Economy
Refuting the ancient myth of overpopulation
From LifeSiteNews
By Aidan Grogan
Recent findings decimate the Malthusian outlook and render advocacy of population control not only ill-informed and inexcusable, but frankly anti-human.
(American Institute for Economic Research) — Prince Philip once said, “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation.” The late Duke of Edinburgh passed away in 2021, but the hysterical sentiment he expressed about overpopulation lives on.
A YouGov poll found that overpopulation concerns are widespread among adults across the planet, with nearly half of sampled Americans believing that the world’s population is too high. This view is shared by 76 percent of Hungarians and 69 percent of Indians, according to the poll.
Overpopulation and ecological disasters have been the themes of numerous blockbuster movies, including ZPD (1972), Soylent Green (1973), Idiocracy (2006), and Elysium (2013). Mainstream news outlets have repeatedly promoted the apocalyptic idea to the public, with headlines such as “Science proves kids are bad for Earth. Morality suggests we stop having them” (NBC News). The progressive magazine Fast Company released a video titled “Why having kids is the worst thing you can do for the planet.”
The theory of overpopulation, and the collectivist idea that human reproduction must be limited, even by force, is nothing new. It first appeared in the ancient Mesopotamian Atrahasis epic, where the gods control the human population by infertility, infanticide, and appointing a priest class to limit childbirth.
Plato and Aristotle both endorsed a form of proto-eugenics and population control. In The Republic, Socrates and Glaucon conclude that an owner controlling the breeding of his dogs and birds to prevent their degeneration should also apply to the human species. The guardians would be tasked with deciding who is allowed to reproduce and who should be prohibited from having offspring. In the Politics, Aristotle advocated for state-mandated abortions of children with deformities or in cases where couples are having too many children and contributing to overpopulation.
The decline of Greek civilization in the second century BCE was not a consequence of an excess number of births, but precisely the opposite. Polybius attributed the downfall of Greece in his time to a decay of population which emptied out the cities and resulted in a failure of productiveness. It was not warfare and pestilence which reduced the birth rate, but decadence. The idle men of Greece, according to Polybius, were more interested in money and pleasure than marriage and child-rearing.
Two millennia later, English economist Thomas Malthus resurrected the old Mesopotamian myth with his 1798 An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus claimed that population growth increases geometrically while food production increases only arithmetically, which he believed would lead to widespread famine if the rapid propagation of humanity were not obstructed.
He identified two checks, one natural and one human-induced, which could keep population growth limited: preventive checks, such as delayed marriage or sexual abstinence, that stabilize the birth rate and evade the natural calamities of positive checks – famines, pestilences, earthquakes, floods, etc. – which represent nature’s striking back against the pressures of unhindered population growth.
Malthus preferred the former, but if unsuccessful, supported appalling and brutal depopulation measures. He suggested policies to “make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.” He also recommended banning “specific remedies for ravaging diseases.”
In 1859, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species argued that species evolved gradually from a common ancestor. His follow-up The Descent of Man posited that humans descended from their ape-like past through a process of sexual selection that favored the stronger, more intelligent genes. Darwin said that his evolutionary theory “is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms.”
READ: U.S. birth rate hit record low last year, signaling surge in childlessness
Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, used Darwin’s theory of evolution to develop eugenics – a pseudo-scientific theory that the human race could be improved through controlled breeding.
Subsidized by some of the largest philanthropic organizations in the United States, including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institution, eugenics was embraced by many leaders of the American progressive movement, who favored involuntary sterilization and immigration restriction.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League – later to be renamed Planned Parenthood – denigrated charity and referred to the poor as “human waste.” She and her companions considered several names for their movement, such as “neo-Malthusianism,” “population control,” and “race control,” before finally settling on “birth control.”
The eugenicists’ fervent collectivism and disregard for America’s founding principles affirming the inherent dignity and rights of every individual were best expressed through Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race, in which he wrote:
Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.
Eugenics laws were implemented across the United States beginning with Indiana in 1907. By the Second World War, around 60,000 Americans had undergone sterilization.
In Britain, eugenics was enthusiastically championed by socialists such as John Maynard Keynes, George Bernard Shaw, and H.G. Wells. Keynes wrote an outline for a book called Prolegomena to a New Socialism, in which he listed “eugenics, population” as “chief preoccupations of the state.”
Eugenics – at least under that official title – began to fade after the harsh realities of the Holocaust were unveiled, but the Malthusian presuppositions which undergirded their movement never vanished.
Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb re-invigorated the Malthusian craze for a new generation, predicting imminent worldwide famines and other catastrophes due to overpopulation. In the prologue, he wrote: “We can no longer afford merely to treat the symptom of the cancer of population growth; the cancer itself must be cut out. Population control is the only answer.”
That same year, a group of European scientists concerned about the future of the planet founded an NGO called the Club of Rome. Their first major publication, Limits to Growth (1972), attacked the pursuit of material gain and continuous economic expansion. Two of the Club of Rome’s most prominent members openly declared in their 1991 book The First Global Revolution that humanity is the real enemy:
In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill… All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
At the time of the publication of Ehrlich’s doomsday book and the Club of Rome’s founding, the world’s population stood at 3.6 billion, and nearly half of people worldwide were living in poverty. Over the next five decades, the global population more than doubled to 7.7 billion, yet fewer than 9 percent of people remain in poverty today, and famines have virtually disappeared.
Ehrlich’s hypothesis was rejected by economist Julian Simon in his 1981 book The Ultimate Resource, in which he argued that a rising number of “skilled, spirited, and hopeful people” results in more ingenuity, less scarcity, and lower costs in the long run. In other words, the larger the human population, the greater the collective brain power our species may wield to innovate, overcome problems, and benefit everyone through increased abundance. The ultimate resource, according to Simon, is people.
Recent research from Gale L. Pooley and Marian L. Tupy has vindicated Simon’s optimistic view. For every one-percent increase in population, commodity prices tend to fall by around one percent. In the years 1980-2017, the planet’s resources became 380 percent more abundant.
These findings decimate the Malthusian outlook and render advocacy of population control not only ill-informed and inexcusable, but frankly anti-human. The ecological cataclysms predicted by Ehrlich and the Club of Rome haven’t come true. Nature hasn’t struck back against a rapidly increasing population in any manner anticipated by Malthus.
As former U.S. Department of Energy undersecretary for science Steven E. Koonin pointed out in his 2021 book Unsettled, U.N. and U.S. government climate data show the following: 1) humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century, 2) Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago, and 3) the net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century.
Pooley and Tupy, however, caution that population growth alone is not enough to generate what they term “superabundance,” as they titled their recent book. The innovation required to sustain an ever-increasing world population demands economic and personal freedom. Collectivism and central planning will only restrict the human ingenuity, ideas, and enterprises that will pave the way toward a brighter, more prosperous future.
It is certainly time to lay to rest Malthusian theory and the overpopulation hysteria it has aroused. We must avoid the cynical outlook on humanity which regards us as net destroyers, a viral pathogen ravaging the earth, and instead opt for the more positive – and true – vision of human beings and human destiny. We are net creators.
Reprinted with permission from the American Institute for Economic Research.
Business
Premiers fight to lower gas taxes as Trudeau hikes pump costs
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
By Jay Goldberg
Thirty-nine hundred dollars – that’s how much the typical two-car Ontario family is spending on gas taxes at the pump this year.
You read that right. That’s not the overall fuel bill. That’s just taxes.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau keeps increasing your gas bill, while Premier Doug Ford is lowering it.
Ford’s latest gas tax cut extension is music to taxpayers’ ears. Ford’s 6.4 cent per litre gas tax cut, temporarily introduced in July 2022, is here to stay until at least next June.
Because of the cut, a two-car family has saved more than $1,000 so far. And that’s welcome news for Ontario taxpayers, because Trudeau is planning yet another carbon tax hike next April.
Trudeau has raised the overall tax burden at the pumps every April for the past five years. Next spring, he plans to raise gas taxes by another three cents per litre, bringing the overall gas tax burden for Ontarians to almost 60 cents per litre.
While Trudeau keeps hiking costs for taxpayers at the pumps, premiers of all stripes have been stepping up to the plate to blunt the impact of his punitive carbon tax.
Obviously, Ford has stepped up to the plate and has lowered gas taxes. But he’s not alone.
In Manitoba, NDP Premier Wab Kinew fully suspended the province’s 14 cent per litre gas tax for a year. And in Newfoundland, Liberal Premier Andrew Furey cut the gas tax by 8.05 cents per litre for nearly two-and-a-half years.
It’s a tale of two approaches: the Trudeau government keeps making life more expensive at the pumps, while premiers of all stripes are fighting to get costs down.
Families still have to get to work, get the kids to school and make it to hockey practice. And they can’t afford increasingly high gas taxes. Common sense premiers seem to get it, while Ottawa has its head in the clouds.
When Ford announced his gas tax cut extension, he took aim at the Liberal carbon tax mandated by the Trudeau government in Ottawa.
Ford noted the carbon tax is set to rise to 20.9 cents per litre next April, “bumping up the cost of everything once again and it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
“Our government will always fight against it,” Ford said.
But there’s some good news for taxpayers: reprieve may be on the horizon.
Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s promises to axe the carbon tax as soon as he takes office.
With a federal election scheduled for next fall, the federal carbon tax’s days may very well be numbered.
Scrapping the carbon tax would make a huge difference in the lives of everyday Canadians.
Right now, the carbon tax costs 17.6 cents per litre. For a family filling up two cars once a week, that’s nearly $24 a week in carbon taxes at the pump.
Scrapping the carbon tax could save families more than $1,200 a year at the pumps. Plus, there would be savings on the cost of home heating, food, and virtually everything else.
While the Trudeau government likes to argue that the carbon tax rebates make up for all these additional costs, the Parliamentary Budget Officer says it’s not so.
The PBO has shown that the typical Ontario family will lose nearly $400 this year due to the carbon tax, even after the rebates.
That’s why premiers like Ford, Kinew and Furey have stepped up to the plate.
Canadians pay far too much at the pumps in taxes. While Trudeau hikes the carbon tax year after year, provincial leaders like Ford are keeping costs down and delivering meaningful relief for struggling families.
Business
Bank of Canada admits ‘significant’ number of citizens would resist digital dollar
From LifeSiteNews
A significant number’ of Canadians are suspicious of government overreach and would resist any measures by the government or central bank to create digital forms of official money.
A Bank of Canada study has found that Canadians are very wary of a government-backed digital currency, concluding that “significant number” of citizens would resist the implementation of such a system.
The study, conducted by the Bank of Canada, found that a “significant number” of Canadians are suspicious of government overreach, and would resist any measures by the government or central bank to create digital forms of official money.
According to results from the BOC’s report titled The Consumer Value Proposition For A Hypothetical Digital Canadian Dollar, “cash remains an important method of payment” for Canadians and “[c]ertain groups may strongly resist a digital dollar if they conflate its launch with the end of cash issuance.”
The BOC noted that not only would a “significant number” of Canadians “reject” digital money, but that for some “mindset segments, their lack of interest in a hypothetical digital Canadian dollar was heavily influenced by perceptions of government overreach.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews in September, the BOC has already said that plans to create a digital “dollar,” also known as a central bank digital currency (CBDC), have been shelved.
The shelving came after the BOC had already forged ahead and filed a trademark for a digital currency, as LifeSiteNews previously reported.
Officials from Canada’s central bank said that a digital currency, or electronic “loonie,” will no longer be considered after years of investigating bringing one to market.
However, that does not mean the BOC is still not researching or exploring other options when it comes to digital money. As noted by researchers, despite there being some “interest” in a “hypothetical digital Canadian dollar,” that “interest does not necessarily translate to adoption.”
“Most participants felt well served by current means of payment,” noted the study, adding, “Individuals who support the issuance of a hypothetical digital Canadian dollar did not imagine themselves using it regularly.”
Those most enthusiastic about a government-backed version of Bitcoin were teenagers and young adults. Those older remained especially skeptical.
“They were skeptical of the need for this new form of money and of its reliability,” read the report, which also noted, “They did not trust that concepts were secure or that their personal information would be kept private.”
Given the results from the report, the bank concluded that “[b]road early adoption” of a digital dollar “is unlikely given that available payment methods meet the needs of most users.”
“Financially vulnerable segments often have the most to gain from this payment method but are most resistant to adoption. Important considerations for appeal and adoption potential include universal merchant acceptance, low costs, easy access, simplified online payments, shared payment features, budgeting tools and customizable security and privacy settings,” it noted.
Digital currencies have been touted as the future by some government officials, but, as LifeSiteNews has reported before, many experts warn that such technology would restrict freedom and could be used as a “control tool” against citizens, similar to China’s pervasive social credit system.
Most Canadians do not want a digital dollar, as previously reported by LifeSiteNews. A public survey launched by the BOC to gauge Canadians’ taste for a digital dollar revealed that an overwhelming majority of citizens want to “leave cash alone” and not proceed with a digital iteration of the national currency.
The BOC last August admitted that the creation of a CBDC is not even necessary, as many people rely on cash to pay for things. The bank concluded that the introduction of a digital currency would only be feasible if consumers demanded its release.
In August, LifeSiteNews also reported that the Conservative Party is looking to gather support for a bill that would outright ban the federal government from ever creating a digital currency and make it so that cash is kept as the preferred means of settling debts.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre promised that if he is elected prime minister, he would stop any implementation of a “digital currency” or a compulsory “digital ID” system.
Prominent opponents of CBDCs have been strongly advocating that citizens use cash whenever possible and boycott businesses that do not accept cash payments as a means of slowing down the imposition of CBDCs.
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