Squeers,

Some of the main factors driving births is financial security. It has been shown that when there is adequate job and financial security, especially for women, the birth rate declines.

Many children were often seen as security in old age. Which is largely why family planning efforts are useless without beefing up the economy.

My first comment might have seemed glib, but it is based on broad global experience. I am open to other examples though.

To matters of mixed economies and government ownership
History shows us that when government, claiming to act for the common good or collective will of all, decides it will make the decisions in a commercial market several things happen
1 Monopoly control – where the government controls everything and the consumer gets screwed
2 Capital and product stagnation and decline – where government policies are driven by non-commercial imperatives
3 Denial of product innovation, exasperating the economic decline and reducing still further consumer choice and benefits (like those terrible 2 stroke cars the ordinary East Germans had to go on a waiting list to buy)
Hence the real experience that “governments will always back losers not winners”.
And the observation by one politician
“a country (in this case USSR) that produces what no one wants to buy, and whose workers receive wages that they cannot use to buy goods they want, is hardly in the best of economic health."
if you want examples of Australian government sponsorship of failures, they are just too plentiful to list.

If you want to address sustainability, stop the levels of breeding in the underdeveloped world
If you want to address unequal distribution, just stop. You would be killing the golden goose and doing more harm than good.

Benq

I thank you for your post, you have saved me from writing similar.

We do not have "capitalism"; we do have monopolies (who are busily tying up third world countries BTW - Tobacco as an example).

The drivers of an unsustainable population are monopolistic capitalism, religion, poverty and lack of education.

Like most issues that limit human endeavour, there is no single cause. It is quite demonstrably a combination of factors.

But, hey, pick on a single issue and argue away.

*just like a communist country is under the thumb of communism, capitalism is under the thumb of monopolies. In almost all cases it's impossible for smaller, private, capitalistic companies to "effectively" compete.*

Not really, Benq.

For in a communist country, you have no choice at all, not so in
our society. In some industries it is indeed harder for smaller,
private companies to compete, simply because the level of capital
requirement runs to the billions, to achieve economies of scale.
OTOH these corporations commonly also have hundreds of thousands
of shareholders directly and millions indirectly through super funds.

You harp on about Coles and Woolies, but even IGA have 1200 stores
in Australia, you are free to shop there if you wish. The reason
that Coles and Woolies dominate is because they can work on economies
of scale and lower margins, unlike smaller retailers. Again there
is no monopoly, just a few large competitors along with a host
of smaller competitors, all competing.

In mining there is no monopoly. We have around 3000 mining companies,
from tiddlers, to global operators. The billions of $ required to
operate mining ventures, needs those kinds of economies of scale
which a company like BHP can provide, a mum and dad venture cannot.

BHPs tax rate last year was around 42%, hardly low, low, low.
6.3 Billion $ in fact.

So yes indeed we have huge coporations competing, but that is
quite different to State monopolies, where citizens have no
choice at all.

Stern:
<No system of economic ownership can control “sustainability”.>
This sounds like an iron-clad law so forgive my ignorance; why?

Dear Stern,
I don't "pretend" that capitalism "should" be sustainable, the whole point is that capitalism, by definition, cannot but be unsustainable in a closed system.
Nor do I have any illusions about the world ever being a fair place according to the childish logic you employ.
"Capitalism does not seem fair because .." it is not; indeed it must seem grossly and unconscionably unfair to any moderately sensitive being who can see beyond his vanity and crude programming.
Nor is the world necessarily an oyster for "those gifted with an astute and commercially attuned mind" lol, they also require the accident of a fortunate birth, and often enough an ability to rationilise their ruthless profiteering--though that's easy in a culture that celebrates these indifferent intellects as "talented".
But there's no point my going on; you haven't said anything new, just the usual ideological mouthings.

Dear Benq and Severin,
We "do" "have capitalism", it is what allows monopolies to flourish. Nor does it matter how capitalism is regulated since it doesn't alter the fundamental (il)logic of endless growth in a closed and vulnerable system.
Anyway, thanks everyone for the comments, we'll just have to agree to disagree in the main.

Squeers

Thanks for your response. Just quickly, I don't see monopolies as a legitimate part of capitalism (free and competitive system businesses) at all - they are stagnating and closed and as such require different regulation to smaller and more diverse businesses.

Too much money is tied up at the top of the pyramid and they require huge turn over, which requires a large population of customers to support them. It is no coincidence that so often (albeit not all) many big corporations are lobbying in conjunction with the conservative side of religion - both want more: more people, more resources, more control.

As with anything there are always exceptions, I am thinking of the altruism of people like Bill Gates. However, just look at the excessive influence of the coal and iron ore moguls - they wield a great deal of power, as has been recently demonstrated. They also require large numbers of people as employees over the relative short-term. Natural resources are eventually mined out and the corporation has to move on to other countries if not other states, leaving many workers behind. While the wages may be good for while the boom is on, the pay is not so generous as to provide a safety net once the workers are unemployed.

Cont'd