Patterico's Pontifications

7/12/2017

Babies Are Killing The Earth, They Must Be Stopped!

Filed under: General — Dana @ 4:42 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Untitled

For those who already have more than one child, I guess it’s time to pick and choose which one really *isn’t* your favorite. Sad!

Before pushing the Earth First zealotry, it would be good to take a moment to consider the economic and societal impact of declining birthrates:

With an aging population and shrinking pool of younger citizens, we would face increasingly intractable problems in providing for our elders. It’s not a terribly controversial notion to admit that younger, productive workers are needed to pay for the tax system that sustains our elders.

At best, Filipovic’s proposal would lead to massive tax hikes on workers and declining standards of care. This would inevitably reduce private sector investment and productivity, growing debt, and a restraining influence on the economy. Put simply, we would live less-wealthy, less-happy lives.

Consider Japan, where birthrates are plummeting:

Last year, the number of births in Japan dropped below one million for the first time, the ministry of health, labour and welfare said Friday.

The shrinking of the country’s population – deaths have outpaced births for several years – is already affecting the economy in areas including the job and housing markets, consumer spending and long-term investment plans at businesses.

For now, the Japanese economy is growing despite a dwindling number of workers and consumers. Growing global demand for Japanese products is one reason. But the real decline has barely begun.

After Japan’s population hit a peak of 128 million at the start of the current decade, it shrank by close to 1 million in the five years through 2015, according to census data. Demographers expect it to plunge by a third by 2060, to as few as 80 million people — a net loss of 1 million a year, on average.

This naturally followed by the inevitable vicious cycle:

Japan has entered a vicious cycle of low fertility and low spending that has led to trillions in lost GDP and a population decline of 1 million people, all within just the past five years…

Economists have a name for countries that contract because of these swirling forces: “demographic time bombs.” In these nations, falling spending shrinks the economy, which discourages families from having kids, which shrinks the economy further. Meanwhile, people are living longer than ever before.

“An aging population will mean higher costs for the government, a shortage of pension and social security-type funds, a shortage of people to care for the very aged, slow economic growth, and a shortage of young workers,” Brinton says.

Not to put too fine a point on it but Japan now sells more adult diapers than baby diapers.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

57 Responses to “Babies Are Killing The Earth, They Must Be Stopped!”

  1. Earth Eugenics??!!

    Dana (023079)

  2. i’ve never met anyone who wishes they’d had fewer kids

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  3. Me either, happyfeet. But have more than one, and you are obviously selfish, hate the earth and want to kill everyone.

    Dana (023079)

  4. i always think of this book when we talk about the japanese population decline

    it’s a real thing, the idea at the heart of the novel

    Coin-operated-locker babies is a type of child abuse found primarily in Japan and China. In these cases, unwanted babies are left in public lockers with the presumption that such lockers are regularly checked by attendants and the infant will be found quickly; however, many children are found dead in these lockers. Between 1980 and 1990, there were 191 reported cases of infants that died in coin-operated lockers, which represents about six percent of all infanticides during that period.

    I guess this isn’t so much of a problem anymore.

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  5. Oh, that makes my heart hurt, hf.

    Dana (023079)

  6. Patterico, I seem to recall you commenting some years ago that there were too many people on the Earth. You cited things like the overcrowding in our metropolitan areas. Have you changed your mind?

    Anon Y. Mous (6cc438)

  7. “The Roe Effect is a hypothesis about the long-term effect of abortion on the political balance of the United States, which suggests that since supporters of abortion rights cause the erosion of their own political base.”

    “Its best-known proponent is James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal who coined the phrase “Roe effect” in Best of the Web Today”

    It is the best pro-abortion argument I can think of.

    Gotta love James Taranto.

    ThOR (c9324e)

  8. Careful, the new French President is in trouble with the SJWs for suggesting the same thing.

    http://www.politico.eu/article/macron-g20-angry-reaction-to-emmanuel-macrons-remark-that-africa-has-a-civilizational-problem/

    harkin (a91251)

  9. If only her parents had heeded her advice, it would have saved the earth and its inhabitants from her odious existance.

    WarEagle82 (2b3d34)

  10. it’s kooky that abortion just isn’t enough for this hooch

    abortion is a very real and handy tool for to help people not have kids they don’t feel they’re prepared to handle

    yay abortion!

    but ffs this hooch wants to take it up another notch?

    srsly?

    that’s just tacky if you ask me

    number one it’s just so tacky

    number two it betrays such a dearth of imagination, and of essential basic humanity as well

    i wonder if this hooch has had her one earth-raping bastard kid yet or if we’re dawdling on that

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  11. Anon Y. Mous,

    I wrote the post, not Patterico.

    Dana (023079)

  12. Happyfeet: My parents may have. At least, they had good cause.

    Gary (7ec1de)

  13. True story:

    My wife and I became parents of twin girls late in our “parenthood” days.

    When I told one of my very close friends that my wife was expecting twins, his wife — a very well educated Berniac — got quite wide-eyed, and before saying anything else to me she said, “Well, you know you have to plant 5 trees of each of them in order to keep the earth’s ecosystem in balance.”

    I’ll never forget that was her first reaction.

    How do lefties wire their brains to think like that?

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  14. “The Roe Effect is a hypothesis about the long-term effect of abortion on the political balance of the United States, which suggests that since supporters of abortion rights cause the erosion of their own political base.”

    Not just political but racial balance too. When you tell liberals that the KKK ended about 3,500 black lives total but that Planned Parenthood has ended over 15 million, the look on their faces is priceless.

    harkin (a91251)

  15. i bet not Gary but i guess there’s always outliers

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  16. good synthesis Mr. harkin

    i don’t really have a comment on the whole childless european leaders thing

    just that if you wrote it in a novel if would seem pretty contrived

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  17. What a great story, swc. Congrats on all your kids.

    DRJ (15874d)

  18. if i had to guess I’d say Mr. P’s thinkings have evolved since that column Mr. Mous

    btw i got the prosecco for your cocktail but I’m held up on the mamango thing – i need to study up and see if i can approximate that or just get binny’s to deliver it for me

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  19. would this do the trick?

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  20. @Dana & Patterico

    Oops… Normally, I pay attention to who the author is. My apologies.

    Anon Y. Mous (6cc438)

  21. harkin@59

    Excellent point!

    Eugenics lives on.

    ThOR (c9324e)

  22. The more people we have like Jill Filipovic, the fewer people we’ll have like Jill Filipovic.

    nk (dbc370)

  23. Just between you and me, if I had to choose, to save the planet, I’d choose a baby over Jill Filipovic. Make room, Jill! (If you know what I mean and I think you do.)

    nk (dbc370)

  24. Shia the Boof hasn’t started a family yet

    he has a passionate love for the erf you see

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  25. oops sorry Mr. Mous that was “Anon a mouse” at another blog not this one

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  26. SWC,

    I am a twin. While mom labored in the delivery room, dad paced in the waiting room. Neither of them knew twins were on the way. And neither did the doctor. There were no ultrasounds then. Thus when told by the OB that he was now father of twins, my shocked dad exclaimed, “But I only ordered one!”

    Dana (023079)

  27. Greetings:

    I stil get a bit of my TV news from the France24 English-language broadcasts. Yesterday, they aired a bit with Paul Erlich (sp???) who is now a Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. What he was offering up was something about how all the invertebrates (whatever they are) are dying off because the population is just too damn high which is a bit of a rewrite from what he was offering up a generation or so ago which was that human over-population was going to kill us all.

    I like flexible Professors best.

    11B40 (6abb5c)

  28. People still heed the words of Paul Ehrlich??

    “In 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb and declared that the battle to feed humanity had been lost and that there would be a major food shortage in the US. “In the 1970s … hundreds of millions are going to starve to death,” and by the 1980s most of the world’s important resources would be depleted. He forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980-1989 and that by 1999, the US population would decline to 22.6 million. The problems in the US would be relatively minor compared to those in the rest of the world. (Ehrlich, Paul R. The Population Bomb. New York, Ballantine Books, 1968.) New Scientist magazine underscored his speech in an editorial titled “In Praise of Prophets.”

    Claim: “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Paul Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971.

    Claim: Ehrlich wrote in 1968, “I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971, if ever.”
    Data: Yet in a only few years India was exporting food and significantly changed its food production capacity. Ehrlich must have noted this because in the 1971 version of his book this comment is deleted (Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource, Princeton: Princeton Univesity Press, 1981, p. 64)”.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/19/great-moments-in-failed-predictions/amp/

    harkin (a91251)

  29. Another great story. Thanks, Dana!

    DRJ (15874d)

  30. I suspect some enterprising Japanese roboticists are about to invent the Aibo Home Care Nurse. Or something like this delightful movie.

    And of course, for those who are still having children, maybe a robot nurse for them, too. That way parents aren’t forced to give up their real lives.

    And of course, someone will build robot babies, for people who want to have the experience, but want to be able to turn it off when they’re tired of it.

    And in the distant future, Japan will be populated by nurse robots spending their time caring for robot babies, and there will be no people anywhere to be seen.

    Karl Lembke (cd9062)

  31. Earth First stances are all too common these days. They cloak themselves in many forms too. Environmentalists, Vegans, Post-Modernists, Progressives, etc.

    People fall in love with the idea that humans should be hated.

    Dejectedhead (d3cff5)

  32. Trump could murder a baby and his supporters would argue that the baby had it coming.”

    Chelsea Handler – proud member of ‘Brag About Your Abortion’ Club.

    http://www.dailywire.com/news/18531/chelsea-handler-trump-could-murder-baby-and-amanda-prestigiacomo

    harkin (a91251)

  33. And Japan probably doesn’t need the likes of Lisa Rinna and provocatively bent cougar ladies to push Depends, either.

    urbanleftbehind (847a06)

  34. I found the column I was thinking of:

    https://patterico.com/2010/09/06/taking-seriously-glenn-reynoldss-column-on-environmentalist-eliminationist-rhetoric/

    Anon Y. Mous (6cc438) — 7/12/2017 @ 5:20 pm

    That post thoroughly confuses me. I could’ve sworn Patterico was pro amnesty and against closing our borders. In the post, he says the exact opposite.

    Strange times. Don’t know how I missed it back then…

    NJRob (91d741)

  35. I don’t get it. The population explosionis from the 3rd world and the West is being demographically replaced. Who is going to lead society into further advancement or are we just going to go silently into the night?

    NJRob (91d741)

  36. You may have made the leap in logic based our host’s Trumskepticism. There are several strains of this view and many are actually on the right hand side.

    urbanleftbehind (dd58be)

  37. it would be a fun post for Mr. P to revisit I think

    he’s clarified his thinking on economics in particular quite a bit since then

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  38. I found the column I was thinking of:

    https://patterico.com/2010/09/06/taking-seriously-glenn-reynoldss-column-on-environmentalist-eliminationist-rhetoric/

    Ha! Check out the WALL OF WORDS Patterico once wrote! Where did I get the energy for all that?

    Patterico (115b1f)

  39. Blah blah blah blah BLAH blah blah blah BLAH

    Patterico (115b1f)

  40. it would be a fun post for Mr. P to revisit I think

    he’s clarified his thinking on economics in particular quite a bit since then

    It’s true. I have come to a different view on how the division of labor, facilitated by our burgeoning population, improves our lives.

    I still think there are valid concerns buried somewhere in that tome I wrote in 2010, but one must acknowledge the benefits of the population growth as well.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  41. That post thoroughly confuses me. I could’ve sworn Patterico was pro amnesty and against closing our borders. In the post, he says the exact opposite.

    I have . . . always said the exact opposite. I don’t have the slightest clue where you got the idea that I was “pro amnesty and against closing our borders.”

    I favor increased legal immigration but I have been a hardliner against illegal immigration for as long as anyone here can remember.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  42. i’ve never met anyone who wishes they’d had fewer kids

    i’ve never met anyone who wishes their parents had fewer kids.

    On occasion I meet someone where I wish both.

    Kevin M (752a26)

  43. I favor increased legal immigration but I have been a hardliner against illegal immigration for as long as anyone here can remember.

    Just so. You maybe correlate illegal immigration with lawbreaking, but there may be one.

    Kevin M (752a26)

  44. I’m reminded of a 30 year old book “Nature’s End” by Whitley Striber*, where overpopulation and economic and environmental catastrophe results in a Depopulation Movement. The idea is for a vote to require everyone one earth to take a pill, 1 out 3 of which will be fatal. It turns out that the proponents actually have a much different ratio in mind, involving “us” and “all of them.”

    —–
    Yes, he later got lost into alien abduction crap, but this is actually a good book. So was his earlier “Warday”

    Kevin M (752a26)

  45. @ Karl Lembke,

    And of course, for those who are still having children, maybe a robot nurse for them, too. That way parents aren’t forced to give up their real lives.

    That’s funny and sad, because for most people, when they become parents, their lives become more real than they ever have been before. Astoundingly so. The appearance of a baby adds a depth and richness and meaning that wasn’t there prior to their arrival.

    Dana (023079)

  46. I think I mentioned natures end, once, that was the first global warming fiction

    narciso (d1f714)

  47. I have . . . always said the exact opposite. I don’t have the slightest clue where you got the idea that I was “pro amnesty and against closing our borders.”

    I favor increased legal immigration but I have been a hardliner against illegal immigration for as long as anyone here can remember.

    Patterico (115b1f) — 7/12/2017 @ 8:18 pm

    Thank you for setting me straight. Don’t know why I thought that.

    Locke (8cb5b0)

  48. The birth rate alarmists were always wrong/ignorant of humankind’s ability to increase crop production.

    And all the time they were ignoring the true catastrophic population bomb (pun intended):

    http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2017/04/04114923/PF_17.04.05_projectionsUpdate_change310px.png

    harkin (a91251)

  49. “That’s funny and sad, because for most people, when they become parents, their lives become more real than they ever have been before. Astoundingly so. The appearance of a baby adds a depth and richness and meaning that wasn’t there prior to their arrival.”

    – Dana

    Beautifully stated, Dana. It is sad that a large segment of our population doesn’t understand this.

    ThOR (c9324e)

  50. No, no, let the babies live. However, we do need to reduce the overall population.

    There’s way too many of us. We’re polluting the air, the seas, and the land: It’s indisputable. And, it can’t continue unabated before one or more of the Four Horsemen lead the charge into catastrophic redress.

    We either face up to the future consequences of overpopulation now and take appropriate steps to bring overall numbers down to sustainable levels, or we risk a brave new world dominated by life boat ethics.

    World population is like a tsunami of lemmings rushing at breakneck speed toward indiscriminate and certain genocide.

    ropelight (a7d89c)

  51. To be fair, Harkin, unless you had ground level exposure to those societies via business, diplomacy or military activity, people were not focused on the muslim threat since religion had been sublimated to national categorization. It why you could get away with defining Iranians as a certain threat in a summer blockbuster movie in 1985 (Back to the Future) and could not do so today. Taken had to use one of the whitest of the muslim groups, the Albanians, to drive this point across.

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  52. Libyans but the point still obtains and Syria was Iran’s enable back then.

    narciso (d1f714)

  53. Back in the 80s I was very pregnant with my third child. Standing in line at the grocery store with my two older children I had a stranger acost me and berate me quite loudly for having too many children. She told everyone within earshot that “people like me” should be sterilized. I was a bit flustered and just walked away. I’d like that ignorant woman to know that I went on to have a *gasp* fourth child. Then to make matters worse I home educated them. Now they are all college graduates (with honors), have all held jobs since the age of 15, all happily married and I now have 13 grandchildren. Every Sunday they all come to Grandma and Grandpas house for lunch.

    And if that isn’t enough, my 13th grandchild was my moms 113th! No joke.. she’s 85 yrs old and has 42 grandkids, 53 great grandkids and 18 great-great grandkids.

    Family is awesome and babies are a blessing. Too bad this lady is so biased in her earth-first message that she will never experience the joys and heartaches that make up family. Or maybe that’s a good thing considering her beliefs.

    Marci (e5bb26)

  54. Good girl, Marci, you’re what makes the world go round. This land was made for you and the good people who share your ideals.

    ropelight (a7d89c)

  55. “Children are a gift of the Lord” — Proverbs

    sam (efcc6f)


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