"As we move from a technology in which a man on horseback was the fastest means of sending a message, to a situation in which instantaneous and world-wide electronic transfer of information is available, we erect new man-made obstacles to effective unity." [341] Nationalism ...
Demography in new nations
"...as William Kruskal has pointed out, the census is a national
ceremony that helps to legitimate the new nation. That has been so ever
since the French Revolution attached great importance to counting
citizens and recording their activities, and was especially
characteristics of the spate of new nations created after the Second
World War.
"When the United Nations was founded, the big question .... was how could it act so that its member nations would not regard it as interfering. The one thing it has done and that has offended no one was to establish norms and standards for census-taking and other statistical compilations trying to secure uniformity and comparability among countries, and arranging technical assistance for those member states that wanted help in starting up their own national statistical systems." [342]
"I argue that it is advantageous from the point of view of limiting population to have the existing network of national boundaries more or less sealed to mass migration. Consider the alternative that would surely win a vote of LDC adults. People would say: 'The rich counties talk much of human rights, foremost among them freedom. But which freedom could be more fundamental than the right to live anywhere one pleases?' Suppose, then that all boundaries were open to migration and people had the right to live anywhere they chose. Vast movements would be drawn towards areas with unused resources, and the constraint of population pressures would not be felt anywhere, until it was felt everywhere. When rapidly increasing populations are kept where they are, the pressure to adopt birth control is felt long before the forces of industrialization begin to [ 342] reduce family size. If boundaries did not exist there would be no need to control population until the whole planet was populated to the density of the poorest country in Africa or Latin America. The two scenarios — with and without impermeable boundaries — would result in very different ultimate global population totals.
"The constraint of national boundaries that applies to people does not seem to apply to moveable resources. As regards the purchase and sale of such resources, the scenario of no boundaries is already in effect. But there are signs that free trading in resources may not always be in a nation's interest; that there comes a point when it ought to insist on its sovereign right to retain its resources for ecological reasons, or save for future uses. ...."
"My point is that with some such transformation nationalism could offer enormous environmental advantages. Consider the world's resources as they are unequally distributed over the planet, with a network of national boundaries imposed more or less at random over them. If nationalism were to put up barriers against the cross-boundary transport of resources, oil and forests would command a higher price in international markets and would be used up more slowly." [343]
Is there a limit to total population? Large numbers can mean diminishing returns. They can also mean economies of scale. Some say that with the move to a service economy "where productivity does not depend on size, the economy becomes 'population-neutral'." [344-5]
How views have changed over time We used to worry about food (Malthus). Then about capital. [345] Now the focus is on consumption [how to increase it] and on human capital [346]
There may be no limit to services but all those lawyers, prostitutes and drug dealers need to eat. How many can we feed? Twenty years ago Roger Revell said 45 billion. May be this is too high but the real limit is not posed by food when food is considered as a theoretical abstraction apart from wars or natural disasters but by "the number of people who can be accommodated in the biosphere without disturbing its delicate balance. To think effectively about limits we have to regard humanity as one species among many, each with a place in the web of life, each threatened with destruction if it grows to the point where it destroys the environment that is the precondition of its existence. We must get along with bacteria that are as essential for [347] digestion as they can be fatal in disease, and with plant and animal life if we are to continue to eat."
"Overpopulation is a particularly serious threat because of the delay in the imposition of limits. If locusts or lemmings had perfect foresight they would never overeat the landscape that nourishes them. Human foresight and control are better than those of locusts, but still apparently not good enough."
But even economic theory shows that we are very unwilling to take the future into account and to sacrifice present pleasures to it...... [348]
Keyfitz quotes Stefano Zamagni who says that economics encourages us " 'to expect the worst in others, this doctrine serves to make the worst in us emerge'.
"If the worst in us as individuals were to spread and produce anarchy, we know from all the ages and places where anarchy has existed in the past, how long and uncertain is the path back to civilization. Reasonable people do not say that this will happen as a result of any likely degree of deregulation, but they do say that the risk should make us stop and think hard about what we are doing.
"Whether through modification of the environment, or of the characters of people, to serve a population that lives for consumption in a deteriorating natural world, the need [351] to produce, and the effective demand for output become evermore insistent. Here is another aspect of a self-driven system that could lead us to collapse or crash like a population of lemmings." [352]
"Abstract justice has seemed to some to entail an equal division of the world's food among the world's population."
He quotes Hardin (1971) as saying " 'If the world is one great commons, in which all food is shared equally, then we are lost. Those who breed faster will replace the rest. ... Fortunate minorities must act as the trustees of a civilisation that is threatened by uninformed good intentions'." Says he remembers "the great J. B. S. Haldane .... stating the equivalent of 'Biology is not just' , or words to that effect." [352]
"....Apart from Stanley Jevons, I know of no nineteenth-century economist who even referred to the problem [of environmental limits], and even today the environment sits uncomfortably in the framework of economics. ..." [353]
"Economists long ago got rid of the idea that what people buy satisfies needs of a physiological kind — clothing to keep us warm, food to fuel the body's activities, shelter for protection against the elements. They recognise the part played by ostentation, by the emulation of others, and similar motives that help capital to become consumption goods; in Frank Knight's words, 'the real motives of consumption are [354] largely .... symbolic and abstract.' " [355]
He says there are three reasons for population growth: employment, increasing productivity, and reducing the relative burden of debt. These make growth irresistible to governments
Growthists think science will save us. Scientists don't. He cites the joint report of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society published in 1992 — Population Growth, Resources Consumption and a Sustainable World,. [359]
Click here to return to the main AESP page (This page is in English.)