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Make Babies, and Don’t Let the Greens Guilt Trip You about It
Several years back, the economist Bryan Caplan wrote a wonderful book called Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. Caplan argued that most parents underestimated the benefits of larger families and were engaging in costly parenting strategies that yielded few real benefits. Thus, he said, if you love kids, you should have lots of them.
From NPR this week comes a story that might well be called “anti-Caplan” in every dimension. It is a profile of bioethicist Travis Rieder and others like him who argue that it is immoral to have many children, if any at all, because of the burden that additional children place on the Earth’s ecosystem. Given that we are already, Rieder claims, on the road to climate disaster, adding more children will both make matters worse and condemn those children to a horrible life on a worsening planet. His argument might well be called “Altruistic Reasons to Have Fewer Kids.”
More specifically, he argues that children are what economists call negative externalities: “We as parents, we as family members, we get the good. And the world, the community, pays the cost.” As it turns out, that claim is almost entirely wrong. It is parents who pay most of the costs of having children and the rest of us who reap the benefits.
I am not going to contest some of the claims about climate change Rieder and others in the article invoke. He does tend to take the most extreme predictions of climate models as gospel truth when the recent data have suggested that reality is closer to the much more modest predictions. However, even if the worst case scenarios are true, Rieder misses a number of important points about population growth that need to be considered.
Human Beings are Producers
Most of the Western world is dealing with fertility rates that are below replacement.He, like so many environmentalists, sees human beings only as consumers of resources. So one core statistic he trots out is that the amount of CO2 saved by not having a child is roughly 20 times what we can save through traditional things like driving hybrids and recycling. Therefore, he and the other people discussed in the story conclude, if we really want to “save the planet,” we should have fewer, if any, children.
But this is single-entry economic and moral bookkeeping. This view ignores the idea that humans are also producers. As Julian Simon reminded us so often, more people not only means more hands to work and more minds to create, it means more different people with different ideas. Increases in population not only deepen the division of labor and productivity by their sheer numbers, they also take advantage of the fact that each of us is unique which leads to new ideas and innovation.
Human progress depends upon the increasing productivity that comes from a finer division of labor and new ways of doing things. And those are the result of more people.
It’s not, as a student in the article suggests, that one of those kids that isn’t born might have come up with a “solution for climate change,” but that each and every one of those kids that isn’t born would have contributed to greater economic growth, which is nothing more than the more effective and efficient use of the resources we have.
Such growth is what has made it possible for the Earth to sustain 7 billion lives of increasing length, comfort, and quality. Reducing the population might mean we use up more resources by losing the efficiencies that come from a larger population’s greater ability to innovate and productively specialize.
The benefits of having more kids are not primarily to the parents involved, though as Caplan points out there are many. More people means we are better able to beat back omnipresent scarcity and carve out a more inhabitable planet for more people who live longer, better lives.
This is the most fundamental error of so many environmentalists, especially those arguing for reductions in the population: they see humans only as consumers of resources and not the source of the very innovations that enable us to use resources more effectively and the riches that enable us to have a cleaner, healthier planet.
Demographic Transition
The best way to save the planet is not to have fewer kids, but to have as many as you can afford.The other crucial point Rieder and people like him miss is that the Earth’s population is already in the process of stabilizing. One of the most agreed upon empirical facts of history is the so-called “demographic transition.” As societies become wealthier and more industrialized, the incentives facing parents change and family size falls. Once mom and dad, or perhaps only one of them, can earn enough income to support a family, and there’s no farm or cottage industry that requires the whole family pitching in, the need for many children is much less and parents seek to control their fertility.
The Western world began to go through this transition over a century ago, and the rest of the world has followed in turn. Most of the Western world is dealing with fertility rates that are below replacement, and rates of population growth in all but a handful of countries worldwide have fallen in the last few decades.
Thankfully Rieder does not want to use Chinese-style coercion to limit family size, but he’s not afraid to tax larger families more heavily. Even that isn’t necessary given the reality of the demographic transition: in a free society, human beings naturally limit their fertility as they get wealthier. Again, the best way to save the planet is not to have fewer kids, but to have as many as you can afford and let their productivity enable us to use resources with more efficiency and create more progress.
Anti-Life, Anti-Human
The radical wing of environmentalism is, as Ayn Rand said decades ago, “anti-life” and “anti-human” in its belief that humans are the scourge of the planet and not the source of its progress. After all, if the important thing is saving the planet by reducing our carbon footprint, why stop by persuading people to not have kids?
Why not persuade currently living people, especially young ones, to reduce their lifetime carbon footprint by killing themselves? The logic is no different.
That they don’t make that argument suggests that “saving the planet” really isn’t the overriding issue here. Like so much else in the Green movement, this seems to be about protecting their own comfortable lives against what they think will happen when everyone else is able to live lives like they have. They got their progress and health and children, but everyone else needs to sacrifice for the sake of the planet. That Rieder does have a child is some evidence of this point.
Not only is Rieder’s argument deeply immoral and reactionary in how wrong it is, it turns out to be far less altruistic than it first seems. Nothing could capture the total failure of radical environmentalist anti-natalism better than calling it “selfish reasons everyone else should have fewer kids.” Let’s hope, for the sake of both actual humans and the planet we live on that these environmentalist arguments are as infertile as their proponents wish humans were.
Steven Horwitz
Steven Horwitz is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University and the author of Hayek’s Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions.
30 Comments on "Make Babies, and Don’t Let the Greens Guilt Trip You about It"
kervennic on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 6:17 pm
I already find it tough to find good meat and keep my iron level high enough.
If Horowitz prediction fails, i am ready to join a new breed of cannibal that really love human-
Horowitz seems already quite tasty to me (had not had a steak in months…). Fat face, well nourished and probably not running very fast.
JuanP on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 6:46 pm
Bullshit! LOL! Good reading material for deluded retards!
jjhman on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 6:50 pm
This is completely consistent with modern economic thought: that human ingenuity can make a finite world into an infinite source of wealth. It is why our measure of societal health is growth in GDP. It is absolutely true, until it isn’t.
That part is called WTSHTF.
Sissyfuss on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 6:53 pm
There are so many holes in this doofus’ manifesto I won’t bother to elucidate. Replacing all natural systems with human based ones is both our destiny and our fate. The majority will agree with the
conclusions of this intellectually challenged blind bozo because it matches their needs for dopamine production and release. It’s impossible to change a mind so anthropocentric .
Anonymous on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 7:06 pm
A pro-natalist jew ‘economist’, whoda thought?
onlooker on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 7:48 pm
Just read the title and thought what a bunch of crap! Pardon the french
Apneaman on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 10:07 pm
“Pork away pal” “Fuck her blue”
Sissyfuss on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 10:12 pm
Paraphrasing Conrad’s Kurtz, “the Horrorwitz, the Horrorwitz!”
geo on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 10:25 pm
This article was originally published on the web site of the Foundation for Economic Education, a think tank funded by the Koch brothers. As always — follow the money…
onlooker on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 10:30 pm
Yep more people=more taxes, more slave labor, more debt slaves and more cannon fodder
claman on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 11:16 pm
The mercy full christian western societies, by means of medical help to the third world, took away child mortality.
We are paying for that now – Not just the western world – but also the countries that got this “help” from us.
Child mortality is natures own way of regulating population density, and we have taken that away.
In some ways Boko Haram is wiser than the western world.
claman on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 12:13 am
Among preppers it is nut unusual, neither immoral, to talk about the great “die of”, because it is the logical consequence of what they think is gonna happen in due time. They do not name a specific group, age or gender. It is just a generel “die of”.
To talk about a great “die of” that is directed towards a specific group – that is children – is still a tabu.
But we have to start some where.
I have a belief that dying is easier for children than for adults, and anyway children mortality has been the order of the day since life began.
The real question is: How do we become less people on this planet if nobody wants to die, and every body wants to have babies.
In what we call the third world all women and men wants more babies, and they generaly don’t worry about over population as such.
If they for cultural or religious reason don’t want to actively limit their amount of children, then I think they should have to live with the curse of child mortality.
This is a hard problem to both understand and do anything about. All though somebody has to do that- sooner or later
theedrich on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 12:52 am
Horowitz is pretty much on target, although his argument needs a subtle qualification: it is not quantity we need, but quality. According to Richard Lynn (Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations), global IQ is declining around 5 points/century. (Some estimate 6/century.) Given the growth rates of Mohammedans and Afroids which far outweigh any diminution of population on the part of the White or even Mongoloid populations, world IQ will probably be around 86.5 by 2050, and falling further. Civilization cannot continue in this manner much longer, no matter how smart the top fraction may be. A millennium of this, and we are back in the jungle, never to rise again.
The Sörös-led drive to negrify the world is leading to catastrophe. The bloodsucker’s “Deep State” control of the Demonic Party and of many Repubs is operating with a covert strategy of self-sterilization of Whites and proliferation of non-Whites. And the lower the IQ, the greater the acceptance of Sörös’ deadly “Open Society” idiocy (which interprets freedom as freebies). Horowitz cannot say it, but his (“racist”) wish to produce more of the higher IQ types is the only sensible proposal on the market today.
claman on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 1:29 am
THeedrich, the top of intelligent culture was probably the ancient greeks, and we will never get there again.
The seemingly high intelligence among whites and some others to day is a product of higher education and sofisticated methods, but not necessesarily better brains.
The free capacity of genious thought that the greeks produced has never been surpassed in the modern western world. We just take others thoughts, process them, and present them as our own.
claman on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 1:43 am
What we do have – though – in the northern european world, is a high sense of cooperation and social responsibility.
That alone gives us an advantage in a military sense
Go Speed Racer on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 1:54 am
Ya, funk her in half, funk her til her head is pushed thru the drywall into the room next door.
But there is a certain reality that most doomers and greenies don’t get.
The fact is, there is NOT too many people, there is too many fat stupid ugly rude ignorant trashbag loser welfare bum people.
So if you can raise a child who will grow up to be a rocket scientist, a dentist, or a jet pilot, then you should raise a whole bunch of them.
And if you can’t just agree with me, then i just don’t care.
claman on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 1:54 am
So if Horowitch is right , then it has been going downhill ever since the greeks. I would buy that.
Mr. Pockets on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 2:31 am
shutup theedrich, you soulless white supremist pig. … making up words doesnt make your racist advocacy any more viable. … go board your windows and lock your doors… we’ll let you know when its safe to come out…
Cloggie on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 3:57 am
Why don’t you shut up, pick-pocket. Current demographic developments and migration and “refugee” lunacy will ensure that 2500 years of European civilization: Greeks, Romans, Renaissance and Modernity, will have been for nothing and if it is up to Soros and the rest of the sanhedrin, this is going to be the horrific future of the entire West:
https://youtu.be/DWsMRoxlS5g
(Detroit at night)
https://youtu.be/thIRL1HsgqY
(Hannover large jihadist demonstration, commented by frightened German girls)
https://youtu.be/3Ay0PQuIXZ4
(Muslims in London wanting to turn UK in Islamic State)
Thank God there is China and Russia and eastern Europe to sabotage the mob. Western Europe and heartland USA will soon join them.
Go Speed Racer on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 4:11 am
The only explanation for the Hillary and Obama types wanting to fill Western countries with Muslim dynamite belters in Burkas, is because those Billaries are insane with societal sucked ambitions. They want to exterminate Western civilization by bringing in all the Muslims on camels. I hope you like the call to Mecca blaring out of cheap tin megaphones on every street corner. Obviously the Hillaries are immune. They live in the walled off compound, while the newly impoverished ex-middle class gets bonked on the head by flying body parts from the suicide bombers.
Boat on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 5:43 am
Muslim immigrants to the US are much smaller in number than those from India, China, Mexico and even the Philippines. All this Muslim fear is over blown by haters. Go to the dept. of homeland security for the latest numbers.
Davy on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 7:25 am
There is nothing wrong with child mortality being referenced but what is lacking is the referencing of mortality in general. This includes lonely old white men. This mortality includes populations on ships that may someday be crossing the oceans of the world and succumb to cholera. Passenger jets will be strange looking monuments to our folly soon so start think ships. In general life spans will shorten for the reasons they did in the past and many more we created with our awful modern way of life. The one I am thinking of is a broad range of modern cancers and conditions related to unnatural compounds we never should have produced. I am in my early 50’s. Instead of 87 which a healthy active man like me should live to I have acknowledge in a new collapse reality I will be lucky to make it to 77. That may be optimistic and maybe 70 is more like it. This is optimism is if mad max does not visit.
This is still not going to make populations right per sustainability and proper carrying capacity per a destroyed ecosystem. We need excess deaths over births of 200MIL for at least a generation. Death, decay, deflation, and dysfunction are the D’s of doom and they don’t come in a smooth graph. They come hard, fast, and jagged. We are going to see unimaginable death and destruction likely for periods. The 200Mil is an average and averages are not smooth. There is no reason why this should not happen. Such death and destruction will surely clear out vastly overpopulated third world areas. But don’t feel smug white supremist racist pigs because it is this kind of die off that renders the kind of complexity and economic velocity that makes your unnaturally high standard of living null and void. Once rich areas are reduced in affluence and complexity they will enter an overshoot of people who are not fed and properly protected from the elements. Waste and pollution will not be cleaned up. Security will break down. Soon rich areas are slums and they too are in the same category as the overpopulated third world and in die off mode.
Now is a profoundly important time for you as an individual. Now is the time to find a stable sustainable location to ride out this die off if only for a short time. I say this because life expectancy will drop across the board dramatically with a loss of affluence. I cannot tell you when and where this is going to hit but I can tell you with as much certainty as science allows that it is coming and it will be worse than we can imagine. I am thinking the worst will start in as little as 5 years and will be hitting the 3rd world. This will be the case unless the rich world does not destroy itself in war.
Disenfranchisement from an unfair and biased global system will discard those who don’t contribute to the economic velocity of globalism. Capitalism and representative democracy in decline can be vicious and cruel. Markets are not sympathetic and democracy is corruptible. High and lofty values of caring are discarded in times of crisis at least at the macro level. At these levels tough decisions can be easily made from within comfortable lighted offices and situation rooms. How hard is it for a politician to pull the plug on food aid if they are dealing with a crisis at home? This is a no brainer and common sense but that is just what is lacking in these discussions. We have a modern disconnect with death and destruction because for so long we have come to the aid of those in need with vast safety nets. In so many cases we have philanthropy making us feel good when the reality is the rich are exploiting the poor and the rich way of life has allowed rich and poor alike to multiply with population and consumption far beyond what is reasonable and normal per a natural carrying capacity.
We are in an age of death. Our flag should be the Skull and bones. Our motto should be a hospice in every home. We now should be practicing humility of mortality. We should be hardening our emotions for what is going to be horrible and painful. I am sorry to talk like this but reality does not care and we need to more than ever face reality because this is some wicked shit coming. We have the ability now with so much productive capability of our amazing global system to make this coming shit storm not so bad. This is at all levels but especially you and your little local you move around in daily. You can make a difference for you and yours. At least make an effort there.
banjo on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 4:06 pm
Yes please have those babies in abundance. It’s a worthwhile endeavor with a huge payback when they reach eighteen and start to repay the economic cost of raising them and their respectful gratitude makes the reward even more uplifting.
ghung on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 4:19 pm
I’m sure it’s no accident that the article’s headline photo is of a pregnant white chick. Funny, that.
Cloggie on Tue, 23rd Aug 2016 3:32 am
“I’m sure it’s no accident that the article’s headline photo is of a pregnant white chick. Funny, that.”
Wrong color, ay? She could even be English, English and English, the horror.
What’s your problem with “white chick’s” anyway? You are married to one. Ah, your kind always has been the Great Leak under European Civilization. London is now a muslim city, funny, that.
https://youtu.be/FyZ7Q-ruVpo
Now that major of London, that Khan fellow is launching a direct attack against that weakling Corbyn and “leader” of the Labor party. Won’t be long and that club will be foreign run. Next step will be the Houses of Parliament morphing into the Great Mosque of London by 2030, funny, that.
https://youtu.be/3Ay0PQuIXZ4
Allah ahkbar! Down with the infidels!
Wasn’t “winning” WW2 great?
In unrelated news, the Indian government has expressed support for the Assad regime, the western regime changers would like to topple:
http://theduran.com/indian-foreign-minister-damascus-assad-visit/
The Russian and Chinese governments did that before, funny, that.
Cloggie on Tue, 23rd Aug 2016 6:13 am
Problems with pregnant “white chicks”, ghung? Wrong color, ay?
Kenz300 on Tue, 23rd Aug 2016 6:48 am
Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/netherlands-petrol-car-ban-law-bill-to-be-passed-reduce-climate-change-emissions-a7197136.html
Kenz300 on Tue, 23rd Aug 2016 6:50 am
The top 1% want it all….. and the RepubliCON party will give it to them………..
What do RepubliCONS believe…….. depends who is paying….. follow the money……. fossil fuels….. oil, coal, natural gas…, nuclear, NRA………the top 1%…Climate Change deniers…….
Are RepubliCONS the real EVIL DOERS………..they want to end Social Security, Medicare and access to contraception…….
RepubliCONS are the reason the middle class is shrinking……
Kenz300 on Wed, 24th Aug 2016 10:40 am
Too many people……….create too much pollution and demand too many resources….
China made great progress in moving its people out of poverty…….one reason was slowing population growth…..
If you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child.
CLIMATE CHANGE, declining fish stocks, droughts, floods, air water and land pollution, poverty, water and food shortages all stem from the worlds worst environmental problem……. OVER POPULATION.
Yet the world adds 80 million more mouths to feed, clothe, house and provide energy and water for every year… this is unsustainable… and is a big part of the Climate Change problem
Birth Control Permanent Methods: Learn About Effectiveness
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/birth_control_permanent_methods/article_em.htm
Apneaman on Wed, 24th Aug 2016 12:25 pm
Make lots of babies….then watch them suffer & die in the environmental apocalypse – AKA 6th mass extinction.
Ocean Slime Spreading Quickly Across the Earth
Toxic algae blooms, perhaps accelerated by ocean warming and other climate shifts, are spreading, poisoning marine life and people.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/08/toxic-algae/
Earth enters sixth extinction phase with many species – including our own – labelled ‘the walking dead’
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/earth-is-entering-sixth-extinction-phase-with-many-species-including-our-own-labelled-the-walking-10333608.html