12 Comments

Given that continuing growth in a finite system is impossible, are we approaching a point at which we should be looking to achieve homeostasis and therefore should be working out how to make that work rather than demanding more babies?

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Given that all attempts to kick start birthdays (eg China, Japan, Hungary) have failed after short-term blips, what can we do (without immigration) to manage our demographic bomb of increasing NHS costs and retirement costs on a dwindling tax-paying population?

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I'm 30 and pregnant with my first child, one reason for that is I left education at 28 where there was no way to balance my doctorate and think about a family. Is there a way to balance education and family life or will the increasing time in education keep pushing back starting a family?

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Among young people, marriage is something that is often delayed or even unpopular. Can you fix the population decline issue without first addressing the marriage issue?

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How many couples will Elon need to get to Mars to start another viable human colony on Mars?

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Strangely there is a population bomb happening in India, a country with a growing population, but, as the Hindu majority might unhappily concede is being driven by a Muslim minority. In Europe a largely homogenous (European Christian) society like Hungary might find it easy to implement direct initiatives for population growth, however when tried in Spain the pro rata uptake and beneficiaries were by it's Muslim population. How can European liberal democracies promote indigenous population growth without experiencing this dilemma and conflict of Human Rights principals versus popular consensus.

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Without reliable figures for immigration is it possible to gauge the population stats via toilet paper sales or childrens shoe sales or such? obviously needing to know which demographic actually uses whatever you base it on? Will the world eventually be standing room only?

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5hEdited

What is the appropriate census policy? Should non-citizens be counted in the census for purposes of distributing governement resources, or for establishing regions for voting districts and democratic representation?

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Can Paul recommend an author who writes about how the West can adjust to a declining population?

We're often told a declining population will lead to national collapse, but is that really true? Can we adjust and learn to live with fewer people without substantially reducing our standard of living?

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My parents had it all—five kids, a home, a beach house, and mum stayed at home. These days, couples have to choose. You can have kids or financial security, but not both.

Why? Because housing is unaffordable. A house used to cost four times the average salary. Now it is thirteen or fourteen times. That is not inflation—it is bureaucracy. Australia has seven million square kilometres of land and just twenty-seven million people - one of the most empty places on Earth - yet there is a so-called "land shortage." How? Simple: the government chokes land supply with regulations. Texas does not have this issue. They build freely, homes are affordable, and surprise, they are having more kids.

If housing costs dropped back to a third of what they are now, people would spend more, have kids, and the economy would boom. The solution is easy: cut the red tape. Let people subdivide land and build houses without endless restrictions. Get the government out of the way.

And do not blame immigration. Immigration creates jobs—newcomers need homes, roads, hospitals; and they help build them. The real problem is bad immigration policy. Bring in builders, nurses, doctors, electricians, and the economy thrives. Bring in people who cannot contribute, and infrastructure collapses under the strain; and people don't have children. Australia has handled immigration well for two hundred years. Housing had only become a crisis when the government made it too expensive to build.

The fix? Scrap the restrictions, fix immigration, and shut down the departments that have spent decades making things worse. It is that simple.

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I'm currently in Brazil and we have a steady stream of young, educated people moving abroad (I work at a language school and most of the students there are looking to work/study abroad). What is the effect of this emigration on countries such as Brazil? Obviously there is the brain drain but is there anything else worthwhile to mention?

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As climate change continues to accelerate I don’t hear enough discussion about population as a contributing factor. With over 2 billion in China and India alone, continuing population growth (and more industrialized nations) has to make the demands on dwindling natural resources more acute. Realistically there are no positives to more people on the planet.

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