Apart from the mobile phone of relatively trivial importance, there
are now no new consumer goods of sufficient 'weight' to keep economic
growth going. This has been so for about 30 years now. Our genes have
been responding by reducing our birth rates and neglecting our old
folk accordingly. ("Stop treating elderly like objects" says the
front-page headline in one of our best-selling newspapers
today.) The declining populations of advanced countries are little
to do with contraceptive devices on the one hand or atrocious
conditions in retirement homes on the other. These just happen to be
the modern methods of population control. Man has always been able to
adjust his populations to a nicety if his very survival depended on
it. The further back we go in time, infanticide and geronticide
methods were more immediate, and often far more brutal, than they are
now but the effect is just the same.
Of course, the opposite is also true. Whenever prosperity burgeons,
and is likely to for at least as long as a human lifetime, then
parents have more children than merely replacement numbers. Also,
when there have been population reductions due to warfare or
epidemic, the surviving womenfolk immediately respond by conceiving
and retaining more children than previously.
It's unfortunate that vastly improved medical methods on the one hand
and almost total mechanization of farmland on the other have caused
billions of surplus births, surplus elderly and surplus workers. The
latter are now crowding into their cities or migrating to advanced
countries -- particularly to those who also offer welfare and health
care benefits. Indeed, in some countries in recent years, such as
the UK, officials who have their future index-linked pensions in
mind, have been turning a blind eye to the immigration of large
numbers of, hopefully, tax-paying, workers.
Because of increasing automation and specialization, advanced
countries actually need only a fraction of their populations (a
quarter perhaps?) to keep the basic administration and economic
system going together with sufficient exports to keep countries'
heads above water. More and more jobs really only exist to recycle
low-grade services because we happen, at the present time, to have
surplus numbers.
Other things being equal, as economists are wont to say, there are no
long term population or economic problems if we are prepared to think
in terms of, say a century, or a couple at the most. But, of course,
things are never equal in the short term and there'll be catastrophes
on the way. At any one time from now onwards, a billion people will
be starving as another lucky billion in countries like China, India
and Brazil vastly upgrade their diets. At any one time, the
governments of advanced countries will be printing more money and
encouraging their banks to extend even more credit in the hope of
stimulating their economies. Indeed, we are already on the verge of a
world-wide currency catastrophe right now if we are to believe the
desperate statements of leading politicians and officials in America,
China and the Eurozone.
I believe we have a splendid future ahead of us in which our
economies will 'grow' by means of more efficient production methods
and more in tune with the natural world. But, in the meantime, we'll
have at least two catastrophes. The more intelligent of our
politicians, officials and the 'beautiful people' (the top quartile)
also know this but cannot afford to say so. Instead, they are quietly
pulling up the ladder, whispering "I'm all right, Jack" to
themselves. Can't really blame them. Anybody else would also, given
the opportunity.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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