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Ensuring Mobility of the Downtrodden
12/24/2003

Last week, Froma Harrop took up the topic of population growth. The world's too crowded, she thinks, housing prices are too high, and the loss of a countryside through which to drive on the weekend is "heartbreaking." If it weren't the case that, over the years, I've built up higher barriers than my usual to responding to Ms. Harrop, I would only have been inclined to comment on this:

David Simcox, senior adviser for Negative Population Growth, regards the desire for multiplying masses as a vestige of an earlier age when humankind's future remained in doubt. "The naked ape is now the dominant animal on the earth," he says, "and its survival is not in question."

Somehow it seems such arguments are rarely made without recourse to, or at least hints of, an atheistic, materialistic view of the world. Reading a week's worth of discussion of Harrop's column on the Dallas Morning News blog it occurs to me that atheism isn't the only ism to frequently accompany fears of overpopulation.

Of course, one reason for continued population growth is that unilateral cessation gives tremendous advantage to a culture that doesn't go along with the global plan, as Europe is finding with its increasingly Muslim demographic. However, there's another factor that I haven't seen addressed: social mobility. Labor is necessary for the functioning of our society, and more laborers than managers are required. As a relative matter, it would seem to me that freezing the population at the lower end (which is where population growth would have to be frozen) would make it more difficult for families to rise out of the mire. Economically speaking, if there aren't more dollars to go around, then those who already have them will more fervently guard their ground.

The only response to this tendency would be enforced socialism, which seems to be a lingering hint among those who fear population growth, as well. Different positions on so many of these matters boil pretty quickly down to basic worldviews, don't they? Even if most people who hold them can't articulate the intricacies.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:52 AM EST