Breeding More Georgians
Via Tyler Cowen, here’s one way to boost birth rates:
Two years after having one of the lowest birth rates in the world, Georgia [the country] is enjoying something of a baby boom, following an intervention from the country’s most senior cleric.
At the end of 2007, in a move to reverse the Caucasian country’s dwindling birth figures, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ilia II, came up with an incentive. He promised to personally baptise any baby born to parents of more than two children.
There was only one catch: the baby had to be born after the initiative was launched. [...]
The country’s birth rate increased by nearly 20% during 2008 – a rate four times faster than the previous year.
Less clear to me is why so many people seem concerned by the specter of low birth rates. Historically, low levels of population are associated with high average living standards. That should be less true in the modern world where we’re not as dependent on agriculture for our economic activity. But the logic hasn’t completely vanished. If there were dramatically fewer people in the United States it would be much more realistic for us to all be eating free-range organic grass-fed beef. And even amidst a real estate bust, the country is far too crowded for a middle class family to afford a spacious residence in the most desirable markets such as San Francisco or Manhattan. I think that to deliberately constrain people from having large families would be abhorrent, but it’s not clear to me that we should be going out of our way to encourage them to do so.
Doing more to ease the burden on parents of families of any side—family leave, high-quality preschool, more day care, some kind of recognition for the value of the work done by stay-at-home moms (or dads)—is another matter. But why should the Georgians care if few families choose to have three or more kids?
69 Responses to “Breeding More Georgians”
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March 30th, 2009 at 9:29 am
“Russia” is the answer to your question, Matt.
But I totally agree with the larger point, of course.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Mr. Yglesias lives in a imaginary world in which levers and buttons in Washington DC can control complex behavior.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Well, Yglesias, part of it is that unlike you, the Georgians are a religious people, and take seriously the Orthodox children that all Christian marriage should be open to at least one child. I have to work now and don’t have time to comment further, but I’ll get back to this later. It sums up, quite brilliantly, the intellectual and moral decadence of the late-capitalist American chattering classes.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Less clear to me is why so many people seem concerned by the specter of low birth rates.
Because modern economies (like ours) are based on growth. Long term growth generally requires the population at least be stable. In the case of our economy, a lot of that growth is actually caused by population increases.
In short: intergenerational Ponzi schemes.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:32 am
I should say, of course, that I wish the Georgians well. The Georgians, like their Russian protectors, are a great and noble people, who will in time triumph over the culture of death, and will outlast their two mortal adversaries: Late-Capitalism in the West and Islamic jihadism in the South.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:35 am
You’re baiting Sir Hector of the Burning Pestle, Matt.
Having babies seems to be a part of making sure that the future contains replicas of you.
Or that you have at least one child to wipe your behind when you can’t do it for yourself. The standard developmental pattern is that infant mortality rates decline and life expectancy rises, since things like vaccination and sanitation are relatively low-cost and easy to implement; it takes a bit longer for birth rates to go down, as people realise the lower odds of their children not making it to adulthood.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:37 am
I think that to deliberately constrain people from having large families would be abhorrent, but it’s not clear to me that we should be going out of our way to encourage them to do so.
Mr. Yglesias lives in a imaginary world in which levers and buttons in Washington DC can control complex behavior.
Well, Yglesias, part of it is that unlike you, the Georgians are a religious people, and take seriously the Orthodox children that all Christian marriage should be open to at least one child.
Seldom is the question asked: is our trolls reading?
March 30th, 2009 at 9:37 am
My memory is faltering but there was a Roman emperor once who, I think, gave tax incentives or some such perk to induce folks to have more babies. It’s generally an economic issue. Yes, in many cases too many people puts a strain on the economy and makes resources scarce, but in other circumstances it can be economically devastating. This is especially true when you have many old people and too few young people to support the economy as the old people get older.
I think the population issue should be viewed regionally on a case by case basis. I think we would be wise to avoid both extremes: the hyper-inflated fear of a “population bomb” and the hyper-inflated fear of coming economic catastrophe from the birth dirth in many nations.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:42 am
And then of course there is the desirability of an ever growing working population simply to finance the Ponzi schemes otherwise known as entitlement and other social welfare programs.
I rather doubt that an increased opportunity for eating free-range organic grass-fed beef is going to be terribly important once 20+ somethings get hit with the confiscatory taxes which will be required to support the aged boomers.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:50 am
OMG! I so wish I lived in Georgia right now and had two children already. The possibility of having my third child personally baptized by Patriarch Ilia himself would just be so awesome. Even better than the time I got Britney Spears to autograph my forehead!
March 30th, 2009 at 9:51 am
One thing Matt needs to ponder is how supportable large govt is with low birth rates. Simply put, activist govt – of any ideology – is not possible with birth rates below replacement levels. That’s why Russia is screwed in the medium term, and why China will face a pretty nasty problem over the next 30 years.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:54 am
It may be true that less people would mean more for the rest of us. But having less people alive would not necessarily mean a better or happier human race. I’m of the opinion that 6 billion people, far from being way too many, is not even close to enough people. Here’s my logic – I value my life, like everybody else. Human life has value. Therefore, the more we have of them, the more valuable and important the human race as a whole is. If life is truly sacred, then we should not just be trying to keep people alive and improve their living standards, we should be actively embrace creating new human life so that more human beings can experience existence. Besides, it’s simply not practical to talk about reducing the planet’s population. Reducing the population is equivalent to asking billions of people to die without reproducing. Perhaps some would be willing to volunteer, but I doubt it would be many.
I don’t mean to say I’m against contraception or family planning or lowering birth rates in impoverished, overcrowded countries. But Georgia is certainly not overcrowded, so why shouldn’t they be busy making more Georgians? More people may mean more competition and more human weakness, but it also means more of everything that makes humanity wonderful.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:57 am
I think the whole framing of the question is wrong. I don’t think people necessarily have some absolute aversion to low birth rates. But any people in their right mind would be averse to dramatically low birth rates. I mean, Georgia’s population is actually declining now.
One obvious analogy would be climate change: people don’t necessarily think the climate of their particular area is so wonderful that it should stay the same forevaaaa! But the climate change questions isn’t about that at all.
Another analogy would be with deflation. While nobody likes high inflation, its the devil-you-know and we have time-tested tools to deal with it. Deflation, not so much. Similarly, I’d guess countries are reasonably sure about the implication of population growth over the next few decades but population decline, well, not so much.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:02 am
I think Matt is being overly cute or deliberately obtuse here. If you’ll recall, Georgians have a strong ethnic identity and find themselves surrounded by, at best, gigantic ethnic rivals, if not enemies. So I’m not sure how surprised we should be that the prospect of a disappearing Georgia should concern people whose identities are wrapped up in the idea of being Georgian. I know we’re all proud of how very po-mo and enlightened and cosmopolitan we are, but I have trouble believing Matt can’t imagine why Georgians might not be able to shrug off the idea of an evaporating Georgia.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Wow, what’s the deal with these trolls? It’s not just that their trolls, but that some of them are not really addressing the issue that is actually described in the blog post.
Anyway, there are three answers that Yglesias probably knows but pretends he doesn’t because he needs content for this blog.
1) The general purpose of life may possibly to make more people. In fairness this is related to what some of the trolls were saying.
2) A higher birth-rate can mean a higher ratio of workers to dependents (yes, even including the children) which is good for taking care of those dependents. This is best done through social security, but the same logic also applies for the fact that the infirm among the old are going to want people to look after them even absent a government-sponsored safety-net.
3) A higher birth-rate means a larger relative population of rough men who stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. You can imagine how this would be good, but you can also imagine how a population full of teenage males would be much more violent (both organized through the state and disorganized through crime) than would be useful.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Having commented on this blog-post, I am sure there will not be further comments on this subject as I have clarified the matter for everyone and convinced everybody else.
What? What do you mean that’s not how blog comments work? How dare you spread your defeatism!
March 30th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Andrew: Depends on how you aggregate the value of human life. If the total value of a collection lives is the sum of the value of their individual lives, then sure, but I’m more persuaded by the argument that the average is what matters. Why should a trillion people with merely okay lives be better than a billion people with awesome lives? I really don’t see the rationale for why simply having more lives out in the world produces any tangible benefit. (Whether or not creating more lives ALSO makes lives more enjoyable on average is a seperate question, of course.)
March 30th, 2009 at 10:11 am
I can’t believe the immigration-friendly liberal Matt wrote this post.
Less clear to me is why so many people seem concerned by the specter of low birth rates.
Just ask Japan/China/Germany why low birth rates are a problem. With advances in medicine, folks are living longer but at a cost to society. This cost is borne by the working population (through taxes etc.) That is not to say that older people cannot be productive but overtime a rapidly ageing population is a big problem for any economy.
Historically, low levels of population are associated with high average living standards
Um, no. Historically, falling population has indicated stagnation and decline in economies. You act as if we can reduce the population of U.S. proportionately across all age-groups at the same time.
If there were dramatically fewer people in the United States it would be much more realistic for us to all be eating free-range organic grass-fed beef.
If there were dramatically fewer people in the U.S., it would be very difficult to get cheap organic grass-fed beef. Unless we all moved to the country side.
And even amidst a real estate bust, the country is far too crowded for a middle class family to afford a spacious residence in the most desirable markets such as San Francisco or Manhattan.
The U.S. is not far too crowded. SF and NYC are not the U.S. Your (apparent) dream of a U.S. with a declining population living in mega cities (with fast trains et. all) eating a lot more organic grass-fed beef is a tad unrealistic to say the least.
Doing more to ease the burden on parents of families of any side—family leave, high-quality preschool, more day care, some kind of recognition for the value of the work done by stay-at-home moms (or dads)
Now that I have no problem with.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:11 am
First of all, a population much over 6 billion is probably not sustainable under current technologies. Still less a population that size possessing a first-world standard of living.
Second, the U.N. is already predicting a natural world population decline after maxing out at around 10 billion later this century. So how is reducing population not ‘practical’? Most European countries are already below replacement rate, the U.S. will be there soon.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:12 am
I knew this one would easy be a scream-out to Hector, but I thought there’d be an outside chance that Sailer would show up because it has to do with ostensibly white people and birth rates.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Judging by this post and the comments, I do not think people realize just how unsustainable the current population is. The production of crude oil, the fuel of the modern age, has peaked. Even if it hadn’t, other constraints are on the near-term horizon. (For example, people worry about global warming, but the threat it poses to human civilization is nothing compared to an imminent decline in oil supplies.) This Patriarch in Georgia is evil, as is Catholic “the more living people the better” doctrine generally. As Yglesias points out, many problems in the world would at the minimum be alleviated by a smaller population.
Flip it around. What would the US look like if the 50 million legal abortions in the country since Roe v. Wade had been born? Think of it.
People have in the past said that there are too many people in the world, but in this case the world itself is groaning under the strain we are creating. In only 150 years we have burned through natural resources that required eons to be naturally produced.
The number of people in the world is unsustainable, and one way or another it is going to fall in the coming decades: by war, by disease, or by famine. I would like to hold out hope that this will not happen, but I think it will.
We have made Agent Smith’s analysis true. No sustainable equilibrium. And if we won’t create one, the earth will force one upon us. And that means death, death on a scale that makes anything from the 20th century look like a warmup by comparison.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_r294bn5UI
March 30th, 2009 at 10:17 am
I’m of the opinion that 6 billion people, far from being way too many, is not even close to enough people.
We’ll see how having this unprecedented number of humans on a finite Earth works out in the next few decades, as resources get used up and climate dramatically changes. (i.e. enjoy the coming population crash through famine, spreading desertification, resource wars, and plague, to mention a few.)
Clergy have traditionally been incredibly obtuse about the implications of a geometric progression wrt population size. To them it’s pretty much just about increasing the size of the flock.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Reducing the population is equivalent to asking billions of people to die without reproducing
No— it’s asking the people of the developed nations to continue on the reproductive trajectory that they have (voluntarily) set for themselves. In other words, continuing to reproduce, but doing so at slightly less than the replacement rate (which is 2+epsilon children per couple where epsilon accounts for the rate of accidental death and disease).
It also means rapidly increasing the standard of living for underdeveloped nations so that they also achieve the same reproductive habits as the developed nations.
This is by no means an easy feat, but it’s a far cry from “asking billions of people to die without reproducing” — it’s giving people the freedom to choose, and assuming that they will voluntarily decide to have an average number of children less than the replacement rate (which means, hypothetically, that every single person could reproduce at least once, and still have a dramatic population reproduction.)
we should be actively embrace creating new human life so that more human beings can experience existence.
You have to remember that we have a long time-scale on which these people can experience existence. To an unborn human being, existing during the (prosperous, uncrowded) 25th century may be preferable to existing during the overcrowded 21st century. Also, keep in mind: if high population conditions lead to increased military conflict, then there’s a real possibility that /trillions/ of potential lives will be extinguished by a human-extincting nuclear war.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Youse all is wrong. Its to get enough soldiers for the wars of the 21st century.
China, of course, saw that they had plenty of people for soldiers, so they could scale back on production. But Georgia is only a small country, it needs all the cannon fodder it can get.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:27 am
I think Bosch’s poodle has it right here. While there are general economic advantages to increasing population, these could be met by more open policies with regard to immigration.
The exception to this is if one feels the need to preserve a particular cultural heritage and ones population is small enough that one is likely to get swamped by such policies, then the Georgian approach makes sense.
This is actually similar to the jewish focus on big families and an opposition to intermarriage. Among the secular, there has largely been an abandonment of the big families, but there remains some focus on intramarriage for cultural reasons.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Hector,
I have to admire your argument that Georgia is pursuing a policy to get families to have third children because they are driven by a religious imperative to have at least one child. That is an audacious non-sequitor.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:38 am
I thought there’d be an outside chance that Sailer would show up because it has to do with ostensibly white people and birth rates.
Oh, bide your time. He’s stuck in mandatory morning cross-burning out on the west coast.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:46 am
Less clear to me is why so many people seem concerned by the specter of low birth rates.
I assume you have heard of Darwin and Malthus?
Sustainable population growth is possible only if all nations do it. If nation A pursues a policy of zero or negative population growth–with all the environmental and resource advantages associated with that policy–and nations B-N do not (and suffer poverty, hunger, disease, unemployment and so on as a consequence), then eventually, people from nations B-N will be clamoring to come to nation A and enjoy the environmental and resource advantages, too. In the process, Nation A will lose not only the environmental and resource advantages associated with its lower birth rate, but will suffer turmoil as its original population loses its cultural identity.
Ultimately, any national effort to increase birth rates of its native population is an attempt to preserve cultural identity. I imagine that Orthodox Georgians feel pressure from the unchecked growth of the Muslim population. “Selection of the fittest” simply means that whoever has the most children inherits the future.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Lon – do you really think there’s lots of people just aching to immigrate to Georgia, if only they would liberalize their immigration policies?
This Patriarch in Georgia is evil
This is just way over the top. The world’s population growth as a whole is obviously problematic, but Georgia is underpopulated and its population is declining, and there’s no particularly reason not to pursue natalist policies if they like.
Beyond that, as others have said, the comparison with inflation/deflation makes a lot of sense. Too much population growth, like too much inflation, is bad. But it also helps to grow the economy, and is a known quantity that people know how to deal with. Declining population, like deflation, is rare and very serious in terms of presenting problems for an economy. Beyond that, the military argument is obviously involved here.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:59 am
“Historically, low levels of population are associated with high average living standards.”
WTF?!?! In what historical context is that even remotely accurate? Was the average living standard in the U.S. higher in 1909 than it is in 2009? Was the average living standard in China higher when it was only 500 million people instead of a billion? What the hell is that statement based upon?
Mike
March 30th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Less clear to me is why so many people seem concerned by the specter of low birth rates.
Really? It’s not as if people are concerned about birthrates below X, where X is just some number — it’s only when X is some other country’s birthrate. Put another way, why do you think it’s people like John Gibson who are always going on about this in the US?
March 30th, 2009 at 11:16 am
On the bright side, “breeding more Georgians” is a possible export market that the United States is uniquely positioned to participate in! Georgian breeding should be outsourced to the USA!
March 30th, 2009 at 11:19 am
I think Bosch’s poodle has it right here. While there are general economic advantages to increasing population, these could be met by more open policies with regard to immigration.
Georgia seems comfortable with making citizens out of Brazilian beach volleyball players, but I’m not sure how easily that can be translated to other fields.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:30 am
having less people
“Surely you mean: fewer people. Smaller, lighter people might confuse us into thinking we’d become hobbits.”
But as long as you’re being pedantic, isn’t “people” singular?
March 30th, 2009 at 11:37 am
PTate and BruceMcF have suggested the two best reasons: cultural competition and war. Given the source of the encouragement I think PTate is most correct in this circumstance but a case can be made for BruceMcF’s point given recent events. And I concede they can be viewed as roughly similar except for degree.
FWIW, I have some very conservative friends who are in a complete dither over the low birth rates of western Europe and Japan.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Oddly enough, a friend of mine was actually trying to persuade me a while ago to move to Georgia, and marry a Georgian. Apparently Georgian women are hot, and apparently they are striving for three-children families, which would be my personal ideal as well. My violently pro-Russian sympathies might not go over well with the current, collaborationists Sakashvili government, but presumably if the government changes I could move there.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:43 am
1. Retiree ratio
2. Army
March 30th, 2009 at 11:46 am
I have some very conservative friends who are in a complete dither over the low birth rates of western Europe and Japan.
I don’t see why Japan shouldn’t have a low birthrate. It has a large population and limited living space which is rather expensive. Plus, they’re an island that faces no demographic pressures from hostile neighbors with a land route into its own country.
It seems like the model of a country for which having a low birthrate would be a benefit.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:54 am
There you go with your typical American short-termism – six hundred years*** from now, Georgia’s population will exceed Russia’s population and then Sakashvili’s great-great-great-…-great- grandfather will be able to stomp all over Putin’s great-great-great-…-great-grandfather (if either of them can remember what the dispute was about in the first place, which is more likely than you think).
*** – I couldn’t be bothered to do the maths so this is a wild generalization.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Although I am a childless (not by choice but by botched childhood surgery) American/NW European, through my adopted religion I am close to groups of Americans from Arab, African, and Central and West Asian descent. And they just value having children more than we do– having a passel of little ones running around is seen as a wonderful thing. I think we in the affluent West have come to think that one or two is perfectly adequate and none is fine too, but most folks around the world have more traditional opinions.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Re: through my adopted religion I am close to groups of Americans from Arab, African, and Central and West Asian descent.
Would that be Islam, or Orthodox Christianity or what?
But yes- having children is a good in itself, not an instrumental good to be valued for economic purposes. To start arguing about the economic and material benefits and costs of having a child is to miss the point from the beginning. In having children, we learn the value of self-abnegation, sacrifice, and self-emptying love. I don’t think there’s anything _wrong_ with having only one, but I do think that a healthy sexual relationship, to be licit, should have as its ideal flowering into marriage with at least one child.
As for the guy who brought up environmental issues- yes, I’m sensitive to the need for population stabilization (and maybe gradual decline) in order to reduce pressure on fuel resources, arable land, timber, fisheries, metals, etc. However, this is something that is going to vary from country to country, and should (as with most issues) be dealt with on a national basis. There are many countries with very high birth rates which would do well to lower them. Georgia is not overpopulated, and has a rapidly shrinking population. They would do better if their total fertility rate was around 2.0 (ensuring a slow decline) rather than the 1.4 or so it is now.
And in fact, many couples who would like to have children are unable to, or unable to have as many children as they want. If we want a stable population (i.e. a TFR of around 2.3) that means that at least a significant chunk of families should aim to have three children or more.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Ditto what others have said about aging populations and entitlement programs for the elderly. The more retired people there are per worker, the more each worker has to pay to support them, which is bad. With a decreasing rate of population growth (or actual population reduction) this can be something of a problem. You need a quite a few people producing three or more biological children just to keep the population *stable*, given that there’s a fair number (GLT’s, the infertile, people who don’t want kids, Catholic priests) who don’t have any. Sufficiently high levels of net immigration can offset this, but that’s not a solution for everyone: how many people want to move to Georgia?
This doesn’t in itself mean that a decreasing rate of population growth is bad, but it’s definitely not without negative effects.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I give Hector credit for at least being nearly unique in his particular vision of a better society.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
“The distinction between “less” and “fewer” isn’t pedantic. It’s a gesture to save my teeth from being ground to their roots.”
Ah, so you’re a neurotic pedant.
How could you possibly get upset about less versus fewer? How often could it be unclear what is meant? Is there a more arbitrary grammar rule in existence? (Split infinitives, maybe.)
March 30th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Matt writes,
Less clear to me is why so many people seem concerned by the specter of low birth rates.
An accumulation of old, unproductive people and not enough young, productive people to support them. This is becoming a serious concern in Europe and Japan, where the population is aging and birth rates are low.
Historically, low levels of population are associated with high average living standards.
Huh? The world has more people than it has ever had, and average living standards are higher than ever. Ditto for most individual countries. That doesn’t mean the trend of rising population and rising living standards could be sustained indefinitely, but the historical relationship between population and living standards is the opposite of what you claim it is.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
But why should the Georgians care if few families choose to have three or more kids?
Because a falling population — no matter what its purported benefits to the planet — is a difficult challenge for an individual government to deal with. And, absent immigration, some families will have to have three or more kids to keep that population from falling.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
The distinction between “less” and “fewer” isn’t pedantic. It’s a gesture to save my teeth from being ground to their roots.
I vote for grinding your teeth to their roots, you pompous pedant.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Seems worth mentioning that the world’s population has consumed more food than it produced for the past eight years in a row and that grain carryover stocks are at record lows. This doesn’t speak to local conditions, but might imply something about optimal numbers of people.
March 30th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
The one that drives me over the wall is the increasingly ubiquitous and thoroughly incorrect use of the conditional past in lieu of the past perfect. Even seemingly well-educated people make this grave error all the time on TV/Radio (ex: If they would have run the ball more they would have won the game.). Grrrrr. This particularly nonsensical construction has reached epidemic proportions in American speech.
March 30th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
So, “less” and “fewer” is a useful distinction? Were you genuinely wondering whether “less people” meant “smaller people”? No, because then he would have said “lesser” people. So you were being pedantic, not making an important distinction.
Can you give me an example of a real-world sentence in which “less” was used in an ambiguous way? I’m genuinely curious.
March 30th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
It seems to me that the ideal situation is to have a low (1.9) overall world wide birth rate, but then to personally have a high number of offspring.
As a father of 5 (with 1 on the way), I acknowledge the very realistic chance of catastrophe (war/enviroment) in the next 100 years, and having more kids greatly enhances the chances that my DNA will live on.
1000 years from now the world will be populated by Duggars and Gosselin’s, not Clintons.
March 30th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Hector: But yes- having children is a good in itself, not an instrumental good to be valued for economic purposes. To start arguing about the economic and material benefits and costs of having a child is to miss the point from the beginning. In having children, we learn the value of self-abnegation, sacrifice, and self-emptying love. I don’t think there’s anything _wrong_ with having only one, but I do think that a healthy sexual relationship, to be licit, should have as its ideal flowering into marriage with at least one child.
I would point out that the justifications Hector provides for child-birth are also instrumental, although they are instruments to personal growth instead of for all that awesome stuff in the preamble of the Constitution. That is to say that having at least one child (1 < 3) is a tool for people to use to achieve their potential and fulfill their purpose instead of the generation of more life on its own being a mystical bonus on its own terms (which for some people it may very well be and which for me seems completely nonsensical. The liberal (or at least humanist) worldview can embrace the family in productive ways while theological [which is not at all to say all religious] alternatives seem to support the family only through lenses that turn life into charades of pointlessness, poverty and pugnacity). Why do I mention this? Why, out of the narcissistic fantasy that people are fascinated by my own earlier comment about maybe making more people is our purpose in life and may have misinterpreted it into thinking that I thought that all women able to bear children should be constantly pregnant.
Additionally, pressures on the environment do suggest a need for lower population growth to be balanced against other needs.
All right! I don’t know what I’m talking about!
March 30th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Less vs. fewer is my personal pet peeve also. It’s a simple rule, and not hard to get right. It’s simply the comparative distinction between ‘little’ and ‘few’. Few people are smart. Little people are smart. Two different sentences.
March 30th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I know this is late but there are certain laws that can’t be violated.
For example, the people who don’t work are supported by the people who do work.
So, if you have the following system
1) stable population
2) everyone works from 20 to 60
3) everyone lives to 80
You end up with a system where you are working half your life and supporting one other person, either a child or a retired person, while you are working.
Now shift the numbers. If you have a shrinking population then you have fewer young people relative to old people so that their will be more retired people per worker.
One solution would be to tax the worker more to support the old person. Another solution would be to extend the retirement age.
In any case, lower birth rates cause serious problems.
March 30th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Re: You need a quite a few people producing three or more biological children just to keep the population *stable*, given that there’s a fair number (GLT’s, the infertile, people who don’t want kids, Catholic priests) who don’t have any.
No Comment,
Precisely! Particularly since so many contemporary feminists, hipsters, and postmodern cosmopolites don’t want to have any kids at all, some one has to have extra kids to make up for them.
Re: I know we’re all proud of how very po-mo and enlightened and cosmopolitan we are, but I have trouble believing Matt can’t imagine why Georgians might not be able to shrug off the idea of an evaporating Georgia.
Bosch’s Poodle,
Exactly. For my part, I’m proud to stand in defiance of all that is cosmopolitan, postmodern, and ‘enlightened’ (read: hipster BS); I despise them and I will fight them to my last breath.
Thank God for men like Patriarch Ilya, who is standing firm against the postmodern cosmopolitans, and for the ineffable good of bearing and raising children. When the West and the South have destroyed each other, the East shall inherit the earth.
March 30th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Scott P: I’m still waiting for an example about how “less” and fewer” could be confused in a sentence. And that in any case would not justify the outrage at “less people having kids,” which is completely comprehensible and is only incorrect according to an irrelevant semantic distinction.
March 30th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
the country is far too crowded for a middle class family to afford a spacious residence in the most desirable markets such as San Francisco or Manhattan.
This is a silly comment. San Francisco and Manhattan may be too crowded for a middle class family to afford a spacious residence.
But the country is pretty darn big.
You think only we’re crowded because you like to live in crowded places.
March 30th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Re: A higher birth-rate can mean a higher ratio of workers to dependents (yes, even including the children)
???
If everyone started having 5 kids we’d have an awful problem with that ratio FALLING, since children remain unproductive dependents for at least 18 years.
Re: higher birth-rate means a larger relative population of rough men who stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
Or to do random, criminal violence on the rest of us if they are frustrated at not being able to find good jobs, mates etc. I don’t think it’s an accident that the youth of the Baby Boom corresponded with an explosion of crime rates.
Re: Um, no. Historically, falling population has indicated stagnation and decline in economies.
Sorry, but you’re wrong. The best understood incidence of depopulation occured in the 14th century (the Black Death) and was prolonged into the 15th century by an astonishing collapse in birth rates (in Britain up to 25% of the population remained childless in the early 1400s). Now what was going on in Europe in the 15th century? Hmm. Could it be the Renaissance? Not to mention the birth of modern capitalism, the stirrings of the scientific revolution, and the early voyages of discovery? And the reason why these things could happen is because the Black Death (which killed humans and some animals, but left everything else untouched, unlike war) had freed up a lot of capital and there was actually an economic surplus in Europe for the first time since the day of Alexander and his Successors. The 15th century stands out as an era of remarkably high living standards, not to be sen again until the 1700s.
Re: What the hell is that statement based upon?
See above.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
JonF,
It’s true that gradual population decline is not a bad thing, and that it would in many ways be easier on the environment. Nevertheless, as an Orthodox Christian I assume you agree with the following:
- At least for heterosexual couples, procreation is an essential good of marriage and not an optional extra.
- Again, at least for straight couples, licit sexual relationships should have the eventual goal of marriage and procreation.
- Georgia and the rest of the Orthodox countries have overly low birth rates, and could use a little more emphasis on procreation, if Orthodox Christian culture and faith is to be kept alive in the face of onslaughts from Western modernism.
- Given that the most common method of population control in these countries is abortion, more births means fewer abortions, which must be applauded.
March 31st, 2009 at 7:58 am
“Less workers are needed for the mine.”
March 31st, 2009 at 9:06 am
Oddly enough, a friend of mine was actually trying to persuade me a while ago to move to Georgia, and marry a Georgian. Apparently Georgian women are hot, and apparently they are striving for three-children families, which would be my personal ideal as well. My violently pro-Russian sympathies might not go over well with the current, collaborationists Sakashvili government, but presumably if the government changes I could move there.
Hector, have you ever read A Confederacy of Dunces?
March 31st, 2009 at 10:50 am
“Sorry, but you’re wrong. The best understood incidence of depopulation occured in the 14th century (the Black Death) and was prolonged into the 15th century by an astonishing collapse in birth rates (in Britain up to 25% of the population remained childless in the early 1400s). Now what was going on in Europe in the 15th century? Hmm. Could it be the Renaissance? Not to mention the birth of modern capitalism, the stirrings of the scientific revolution, and the early voyages of discovery? And the reason why these things could happen is because the Black Death (which killed humans and some animals, but left everything else untouched, unlike war) had freed up a lot of capital and there was actually an economic surplus in Europe for the first time since the day of Alexander and his Successors.”
Oh, for pity’s sake. If you’re so blinkered you can’t see the difference between the effect of a massive catastrophe on birthrates and people simply deciding not to reproduce, you’re beyond help.
Jeez, bringing up the economic benefits of The Black Death is something I’d expect out of Glen Beck.
Mike
March 31st, 2009 at 11:17 am
“Less workers are needed for the mine.”
Where’s the ambiguity? I’m genuinely confused. I know that you and I should be duking it out by e-mail at this point, since no one else is interested in our grammar wars, but I want to get this right.
March 31st, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Historically, low levels of population are associated with high average living standards. That should be less true in the modern world where we’re not as dependent on agriculture for our economic activity. But the logic hasn’t completely vanished. If there were dramatically fewer people in the United States it would be much more realistic for us to all be eating free-range organic grass-fed beef. And even amidst a real estate bust, the country is far too crowded for a middle class family to afford a spacious residence in the most desirable markets such as San Francisco or Manhattan.
The above, I assume, is why you support tough limits on immigration?
March 31st, 2009 at 11:29 pm
“Are there any historical examples where low birthrates caused problems? ”
There isn´t, because that´s a unseen situation. Until the 60´s there was no birth control, and most women had several children. There may be some high mortality, but not general low birthrates. That´s the problem.
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