In a perverse sense of economy, people are seen as just a resource. From a distributor’s point of view, more people mean more consumption. For an industrialist, more people mean more workers. For a government, more people mean more taxes and programs. This perfidious notion reduces people to being numbers on a chart.
Is this where we are going. In Japan there’s national outrage that the birthrate is dropping (1). The same occurs in Singapore where there are cries of shortage and a need to reach goals(2). They cry is the same across many other countries. There’s this untold urgency to fill a country’s borders with people.
Don’t get me wrong, babies are amazingly cute. Adored by me and almost everyone. Our primal urges lead us to procreation. But will there ever be an end to going forth and multiplying? At what point do we say that there’s enough people and we don’t need incentives for more?
In the natural world, populations have natural boom and bust cycles. Just watch the lemmings. For the last 20000 years, since the end of the last ice-age, the human population has been booming. Ready energy and copious living space has allowed for this. Will there be a bust? Nature says so. We can wait for the bust or we can manage a declining birthrate so that the eventual bust is minimized.
The next time there’s a cry for augmenting a birthrate, we’d do well to question the basis. Each new life will need 34 TJ <14>. We need be sure that the energy is available for the duration of these new lives. Else wise, we are dooming them to a non-pleasant existence.
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