Loading UTC time and date...
2025/07/28
Fears of the overpopulation have been present since the Western baby boomer generation reached adulthood. But the real "golden age" of tackling this concept was the post-Cold War era, when it was believed that humanity can unshackle itself from the restraints caused by the looming war between (assumed) major superpowers.
That, sadly, never went anywhere. The talks of overpopulation gradually declined in favor of a voodoo cult of "justice".
Who can blame them? As the baby boomer generation had fewer children and the younger cohorts of Gen X and their successors began declining, talking of overpopulation became associated with racism and eugenics.
Many decades ago it was predicted that immigration would be the major contributor to population growth in the U.S. outpacing the natural growth. So, an obvious next task after stabilizing birth rates was the imposing curbs on immigration in a now post-Cold War era.
Ha! Good luck with that. Immigration increased across most Western countries driven by various forces, including demand for cheaper able-bodied labor which can be hired for less and be stuck to an employer without an option to leave; as well as the growing problem of retirees requiring a growing tax revenue to maintain the elderly cohort.
In the countries like the United States, a new problem emerged - that the immigrants became either a direct or tangential contributor to the electoral success of one of the two parties.
All of these problems contributed to maintaining a relatively open policy towards immigration even as it has been put on the path of tightening at least since the 2008 Great Financial Crisis.
But one aspect of immigration that is not talked about as often are the root causes abroad - dictatorship, war, famine, etc.
These things are highlighted less either due to ignorance or an agenda. I always bring an example of the Syrian Civil War - which was started by the dictator Bashar Al-Assad when his goons started mass murdering children. Fast forward and you end up with the Syrian refugee crisis. Sometimes, however, it is more nuanced, e.g. with the Gaza war that is still ongoing.
For decades the NGOs and government bodies contributed to the population growth in Hamas-controlled Gaza enclave, fuelling the capital of living human shields for the terrorist group there. And now as they get bombed to smitherines by the Israeli Defence Force, we only blame the Israelis. It's not that simple.
The optimal population of an area is defined by the formula: The biocapacity of a given area divided by the ecological footprint per capita.
Depending on the country and the ecological footprint per person, you might get different results but almost everywhere, especially in smaller highly developed countries this number is way lower than the actual population.
According to the Wikipedia page on the ecological footprint the 2012 population data of the UK was 65.648 million; while the country's Biocapacity and Ecological Footprint were 0.56 gha and 7.93 gha per person, respecitvely.
Given:
Calculation:
$$ \text{Optimal Population} = 65.648 \times \frac{0.56}{7.93} $$ $$ = 65.648 \times 0.0706 $$ $$ \approx 4.64 \text{ million people} $$
If we calculate the optimal population size based on these numbers, it would be approximately 4.6 million people, which is more than 14 times smaller (!) than the current population size.
According to the data that was published in 2015, with a population of 37,253,956 people, the state of California had the per capita values of the TEF and BC at 16.5 and 1.9.
That puts its optimal population down at approx. 4.29 million. Contrast that with Vermont, whose optimal number is actually higher at ~ 730k with a population of just below 625k. And by 2025, Vermont is still estimated to be below its optimal number, while California grew by extra two million!
Similarly to the U.S. states, some countries in Europe stay at or below their optimal number, e.g. Norway.
But almost all EU countries are overpopulated by this criterion. As well as the U.S. itself, surpassing its optimal population size by more than twice.
But while the Western countries may seem to live beyond their means, the Third World excels at trying to outpace the West.
Out of 8 billion people, only 1.39 billion live in the so-called OECD countries, which conventionally includes most of the developed world, but even there this number is inflated by the presence of countries like Turkey, Mexico and Colombia.
That is still at least 6 billion people out there who keep contributing to the ecological disaster that is impacting humans and natur overall.
A lot of skepticism is thrown the way of antinatalism and overpopulation alarmism, even saying that there's a looming population disaster waiting to happen - as birth rates collapse and fewer young people work to sustain the elderly.
I have taken a very nuanced look at this, combining the attitudes of someone with a skeptical view of government intervention and a more naturalistic approach to explaining the birth rates and population fluctuation.
Firstly, that there's not enough young people to sustain a large cohort of the elderly is the sign that overpopulation is real, otherwise we would not have had an underpopulation problem.
Secondly, overpopulation has shown its ugly head in the realities of overpopulated countries like China. Even though the Chinese no longer suffer from famines and civil wars waged by warlords with million large armies, the life of an ordinary Chinese is expendable like no other neither in Europe, U.S. or other Western or westernized countries, even such as Japan and South Korea.
A large population of the Chinese suppresses their wages, which contributes to the double evil of chronic unemployment and low wages. The situation is exacerbated with a large influx of college graduates and perpetual discrimination of both the elderly and the females, who are less suited for physical work as either factory grunts or engineers.
As a result, the condition of overpopulation drives up demands for living space and suppresses wages, creating a reality, where young employees cannot a good enough job to buy housing large enough to start a family. As a result, birth rates drop.
That is where both of the opposing camps of population alarmists fail to see the solution to the problem each keeps highlighting.
On one hand, overpopulation will result in higher demand for baisc goods, which will eventually drive the birth rates down. Call it a "Malthusianism lite". There does not have to be a famine, but the expenses will postpone births past the fertile age of a woman, making a natural population growth unlikely.
On the other hand, the ills often cited as causes of the low birth rates will go away as population ages and dies off. So, as the elderly grow older, they are more likely to die. That will result in a lot of real estate freeing up as owners pass it on to their descendants or it ends up sold at auctions, with fewer contenders, and thus lower demand - all driving prices down.
But immigration will distort these processes, even as new arrivals remain childless or have fewer kids.
Immigrants offer a lifeline to the growth economy, driven by business demand for both skilled and unskilled physical labor. Indeed, they are a necessity for a country to stay solvent and pay sovereign debt - hoping that you will stop immigration by electiong politicians X or Y is futile.
Indeed, there is no political solution.
Indeed, one of the worst crimes of the 20th century was that governments contributed to increasing birth rates through social reforms, abandoning the policies of Social Darwinism and Eugenics in favor welfare state and dysgenics.
Today, we see a strange situation where young people in Britain go on welfare and a permanent sick leave due to being diagnosed with anxiety, but nobody addresses the root cause of such mental diseases - one of which can be trauma caused, ultimately, by overpopulation.
It is futile to deny that crime and abuse stem out of overpopulation because both the victim and the perpetrator had the unluck of being born.
Therefore, it is a great joy that I see government incentives failing to address and stop the birth rate collapse worldwide. Environmentalists and population alarmists should be happy, and yes, that includes the ones who warn about the population collapse as well.
As people have fewer kids, there will be more elderly people, who are more likely to die from natural causes as time goes on, freeing up space for younger people to form their families. As the amount of dependents decreases, so will the tax pressures on the workers and businesses. Producing more children will actually exacerbate the dependency problem and lead to an even higher tax burden, especially as governments begin to subsidize nonsense like childcare and offer payouts for extra children - essentially debasing the currency and contributing to social discord.
There is no panacea. The best approach is to let the nature take its course.
And that applies to the suffering in the Third World countries as well.
The only one you help by doing charity is your own ego. Accept the reality that there are too many hominids alive today. Accept it and move on.