Hay Pericles, I don't give a damn how many kids or people you want, just as long as you pay for them, & don't expect me to.

The problem is for some reason, they all want to crowd, or the damn planners want to crowd them, into the same place.

Sydney was a better place in the 60s because it was smaller. People would have been much better off with a dozen 60s Sydneys & Melbourns spread around the country. It would only have required government to spilt the public services. It is totally ridiculous that people who are over 2 hours from the GPO, but still live in Sydney.

How long before Sydney & Canberra are joined by suburbs?

Hasbeen asks

'How long before Sydney & Canberra are joined by suburbs? '

At the rate of illegal immigration, not to long.

As usual the likes of Curmudgeon, Cheryl and Pericles are busy fighting shadows:

Pericles:

Malthus is a red herring. What the author really wants is to tell us how to live our lives, under the shadow of the impending doom that is "overpopulation". It's always easier to control through fear, after all.

Cheryl

These cranks ought to just come out and say they hate capitalism, hate the social welfare system, hate liberalism and almost everything that supports modern life. They are like Andrew Bolt in reverse.

Curmudgeon:

Is there any suggestion the rete of innovation is slowing down? Not really. Food prices are high at the moment for a range of factors including a sharp increase in income for large numbers in India and China, but high prices stimulates production. If you can see genuine barriers to production increases then I'd be quite interested to know what they are.

The author is not telling us how to live our lives - on the contrary the objection is that the social engineering that successive governments have engaged in is to pursue policies which encourage population growth. There is no need to tell anyone how many children to have but there is a need not to have policies which pay people to have children, which actively encourage migrants to come here.

To be anti growth is not to be anti-capitalism - people forget that the idea of a continually growing economy is a relatively new one - classical economists assumed that a mature capitalist economy would be stable. (Try reading people like Adam Smith or Galbraith, Cheryl)

I am assuming that Curmudgeon has the plans for a perpetual motion machine somewhere in his back pocket - pinning your hopes on continual innovation is like planning your financial future on the assumption that you will win lotto.

All that the article is saying is that nature bats last. We dont have to do anything about population growth, we can ignore it for nature will solve it for us - if that thought is scary then head nature off at the pass.

This article is part of the new Environmental push to exert mass behavioural control through pushing the 'impending famine' agenda just as they have through the Global Warming 'disaster scenario'.

Far FEWER people are dying of hunger now than in the past.

The author's rather 'lame' reasoning that someone else repeating Malthus' argument could be correct, even if Malthus was wrong is silly and implausible. He is predictably following the new Green agenda of limiting food supplies using false 'famine' scares.

Also, famines aren't caused by overpopulation but by sudden weather events, biological agents or bad central planning such as by Chinese and Russian Communist regimes.

The Malthusian argument has been used over and again by 'experts' e.g. Paul Ehrlich to make similar predictions to the author in the 1970's which all failed miserably. The Club of Rome did so again with the Limits to Growth book. Their predictions again proved incorrect.

Environmetalism will probably lead to a lack of available energy sources in the future, an now they are moving on to food production and population. We really should resist this new scare campaign. Its ultimately all about control and the new Green vision which is inevitably the path to ruin.

<Any discussion on the effects of the ageing population on our economic future - especially that of our children, who will be required to support us - will be instantly suppressed.>

No, Pericles. What happens is growth advocates tell scary stories about the ageing catastrophe and how Japan, Russia, Australia are all doomed because of it. The argument fails because of its abject absurdity: The idea that suppression is involved is delusional.

I welcome argument as to why the future of countries with growing populations is rosy compared to countries with stable or falling populations. I welcome argument as to how immigration can solve the aging catastrophe. I welcome argument as to why someone can be so critical of the accuracy of climate forecasts, yet so accepting of long range economic forecasts: This point is especially contrary, as it would seem to be synonymous with the deepest Malthusian pessimism.

Settling down nicely into its usual pattern, I see.

>>The author is not telling us how to live our lives - on the contrary, the objection is that the social engineering that successive governments have engaged in is to pursue policies which encourage population growth<<

Those policies would be economic growth that leads to better standards of living, a humane immigration policy and a lack of intervention on family life, I guess. Or perhaps you were thinking of other social engineering policies, BAYGON? Which would they be?

>>What happens is growth advocates tell scary stories about the ageing catastrophe and how Japan, Russia, Australia are all doomed because of it<<

It has nothing to do with "doom", Fester. That is the province of the population control freaks. It has to do with economics, and the effect of an ageing population on income distribution.

>>All that the article is saying is that nature bats last. We dont have to do anything about population growth, we can ignore it for nature will solve it for us<<

I'm not sure that is what the article was saying, BAYGON, but I will happily agree with the conclusion. Human beings are only human, so to speak, and our ability to feed ourselves and our desire to live in free societies will continue to drive our economy, and our growth. As they have in the past.