When Thanos snapped his fingers, he wiped out half of the living beings in the universe to achieve “balance and reduce suffering”. But Thanos was a villain, right? Or wasn’t he? Since the times of Thomas Robert Malthus global media is pondering the idea of overpopulation, massive famines and collapse of civilization to the people. This article explores why the threat of “population bomb” is a big lie, how it wrecked whole generations of “developed countries”, and why you should have children to save humanity!
Part I. Why people won’t have children
The ghost of Malthus.
In 1798 Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus presented has famous “population trap” in the Essay on the Principle of Population. According to the author – the linear growth of food production cannot keep up with exponential population growth, therefore famine and collapse of civilization is unavoidable.
The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.
Thomas Maltus
Unfortunately, Malthus didn’t realize that agricultural innovations can also expand exponentially over time. As Friedrich Engels rightly stated – “progress is as unlimited and at least as rapid as that of population idea”. Indeed, since the late 19th century, the productivity of the land has experienced a significant increase, from 15 bushels per acre in 1866 to 30 bushels in 1965, and finally to 42 bushels per acre in 2005. It is evident that the productivity of wheat surpluses tripled within a span of 150 years, and this phenomenon has been observed in virtually all other crops as well.
Peter Zeihan, the author of a great book “The End of the World Is Just the Beginning” noted –
“ some 11.5 billion acres, is under cultivation than at any other time in human history. More crops-in 2020, total agricultural output was worth about $8 trillion–are in production than any time in human history… it has enabled vast swaths of the planet to have large populations when geography alone wouldn’t previously support them.”
The population in North Africa increased 5 times because governments could afford to buy cheap wheat grown in Ukraine or elsewhere. Now we have more food than in any time in history, humanity can flourish not fearing the Malthusian famine trap. Alas, despite the obvious progress, neo-malthusians won’t stop frightening people with the phantom of famine and the death of civilization:
In 1968, Stanford University professor Paul R. Ehrlich and former Stanford senior researcher Anne H. Ehrlich published the book called “Population Bomb” where the authors predicted that rapid population growth will cause a catastrophe while there will be simply not enough food.
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…We must rapidly bring the world population under control, reducing the growth rate to zero or making it negative.”
In 1972, a think tank called “The Club of Rome” issued their infamous report “The Limits to Growth” where authors “predicted” again the depletion of resources on Earth (including food) and the collapse of civilization. It was supposed to happen by year 2000.
The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied, and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential.
The infamous National Security Study Memorandum 200 aka The Kissinger Report, released in 1974 mainly stressed on the issue of keeping the populations of“least developed countries” low, to withdraw their resources and avoid revolutions. It also had mentioned food shortages as the reason to keep the population numbers down. This classified document was used as a blueprint for decades of US foreign policy mainly aiming at counties like India, Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria etc.
“Growing populations will have a serious impact on the need for food especially in the poorest, fastest growing LDCs.[least developed countries] … there will be serious problems in food distribution and financing, making shortages, even at today’s poor nutrition levels, probable in many of the larger more populous LDC regions.”
Kissinger Report
Communist leader Deng Xiaoping proposed implementing a strict “One child policy” to stop population growth of China that has hit one billion mark in 1982.
“Comrade Xiannian proposed to me planning “better one, at most two”. I’d say be stricter, stipulating that “only one is allowed”. Prepare to be criticized by others for cutting off the offspring. But if we don’t do it, the future looks grim.” Chen Yu.
Industrialization and Urbanization
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!
Psalm 127
Centuries before the Industrial Revolution, your children were your workforce, your army, and your care in old age. When goods and food started flowing from the colonies in the 19th century and factory workers could afford housing and food while enjoying all the benefits of living in the city, it became obvious that the old tribe model was no longer viable.
Children were free labor that were de facto chained to their parents’ economic needs. The extended family formed a tribe that consistently supported one another. The new industrial conditions were urban-based. and coal-driven. The countryside drained as people chased the money. Towns became cities.
Peter Zeichan. The End of the World Is Just the Beginning.
Fertilizers caused the productivity of land to grow every decade, modern machinery like tractors and harvesters not only replaced horses and axes but humans too. There was no longer a need for extensive manual labor on farms as it happened for millennia, therefore people moved from county to the city en masse. Children no longer were a feasible investment (even if it sounds cynical), there was not much work for children to do in cities (well maybe in the mines and factories in the 19th century) but children still required their parents to invest in food, clothing, and education. That is precisely the reason why industrialized societies inevitably experienced depopulation.
Boy feeds his chickens and donkey on farm, Shropshire, 1910
Women’s rights and birth control
Industrialization also boosted the fight for Women’s rights. Suffragists demanded equal rights with men, which wouldn’t have been possible before the Industrial Revolution, while women had to work as hard as their husbands and children to survive. It would have been really hard for a woman to survive on her own in previous ages, unless she had some higher status in society and some sufficient possessions. With industrialization, women could work and sustain themselves without a family. The newly found methods of birth control and legalization of abortion introduced in the Communist USSR in 1920 also gave women an opportunity to reduce the number of children or even live childfree.
In 1845 the U.S. government awarded a patent for rubber vulcanization to Charles Goodyear, which set industry on the path to making cheap, reliable condoms. Combine such advances with the early women’s rights movements, and the political and economic stars of the fairer sex began their long rise- but at the cost of overall fertility rates.
Peter Zeichan. The End of the World Is Just the Beginning.
Sexual revolution
“They shall prostitute themselves but not multiply”
Hos 4:10
In 1920 the First Sexual Revolution led by Alexandra Kolontai in Saint Petersburg not only introduced abortion, but also allowed sexual communities of workers, normalized infidelity and nudism in public places, even for children. These “reforms” were backed by modern Freudian and Marxist ideas of “freedom”. While this experiment ended as a fiasco and was wrapped up by the communist regime, while rape levels skyrocketed as a result of “free love” politics.
Nevertheless, Sexual revolution was later imported to Western societies and exploded in the 60s. Abortions were slowly legalized in many countries all over the world and “free love” became a tempting idea, pushing aside family values and childbearing along with it.
Soviet power realises that the need for abortion will only disappear on the one hand when Russia has a broad and developed network of institutions protecting motherhood and providing social education, and on the other hand when women understand that childbirth is a social obligation; Soviet power has therefore allowed abortion to be performed openly and in clinical conditions.
No more domestic bondage for women. No more inequality within the family. No need for women to fear being left without support and with children to bring up. The woman in communist society no longer depends upon her husband but on her work. It is not in her husband but in her capacity for work that she will find support. She need have no anxiety about her children. The workers’ state will assume responsibility for them.
One climate change study suggests that having one fewer child reduces CO2 emission by 60 tons per year. Authors complain that governments do not encourage children in school programs to have fewer children (?).
No textbook suggested having fewer children as a way to reduce emissions ..Some high-impact actions (having less children) may be politically unpopular, but this does not justify a focus on moderate or low-impact actions at the expense of high-impact actions.
We can hear more appeals in the media to save the planet and have fewer children. Some women even went on birth strike while climate change is not resolved.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) stated: “Basically, there’s a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult. And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question: Is it okay to still have children?”
Although not all people buy the message that demographic suicide is great for the planet, but still “only five percent of childless adults specifically named climate change as the crucial factor for not , with an additional nine % citing “the state of the world.” (2021 Pew survey).
The demographic paradox.
The common knowledge indicates that a safe and prosperous environment is desired, and even required, to raise children. Well, not exactly, according to the CIA Total fertility rate, poor countries like Niger, Angola and Congo top the chart, while developed countries like Germany, UK, Japan and US are at the bottom of the league. In year 2000, Herwig Birg coined the term Demo-Economic Paradox , he observed that the more prosperous society gets, the fewer children it requires as an “investment”.In other words, in modern industrialized societies, children have become more of a commodity that can be easily replaced by a dog or a cat.
The more successful modern societies are in utilizing the beneficial effects of competition while avoiding its adverse effects, the less people need to rely on having their own families, which always performed these tasks before the emergence of modern societies, and the larger the fall in the value of having children “as an investment”
The winners of Global Fertility Rate Chart
The outcomes
Although industrialization and scientific progress reduced famines, prolonged longevity, and welfare globally, it had its dark side – ironically, urbanization and higher life standards provoked the fertility rates to plummet. Here are a few quotes from Peter Zeihan on the outcomes of industrialization and globalization:
The point of no return passed around 1980. That’s when masses of twenty-and thirty-somethings simply stopped having children. Fast-forward four decades to the present and this childless generation is now retiring. Most of the developed world faces imminent, simultaneous consumption, production, and financial collapses.
In 2019 the Earth for the first time in history had more people aged sixty-five and over than five and under. By 2030 there will be twice as many retirees, in relative terms.
In the 2020s, birth rates are no longer simply dropping; they have been so low for so long that even the countries with the younger age structures are now running low of young adults -the demographic that produces the children.
China’s labor force and overall population peaked in the 2010s. In the best-case scenario, the Chinese population in the year 2070 will be less than half of what it was in 2020.
For countries as varied as China, Russia, Japan, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Ukraine, Canada, Malaysia, Taiwan, Romania, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria, the question isn’t when these countries will age into demographic obsolescence. All will see their worker cadres pass into mass retirement in the 2020s. None have sufficient young people to even pretend to regenerate their populations. All suffer from terminal demographics.
Japan is already the world’s oldest demography (and was the fastest-aging one until China took up that mantle in 2020). Korea’s baby bust started twenty years after Japan’s, but has progressed faster. Taiwan and Thailand are roughly a decade behind Korea. Even populous
Indonesia and Vietnam, with roughly 400 million people between them, have been bitten by the urbanization bug. Neither is close to that “no return” point, but their demographic structure in 2021 looks remarkably similar to China’s in the 1980s.
Peter Zeichan. The End of the World Is Just the Beginning.
So prospects do not look great, ironically we are arriving to the opposite scenario to Malthusian “population trap”. We got into a DEpopulation trap – not enough workforce to create affordable goods, not enough taxpayers to sustain the government and countries, not enough military to oversee global trade, simply not enough people…
Declining HUMAN population
Up to 1965 the average woman in the world had more than 5 children. Since then we have seen an unprecedented change. The number has halved. Globally, the average per woman is now below 2.5 children.
As Elon Musk (father of 10) rightly stated – “They say civilization might die with a bang or with a whimper, If we don’t have enough kids, then we will die with a whimper in adult diapers. And that will be depressing.”
“Having children is saving the world!” – @elonmusk
Why you should have (more) children.
This is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham.
I will bless her (Sarah) richly, and she will become the mother of many nations. Kings of nations will be among her descendants.
Genesis 17. 4-5, 16
Evolution theory proclaims survival of the fittest, but fittest does not mean the strongest. Dinosaurs were strong, and they parished while insignificant mammals survived.
In 1998 I was visiting Manhattan for the first time; on the street, I saw a Hasidic Jew who was aligning his wife and five children to take a picture with Twin Towers in the background. I had never seen such huge families before in my native Ukraine, even in villages people had 3 children at most. So I was standing there staring inappropriately at this big happy family taking a picture, I was stunned to the core.
Hasidic family. Illustrative photo
Today, having myself 5 children, I see what a blessing it is to see them growing up. As a parent, I fear for them, especially during the Russian invasion to Ukraine, especially when Caliber missiles fly over our city. But still, I am grateful to have them, and go through this difficult time with my family.
I remember my grandparents living in the rural countryside. They had many children, so I had many uncles. Father’s parents had 5 kids, the sister died as a child. Mother’s parents – 4 children, sister also died as a child. They lived in harsh times. My grandfather on my father’s side, Mykola returned to his wife Rosalia and kids after WWII straight from Berlin. He realized that they will live as surfs under the Communist regime. Back then, you could be sent to Siberia or sentenced to death for any hint of criticism regarding communists.
My grandfather on my mother’s side – Myhajlo survived the famine in 1948-49 (yes there was another famine in Ukraine after WWII) and they lived with my grandmother Maria in the same threatening conditions under the soviets.
Thanks to their choices and sacrifices my parents and uncles lived, I live today, my cousins live, and my children can live too, even in the reality of war…
Going back to Jews – they are the fittest. They outlived so many empires, starting from Egypt and Babylon to the Habsburg and USSR empires. What is the secret of this nation’s longevity ? This is just sticking to their religion/tradition and … being fertile, especially in poverty, persecution, and suffering. There is a great midrash (story) about Miriam saving her brother Moses even before he was born:
when Pharaoh ordered to cast every Jewish boy born into the NIle, Amram (father of Miriam Aaron and Moses) said: ‘Isn’t Israel begetting children for naught?’ Immediately, he abstained from sexual relations divorced his wife Yokheved.
He divorced his wife when she was three months pregnant. All Israel arose and divorced their wives. His daughter said to him: ‘Your decree is harsher than Pharaoh’s, as Pharaoh decreed only against the males, and you, against the males and the females. Pharaoh is wicked and it is uncertain whether his decree will be fulfilled or whether it will not be fulfilled. However, you are righteous and your decree will be fulfilled.’ He arose and remarried his wife. All Israel arose and remarried their wives.
Amram and Yokheved
What a great story! Especially during the war in Ukraine. Our enemies can kill our children, this is possible. But should we abstain from having more of them? From shrinking the future population of our nation? Pharaoh is wicked, but should we stop our children from seeing the light of this world even for the short time?
So yes, you should have more children to save humanity from dying out, from shortages of manpower, and civilization collapse. Yes, having children is hard, expensive, and frustrating at times, but it worth it. Definitely. I could compare having children to mountain hiking– it is hard, you are out of breath, you want to go back, but step by step you come closer to the top and finally, you see the splendid, unforgettable landscape that mesmerizes imagination. Having children is like that hard path, but at the end of your life you will see “children of your children” and you will rejoice.
As Abraham and Sarah, you can become the father or mother of many nation (or a tribe at least). When we think about our place in this world, or plan our lives, we rarely think beyond our lifespan. Imagine the world 300 years from now, imagine your grand-grand-grand-grandchildren still living on this earth, still bearing your last name, maybe even remembering you.
Who cares -you might say – I will never see it. Of course, but you have accomplished your mission – you’ve passed on life and values that will sustain it in the future. You’ve made your sacrifices, perhaps a splendid career or careless life, for the sake of future generations, just like your parents did, your grandparents, and all the generations beforehand.
Britain’s largest family, the Radfords, are expecting another child Credit: David Parry/PA
