I believe I understand how strongly some environmentalists believe lower population is "the answer" especially in an Australian context of concern about water and carrying capacity of an overwhelmingly arid landscape. This isn't a random belief, it's grounded in some simple economics about the environment. I just think it's usually over simplified, and lacks rigour.
The problem is that the historical associations to racism have to be confronted. And they rarely are. Oddly, the same people who push this small carrying capacity line often also oppose Gates and others working to improve access to contraception and abortion. Perhaps the Indian emergency under Indira Gandhi and the Chinese mass sterilisation campaigns left "scars" of concern.
Dick Smith didn't do enough to distance himself from Pauline Hanson.
(I am not a small Australia believer btw. Even noting the above we could have environmentally acceptable 50m population here)
I find it astonishing that people have an easier time believing we can colonise Mars than that we can colonise the centre of Australia.
The average person would rather live in a crammed Sydney apartment complex then live in the middle of the Simpson desert.
Mars is new. We really don't know what will happen. There are a group of people throughout history that have "chanced it" and gone to the new world out of the hope they can build something better. You will have the same rush on Mars.
Also, you drive through a lot of less arid farm land before you get anywhere near desert. Including past dying country towns (many below the Goyder Line). We could increase the density of rural properties (from large farms down to farmlets, etc) or do more to boost living in fading townships well before there was any reason to make the desert more habitable.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/14/just-a-m...
What makes Mars interesting is that it’s hard. Nobody is arguing that we should go to Mars because it is easy!
Help me understand your view because I simply cannot fathom how you must think to want 500M people in Australia.
Have you traveled? Do you want to live the way people live in overcrowded countries? Do you think there will be some trickle down economic effect for you? Do you place any value on the environment?
My point is that people assume we can turn Mars, an entire arid planet with no water, into a habitable place but that we can't turn deserts on earth into habitable, arable land.
The earth is finite. And it becomes undesirable and polluted long before we hit a hard population ceiling. I just do not understand people who would happily see the entire earth destroyed just so we can have a few more billion humans. we have too many already.
almost all high density places in the world are shitholes. Japan is an exception, but I don't have faith that Australia could be. Sydney is already seeing net loss of residents (excluding new migrants) because it is becoming overcrowded.
Australia is already "big Australia", Australia's record on habitat and species destruction is horrific. It just astounds me that people would think doubling the population of western countries (or any country) would be a good idea.
I don't buy the "eugenics" equivalence, any more than you can connect any sort of policy or technology to genocide if you tried hard enough. By advocating for massive populations you are implicitly advocating for tiered class system of haves and have-nots in my opinion.
On the contrary, though, advocating for population reduction is inherently classist, since this requires government management, and ruling classes will inevitably protect their own ranks first.
The result of such modes of thinking is not academic. The UK's prime minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, is not the hapless buffoon he plays on camera, and his COVID management policy disproportionately kills the poor by a factor of 3.7[1].
Inequity of survival is the actual consequence of any managed population reduction.
[1] https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infogr...
Many people are. Our current global population is massive. Humans and their livestock account for 96% of all mammal biomass on earth and we're rapidly exterminating the remaining 4%. And people want it to grow significantly, e.g., the person I just replied to.
> On the contrary, advocating for population reduction is inherently classist, since this requires government management, and ruling classes will inevitably protect their own ranks first.
No it doesn't, that's just false. The most highly consuming countries on earth have naturally stable or declining populations.
And making arguments about the ruling class protecting their own ranks or deploying authoritarian government control over others doesn't really make sense because they do that now, they'll do that when populations are growing, they'll do that when populations are shrinking. You can't have that as your argument.
However, since they're quite clearly a load of intentional misrepresentation and false equivalences, they don't wash with a critical outside observer.
> You can't have that as your argument
Excuse me, no, as with the previous misrepresentation of countervailing positions, once again you don't get to decide what someone else's argument is. This coercive attitude is consistent, but it doesn't hold any water.
There's no proposal to eliminate governments and ruling classes, so ignoring the realities is facile. The outcome of a downward trajectory is literally killing people, and this is not OK.
If I can make the choice to recycle, eat less cows, cycle instead of walking; why can't I make the choice to have 2 children instead of 5. Or even have 1.
Though nobody should be judged on one view alone. Everyone has their failures and blindspots
I'm always astounded by people in rich western countries boasting about how they poached all this talent from some of the poorest countries on earth. Like, yeah that's great you got another doctor for your healthcare system that spends billions of dollars extending people's lives by a few months. Guess that country she came from where children regularly die of easily preventable diseases won't miss her. So long as we don't have to wait more than 10 minutes for an ambulance when we have a boo-boo and get to see a doctor immediately at the ER f- everybody else.
Though as you say, I don't judge everyone purely based on that greed and selfishness. They all have their failures and blind spots.
Sure, maybe that is the case when looking at the 'Greater Good' of the whole population, but the
> best and brightest people -- from disadvantaged countries
are also real people with individual hopes and dreams. Just because they happened to be born in a bad place doesn't mean that their desire to achieve better things (think research facilities, schools for kids) and contribute to the future of humanity should be discounted.
The robber barons were also real people with individual hopes and dreams. The real problem is so are all those other people in those poor countries. The 99.99% who are left behind are also individuals with hopes and dreams.
Practically, yes, I know society expects people to be nationalist to some degree.
But wealthy countries are not doing this for the benefit of those people, they are doing it for their own benefit. To the detriment of the rest of those in poor countries. This pretty much seals the lot of those countries to be dependent client states subject to the whims of wealthy countries and prone to having their other natural resources plundered as well. Let's not lie to ourselves about this being some kind of altruism or net positive outcome.
During colonialism, many collaborators in the countries being exploited got great benefit, they were put in positions of power installed as local rulers, for example. I don't see a lot of difference in the dynamics or results.
Theoretical question, because it's quite interesting to me that almost everyone I have talked with about this who has made arguments in this direction have tended to be leftist or collectivist leaning -- what do you think? Also do you think the 0.01% of people in a western country have any obligation towards the 99.99% of people in that country?
In a patriotic, nationalist culture, yes. But if you explicitly reject things like patriotism and nationalism as being chauvinist or racist, then of course there is no obligation to privilege your countrymen over anyone else. So you have the same bonds to everyone, which is just another way of saying you have no special bonds to anyone.
Now in real life, we always have bonds to some group and that group is usually your own family first and your own tribe second, and it radiates out. So if you preach class consciousness, then you would have loyalty to members of your own class, etc. So then here, too, you can't expect the very top to have any loyalty to you.
It's really strange how people advocate for certain value systems without even taking a moment to think about the logical consequences of their values, let alone devoting serious consideration as to whether a given value system promotes long term human flourishing. This is also why most of these values have terrible consequences for human flourishing whenever they are adopted on a large scale.
That's a fair point, but I guess the question then becomes - is that non-zero obligation greater than the emigrant's personal quest for a better life. Which, in the real world for most people, seems to be no.
> Let's not lie to ourselves about this being some kind of altruism or net positive outcome
Probably the best outcome for collective human knowledge would be to develop every country, research in every single country = more total research / unit time. But for individuals who just want to be able to invent something in their lifetimes and have a better daily life, this is very far away and humans are bad at long-term decision-making.
> Also do you think the 0.01% of people in a western country have any obligation towards the 99.99% of people in that country?
I don't think so. That's actually similar to the premise behind Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged [1]. But, I am very happy that we share the same world and I the same country (US) with some of the best people in pretty much every field.
You're right though, it's essentially 21st century colonialism. When I studied economics we studied a lot about economic development. Funny how that's pretty much gone by the wayside, extinguished by the very people who should support it (western leftists).
As an aside, the whole carbon reduction thing is also thinly veiled colonialism. We want to insist that India and China reduce emissions when they produce 1/10th and 1/4 the emissions per capita that western nations do. We're already developed so it's easy to say let's cap it where it is right now. Fuck poor countries right?
Dick is easy to write off as just another "old racist white guy" but his arguments were all environmental based, the guy cares a lot about the natural world and conservation.
So wouldn't a high level of Australian immigration reduce the total world population, relative to a low immigration level?
Funny how nobody talks about that any more. I've had an "environmentalist" get red faced and belligerent toward me for daring to suggest the most effective way to reduce humanity's environmental footprint would be to reduce population. Insisting that the earth's human carrying capacity was 100 billion(!!) and therefore I was wrong and population didn't matter. Scary.