> Famines, Sen has shown, are not caused by
> food shortages but by denial of access to resources.

This reference by Paul Spicker to Nobel Prizewiner economist Amartya Sen is
instructive because Sen epitomises the capitalist world's attitutude to
population growth.   If growth encourages demand it is OK.   If demand for
food is requited there is no problem..

Sen discusses population growth in a chapter of his 1999 book 'Development
as Freedom'.  That chapter recognises that there are reasons to be concerned
about population growth besides fears about food output. The chapter claims
that the idea of public policy on such matters is "highly divisive".  But
Sen's treatment of this topic is curiously asymmetrical.    He says that
""there is a strong  school of thought that favours, if only implicitly, a
coercive solution to this problem" (p 210).    

Why does Sen raise this spectre of coercive measures?   

It is difficult to find examples of public policies aiming to check
population growth.   The major exception is China's one-child policy
instituted in 1979.   This has been labelled as coercion in the West and is
persistently deprecated in the mass media.   It believed to have been
effective in reducing China's population growth.    As far as I am aware it
would be labelled as having been public policy rather than coercion in
China.

Most reductions in population growth have not been the result of purposive
policies let alone policies that can be plausibly labelled as coercive.
Population reduction in the former Soviet countries has been achieved by the
uncertainties associated with the ending of the Soviet system.    In the UK
falling fertility is associated with growing equality between women and men
in the labour market - and rising house prices.  On the other side many
countries have pronatal policies.   France and Russia are now intent on
arresting the decline in their population.   Should such pronatal polices be
labelled as coercive?

Sen's highlighting of coercion and "reproductive rights" draws attention
away from pronatal policies and ignores the fact that most population
reductions have been achieved without coercion.  The idea of coercion gives
a false representation of the issues involved in population growth.  Sen in
effect avoids discussion of levels of population and discourages others from
entering such discussions.   

The major issues relating to population levels are nothing to do with
coercion or reproductive rights, but are mostly to do with womens' rights,
womens' education and, as Jay pointed out, access to contraception.   

The importance of these factors has been well identified for many decades,
but not it seems among economists.  Nor it appears among Radstats members.

Ray Thomas
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-----Original Message-----
From: email list for Radical Statistics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Paul Spicker
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2007 11:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: OPT.


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.

.....

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