Steyn on Population Decline

Monday, October 22nd, 2007 | Population |

John O’Sullivan and I occasionally discussed Montreal, and he observed that a big-city heritage without big-city overcrowding can be very pleasant: You’ve still got all the art galleries and symphony orchestras and so on. You’ve got tickets for Pavarotti at the Place des Arts. Curtain up, 7.30pm. So you leave at 7.20, park outside the front steps and stroll in. As John put it, societies in the early stages of decline can be very agreeable - and often more agreeable than societies trying to cope with prosperity and rapid growth.

Which brings me to my usual everything-comes-back-to-demography shtick. Precisely because the first stages of decline are so agreeable, it’s very hard to accept it as such. Part of the problem in Europe is that, when chaps like yours truly shriek “Run for your lives! The powder keg’s about to go up!”, etc, the bon vivant enjoying his Dubonnet at the sidewalk cafe thinks: Are you crazy? Life’s never been better. Civilized decline can be so charming you don’t notice it’s about to accelerate into uncivilized decline.

2 Comments to Steyn on Population Decline

Stormy Dragon
October 25, 2007

Population decline alarmists make the same mistake as the overpopulations alarmists were making a few decades ago: they extrapolate from the current growth rate until they get a ridiculous result and then try to convince us this says something about the current trend instead of their crummy analysis.

Les Jones
October 25, 2007

It’s possible. You’re exactly right that trends don’t go on forever.

On the other hand, depopulation isn’t an easy thing to correct. The government can’t just mandate a solution. The fix is for people in countries where they’re averaging say 1.5 babies to starting having an extra baby, on average. That ain’t an easy thing to do, especially with the tax rates in those countries.

I think it’s fair to say that in Europe things are going to get a lot worse before people are willing to make the kinds of changes that are necessary.