Kerry Howley has a fascinating piece in Reason on fertility panics. Let me make a few points I consider obvious: entitlements are not a reason to have more children, natalist panics often have an unpleasant flavor of racism to them, and ever-increasing populations are neither sustainable nor desireable. The transition we are currently facing will be moderately difficult, but as I wrote for The Atlantic, it will not be a disaster, and at the end of the transition, we will still be a wealthy society with a lot to live for.
That said, I think Will Wilkinson goes too far when he says
The way I see it, those obsessed with fertility are people who think the culture they desire cannot possibly win the argument against competing cultures. So, they conclude, it’s down to brute baby-making force: the culture that wins the fertility war wins the culture war. In contrast, I think liberal market culture has such immense, salient rewards (wealth, longevity, happiness, etc.) that it is not only possible to win the argument, but that we are in fact winning it. Of course, part of the winning is dynamist cultural synthesis. So if you’ve got a conservative, zoological view of cultural preservation which fixes on the importance of high-fidelity copying of inessential aspects of a culture’s history (costumes, holidays, rites, cuisine, skin colors etc.), you’re going to have a hard time of it. But if you care about the essential core of liberal modernity, you should be delighted with how things are going. You’ll eat your szechuan taco pizza and you’ll love it.
Cultures don't have "arguments". The most important core beliefs most people have are transmitted not through dialogue, but through inheritance. It is extremely likely that you share the political views of your parents, their religious affiliation, and at a less obvious level, their beliefs about things like what constitutes stealing and lawbreaking, and what are justified evasions of petty laws. My mother is the one who would make us turn around and drive twenty miles back to the store if it turned out we'd forgotten to pay for things, and I now have the same attitude.
The overwhelming evidence is that when it comes to culture, numbers trump ideas. in the successive invasions of England, for example, the locals always won unless they were wiped out; the conquerors assimilated. Or look at America. More people here claim descent from the Irish than the English; numerically, Irish Americans are the largest single-country ethnic group. Yet our culture is much more heavily derived from English Prostentantism than from Irish Catholicism. That's because the earlier waves of assimilated immigrants had adopted the fundamentally British culture of America, and outnumbering the Irish, forced them to assimilate. Successive waves of immigrants have each left their cultural mark, changing (I devoutly believe) us for the better, and also to something that cannot be called British. But the dominant strain remains English. Cultures that "win" the argument in territory outside their own do so by killing, swamping, or removing the previous inhabitants.
Food is awesome, but it is culturally trivial. A little while ago, I said that I thought that liberals underestimated the extent to which the welfare state is spending down cultural capital accumulated in an era before safety nets. Similarly, I think libertarians tend to vastly underestimate the extent to which liberalism and free markets are sustained not by proclaimed belief or legal institutions, but by unobserved cultural norms that are transmitted slowly, if at all. Mexico can see all the things that are better about the US, none of which are particularly difficult to reproduce at the institutional level, but enforcement depends on things like a visceral indignant reaction to policemen who take bribes, rather than an attempt to work the system by developing friends in the police force. Tyler Cowen now believes that returning immigrants are shifting those norms, but we're talking about a process of decades, if not centuries. I deeply enjoy having access to world music, world art, world food--but none of them improves my life as much as living in a country with robust cultural support for individual freedom, democracy, capitalism, and liberalism.
Countries that have a real natalist problem--not America or most of Europe, by the way--are right to worry. If Israel is demographically swamped by the Arabs in the occupied territory (as they will be if they don't reach a two-state solution pretty quickly), the character of the country will change dramatically. You'll still be able to get kosher sausage, but the way the government and civil society work will change dramatically, and in many ways not for the better. Likewise, the Protestants in Northern Ireland were perfectly correct to be concerned that if the Catholics reached a majority, their country would change a great deal.
I don't think natalism is the right way to deal with this problem; I think the answer is to handle immigration in a way that allows the immigrants to be easily assimilated into your culture. To the extent that Europe does face a threat from immigration, it's because their policies flatly discourage assimilation. On the one hand, they lavish welfare benefits on immigrants and often make extensive accomodation to their interest groups; on the other, their employment system discriminates, their culture does not consider immigrants to be real members of society, and when they do attempt to encourage assimilation, they do so through ham-fisted authoritarian measures like the French ban on headscarves. America does very well with a policy of benign neglect: no one's going to force you to assimilate, but you'll have a hell of a hard time staying here unless you do.
I'm enough of a cultural relativist to believe that other cultures have a perfect right not to adopt American values, but enough of a cultural hegemonist to know that I want my country to maintain the dominant American culture. I will be thrilled to have new generations of immigrants contributing their music, their food, their religion, their community life--but I do not want them contributing their ideas about the rule of law, or indeed, what constitutes acceptable behavior in a queue. I think it is possible to achieve this happy balance without having nine kids--and without freaking out at the thought that future Americans will not share my green eyes, snub nose, and near-flourescent albedo.
While there are excellent reasons we do not legally or morally consider people as a form of capital, from an economic standpoint it seems to me we really ought to - in some sense, raising and educating new people is an economic investment no different than building heavy machinery. (And of course, human capital, like other forms of capital, depreciates over time without reinvestment...)
I'd be curious to see economic statistics on this; in some sense, a low birthrate is raising current standards of living at the cost of running down our store of human capital.
I think you put too much weight on data from before the age of cheap wide-scale communication. If we look at more recent history, I'd argue that no, ideas are vastly more important than you give credit to.
Take Israel for example. The absolute majority of Israeli jews are of middle eastern ethnicity. Yet they saw the economic advantage of adopting social norms, and did so within a generation or two.
Or look at Botswanna. Despite the British being a very tiny minority that only was in control for a short period of time, Botswanna's social norms have signifigantly shifted.
More drasticly, look at Estonia. They have had no history whatsoever of capitalism. Yet after 1991, the country spontaniously managed to adapt the social norms nessisary for a functioning market system.
Or look at Germany, Japan, Europe in the last decade, Post soviet Russia...
True or false: you came up with that "near-flourescent albedo" line a while ago and have been just dying to work it into something
"The overwhelming evidence is that when it comes to culture, numbers trump ideas. in the successive invasions of England, for example, the locals always won unless they were wiped out; the conquerors assimilated."
Most invasions of England changed the culture. The Romans made England a part of the Roman world. The Saxons (and Angles of course) destroyed Roman England and made it Germanic. The Normans may not have changed the language, but they turned England into a continental style feudal state, a massive cultural change. England remained an aristocratic country from 1066 until the First World War and the rise of the Labor party. The only invasion without permanent effects was the viking one.
I'd echo Horaceco's comment, with the caveat that the Viking invasion's effects were mostly overwritten by the German and Norman invasions.
Part of the problem with the Latino immigration into the U.S. is the size of it, which allows for ethnic enclaves that can function reasonably well without assimilation, and the ability to access Spanish-language media. While German, Italian, Polish, etc. books, magazines, newspapers, etc. were probably available, I'm sure that they were, proportionally, more expensive than the Spanish books, magazines and newspapers are today. Were there radio broadcasts in German, Italian, Polish, etc. during the prior mass (get it?) European immigration? There are Spanish-language radio and television broadcasts.
In short, in the U.S., the 'sticks' that encouraged assimilation are fewer in number if you are a native-Spanish speaker.
"More people here claim descent from the Irish than the English; numerically, Irish Americans are the largest single-country ethnic group. Yet our culture is much more heavily derived from English Prostentantism than from Irish Catholicism."
a significant chunk of those are Appalachian Ulster protestants.
False: I came up with that on the fly.
Yes, of course, they altered British culture. But they did not assimilate it; they were instead assimilated, with some small part of their cultural legacy absorbed into the whole. The British are probably still more like the Scandinavians than like the French--indeed, the common law and the parliamentary tradition grew out of an Anglo Saxon council called, aptly, The Thing.
The only invasion without permanent effects was the viking one.
Not entirely true. The dialects spoken in the parts of Britain settled by the Norse (including Scotland) bear the imprint of the Norse language.
Place names are the most visible example. In the north, the name of a small valley will end in "-dale," which is ON dalur. In the south, the name will end in "-combe," which is Welsh cwm.
"Numerically, Irish Americans are the largest single-country ethnic group."
The census bureau says German Americans are the largest (self-reported) ancestry group at 49.1 million. But perhaps they don't count as a "single country," what with German unification postdating much of the immigration.
I have to say its nice to know that not all Americans are going to tell me my country (UK) and its continental shelf are not going to rant on about how I'm gonna be swamped by Muslims, because My parents and I didn't have enough kid's. I'm sick of trollers yammering on about how Europe is the first civilisation to kill itself through...conratceptives. By the way in England we've come with an emergency countermeasure for dealing with these muslim hordes. We brought other foriegners in of different ethinicities and religons (brilliant huh?).
I would point out that most long term projections show every nation going through similar demographic evolutions, including the US. Apart from Africa and parts of the Middle East everybody's in the same hole, going at different speeds. Remember people aren't just living longer they're being hale longer (there is some truth in the 50 is the new 40 mantra).
Guess what other big nation/continent is going through a similar demographic change. China (so are South Korea and Japan by the way)
Good for you Megan calling out the racial element in all this stuff.
Actually, the biggest "ethnic" group in the 2000 census was "no ethnicity" (20 percent of population), significantly larger than the number of Germans (15 percent of population). The number grew by 115 percent between 1990 and 2000.
And although the Irish might dispute it, they were certainly part of British (not English, British) culture before they emigrated, whether it was the Presbyterian Scotch-Irish or the Catholic Celtic Irish. I don't know whether Bobby Jindal qualifies as having British culture?? Obviously, some people change very quickly, others, like the Amish, very slowly.
"in the successive invasions of England, for example, the locals always won unless they were wiped out;"
Have you never heard of the Welsh?
I will be thrilled to have new generations of immigrants contributing their music, their food, their religion, their community life--but I do not want them contributing their ideas about . . . what constitutes acceptable behavior in a queue.
If some immigrant group is degrading queue behavior, I have missed it. Probably about half the people who ride my bus were obviously not born in the US. The accepted bus stop code is universally observed. (Which is to say, at my evening stop, where it is unlikely that everyone boarding will get a seat, a line forms. In the morning, where my stop is far enough out that there is usually plenty of room, people stand around at random -- but when the bus come, it turns out that everyone has kept track of who got there first, and boarding proceeds in that order.) So who are the vandals, and where do they perpetrate their cultural degredantion?
"Degredantion." Geez. There goes my standing to correct the spelling of "fluorescent."
To make explicit what I was suggesting in the prior post: I have read that in some places (China for example), queuing for the bus is unknown and boarding is always a scrimmage. If any of the riders on the 16Y grew up in such a culture, they have obviously not had a lot of trouble figuring out what the norm is here, and conforming to it. Megan's point may be valid, but she needs to come up with a better example.
No, no, that's exactly the point. Immigrants come here and queue like Americans, which is what I want. Assimilation at its finest.
Bill,
Scotch = drink.
Scots = people.
What surprises is that the conservative demographic panic-artists seem to reject the power of human freedom. Take Ms. McCardle, who responded to Wilkinson that brute cultural inheritance from authority figures, and not individual human freedom, wins out. In so doing, she and Mark Steyn, for instance, condemn the unborn children of foreign societies to being automatons, vaguely robotic civilization-threatening enemies from the moment they are born.
"The British are probably still more like the Scandinavians than like the French--indeed, the common law and the parliamentary tradition grew out of an Anglo Saxon council called, aptly, The Thing."
Perhaps, but, as has been noted, the Anglo-Saxons were themselves invaders. Recent genetic studies show a lot of Brittanic (i.e., pre-Anglo-Saxon) DNA, but Anglo-Saxon culture became, and remains, overwhelmingly dominant.
Better examples of your thesis might be found in France (Vikings becoming Norman French, or Germanic Franks adopting Gallic culture) or Italy (Goths, Lombards, etc. becoming Italian).
What if you have a enemy that sees your lack of physical reproduction as a weakness and, hence, a provocation?
"While German, Italian, Polish, etc. books, magazines, newspapers, etc. were probably available, I'm sure that they were, proportionally, more expensive than the Spanish books, magazines and newspapers are today. Were there radio broadcasts in German, Italian, Polish, etc. during the prior mass (get it?) European immigration? There are Spanish-language radio and television broadcasts."
Don't have time to go through it now (about to leave work) but the answer for Polish publications is probably in here somewhere:
http://www.polishroots.org/newspapers/newspapers.htm
...And the Anglo-Saxons were not exactly Scandinavian, of course, although both were part of Germanic culture, broadly defined.
Numbers win. Every foreign invasion of England, or China for that matter, failed because the natives swamped the foreigners.
On the other hand, England was very successful at leaving a permanent mark on its colonies, and the U.S. has been similarly successful with nations falling under its influence. And both are very good at assimilating immigrants within the country. But the question is, why are England and America so good at this? And why don't other countries (that we aren't controlling) become exactly like us, if we're so successful?
Ms. McArdle:
Why reject the idea that babies born into Muslim society have the same robust individual freedom to seek liberty that, say, children born into Soviet society did?
Let me make a few points I consider obvious: ... ever-increasing populations are neither sustainable nor desireable.
"Obvious", but wrong.
The Black Death lead to a population crash, but had positive effects (because it destroyed population much more than it destroyed wealth, it left the survivors wealthier than the had been, and probably led to the growth that led to the Renaissance). Can you name any other time in history where such a demographic crash, or even demographic stasis, accompanied long term economic growth, and improvements in standards of living?
Population decreases come about because people stop caring about the future. The lack of children, the lack of responsibilities, leads to a poorer future (why save and invest for the future, when the world ends when you die?).
Having children makes you more invested in the future, which makes it more likely you'll take the time, and spend the effort, to make your society a better place. Since people are our fundamental economic capital, having more people means we have more bright people, inventive people, creative people, who can make the inventions that will make life better for all of us.
There are lots of bad societies with rapidly growing populations. But there are no long term healthy societies with zero or negative population growth.
Brilliant. Right on the money.
Assimilation is key. Each ingredient adds some flavor to the melting pot, but the core of the recipe remains: The truths that we hold self-evident and the norms that we take for granted i.e., how we behave in a queue, how we react to nose-picking, how much odor we tolerate from the lunch in the next cubicle, what animals we allow to be eaten... (Pigs are yummy, but dogs are forbidden... Both are smart and good pets. But I will fight to preserve bacon, and I will fight to outlaw dogmeat.)
I worry that the last 50 years have undermined the assimilation that made America what it is. Group identities are trumping individualism (though race was always an issue).
Two books I've read recently are relevant here. The first, "Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America", by David Hackett Fischer (http://www.amazon.com/Albions-Seed-British-Folkways-America/dp/0195069056/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213755900&sr=8-1)
explains how the "original" settlers of 4 regions of America were settled by folks from 4 different English cultures. And, points out that many effects remain.
The other, "How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads", by Daniel Cassidy, (http://www.amazon.com/How-Irish-Invented-Slang-Counterpunch/dp/1904859607/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213756308&sr=1-1) is very badly written, but makes the case that much of our slang is actually Irish Gaelic.
M: Steyn's work is the one I'm most familiar with, so I'll address that. He specifically states at several points that his concern is not ancestry, it's culture - the problem he sees is not European Muslims, it's European Muslims who want to force some pretty extreme variants of Islam on Europe. His condemnation is aimed squarely at the Europeans who refuse to stand up for a cultural appreciation of civil liberties and instead stand behind cultural relativism. He actually claims that it's this fundamental lack of substance in European culture that's driving most of the radicalization of European Muslims, especially among the youth.
The demographic issues Steyn addresses are only one of about three prongs behind his thesis about the death of Europe as we know it. Basically, the welfare net demands children to pay for it, Europeans aren't having those children and are instead letting them immigrate from elsewhere, European culture refuses to assimilate these immigrants, and disdain for that same European culture is leading them to adopt some pretty crazy ideas taken from the worst part of their cultural background(usually far more extreme than what their parents believe, as well). It's a problem of immigration, demographics, and disassimilation(i.e., the newcomers getting even further away from their new home's cultural norms) all three, it's not just mindless racism in book form.
I don't agree with everything Steyn has to say, by any means, but I'd like to defend him from some of the more egregious stereotyping of his positions. He may not be right, but he's at least got some plausible rationales for thinking as he does, and they shouldn't be dismissed as a belief in foreigners being inborn opponents of Western culture.
At Will Wilkinson's post I provided two links indicating that assimilation in America to his preferred culture has failed (though not as badly as in Europe, I would say). I asked if he could provide any evidence to believe it will "win the argument". He has made comments below it but declined to provide any such evidence. I take that to mean he is either incapable or uninterested in doing so.
It is time for us to set aside our transatlantic differences in the interest of preserving our greater culture.
I, for one, am willing to help the European people with their underpopulation problem. As a matter of fact, in the time I spent living in Europe, I tried to provide very personal assistance to a few specific Europeans.
The next time I am in Europe, I shall try once again to assist the European people in their time of need.
Mr. Harshaw above made an important point. The Irish, or most of them, who came to the United States had long been part of the Anglo-sphere, those from the Pale since the 15th Century. An Irishman, Edmund Burke, is one of the great lights of English Parliamentary history. Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland a few years later brought Catholics like O'Connell into the system. The Irish who flooded the United States in the 1840s and 1850s brought with them English speakers with a working knowledge of how Anglo-Saxon politics functioned, and Irish friends used their mastery of the English language to help their bretheran assimilate without necessarily become Protestant--and by the way, become the ruling power in the Catholic Church in the United States, instead of the Germans and Poles and Italians, who came in equal numbers but not armed with the English language.
The real hurdle is admitting that your own culture is worth keeping over any others. Why does our way of life merit special treatment?
It's really about identity. If you can't value your own culture more, just because it's yours, then you'll have a hard time defending it. That's what's happened to a lot of our elite. You should apologize for what you've done, not who you are.
What is it with the Atlantic (and readers) and its obsession with Burke?
I wonder how many European Muslims Steyn and co have actually met? I meet them almost every day and while there are huge intergration problems, they're mostly more concerned about they're own lives rather than creating a global Caliphate with Europe included.
And sure the Europe of today and yesteryear is dying, but so is that of every nation, religion and continent. The world is in flux as always. And seriously why is it everyones telling me I come from decadent continent? Because we're not having enough children? Why nobody going after China for this reason? Oh wait they're demographic muddle was planned of course....makes sense now.
Anyway the picture is more complicated, pro-birth social policies actually do work as you can see from the fact that the French have an above replacement birth rate (its not just they're north africans). The Nordics and Irish have a similar situation (Uk's kind of in the middle). The Italians, eastern Europeans and Germans are the ones with Demographic problems.
But I will say our intergration policies are awful.
I somehow sense Israeli Jews' concern with the Arabs taking over is not wholly focused on dramatic changes to their queuing culture.
Re: Numbers win. Every foreign invasion of England, or China for that matter, failed because the natives swamped the foreigners.
Actually, culture wins. China's culture was vastly superior to anything the Turkic or Mongol invaders had, so they ended up assimilating. Ditto for Roman culture. The Germannic "barbarians" may have destroyed the political Roman Empire, but within a couple of centuries their descendants were speaking Latin-ish dialects (the infant forms of Spanish, French etc.) and worshipping in Roman Catholic churches. But when invaders have superior cultures, as with the Europeans coming to the New World, the reverse occurs and the conquered usually end up adopting the invaders' ways, no matter what the numbers.
Re: Can you name any other time in history where such a demographic crash, or even demographic stasis, accompanied long term economic growth, and improvements in standards of living?
Can you name any time in history when population declines anywhere were not accompnaied by calamity, whether famine, war or plague? Obviously those sorts of events (and the mass dying thaey produce) create a certain cultural pessimism. But none of that is relevant to today's situation where a (potential, not yet actual) population decline is caused by a fall in birth rates not a rise in death rates. We cannot comment on the cultural effects on this situation beacuse it is in fact unique. Though as far as economic effects go, I think the Black Death analogy applies: fewer people inheriting the wealth of the past equals a higher standard of living. And despite your dirge-like musings most people still have children, just fewer of them. And a reality check: if the population of the entire planet fell by half we'd have as many people still as lived in this world when I was born, just forty years ago. We are in no danger of having too few humans on this planet any time in the foreseeable future.
Greg: I hate to break it to you, but simply having viable sperm and a willing partner does not make you the hero you seem to think you are.
USA: the demographic winter is coming.
Aging workforce.
geocities(dot)com/demographic_crash
P.S. Also new website prowomanprolife(dot)org
Strange that McCardle starts out by invoking 'an unpleasant flavor of racism.' i.e. explicitly deligitimates the position she is supposedly pondering.
Well... first, you have to 'unpack' racism. There is the negative racism of the slaveholder or the lynch mob, but there is the totally normal and natural feeling of wanting to see your own society continue with those who look, more or less, like yourself and your parents and your grandparents. That feeling is so normal and natural it motivates the immigration policy of virtually every nation on earth outside the West. The Chinese in control of Singapoore don't open their borders to Malays and they de facto encourage Chinese couples to have children, the Indians don't open their borders to sub-Saharan Africans, and the Zimbabweans worked quite diligently to get ride of the 'settler' population (a phenomenon repeating itself more slowly in South Africa).
Indeed in our own country, groups like La Raza devote most of their energies into getting people of their own race into the country. They know that numbers mean political power in a democracy... that's why Antonia Villaraigosa is mayor of LA, Fabian Nunez is speaker of the California asssembly. On a more extreme level, go ask some Kosovo Serbs. Ask some Navaho or Hopi or Lakato even.
So I for one would like to see McCardles fair skin continue, and her green eyes. And not only for aestetic, but for political and ultimately cultural reasons. Science is finding out more and more about how biology affects political leanings. [Altavista 'Are political orientations genetically transmitted?'] There are simply no liberal democracies outside of the countries with a substantial proportion of Northwestern European genes. Virtually all libertarians have names like Wilkinson or McCardle or Cavanaugh or Welsh. That alone should give biology deniers pause.
The Cultural Advantage Argument vs. Demographic Swamping is pretty complex.
I'd point out that we have lots of examples where the culture of a very small number of people came to dominate large populations quite quickly, and this dominance endured for a long time. Scythian tribes dominating the fertile crescent, the influence of the Greek city/states over the Mediterranean basin, Roman influence over Europe, European colonialism in Africa and Asia. Even in today's USA, so many features of our 'pop' culture and language come from minority populations. Modern American music largely derives from Africa. And modern American English has vocabulary and grammatical forms (double negatives) from Spanish.
On the other hand we have lots of examples of the population crush. It's not an easy argument to make, either way.
Also:
'There are simply no liberal democracies outside of the countries with a substantial proportion of Northwestern European genes.'
Israel? Greece? Spain? Italy? India?
'Virtually all libertarians have names like Wilkinson or McCardle or Cavanaugh or Welsh.'
Rand? Friedman? Proudhon? Nozick? Chomsky? Boaz?
Or are you going to pull the 'all your counter-factuals are meaningless because they are all special cases' dodge?
in the successive invasions of England, for example, the locals always won unless they were wiped out; the conquerors assimilated.
The conquerors always ended up calling themselves English - that is not quite the same thing.
The creoles who ran New Spain made a big thing about being Mexican when they declared independence, but I do not know that they really had more in common with the Aztecs than with the Spanish.
People tend to try to fit in with the dominant culture, but that can mean the culture of a small minority, if it is influential enough.
Just how African is Barbados?
Well, I am obviously not a libertarian so its not exactly my place to say who belongs in the club -- libertarianism of the conventional kind is very identity politicsy -- but I'll be your huckleuk.
I would go with Leo Straus and call Rand more a sub-Neitzchean (sp?), Friedman was into centralized money -- but okay you've got one, Proudhon a communitarian "property is theft! is not a typical libertarian sentiment", Chomsky and Boaz are not libertarian at all, in the classical sense. Nozick I'll gladly give you, so you've got two. Now compare to all the intellectuals of that ethnic group who are conventional socialists or neo-con socialists etc.
Now to countries. Israel and (to a much lesser extent) Greece are ethnostates, not classical liberal polities. Spain is a socialist state, changing from what very recently was of course a dictatorship. Italy -- hmmm -- real live fascists and semi-fascists get elected there (not a curse word for me, I think its moderately good they do -- forza Italia!) India , you've got to be kidding. India has essential a 'brown/Hindu India policy' , only people of India origin can immigrate there, its criss-crossed by caste even today, etc. And ever heard of the BJP?
There are some so-called libertarian Indians in the west, but I suspect that is because the ideology serves their class/ethnic purpose, i.e. getting even more Indians into the West.
So as a categorial my argument fails, as a probabilistic argument it succeeds.
The fear of demographic overwhelming is generally a conservative anxiety, coupled with a fear of the foreign invader and cultural change.
But when it comes to policy, how many of those conservatives would be willing to countenance massive child-care and birth-benefit packages, to disincentive 2-income, 2-career households, to make it more financially rewarding for the (presumably native) middle classes to produce large families? I would happily generate several more children if it were in our socio-economic best interests to do so. The modern late-capitalist upper-middle class career (including the obligatory expenditures on housing, etc) doesn't really cooperate, however. Oddly enough, those ethnicities that produce large families often participate in the economic sectors that allow them to coordinate extended-family and large-family labor, like family-owned businesses.
Lemmy:
"How many conservatives are going to embrace my intrusive government 'solution' to this problem?"
Well, hopefully not many. Because, as a general rule, government is the problem, so getting it involved just screws things up more. Most American conservatives understand this.
Howard:
Are you by any chance a grad student, or recent Ph. D., in one of the "social sciences"? Because you sure argue like one.
That's a lovely strawman you put together. Now would you care to actually address my argument? Or is the strawman simply your confession that you know I'm right?
Let me put it simpler, so that even you can understand it:
I contend that, in the history of this world, there is no example of a society that went from demographic growth to long term demographic stasis / decrease, said stasis / decrease not caused by external factors (i.e. plague), where it remained a long term healthy society.
IOW either you grow, or you die.
"Long term" means that to adequately evaluate a society, it must have entered that state at least 50 years ago.
Now, got any example to prove me wrong?