances, since the working population would still decline by four or five per cent over someone's working lifetime. So fewer working people paying taxes for more older people.

Shoot the messenger, burn all of the maths books if you like, but that's about how it might work out :)

Joe

Everald, see what you’ve done?

You should be proud; look at all the nightmares that have been liberated. Just look at the responses, all these people with things that “keep them awake at night”, worrying about the sustainability of our planet.

Too many people. We may now go into solutions of our own, global reduction vigilantes, out there knocking off all those “surplus to requirements”. Start with the mentally infirm, then get stuck into racial impurities, then move on to the poor, the emotionally displaced, the politically unsustainable and those who drive Hyundai’s. I love it. When do we get to the gas chambers?

You are part of the “Seeds of destruction” brigade, you pose the answers but have no concept of the questions you breed. A pox on progressives