The Population Question; J. Weber

JAMES A. WEBER THE POPULATION QUESTION Limited government or·limited people? WE, the people, founded the United States of America on the principle of limited government. Now, the government is propos ing to operate on the basis of a new principle: limited people. The need for this complete in version in the relationship between the American people and their government has been heralded by a seemingly endless outpouring of population-control propaganda and other "popullution" pap. Yet, the case for population control re mains unmade. Consider these facts: 1) Population growth in the United States is not a problem. The more hysterical proponents of population control like to draw "runaway" population growth Mr. Weber is a Chicago writer-photographer specializing in public relations. A graduate of Loyola University with an M.A. in Urban Studies, he is doing research for a book on U.S. population.

curves that go practically straight up. However, in the real world, population growth follows an "S" rather than a HI" curve. We are nearing the end of this "8" curve which represents the demographic transition. Conse quently, our population growth is now slowing down and in the fu ture will begin to level out, caus ing a number of noted demogra phers to bail out of their expo nentially rising projections. The most prominent example to date is Donald J. Bogue, director of the Community and Family Study Center at the University of Chicago. In 1963, Dr. Bogue was among those shouting from the rooftops about the perils of over population. At the time, estimates of U.S. population at the end of the century varied from 300 to 400 million. Today, Dr. Bogue is predicting 579 580 THE FREEMAN October a U.S. population in 2001 of about 250 million people - only 42 mil lion or 20 per cent more than in 1970. Bogue further predicts that there will be no more babies born annually in 2001 than there are today.

The President's National Goals Research Staff recognized the lack of any population "explosion" in the U.S. when it stated in July, 1971, in a report entitled "Toward Balanced Growth: Quantity with Quality": "One decision which ap pears not to be urgent is that of overall size of the population even after the effects of a consid erable immigration are taken into account." 2) Population growth in the United States is not a major cause of problems. Population growth has proved to be a boon to those in search of simple solutions to com plex problems. Pollution, crime, overcrowding, resource depletion, lower living standards, reduced governmental services, you name it, population growth causes it, according to these simplistic souls. But the ac cusations are not supported by the facts. Technological Impact Take, for example, pollution. According to Barry Commoner, the increase in population since· 1946 accounts for only about 12 to 20 per cent of the various increases in total U.S. pollutant output.

From 40 to 95 per cent of these increases were caused by new production technologies which re sulted in increas·ed output of pol lutants per unit of production. Commoner points out that it would have been necessary to re duce 1946 population by 86 per cent in order to prevent the rise in pollution which has occurred during the past 25 years. In other words, we would have to have a current U.S. population of 20 to 25 million people to maintain 1946 pollution levels at today's level of technology. By contrast, a 30-per cent reduction in the environmen tal impact of technology would have accomplished the same result. The conclusion is that U.S. popu lation growth has only a minor ef fect on the intensification of pol lution. Conversely, immense re ductions in population size would be required to materially affect pollution levels. There is at the same time an other side to the pollution coin, namely, that although people ac count for only 12 to 20 per cent of pollution, they form 100 per cent of the productive source of funds which must be used in the future to reduce many types of pollution. Lake Erie, for instance, will contilJ,ue to be a problem re gardless of future population 1972 LIMITED GOVERNMENT OR LIMITED PEOPLE? 581 trends. But it will be a problem that can be more easily resolved from a financial point of view by a growing population.

Crowding and Crime Another favorite "problem" of populationists is crime. A classic example of this was a full-page advertisement in the New York Times sponsored by a group called the Campaign to. Check the Popu lation Explosion. Under the head line "Have you ever been mugged? Well, you may be" was a picture of a man grappling with a mug ger. "Is there an answer [to crime in the cities] ?" the ad copy asked. "Yes," it responded, "birth con trol is one." Major central cities such as New York do, in fact, have the highest crime rates. But these cities are losing, not gaining, population. Shall we therefore con clude that crime increases as popu lation decreases? Of course, juvenile delinquency goes up disproportionately during a period of population growth be cause there are more young people around in relation to the rest of the population. The ad also calls attention to this fact with the statement: "City slums - jam packed with juveniles, thousands of them idle - breed discontent, drug addiction and chaos."

Tongue-in-cheekwise, population control is sort of, yes, an "answer" to the so-called "youth problem." But an answer which involves solving problems simply by elimi nating people who have or cause the problems hardly merits serious consideration as a legitimate solu tion. Population Density What about overcrowding? At 55 persons per square mile, the United States is one of the least densely populated countries in the wor ld. Holland, for example, has 975 persons per square mile; Eng land, 588; Switzerland, 382. Overcrowding in the U.S. is a function of population distribu tion, not population size. And peo ple congregate, Le., overcrowd, in metropolitan areas for their mu tual advantage. This is what met ropoli tan areas are all about. But even in these areas popula tion density is decreasing with the continuing exodus of people from central cities to suburbs. This de centralization was initially made possible by improvements in trans portation. It is now being further hastened by revolutionary im provements in electronic commu nications which are rapidly mini mizing the need for centralized paper-shuffling and face-to-face contacts.

Nobody anticipates that the United States will run out of re582 THE FREEMAN October sources in the next 50 years due to population growth. Beyond that, it is difficult to speculate or, to put it another way, it is only possible to speculate because we are not sure of the full extent of existing resources or what new resources may be developed. Fur-~ thermore, many resources now be ing consumed and discarded will increasingly be reused in the fu ture should prices rise due to growing scarcities and the addi tion of pollution charges to processing costs. . Meanwhile, those who weep be cause Americans constitute only 6 per cent of the world's population but consume 40 per cent of the world's annual resource output should dry their eyes. Economies of underdeveloped countries around the world are dependent for their survival on the income derived from this consumption. Reduce or eliminate it and we will really find out what problems are like.

It is a rote assertion of popu lationists that per capita income will not keep pace, Le., we will be forced to accept lower living standards, as population increases. There is, of course, nothing in our previous economic history to in dicate that increases in per capita income cannot proceed side-by side with population growth; the exact opposite is the case. Nor is there anything in our present cir cumstances to support this suppo sition or its converse that per capita income will increase as pop ulation growth decreases, e.g., West Virginia whose population is declining is not noted for boom ing per capita income. Per capita income IS a function of productivity as well as popula tion. A growing population makes possible improvements in produc tivity which are more than a match for population growth, thus resulting in increasing per capita income. "Public Sector" Problems It is also said by population control promoters that growing population will outstrip the capa bilities of Federal, state and local governments to provide services to the people. But, if this is really the case, it can be more readily taken as a mandate for more ef ficient governmental operation and greater concentration on the pro vision of essential governmental services rather than a rationale for population reduction. The idea of eliminating people to make things easier for government is a rather grotesque perversion of the American political promise.

The lack of any major cause and-effect relationship between population growth and the prob lems it supposedly causes prompt1972 LIMITED GOVERNMENT OR LIMITED PEOPLE? 583 ed Conrad Taeuber, associate di rector of the U.S. Census Bureau and director of the 1970 census, to observe: "Our population prob lem is one of tackling the agenda for improvement of our total en vironment. A lowered rate of pop ulation growth may facilitate the tackling of those tasks - but it would be only one small element in the programs which need to be developed." 3) Population control in the United States will not solve any problems. The purpose of popula tion control is to reduce popula tion growth. But population growth is not a major cause of any problems. Therefore, reducing population growth through popu lation control will not solve any problems. This is another way of saying that it is simplistic nonsense to suggest, as the report of The ComSocialism's Poor Record mission on Population Growth and the American Future does, that increases in the "quality of life"

-the Commission's favorite "buzz" phrase - can be achieved through decreases in the quantity of peo ple. There is no automatic, inverse relationship between people qual ity and people quantity. I t is true, of course, that wher ever there are people there are problems. But this is a description of the human condition, not a pre scription for population control. In a creative, free and rightly ordered society, people solve more problems than they make. This is the source of increasing life qual ity. It is unlimited government of the type required· to achieve the stated goals of population control that makes more problems than it solves. , IDEAS ON LIBERTY SOCIALISM has a poor record when it comes to eliminating prob lems: its answer adds up to eliminating people. In fact, one of socialism's major and chronic problems is simply people. Social ism on the one hand destroys production, and, on the other, breeds up the least desirable elements. Its answer is to find the people at fault. Socialism always faces overpopulation; a free economy does not.

ROUSAS J. RUSHDOONY, The Myth 0/ Over.Population FOR MYSELF Enw ARD Y. BREESE THERE'S ONLY ONE VOTE I can cast this year· or any year that's of real importance to myself or to anyone else -and it won't appear on any ballot. Contrary to what most people feel, the vote I cast in a Presi dential election doesn't seem very important to me. The sheer weight of inertia inherent in a burea uc racy the size of ours makes me doubt that any Chief Executive can really make things either much better or much worse. All of the cells of the body politic tend to go on pursuing their individual aims of growth in the same old way no matter who sits back of tha t desk in the White House. The legislators and the courts continue to march to their old, familiar drums. It's been some time since poli tics excited me. Still, I can cast the vote that Mr. Breese has taught Industrial Manage ment· at Georgia Tech and headed the De partment of Humanities at .Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Institute in Florida. At present he is a freelance writer.