I love reading Walter Williams, even when I disagree, and even when he uses questionable tactics like talking about putting the world's population in the U.S.(can anyone envision people living throughout our great desert, one on every 1/3 acre?.....wow....)

But his thesis is still right. This planet is obviously capable of supporting many times over the population we have now. We're just still figuring out how to manager ourselves in a way that won't destroy the planet and/or us.

But we will figure it out.

As he points out, the strides made thus far were unimaginable just decades ago.

The stupid editorial of the day. How can a person in Congo add value to their lives? There are no great universities. There is division and turmoil.

Australia has about the same population as California. Australians have excess to education. You don't see Aussies clawing their way to the States.

Look at India. India has a huge population. Maybe, one in 20,000 attends college. Yes, India is doing better. India has more engineering grads than the US. The average people in India may earn $1.20 a day.

Overpopulation isn't a problem?
I'm thinking most people in China and India would disagree.
If everyone lived like the average American, we'd have some serious problems.
We're seeing some of those problems right now, as China builds more and more cars, using more steel and more oil. Demand for steel and oil increase, and prices go up.
Imagine if everyone in the world owned a car. Even if we did find another way to power them, steel prices would still be horribly expensive.

Walter is correct, humans will never run out of space, we will run out of other critical resources first. The effects of overpopulation are being felt right now, with competition for scarce commodities like water, energy, copper and food dominating the headlines. As countries like China and India start to adopt the "American" lifestyle the first casualty of world over population will be our quality of life, a trend we are seeing already.

Williams "the more, the better" take on human population is the sort of conviction that will stupidly doom us to lives stripped of beauty and plenty. An economist like him should take a few classes in how matter and energy move through the ecosystems that sustain us. He should be able to see how the concept of "scarcity" is just as much an ecological concept as it is an economic one. In Utah, we have a finite amount of arable soil to grow crops in. As our population expands, we have fewer acres per person to devote to feeding us. That's why the oil price increase is going to hit Utah quite hard; we are growing our corn flakes in Illinois, and shipping it thousands of miles to a state. Could we feed ourselves now? I'm not sure, possibly, if we devoted ourselves to the talk. Would we be able to feed ourselves at 6 million? (which will be here sooner than you think). Not without crowding most other life forms off the table (after putting the "lucky ones" on the table itself). Could we feed ourselves at 10 million? Not a chance.

Sorry, but I don't buy it. Seven billion cannot eat as cheaply as six billion. Our highly touted intelligence has to someday come to the conclusion that the earth is a finite place. These guys always mention how Hong Kong or Monaco are so densely populated and happily exist. If, however, they had to be self sufficient in food production only a handful of people could survive there. Many issues limiting our growth are now visible. Huge growing economies in India and China. Oil, the driver of the 'miracle of modern agriculture' seems to be not infinite, and not cheap. Climate change. Maybe we had better start thinking about this a bit more seriously.

It is a matter of distribution of resources, the increase of population will result with a more distinguished bell curve of have and have nots with a small population of super rich and powerful and most of the rest of the population poor and subordinate to the rich's influence. The rich for the most part live good lifes and the poor have miserable existences. The earth does not have the recouces to give super large populations a quality life for all inhabitants plus over crowding causes many problems of quality of life and growth.

I thought this editorial was fantastic. Government intervention into self-correcting markets (such as happened in Zimbabwe) is most likely to foster inefficiencies or worse. Specialization, free trade, private property rights, and encouragement of educational opportunities foster growth economies and poverty reductions that are sustainable. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" still applies today, looking at world population issues.

What you say is absolutely true. The left (even those in this country) will see us all broke and starving before they will allow true economic freedom throughout the world. The plan is to destroy it here so that there is no example for others to follow.

Man has the odd tendency to put off certain disagreeing facts until the last possible moment.
The population explosion is one of them.
All major social problems stem from overpopulation one way or another.
Less is more.

you need to study the dominance of competitive advandages and monoplies to understand why a total free market will not work and why the world economy requires international law and the power of regulation. The world really does belong to the total world population and not to individual nations or individuals. Some how we must make it a good place for all life, and particularly human life. Greed is not good.

To To Doug:
You need to understand that greed is not limited to the private sector. It is most egregious and dangerous when manifested by government entities such as Mugabe's and Stalin's administrations.

To Liberal Larry, Aldo,et.al. You make the mistake of assuming that technology will not improve as population increases - same mistake that Malthus made. Yes, we might run out of steel - but it will be replace by something else just as steel replaced wood. Or perhaps someone will come up with a new method to produce it economically.

Whenever the subject of overpopulation comes up, Utahns get nervous.
With the largest families in America, it isn't difficult to understand why they insist no such population explosion with subsequent social problems exist.

More relevant today than ever. Makes Malthus look like a giddy optimist. Read it to understand why we are where we are and where we are heading.

As nations deveop into modern industrial societies, the incentive to have large families tends to drop dramatically. In a traditional agricultural society, children are profit centers, functioning as free labor and retirement security.

In a modern industrial society, on the other hand children are cost centers. They're expensive to feed, house, medicate, and educate. You can "take your daughter to work," but most people can't actually *put* their daughters to work in their workplace. Then there's the opportunity cost of taking time away from work to raise a child; the richer you are, the more money you forego. With all these considerations, it's no surprise that virtually all developed nations have experienced drastic declines in fertility over the past fifty years -- in most cases, to below the replacement level.

The United States' population is still growing due to immigration and (relatively) higher fertility among immigrants from less-developed countries.

Pension plans and social security systems worldwide are based on the assumption that populations will grow. Population decline in the developed world will be a major challenge in coming years.

Thomas tell us:
"The United States' population is still growing due to immigration and (relatively) higher fertility among immigrants from less-developed countries. "

Nice try Thomas, but this would be better served in an anti-illegal immigrant blog.

Bill on Fox earns 50 million a year. Rush earns even more than Bill earns. Michael Savage has a doctorate from Cal Berkeley he one was a devotee of Alan Ginsburg and he hung with the poet culture in San Francisco. Savage was a quick way to make money: call liberals names on AM radio.

Walter Williams has to write trash like this to keep his bank account lubricated. O'Reilly can't be objective or he would have to get a real job. Rush need Obama to support his life style. Savage must bash liberal to afford living and dinning in San Francisco.

There the economics of exposing hate to Americans who feel victimize and need a emotional release by nor taking personal accountability for their lives.

It's the decline of the economic resource available to the average American that has created the environment for this hatred to fester.

Rush and Fox won't tell you. Global resources are finite. American's once control most the resources on earth. They only way for the rest of earth's humanity to move up is for you to get a smaller share of the global pie. Welcome to life in the Third World.

"More neocon," it is simply, factually, undisputably true that immigration and fertility among immigrants accounts for virtually all of America's positive population growth. Look it up, for heaven's sake. It is simply, undeniably true that the fertility rate among native-born American women is at or below the replacement rate (depending on which statistics you favor). Q.E.D., without immigration and elevated immigrant fertility, America's population would not be growing.

What part of math don't you understand? What is it with liberals an inconvenient truths?

Nonsense Thomas.
Just more neocon racist drivel and a passing attempt to cover for the baby-makers and way too high birth rate in the reddest and most fertile state in America.

You can lead a horse to water...

Just like global climate change, the modern American conservative movement refuses to accept the fact that our world (especially in major cities like Salt Lake City has become burdened by a population explosion.

And these same people will tell you WMD's were found in Iraq but the government is keeping it secret.

Is it November yet?

less is more | 10:49 a.m. July 2, 2008:

"All major social problems stem from overpopulation one way or another."

Right our are. See YouTube's "Immigration Gumballs" for a logical presentation of overpopulation via immigration.

sometimes time stands still | 1:54 p.m. July 2, 2008:

"And these same people will tell you WMD's were found in Iraq but the government is keeping it secret."

Even Saddam believed he had WMD. How could we think otherwise?

"Is it November yet?"

Please note that the election has been changed to the first Tuesday in December.

And now we have a not-so-cleverly disguised neocon bait-and-switch tactic of going from a discussion on overpopulation (just try to make that left turn to see an empirical example) to the usual neocons second most racially-charged favorite topic - illegal immigrants (aka Mexicans).

Thomas | 12:16 p.m. July 2, 2008:

"As nations develop into modern industrial societies, the incentive to have large families tends to drop dramatically.
***
With all these considerations, it's no surprise that virtually all developed nations have experienced drastic declines in fertility over the past fifty years -- in most cases, to below the replacement level.
***
Population decline in the developed world will be a major challenge in coming years."

As a side note, civilizations/societies with higher birth rates (forced or otherwise) will one day populate/control/rule the world. Some Hispanic advocates have said as much.

What population that occurs naturally isn't defined by the limitation of resources?

Once America was the largest exporter of food. Today America imports food. The ability to grown more food in less space as slowed.

How many years of drought can Utah or any Western state take without serious impact?

In nature it works like this. Populations will expand until they consume all their resources than population collapse.

Studies conducted on the effects of over population showed higher population densities increased antisocial behavior.

No doubt the earth's resources are finite. They will support a finite population number. But nobody yet knows what that finite number is. Every time someone has thought they knew it or could calculate it (from Malthus to Erlich and beyond), they have been proven wildly, spectacularly, wrong.

Anon, if you're discussing population trends in the United States, you simply can't ignore immigration. It'd be like trying to have a discussion of global warming and ignoring the role of coal. It's the biggest single factor in play.

You may not like it; you may huff and puff about "nativism," etc., but it is what it is.

One of the things around now that wasn't then is math heritage. Which allows us to do problem solving that is amazing. Which is why Utah needs to improve math education. It has gone downhill since I went to school.

Ways exist to make every person on earth rich beyond comprehension. We just don't comprehend them yet. Just as people 200 years ago didn't comprehend an entire nation living as well as we do today.

In time these will be discovered, the pace of discovery has accelerated and shown no sign of abating.

Thomas, your racism is not very subtle.
You can blame the culture that raised you that way.

That left turn that takes so long to make today will without a doubt take even longer next year.
That graduating class that seems so large this year will be even larger next year.
We are officially in the age of overbreed.
But sounding the alarm to conservatives falls on deaf ears everytime thinking the data presented is merely a poltical ploy (they should know).

Anon, what a loser thinks of me is not high on my list of concerns.

Your kind throws the "racism" tag around at the drop of a hat. It only intimidates fellow liberals, who've been conditioned to view racism as the ultimate sin, as opposed to just one more species of human nastiness. I would consider myself lacking in character is your kind *didn't* accuse me of racism -- because that would only be impossible if I remained properly cowed from discussing difficult facts.

Overpopulation is *so* seventies. The real demographic problem is the aging of developed societies, not their overpopulation. It's going to have a huge effect on Social Security and Medicare, for starters. But the "forward to the past" gang is too ideologically hide-bound to notice, and accordingly has no solutions to offer.

I think Thomas may mean well, but he is clearly a victim of a very odd culture.
His culture is big on having the largest families on the face of the earth (for some obscure reason) so I understand his oversensivity to a very real problem.
However, I know many, many people who have escaped from that culture and are thriving.

Effects of overpopulation:
Inadequate fresh water
Depletion of natural resources
Deforestation and loss of ecosystems
Changes in atmospheric composition and consequent global warming
Mass species extinctions
new epidemics and pandemics
Poverty coupled with inflation
increased levels of warfare
Elevated crime rate

Thomas,

Your logic and fluency (not to mention remaining composed) put your arguments above the rest in ways that those who oppose you here can't even recognize well enough to be envious of.

Anon, thanks for the compliment. At least I mean well.

No thanks for the condescension, though. That's the thanks I and my fellow odd "breeders" get for making the babies you'll need to tax for your Social Security benefits.

The ingratitude of some people!

Another silly made up list huh?

By the way extinction sare natural who are you intervene in nature.

None of what yuy have listed is caused by overpopulation.

There was pandemics and epidemics before had large population.

We had poverty in all times in history, hence not a result of over population.

We have more clean water than antime in history thanks to t3echnology. Water is not clean whether we polullute or not. IN the past IT actually more dangerous to drink water, hence drinking of wines beers ciders, ales mead etc. IT was safer.

and you can similarly go on disproving every item on your list.

but you can believe the lies if you want, just because a college professor told so, or read it in a book, or read on the internet, does not make it true.

Thomas is one of our typical far-righters who is goes after the person instead of the subject.
Notice the complete silence on "Effects of overpopulation" Anonymous 4:22
Coupled with the dominant culture's bizarre persecution complex, all arguments eventually deteriorate into an "anti-mormon" spiel. Subtle or otherwise.

Yes, yes RE: anoy 5:54 -
And from here on data coming from Wikipedia (where the effects of overpopulation were snatched from) shall hereby be declared as null and void. :>

Anonymous is one of those people who, when hopelessly outmatched in argument, swings for his opponent's kneecaps -- and then whines like a little girl that his opponent is "going after the person" when said opponent is finally exasperated enough to respond in kind.

But thanks for the commitment to keeping things civil and rational. Shall we go back there, then?

Excessive fertility among native-born Americans is not a substantial contribution to any problems that may arise from overpopulation. Discuss.

Let me see if I understand: "The greatest threat to mankind's prosperity is government... It's the same story in many countries — government interference with mankind's natural tendency to engage in wealth-producing activities."

There would be no problem in this world if there were no government, only anarchy, which allowed uncontrolled greed to profit in a sham "free market."

What drivel. Williams is always entertaining for his little trips down lunacy lane.

Williams can get a little too libertarian for my taste -- a prosperous society requires not only individual initiative, but good, accountable government to serve as a referee -- but I do agree that viewing the world as a whole, the world has erred on the side of "too much government" more often than the reverse, and on balance is poorer for it.

I don't see how anyone can

There's a cure for an aging population: immigration. Seeing that America reflects some here, big on ego and small esle where. America will need engineers, sciencist and people educated in mathmatics. India and China out produce us in these fields. You can make people value education. We can import it.

Your post speaks volumes. It is hard to tell if you are a serious poster, or an agent provocateur who is trying to make "your side" look ludicrous.

I recall a graph in sociology comparing world population with the consumption of energy. The population began to level off as we ran out of wood then picked up again when we switched to peat. It was the same story with coal, then with oil. Then the FORECAST plummeted as we ran out of oil. Funny how historically the trend was upward with periodic dips as technology changed. Yet this, according to the instructor, was supposed to support a theology of impending doom and gloom.

What will be the next great energy source? Nuclear has a bright future in those countries that recycle instead of throwing the fuel out like a dead battery as we do. Coal liquefaction? Inexpensive solar cell ink? Most of the world’s grain and vegetable crops did not exist in nature in their current form but are the product of mankind's ingenuity. For a good read get a copy of "1491" by Charles Mann. It is a history of the bounty and industry of the native peoples in the western hemisphere before they got messed up with Europeans.

Forgive me. I’m still a recovering optimist.