David Gordon made a characteristically robust response to the arguments
about population and migration. David commented that the idea of carrying
capacity was falsified and disproven, and that claims to the contrary were
"pseudo-scientific nonsense". Ray Thomas replied that "Dave Gordon seems a
bit out of his depth in attacking the Optimum Population Trust ... Dave
seems to be saying that everybody who supports OPT 'is very foolish and
ignorant'". We need to distinguish criticisms of an argument from
criticism of a person. The first part of Ray's reply attacks David as a
person, not David's argument. The second part assumes that David is
attacking the people who hold the view, which as far as I can see he is not.
David's argument, if I understand it rightly, was
(a) that the idea of "carrying capacity", used in this context, is
bogus;
(b) that the arguments are a survival of Malthusianism, which has been
repeatedly falsified;
and that (c) that Paul Ehrlich, the leading patron of the OPT, has
consistently been wrong about these issues.
The reason why the idea of "carrying capacity" is bogus in this context is
down to basic economics, not biology. The ability of humans to produce and
consume depends on a range of factors, but the key concepts depend on the
division of labour (from Smith) and exchange. Ricardo demonstrated, as a
simple matter of maths, that people are able to increase their productive
capacity and consumption through the division of labour and exchange. This
is explained in terms of "comparative advantage", and it is fundamental both
to social exchange and to international trade. Humans use the division of
labour, exchange and trade to increase production and capacity; to the best
of my knowledge, larks don't. Because of this, the number of people who can
live in London, the UK, Europe or even the Northern Hemisphere has no
direct relationship to the environmental constraints that would apply if we
were individually self-sufficient and did not know how to share or exchange
production. There is a normative argument that some people wish to make
against this; it has nothing to do with biological science.
David takes it that the argument is Malthusian. The core of Malthusian
arguments rests on the proposition that, given time, population has to
exceed resources. Malthus was obviously wrong - he was writing two hundred
years ago, and it has not happened yet. Neo-Malthusians think that he has
to be right in time, and there have been a series of Malthusian arguments
ever since - including e.g. the 1834 Poor Law Report, the eugenics movement,
"The population bomb" and "The limits to growth". In every way, on every
major point, the central tenets of Malthusianism have been falsified.
Population does not increase exponentially. Birth rates do not increase
regardless of circumstances. Resources are not fixed, and have consistently
expanded with population growth. Famines, Sen has shown, are not caused by
food shortages but by denial of access to resources.
OPT claims that "failure to reduce population is likely to lead to a
population crash when fossil fuels, fresh water and other resources become
scarce." I think that can fairly be described as a Mathusian argument.
But birth rates do not rise with development; they fall. Resources are not
exhausted catastrophically, because this is not the way that an
exchange-based economy works; scarcity changes relative prices and pushes
people to move to substitutes. OPT's argument is bad science, bad economics,
and at odds with what we know about population growth.
The quotes from Ehrlich show how very wrong he has been, and the manifesto
for OPT is a repetition of the same basic arguments. I was unsure about
whether Ehrlich could justly be described as OPT's "leading patron". I have
consulted their website at http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.aboutus.html <http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.aboutus.html> , and he can.
David and I have had some deeply felt disagreements in the past. On this
issue, however, he happens to be right.
Paul Spicker
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