<< Aha! So you would ride roughshod over the will of the people who prefer to keep their environment out of the hands of land developers, and who would rather maintain their surroundings of "national parks, agricultural land, heritage sites, urban parkland". Instead, you would insist that they make room for thousands of your forced refugees from the overcrowded cities. >>

What sort of a straw-man argument is this? You know perfectly well that I haven’t advocated any such thing, and indeed you know that I am a staunch environmentalist who would absolutely be opposed to any alienation of land set aside for conservation. There should only be urban expansion in suitable areas, which abound on the fringes of most small centres.

<< Or social engineering? >>

You hold onto that thought; that the sort of population-distribution planning that I advocate has to be social engineering and has to be totally bad. Continue to think that it is something entirely new and unacceptable, rather than a simple extension of what government has always done. Continue to think that such actions are totally outside of the role of government rather than a perfectly fair and reasonable and fundamental part of good governance.

What more can I say? I just totally disagree with you. And at the more basic level of the way government operates, I totally disagree that government should be minimalist and I will continue to advocate strong governance, especially as population growth further stresses demand – supply patterns for energy, food, all manner of goods, infrastructure, services and environment.

And I guess that’s about the size of it.

Fair enough, Ludwig.

>>What more can I say? I just totally disagree with you.<<

And we do indeed disagree at the most fundamental level.

>>I totally disagree that government should be minimalist and I will continue to advocate strong governance, especially as population growth further stresses demand – supply patterns for energy, food, all manner of goods, infrastructure, services and environment.<<

And Five Year Plans, too?

We all know how that went, don't we?

Or do you believe we can trust our government to do it differently? As I see it, the more power you allow a ruling body to exercise, the more they want, until eventually individuals count for nothing any longer. Great, if you happen to work for them. You can then pick up all the multitude of lurks and perks that are denied non-government employees.

Pretty lousy though if you have any thoughts about running your own business - or life, even - without the dead weight of bureaucracy constantly saying "do this, don't do that".

There isn't even the pretence any longer that it is "for the good of the community", just so long as there is a sound-bite back-story that can be repeated ad nauseam. Population growth. Pollution damage. Natural resources shortage. Agriculture exhaustion. Industrial over-growth.

If you have a spare moment, do yourself a favour and have a read of this:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137681/bjorn-lomborg/environmental-alarmism-then-and-now

I know you will disagree with everything Lomberg writes, simply because you choose to disagree. But it might just be worth a little effort to revisit the source of your prejudice against individual freedom.

<< Or do you believe we can trust our government to do it differently? >>

No we can’t trust them. So we should be lobbying very hard for a better standard of government, and certainly not for an even worse standard, which is what a minimalist governmental regime would be.

<< As I see it, the more power you allow a ruling body to exercise, the more they want… >>

Aha, this is getting to the nub of your hatred of government. It is always going to be a balancing act. Yes governments can go too far and exert too much power. Yes bureaucracies can be too big and inefficient. And yes governments can overdo it in some areas and undercook it in others at the same time.

So what should we be doing?

It is obvious to me that we should be striving for a better quality of governance, which is efficient in its management of society…. and certainly not lobbying for the minimisation of government.

The great problem with minimalist government is that there would be a minimum number of laws, a minimum regulatory effort to get people to obey the law and basically a very free rein for the powerful, aggressive and unscrupulous elements of society to suppress the rest of us. It would also mean that we’d have no chance of planning for our national future or that of each town, region or state.

I appreciate your concerns about the quality of government. But I think your desired solution of minimising the whole caboodle is entirely the wrong thing to do.

<< … it might just be worth a little effort to revisit the source of your prejudice against individual freedom. >>

Again, with good governance, strict laws and the effective regulation thereof, personal freedoms would be protected, not reduced. With a slack government, which administers a minimum number of laws, or basically lets the law go to pot, personal freedoms would be very seriously reduced for the vast majority of us.

<< I know you will disagree with everything Lomberg writes, simply because you choose to disagree >>

That is truly amazing Pericles. What an extraordinarily wrong-headed article!

I mean, what is he suggesting – that because societies haven’t collapsed anywhere in the modern era due to limits in providing the essentials for their continuous growth, that it won’t happen at all, anywhere….and that there actually aren’t any limits and that we can continue to grow indefinitely?

It would appear so…. which of course is just mind-numbingly absurd!

So, you would simply choose to agree with Lomborg I presume? If you agree with him, you’d have to simply choose to do so, because there isn’t the slightest inkling of logical reasoning to do so!!

So then, let me see if I’ve got this right – you have no problem with rapid population growth in Sydney, with no end in sight. You have no problem with the obvious road congestion that it is causing or the stressing of all manner of infrastructure and services. You have no problem with the enormous expense needed to struggle to keep this I&S from completely going asunder, let alone actually improving it at all, or the enormous expense paid by current residents to build I&S for new residents, rather than this money being put into fixing current I&S in a scenario where there is no or much reduced increasing pressure upon it.

You don’t have an issue with the now quite large enclaves of various nationalities, ethnicities and religions in Sydney and the disharmony that has been demonstrated here and there (the Cronulla riots come to mind).

You think that as things get more stressed and tetchier that government should basically just hang back and let it sort itself out, with the rougher, less lawful and more unscrupulous elements prevailing.

You think that Sydney can have another two million or four million or more without any reduction in the average quality of life and without considerable strife erupting at least in some quarters, and with a reduced level of governance?

continued

In short you really think that we will have a better society with a very low level of governance and that personal freedom would actually be reduced by good governance more so than by the consequences of letting the aggressive and ruthless prevail?

Is this basically right?

I’m still trying to clarify your exact views, because from what I’ve gleaned so far, I find them incredibly hard to believe.

Not quite, Ludwig.

>>I mean, what is he suggesting – that because societies haven’t collapsed anywhere in the modern era due to limits in providing the essentials for their continuous growth, that it won’t happen at all, anywhere….and that there actually aren’t any limits and that we can continue to grow indefinitely?<<

I suspect that you only read the intro, and chose not to read the rest. Lomberg simply highlighted the fact that the various contributions to the debate back in the sixties and seventies i) were completely inaccurate in their forecasting, ii) directed attention towards entirely the wrong "solutions" and iii) persist today.

We all know from the experience of the past few decades that economic growth has done far more to alleviate the misery of poverty around the world than any adherence to the strictures of "The Limits to Growth", "Silent Spring" or "The Population Bomb".

I know that you believe this to have been wrong thinking. In your view, none of the hundreds of millions who are now eating properly should have been born in the first place, so wouldn't have needed economic growth to sustain them. In my view, however, this is merely a more polite form of eugenics, where you decide who gets born and who doesn't.

Lomberg does not believe that "there actually aren’t any limits and that we can continue to grow indefinitely". You would like to think that he does, so that you can ridicule his ideas as mathematically impossible - which, of course, they would be. But if you actually read what he writes, instead of believing sound-bites, you would find that his point is that alarmism - which is at the heart of everything you believe - does not create good policy.

In fact, precisely the reverse.

"If [The Limits to Growth's] suggestions been followed over subsequent decades, there would be no 'rise of the rest', no half a billion Chinese, Indians and others lifted out of grinding poverty; no massive improvements in health, longevity and quality of life for billions across the planet..."

Do you disagree with that view?