This week I attended a forum on population housing and immigration.
There were four speakers who will remain anonymous.
The first was a speaker who opposes the wholesale construction of
multi story blocks of home units at the expense of single level family
homes. He was very critical of the planners justification of the
current trend.
He quoted figures to show that they are not as economical and environmentally
friendly as we have been led to believe.
He was the best speaker of the night.

The second speaker was an economist from a University.
His idea is to bring in as many immigrants as possible to reduce the
impact of the aging population.
When asked by a lady in the audience, how long do you keep doing this as the immigrants age ?
He had no satisfactory answer, except growth would look after it all.

The other speakers were failed to be elected politicians.
The first wanted to only import compatible migrants and the other was
away with fairies proposing that we export energy to China by use of
microwave beams to a satellite which would in turn send the power
down to China. He had several other similarly impractical ideas.
I did not bother to ask him how many decibel path loss would be involved.

My purpose in explaining all this is to illustrate how all these so
called learned and public service orientated have no idea what is
going on around them. They all spoke of a business as usual future.
Growth would resume its previous trajectory and would continue into the
distant future.

If this is typical of our universities and politicians that inhabit
our country then we are in real trouble. Several people I spoke to
afterwards were equally amazed at the presentations that we heard
except for the speaker from Save Our Suburbs who I thought had his
subject well understood and covered. He turned over many of my assumptions.

Anyone who believes that expotential growth can go on forever
in a finite world is either a madman or an economist !
Kenneth E Boulding.

If this is typical of our universities and politicians
Bazz,
it's not typical, it's the norm. Aust Standard #1

Dear Bazz,

There are many views in universities
and amongst academics. I found
the book by Tor Hundloe, "From
Buddha to Bono: Seeking sustainability,"
an excellent and interesting read.

In it he tells us:

"Humans have the intelleigence, the tools
and the natural resources to provide for
a good, sustainable life as long as there
are not so many humans that we exceed the
globe's carrying capacity. All the evidence
suggests that we must turn around population
growth and aim for a much smaller population
than we have today. Already there are highly
developed European countries where - regardless
of religion - the population is declining.

Politicians in the US, Canada, Australia and
New Zealand are absolutely wrong. The leaders in
these countries are promoting population growth.
They are derelict, probably dumb...politicians
like Peter Costello should be condemned for
encouraging large families."

There's also an
interesting website that's
worth a read:

http://www.population.org.au/

It covers quite a wide range - including Australia.

Well I hope you are right Foxy.
I think we have all been reading about how the US European growth has
been languishing despite trillions of money being thrown at the problem.

Just to prove that not all economists are madmen the Canadian economist
Jeff Rubin, author of "Your World is About to get a Whole Lot Smaller"
has written an article in a Canadian newspaper projecting the scenario
that at US$75to $80 a barrel the US economy cannot grow to any extent
and that the current unemployment levels and economic level is static.

http://tinyurl.com/2522twp

The article is at that URL.
I wonder what it means for our economy.
Is this the start of the long descent ?

OH. I cant wait for the end of this one.

TTM

<< Anyone who believes that expotential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist >>

Bazz, it’s a great quote, ‘çept for one thing…economists ARE madmen…. by and large!

Or at least, conventional economists are mad. They are really just pseudo-economists at best and outright anti-economists at worst, while real economists are those that take into account the utter absurdity of continuous never-ending growth, as well as all the quality-of-life, aesthetic, environmental, intergenerational, etc factors that are not normally included in economic calculations. And they are few and far between.

http://www.colorado.edu/econ/Kenneth.Boulding/ken1.jpg

It is because economists, in the main, are indoctrinated into the myth of eternal expansion and growth as the only way to maintain and structure economies.

That is why we ended up with 'funny money'; the ability to make money from producing nothing; and a destruction mentality to create growth through rebuilding and to create new markets for industry.

What chance do humans, other species and the environment have over those priorities.

Our governments operate in fear of opposing those entrenched perspectives and hence we get more of the same destruction = consumption attitudes.

Logic dictates there is a point of overconsumption that works directly against the welfare of human beings and the environment on which they depend.

But is anyone listening or are we going to keep voting in governments that are only working on behalf of developers.

pelican,
I agree totally with your last sentence.

However Australia is a large land mass and the envy of many overpopulated countries. Australia is concentrated in costal over populated cities; where the view of overpopulation is promoted. We need to manage water better from the North with its excess, and pump into the middle of Australia. Australia could then support a population twice its size if large public works were in place to distribute water and private farm could be more productive.

Philo
We certainly could do more to distribute resources more wisely as you say but even with our current population level we face water shortages affecting farming, domestic and industrial use. We are continually invading bushland to grow our cities (remembering most of our land is arid).

Bazz's argument is a plea to learn from out mistakes not to perpetuate them into the future.

Wouldn't make sense if we start bypassing the likes of coke, and to ban factories to suck it out of our aquifers, because it is not fast enough replaced?

Who's finite world? Not in your backyard,unless you have already made your own personal decision to live within highly dense dwelling stock which you now want to use to justify your decision and force prescriptive planning policy's to reinforce your values and financial decisions.What makes your mindset so perfect in denying others their right to build housing of their choice in their time on this earth, Nostradamus.

At the talk the economist and the 2nd politician both talked glibally
about how water could be expanded to supply an ever increasing population.
I think one of them mentioned bringing water down from the North.

You often hear this suggestion.
Think about it, water is heavy, hills and mountain ranges have to be
crossed, so you either have to tunnel through or pump over them.
Either way the pumping costs are enormous and the costs of supplying
electricity to those pumps for the whole length is a major project in
itself, and finally when the water gets there, will you be able to afford it ?

Actually Bazz, this is where solar pumps could be of great benefit.
We have many places throughout Australia where copious amounts of pure clean water are running out to the ocean. By use of solar pumps we could capture some of this water and pump it to usable places. The Intermittent nature of solar (or even wind) is not a problem in this application. Sure we'd have to do the numbers, but I reckon the way we're going it might become essential. I never understood why we are building desalination plants that require their own coal fired power station when we could be sucking water from somewhere else for next to nothing. It kind of shows that the new globull religion of money is king!

Oh pelican, you have hit the nail right on the head with that one.

I wonder how long it will take humans to figure it out.

Logic dictates there is a point of overconsumption that works directly against the welfare of human beings and the environment on which they depend.

Oh Dear, Oh dear, Oh dear.

Its only a matter of time.

Brave new idea,s are needed quickly and with-in the next 50 years if possible.

TTM

<<It is because economists, in the main, are indoctrinated into the myth of eternal expansion and growth as the only way to maintain and structure economies. Posted by pelican, Monday, 27 September 2010 10:38:00 AM>>

I disagree. To have a sensible discussion we need to distinguish growth in output in absolute terms and growth in output in per capita terms (i.e. productivity). A classical prediction of economic growth theory is that higher population growth will reduce per capita output and real wages. On the other hand more recent arguments (Cordon) relate population growth to productivity gains to be had through an expanding domestic market. These gains are mainly relevant for non-traded goods (which do not have an international market to reap the benefits of scale economies) .

The Productivity Commission in its 2006 in a report entitled “Economic Impacts of Migration and Population Growth” concluded (in part) that it is "unlikely that migration will have a substantial impact on income per capita and productivity", arguing

<<Some effects of migration are more amenable to measurement and estimation than others. Effects that cannot be reliably measured or estimated might still be significant.
• Positive effects from additional skilled migrants arise from higher participation rates, slightly higher hours worked per worker and the up-skilling of the workforce.
• Some of the economy-wide consequences lower per capita income, such as capital dilution and a decline in the terms of trade.
• The overall economic effect of migration appears to be positive but small, consistent with previous Australian and overseas studies.>>

For full report see http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/9438/migrationandpopulation.pdf,
Particularly chapter 3.

One aspect the report does not mention is that more people can increase the production of new ideas and raise the rate of technological innovation. This would be a plus for productivity, at least for Australia and perhaps globally if Australia is providing greater opportunities for innovation than would otherwise be available to migrants.

Sensible discussion anyone?