On Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:59:38 +0000, Henry Braun <
[email protected]> wrote:
>> Perhaps you haven't thought about it? If you allow the population to (say) halve you get the
>> following benefits for zero effort:
>> Half the pollution Half the CO2 (if it matters) 10% of the congestion (or less) Double the space
>> for each person Double the inherited wealth for each person
>No. Wealth is not a constant like that. It needs to be generated all the time, and a capital
>investment (in a car factory, say) is only worth anything if there are people to work it, and a
>demand for its products. With a falling population all capital investments are used more and more
>inefficiently, and wealth is destroyed.
I agree that there are complexities, but much asset wealth is sufficiently durable to provide medium
/ long term benefits.
> "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey
> Where wealth accumulates and men decay."
>In particular, your precious roads are a capital investment and they are worth less and less, the
>less traffic is on them. So you will have empty roads, but potholed ones, and very soon your four
>or eight inherited cars will be worthless too.
That would certainly be part of the picture, but it doesn't seem like an unmanageable or
important part.
>The last major population decline in Britain and Europe, during the Black Death, caused a terrible
>recession lasting over a hundred years. And the proportion of wealth held in capital investments in
>the fourteenth century (as opposed to the natural wealth of unimproved farmland and fisheries) was
>tiny as compared with now.
I wouldn't expect things to happen so fast, it would be a gradual process, over a few hundred
years perhaps.
>Even a small change in demographics for the worse, such as with the "pensions timebomb" is a
>tremendous problem for the macroeconomy, compared with which the current difficulties of the road
>transport system---caused by too wealthy a society!---are minuscule. You really don't want, if you
>have thought about it at all, to live through a population crunch.
No. The timescale would need to be very many generations.
>> Side effects of the above would include reductions in criminality.
>Provided, as I suggested recently, all the extra inherited wealth is held in the form of bicycles.
>[Token reference to newsgroup subject]
<grin>
>> I've done a big "population reduction exercise" and I like the effect very much. How? I moved to
>> rural North Scotland.
>No, you've done a neighbour reduction exercise. Your lifestyle is possible because the north of
>Scotland benefits from the wealth of an expanding economy. Don't knock it.
We can't any longer afford to take a pure economic view. We need to look at more factors, such as
the long term impact of the species on the planet, and how much human meat is lying around to
encourage new germs to develop and spread.
I've long considered that we are seriously overpopulated. Since we are getting a natural decline in
population, I don't think it's wise to fight the trend.
--
Paul Smith Scotland, UK
http://www.safespeed.org.uk please remove "XYZ" to reply by email speed
cameras cost lives
