Dear Jay,

<<Of course it's the fault always lies with the child taking the drug, not the drug dealers>>

Not the children - the parents!

My parents told me when I was very little never to accept sweets from strangers, that it could be a drug which is a horrible thing that would make me addicted and unable to come off it ever. I always obeyed them and never went anywhere near those things.

Now as society allows, if not even encourages, the family to break down, particularly but not exclusively because they want everyone to be employed so they can heat up the economy and get more taxes, children are neglected and instead are indoctrinated by the state to become more involved in the economy themselves, both as consumers and as producers. The government doesn't want children to respect their parents because it wants them to respect itself instead.

Regardless, a good parent would never bring a child to the world if they know that they are unable to educate them properly, including because the state is hostile to their wholesome education.

Dear Philip,

I'm sure if you were to do some
research into the ancestry of the men and women
who currently are members of our Australian Defence
Forces you just may be very surprised. Making
sweeping statements about people all too easily
leads onto the questionable practice of stereotyping.
Not a good idea

Divergence,

Thank you and I agree with the points made in your post.

Emperor Julian,

I don't disagree with anything in the article that you linked to. High fertility rates are not a problem in most of the world, although some countries can still expect quite a lot of population growth from demographic momentum. (Fast population growth in the past leaves them with a pyramid-shaped age distribution, with most of the deaths in the relatively tiny elderly generation at the tip, so births can still outnumber deaths for up to 70 years, even if the fertility rate is low.)

Nevertheless, fertility rates have remained stubbornly high in certain countries, mainly in Africa and the Islamic world. As shown by the link in my first post, this is mostly because people want very large families. The growth has continued, even while people find it harder to afford the necessities of life, so Malthusian trap is a fair description. The UN recently had to increase its medium population projection for this reason. Population growth in these countries doesn't have to be a big problem for the rest of the world, apart from humanitarian concerns and concerns about extinctions due to habitat loss and overhunting, if people from such countries are resolutely kept out. Talk of instituting culls is hysterical nonsense. The Syrians are culling themselves, as happened earlier in Rwanda.

Overpopulation in its very small geographic area can end when the population at risk learns to respect women as equals, not as breeding stock. That is a proper objective in itself, not just a long term lament about numbers that freezes real action or a short term policy (as in China and - briefly - Indira Gandhi's India) or a racist massacre as in Rwanda but a response that promotes human rights, like combating Islam and tribalism and misogyny. Malthusian outfits like SPA raise population numbers as a diversion from tackling real problems vulnerable to real policies (like tackling misogynous ideologies aimed against women's rights as human beings) while remaining stubbornly coy about stating how they would effectively tackle population pressure in real time. For that reason I postulate culls as an unspoken agenda.

Google Thom Hartmann and download and read his latest book on the crash of 2016 for an insight into the existential menace to civilisation (it's not runaway breeding) and how inspired leadership has marshalled grassroots common decency to thwart the class responsible for the menace for the next four generations.

Emperor Julian,

Your comments on Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) are libellous. Here is a link to their policies, which are primarily concerned with very high government sponsored population growth in Australia:

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

There is absolutely no suggestion of any sort of coercion, let alone a cull. This is from the FAQ

"How do we lower the birth rate?

There are plenty of non-coercive things that could be done. Experience in the third world shows three things are vital: Access to and information about contraceptives. The ability of women to decide their own future, including the number of children. High health levels and low death rates of those children."

So far as global efforts are concerned, SPA advocates more and better targeted foreign aid and advocates taking more refugees in the context of a reduced overall immigration program.

This is what Thom Hartmann actually has to say about overpopulation

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2009/08/thom-discusses-population-control-marc-morano-11-august-200