King's article shows that he understands and uses something the anti population and anti immigration lobbies don't, evidence vs opinions, beliefs, cherry picked data and at best vague references.

The idea of overstating population growth and immigration to create alarm is not new, it emanates from USA nativist movements, namely John Tanton of U.S. Inc., his journal The Social Contract and umbrella or front organisations funded by him to promote reduced immigration, reduced population growth, English, influence media and politicians etc. CIS, FAIR, Numbers USA, PFIR etc.

Objective? To green wash his racial views, and surreptitiously co opt environmentalists, liberals, progressives etc.

On the Irwins, what a coincidence, guess who visited Australia Zoo in January? Roy Beck of Numbers USA, who has been an employee, colleague and friend of Tanton.....

Rhian “perhaps that is why you [Divergence] omitted it from your list?”

And what are you ignoring from yours?

The top ten HDI countries are *all* majority-White populations, the very people we are no longer welcoming as immigrants (only 1 out of 4 now).

Oh, and it's not just the top 10.

Let's look at the rest of the 47 “Very high human development” countries.

Note that 8 of these countries were formerly behind the Iron Curtain (9 including East Germany), yet have caught up in no time.

11 Switzerland (majority White)
12 Japan
13 Hong Kong
14 Iceland (majority White)
15 South Korea
16 Denmark (majority White)
17 Israel (majority White)
18 Belgium (majority White)
19 Austria (majority White)
20 France (majority White)
21 Slovenia (majority White, former communist)
22 Finland (majority White)
23 Spain (majority White)
24 Italy (majority White)
25 Luxembourg (majority White)
-- European Union (majority White)
26 Singapore
27 Czech Republic (majority White, former communist)
28 United Kingdom (majority White)
29 Greece (majority White)
30 United Arab Emirates
31 Cyprus (majority White)
32 Andorra (majority White)
33 Brunei
34 Estonia (majority White, former communist)
35 Slovakia (majority White, former communist)
36 Malta (majority White)
37 Qatar
38 Hungary (majority White, former communist)
39 Poland (majority White, former communist)
40 Lithuania (majority White, former communist)
41 Portugal (majority White)
42 Bahrain
43 Latvia (majority White, former communist)
44 Chile (majority White)
45 Argentina (majority White)
46 Croatia (majority White, former communist)
47 Barbados

It's not population growth, it's the *population*!

With our current immigration policy, we won't be in the top 10 (or 47) forever.

“looks to me like Australia's population growth is about optimum”

Looks to me like being White is optimum.

Looks to me like being White is optimum.
Shockadelic,
What is the optimum for non-whites ?

Shockadelic

You are right that most countries with high Human Development Indexes have white populations. But as any half-decent student of statistics knows, correlation does not necessarily signify causation.

Europe was the home of the industrial revolution, and the birthplace of modern capitalism. European countries and those settled by Europeans were the first to adopt the mix of social, political and economic policies that have proved most conductive to high living standards. These include democracy, rule of law, and mixed economies with vigorous private sectors and governments that provide or support infrastructure, social protections and essential services. This gave “white” societies a massive head start in the development stakes, but other countries that have adopted similar policies have in some cases achieved similar levels of development, sometimes very quickly (Japan, Korea).

You quite rightly identify those European economies that did not adopt these policies until quite recently – the former communist states of Eastern Europe – as having significantly lower levels of development than the Western democracies.

Being white is neither necessary to attain very high development (Japan, Korea), nor sufficient (Albania, Armenia). Having lots of oil can also help (UAE, Qatar).

It is policies and resource endowment, not genetics, that determine whether a society has high human development

Rhian,

Where do you get 1.3% population growth for Norway? The CIA World Factbook has 0.327%, which sort of defeats your argument. The inequality adjusted top 10 HDI rankings are Norway, Australia, Sweden, Netherlands, Iceland (0.679%), Ireland (1.112%), Germany, Denmark (0.239%), Switzerland. Slovenia (-0.185%). Note that half of these countries are also on the World Economic Forum top ten, and some of the others also rank high, so there isn't an enormous difference. You also need to consider, as with the Australian states, whether good economic performance is attracting people in some of the higher growth countries, rather than more people creating good economic performance.

Furthermore, you are misleading in your discussion of arable land. Arable land is not all equal. There is a lot of land in Australia that is technically arable, but will only produce a crop in a wetter than average year. Our wheat production per hectare is between 1 and 2 tonnes, depending on drought. It is 8.9 tonnes in the Netherlands and 7.2 tonnes in the UK. The average yield in tonnes per hectare for all cereals is 1.72 in Australia, and 7.09 in France (according to the World Bank). This is not surprising, as our soils have not been renewed by glaciation or mountain building, so good soil is very scarce, apart from alluvial land and some old volcanic hotspots. Then there is the ENSO cycle with long recurrent droughts. See these maps from Dr. Chris Dixon of the CSIRO

http://www.australianpoet.com/boundless.html

There is a theory that the Aboriginal people never developed agriculture, unlike their cousins in New Guinea, because it would have been a death trap. Even enough food to see a village through a European winter wouldn't have been enough to survive a long ENSO drought.

The bottom line here is that we export about 6o% of our grain in an average year and 40% in a drought year, despite Malcolm King's hype.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2010-05-06/can-we-feed-“big-australia”

Why do you want more people to eat up our safety margin, especially in the light of likely negative consequences of climate change, the end of cheap oil, etc.?

Rhian,
Europeans didn't "adopt" modernity, we CREATED it, creativity is a crucial difference between White and non White populations.
As has been conclusively demonstrated on this forum in the past the progress of the "Asian Tigers" relies almost exclusively on technology and IP transfers from Europe, some licensed but much of it plagiarised.
Look up the figures for U.S patent applications by Asian firms, then look up comparative productivity figures, Asians (the much lauded leaders in non White development) are neither creative technicians and strategists nor productive workers. Even if you are going to insist that race is "just a social construct" then it's probably the most important and valuable of the many social constructs we use to make sense of the world around us. In strategic terms race is an accurate diagnostic tool and an useful part of a forecasting system, science is not colour blind, talking about race may be politically incorrect but it's scientifically sound.