Individual, Geoff

The question is not whether one thinks the world's population is unsustainable. Maybe it and maybe it isn’t. It depends what time-scale you choose, how you define unsustainable, and a host of other contingencies and unknowables.

The question is whether policy interventions can make it more sustainable - even from the interventionists’ own standpoint - once we take into account the need for the intervention itself not to be the cause of human death, hardship, deprivation, or arbitrary or unjust abuse of power.

In order to answer this, we have to take account of the all-critical factor of human evaluations. The positive scientists so often who favour sustainability policy are too used to ignoring this factor, because they have no scientific methodology for dealing with it.

The interventionists all seem to jump from their premise that the status quo is unsustainable, to their conclusion that policy is the solution, without ever pausing to look down over the giant abyss of knowledge, or ignorance, they are blithely passing over.

However just because *they* pretend to a knowledge they don't have, doesn't mean the rest of us have to share in that pretence!

In a word, it's bullsh!t. The reason is because they don’t, and policy cannot, take account of the critical factor of human evaluations. And without ever turning their mind to what the State actually *is*; they indulge an assumption that what it *should be* is some kind of benevolent institution favouring delayed grat of all things LOL! Wotta joke! Once we unpackage these assumptions, we find there is no way they can justify their proposals.

For a scientific or rational belief system, *one* logical disproof should be enough to dispose of the question. Once we take into account the human evaluations involved, their case is a shot duck.

It's not enough to *assume* that restricting present resource use automatically serves the purposes of "sustainability", because if that were true, we could just ban all productive activity. The advantage would be a pristine environment preserved in perpetuity, and the disadvantage would be that all the people would starve

Therefore the question is ALWAYS how to balance present human values (including nature conservation for future generations and non-money values) with future human values.

To balance present with future human values, we need to know the values that all people with an interest in a resource, have in using that resource, now and in the future; compared with the interventionists’ dispensation.

Obviously that knowledge is not and cannot be available to the interventionists. Their presumption to know the appropriate level of consumption for any given person or resource now and in future, is completely unfounded which completely destroys their entire case.

(But it gets worse. People universally value present satisfaction of a given want more highly than the satisfaction of the same want in the future, and the further into the future, the less they value it. Hence the economic phenomenon of interest. Yet the absurd premise of the "sustainability" brigade is that future satisfactions are to be accounted equal to present satisfactions: people are supposedly to value their child not starving now, on par with the interest of a hypothetical stranger in a thousand or a million years time!)

Furthermore the instrument of policy is of course to be the State. Policy is to be enforced, that’s the whole point. It never seems to occur to the interventionists that this power might be abused, either in good faith or in bad. Because they always think of people as great aggregates, vast herds, it never occurs to them to reflect that their policies might forcibly and wrongfully cause individuals’ death.

There are already food shortages in the world, and many people live in constant hardship and privation. Yet the effect of ALL policies of the sustainability brigade is to divert society’s resources from satisfying the more urgent and important values of the world’s people – as judged by the world’s people – in order to satisfy the less urgent and important values of interventionists, the most comfortable and well-fed portion of mankind thanks to the industrial capitalism they despise, and the principles of liberty they are determined to violate.

Quite right Jardine K.

One major problem with the Stable Population Party and its followers is the obsessive hounding of the consumer aka - the individual as being the sum cause of all the worlds ills.

The notion that global warming is totally caused by each and every person is ridiculous and also punitive. The anti-pops want to empower the state to crush immigration and I suggest procreation in some countries, while continually bleating that the earth is finite and its everyone's fault were running out of X, Y or Z.

This is extraordinary and ignorant thinking on behalf of the anti-pops and shows a lack of conceptual understanding, not only of cause and effect, but also on how societies and economic systems operate. They would do far better and get a better hearing by analysing the reckless greed of some major polluters rather than shafting home the blame to everyone.

Racist. Misanthrope. Alarmist. Pessimist. Luddite. Ammo-hording Survivalist.

In a nutshell, Fruitcake.

Can we ever have a sensible debate about population and immigration?

A vote for this party may be "dead", that doesn't mean the issue is.

It's not rocket science.
The only way we could have an ever-expanding population is if we have ever-expanding resources, both locally and globally.
Is this the case?

It may have appeared to be the case in centuries past, as there was still plenty of growth that could be accommodated.
Is this still true today?

There is an assumption that things will either continue as presently, or improve (new tech).
What if things get worse?

What if political or environmental catastrophes devastate the oil-rich Gulf states or the manufacturing centres in China?

The presumption of an eternally improving interconnected global system is an utopian fairytale that could come undone in days or weeks.

If we are living in a sustainable way locally, we will be relatively unaffected.
If not, we are devastated too, even though half-a-planet away from the crisis site.

We need to be concerned about the sustainability of *Australia*, not just the world as a whole.
And most experts agree we are near or have exceeded our population capacity.
Something must be done now. Reducing or stopping immigration (a completely artificial, politically controlled phenomena) is fundamental and cannot be avoided and delayed forever.

Cheryl "whackos depriving people of the right to have kids"

Reducing government-determined funding or immigration numbers has nothing to do with any "right" to have kids.

Thought you'd sneak one in old Shockadelic, but you know, as I do, that the whole of Australia's population is about the size of greater New York City.

Population in Australia is a crank issue. Best left to the far, far, far left of the Greens and what's left of the crazy Democrats.

You're obviously a smart person. Redirect your thinking to urban design and give the 'ants will rule the world' thinking away.

Anyone, such as Cheryl who thinks that population is not involved in
THE problem is living in la la land.
The higher the population that we have the more urgently we have to
deal with the problems that Australia faces.

In about one years time we will be dependant on 100% import of oil fuels.
It will only require one upset in the Persian Gulf and Iran to close
the Strait of Hormuz and all private use of petrol and diesel will be
forbidden the next day.
Due to our governments ignoring this problem we are very vulnerable.
It is obvious that the larger our population the greater the difficulty
we will experience.

Has no one noticed that we are getting further & further behind in
house building ?
Has no one noticed that the cost of housing has reached a level that
people cannot afford to even rent a house.
Has no one noticed how our infrastructure such as country bridges is
getting in need of rebuilding or repair but the councils don't have the money ?
Any country roads being turned back to gravel ? Belly ?

Am I really the only one that has made the connection between the
above and falling GDP ?