Population 🧩 Puzzle
SMH's piece covering the ABS's latest population growth report, implies there's something wrong with those who want to limit Australia's growth. Yes, we are ageing but we die off — it's not an inverted 🔻 triangle — it's a ♦️ diamond. Accordingly, we should be adjusting to the cyclical nature of life and not just expanding ad infinitum to our demise.
The article starts tartly with a dig at the ‘usual offenders … worked up, hand-wringing over immigrants … claiming Australia is full.’ This notion comes from the ABS report's stat that 80% of the latest 659,800 person population increase was via net overseas migration — the largest since Robert ‘Me Cunt’ Menzies' dreamtime 1950s. It goes on to say that …
Those decrying the report ignore the homegrown demographic trouble facing this nation. Australians are dying at record levels while the number of babies being born is sliding down a cliff.
Then, helpfully, it explains that population growth is determined by: immigration, births and deaths and that stats show Australia's population increase is decreasing — roughly by a third over the last decade. And therefore, without immigration, Australia's population is actually 📉 declining.
Births and fertility rates are also statistically shrinking to the point of being below the replacement rate. Again, this, supposedly, is worrying because our population is ageing, China is depopulating and climate change is worsening and AI is rising so production is changing, again.
However, these fears don't mention India which is doing ‘well’ considering its ongoing population decline (and their population is younger). How this plays out remains to be seen but, in any event, regardless of which country they are in, the more educated women get — the fewer children they have.
Lumping the ‘extremist fringe of environmentalism and those who find any excuse to demonise immigrants’ together the article suggests a looming economic catastrophe because governments can't pay for things like services, housing and infrastructure — societal fading. But …
This ignores the fact that any and all resources are finite. Growth has to be sustainable and human expansion is not. Humans are not natural — we have no checks and balances until a bomb blows up or a ponzi scheme empties bank accounts and whatever else is exploitable. The libertarian fantasy of eternal growth guarantees we all die badly.
The rich will see this planet 🔥 burn. Depopulate or die!
Economic systems must change and not for the benefit of some. Billionaires are neither democratic nor sustainable. As David Attenborough and others have said — most problems are solvable with fewer people and with wealth, services and infrastructure more evenly (i.e., more fairly) distributed.
Many of the Indigenous solutions to modern problems (such as bush fires) work with and not against the land we live on. Australia's original inhabitants are seen by colonisers as having been ‘nomadic’ — but they weren't — they were seasonal. Maybe we should be looking at solutions that follow the ebb and flow (the triangles and diamonds) of population and growth rather than trying to control and conform everything to our will. 💪
We must also defeat religion and its idiotic obsession with abortion and contraception and control of the reproductive rights of women. 🙋♀️
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