A common and long-running theme among statist big thinkers is that people are having too many babies and thereby overtaxing the planet. We first heard such negativity from Thomas Malthus nearly 250 years ago, but have yet to witness the famine and resource depletion that he and countless of his ideological descendants warned us about. Instead, life has steadily been getting better. Technology has steadily outpaced population growth, enabling us to grow more food on less acreage than ever, and increasing our energy reserves even as we use ever more of it.
The latest bugbear involves climate change, or more specifically the idea that overpopulation is going to overburden the climate and exacerbate climate change. It’s coupled with especial admonitions for rich First Worlders who purportedly have bigger carbon footprints, nestled in a message that children are a negative externality that imposes added costs to society. No, really, that’s what some of these noodle heads actually claim.
There is a philosophical rebuttal to this, rooted in our essential humanity. Isn’t it the primary purpose of the species to have children? Aren’t our biological motivators specifically wired to encourage reproduction? I won’t go deeper into that today, because these Best-and-Brightest aren’t inclined to consider such base and backward things as human nature. Instead, lets simply consider the cognitive dissonance of arguing against population growth when population growth is absolutely necessary for advancing the balance of the statist agenda.
Most first-world nations have some sort of public pension or social security program. With rare exception, these programs are wealth transfers, wherein money collected from taxpayers is redistributed to retirees. In theory, a steady-state population can sustain such a program at a steady rate of taxation. It doesn’t work out that way. First, there’s the fact that technology is extending our lifespans. If retirement age isn’t changed in conjunction with those increases, the steady-state system becomes insolvent. More money is needed to pay people who spend more years in retirement. Second, politics are involved, and older citizens tend to pack considerable political clout. So, the economics and actuarial health of such programs take a back seat to political pressure. Third, surpluses get gobbled up by politicians. In America, the supposed Social Security “Trust Fund” contains nothing but IOUs. Starting under LBJ, the government has been using contribution surpluses to mask its deficits. Money that should be reserved to pay out future benefits is no longer there.
All these reasons and more speak to an absolute requirement that the population keep growing. More workers are needed in the future to pay the benefits promised (I deliberately eschew “owed” because the government can change its promise at any time) to today’s workers. Social Security in America is a Ponzi scheme, and its flaws are mirrored in pension programs around the world.
Economically, an aging population (the inevitable outcome of curtailing reproduction) is a ticking time bomb. Not only will public pensions have to be cut (see: Greece), but economic productivity will suffer. Public sector employment tends to be persistent – government is FAR less likely to lay off workers than the private sector, and if the private sector shrinks, public employment as a percentage of the whole will grow. The tax base necessary to support all those public workers will diminish, and the government will need to borrow or print money to sustain itself. And, if you think that government will shrink as the population shrinks, I’d like to invite you back into reality.
Statist polices and statist philosophy require a growing population in order to keep working. This makes arguments against having babies self-destructive, obviously so. Perhaps these Best-and-Brightest think that their ideological descendants will figure out how to make things work better with fewer people. Perhaps they have solutions for these problems in mind. Or, perhaps, they simply haven’t thought things through. Perhaps they’re latching onto ideas that feed their particular predilections and confirm their biases without pondering the outcomes. As many have observed, there is a preference for acting with good intent over achieving good outcomes. I suspect that smug self-satisfaction from scolding others is the reason we continue to hear about how we have to not do the things that come naturally to us (i.e. reproduce) from the Best-and-Brightest.
Sure, the doomsayers warn us that we need embrace privation today in order to protect our children’s future. They’ve been saying that for a couple centuries, and we’ve been ignoring them. Their predictions have proven false, time and again, but they keep insisting. They should wake up and realize, at some point, that the privation they wish for will destroy the balance of what they wish for. Maybe, then, they’ll recognize the dissonance and stop making counterproductive demands.
And, maybe, I’ll become the Pope one day. Don’t hold your breath for either.
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