Natural instincts and societal pressures (pick one) seem to be enough to keep the population alive. No taxes necessary. |
That clearly is not the case. The world is currently populated by many people that lag behind modernity, but they are quickly catching up and leaving their old irrational but nonetheless reproduction-encouraging traditions behind. No modern secular society seems to be able to average more than 1.2 kids per woman or less. Libertarian atheists average even less. The average fertility rate of 1.05 much means that productivity has to double with every generation
just to keep the economy static, and economic growth requires even greater productivity growth than that, which is simply impossible.
The ideal political and economic system is recognized by its ability to encourage the greatest economic growth - there's just no way around that. There just isn't a rational epistemological theory (i.e. the system of thought recognizes people's natural rights - like life, liberty, and property) that recognizes one's "right" not to reproduce!
Have you considered that maybe the reason you never get any traction from this topic is because the whole notion is a load of crap? |
I have studied and reflected on this issue for several years now, and if I could think of a way to rationalize this problem away I would, believe me. The reason why I never get any traction on this forum is because people tend to stick to wishful thinking and ignore reality whenever it suits them. The "demographic socialists" are as guilty of this as the economic ones, and sadly the former term applies to most people on this forum.
Your comic implies that I'm concerned with the
dysgenic effect of disproportionate birth rates, which is a relatively minor problem because the IQ, parenting skills, and the material wealth of the parents determines the economic competitiveness of their children only to a relatively small degree. Nor is this the issue of ethnicity or religion - birth rates seem to eventually decline in all societies, from Latin America to the Middle East, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Your comic then makes unsupported claims and ends in an insult, there is no substantive argument there.
There is no breeding problem. When the population has shrunk to the point in which further innovation and improvement is impossible, humanity will stagnate, then the bored people will begin to breed again. The cycle will repeat, each time with less variation, until equilibrium is reached. |
I'm not arguing that the decline would go on indefinitely, but the "cycles" you're talking about would take hundreds, possibly thousands of years, while the humongous fraction of humanity's potential for economic growth is squandered in the meantime.
Have you ever played the game
Civilization, and found one player still stuck in the bronze age while another invades them with nukes, tanks, aircraft carriers? What's different now is that competing economic theories can no longer be tested separately, and humanity is quickly becoming one civilization, which can grow as quickly as the English-speaking civilization has over the past 400 years or as slowly as a culturally-static tribe of savages depending on the economic rulesets it adapts. Exponential economic growth or decline can have huge effects, making the difference between humanity quickly spreading to the stars and discovering immortality to it entering a new dark age!
There is no such thing as "equilibrium" when it comes to economic growth, because a rational being's economic desires are limitless: from ever-tastier food to ever-better entertainment to eternal youth to omnipotence! There are no known limits to the size of the universe, or even how much food can be grown in this one solar system! The greatest limit that exists to humanity's growth are the widespread erroneous beliefs that discourage it!
That's a silly postulation, but I think no sillier than the idea that "proper" population growth can - or should - be managed. |
The most rational and effective economic ruleset, free market capitalism, does not "manage" the "proper" creation of wealth, it just encourages it by recognizing the property rights of the individuals that create wealth, thus making wealth-creating far more desirable. Similarly, an effective social ruleset needs to recognize the rights of the parents, so as to encourage the all-important economic activity of producing new human beings. There is no difference between property theft and reproductive theft (i.e. the failure to at least try to pull one's own demographic weight)!
Its funny that this is the exact opposite thing Malthus predicted. OOOOOOOOOh nooooooooooooo, the world is underpopulated. |
Malthus died in 1834. The new information that we've discovered since then renders his conclusions laughably erroneous.
If it was a concern, a guest worker program could be tried. |
Like I said, it's not a problem of one nation, it's a problem of the human economy as a whole, so... where would those "guests" come from?! Even if life exists on other plants, getting them here and training them to be effective "workers" (or whatever other mutually-beneficial economic interaction might be possible) would take a while. Robotics is a much more expedient and cost-effective solution, but it doesn't change the fact that demographic decline still represents a substantial net economic loss. Children and robots are not mutually-exclusive! To the contrary, the growth in human productivity is necessary to increase and control the growth in artificial productivity. Old people are less culturally dynamic and don't learn things as quickly.