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Far right snuggles up to depopulationists

By Malcolm King - posted Friday, 11 July 2014


Arguments to reduce immigration and population play upon our fears of others. That strangers are not to be trusted or that we will miss out on our share of the economic pie. According the SPP's sociobiological stance, people are just units of consumption and mothers give birth to 'carbon emitters'.

A larger home market attracts greater economies of scale (less cost in production per unit with increase of volume).But you need the businesses to trade in the first place. The anti-population lobby is anti-industry and employment.

A larger well-educated population attracts investors. This stimulates investment in R&D and knowledge, which generates new ideas and improves productivity. The SPP's and SPA's ultra nationalist policies want international students and visiting academics out.

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Greater population concentration forces social changes in the direction of a greater degree of organization; changes are costly in the short term but in the long run, increase a society's ability to reach its economic and social objectives. The de-populationists want to return us to a medieval village.

In 1990 the World Hunger Project calculated that the ecosystem could sustainably support six billion people, and then only if they lived on a vegetarian diet. More than two decades later, with 7.1 billion people living on the planet, global beef production has increased by 5 per cent per capita, pork by 17 per cent and chicken by 82 per cent.

The World Food Program estimates that there are 170 million fewer malnourished people than there were in 1990. The inconvenient truth is that the human beings have, since the dawn of time, created more than they used on average over the course of a lifetime.

The SPA and SPP represent instrumentalism, reductionism and racism at its worst. So if your train is packed full of people, it's the fault of over-population – not that there are too few trains running. If you don't get that important job, it must be because a migrant took it. If it takes you an hour to get to work, it's because there are too many people – not because every single person is driving a car.

Cast the light of liberty on these dangerous misanthropes and send them scurrying back to the dark corners of society, from whence they came.

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About the Author

Malcolm King is a journalist and professional writer. He was an associate director at DEEWR Labour Market Strategy in Canberra and the senior communications strategist at Carnegie Mellon University in Adelaide. He runs a writing business called Republic.

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