Oh noes!  Lots of countries are facing population declines!  Let me see if I can paraphrase this entire conversation:

Nicholas Eberstadt: “There are fewer Russians every day, and this will be bad for Russia.”

Ross Douthat: “And that’s why we shouldn’t be as worried about Russia.”

Matt Yglesias: “Hogwash!  Declining population does not equal badness.”

Michelle Goldberg: “Declining population means my ideas of socialized day care and family leave are great because they encourage native growth!”

Kerry Howley: “This whole natalism thing is creepy, from conservatives or liberals.  Stop telling women what to do.”

Will Wilkinson: “Howley is right, plus you should read her other article on the subject.”

Did I get that right?  Hopefully.  Anyway, every time I hear people complaining about population decline, I have to laugh.  It wasn’t that long ago that we were all worried about rampant population explosion.  Lots of (silly) people still are — anyone remember “The Population Bomb“?.  I hesitate to ascribe certain unpopular motives to those who are Very Concerned about the decline in certain populations vs. increases in certain other populations, but the thought has arisen.  It has to be very galling to citizens of certain countries to hear wealthy Americans bemoaning population decline in places like Europe, while simultaneously worrying about the negative effects of population growth in their countries.

Now, I certainly think that a world with X+1 population is, on average, a better place than a world with X population, because that person has talents and desires that make the world a better place.  But I think the world is made an even better place when we let people do what they want, especially with regard to the highly personal choice of childbearing.

Taken as a whole, the population of Earth is still growing.  The difference is that it is growing in ways that certain people don’t like.  The most charitable possible explanation for this is that they feel that the good beliefs associated with the declining population will be, in any popularly representative society, be voted out by less-good ones in the increasing population.  Which would be a decent argument if the only method of belief transmission were through birth.  But two major trends over the last 20 years drastically contradict this.

First, within the United States, there have been massive belief shifts (even within a generation or tw0) on the concepts of religion, sex, marriage, drugs, war, gender, obscenity and so many others.  No amount of birth, death or immigration rates can wholly explain this.  We are not importing these belief changes.  Not even the most impacable of idea transition-mechanics — the old people who believe them dying — can explain this shift.  People are just changing their minds.  The only possible conclusion is that other factors are at work — perhaps brainwashing, perhaps free transmission of ideas, perhaps extremely persuasive media sources.  Whatever it is, it’s certainly beating the pants off of the old fashioned breed-your-voters tactic.  

Secondly, that theory/tactic completely falls apart when we look at two countries who have experienced some of the largest population growths over this period: China and India.  Coincidentally (or not) they have also experienced an even more massive (if there’s some way to objectively compare the apples of belief shifts to the oranges of population increases) changes in their beliefs on many of the same topics, to the extent that observers both here and there worry about a loss of traditional beliefs and practices.  Almost without exception, however, these shifts have occurred in the direction that makes them more similar to the beliefs held in places like Europe and America.  The huge improvement in material wealth, whether a cause or an effect or irrelevant, is almost a footnote in this case.  Most convincingly, they’ve occurred on a scale that dwarfs any realistic offsetting effect from “Western” fertility choices.

So what this comes down is this: in order to increase the world market share of your belief system, it turns out that propaganda, persuasion and evangelism are vastly more effective than fecundity.  I’d go so far as to imply that those who believe the best path for spreading their beliefs is childbirth are betraying a certain lack of confidence in those beliefs — if the only way you can imagine successfully transmitting your ideas requires the blind trust that young childen put into their parents, you can’t believe your ideas are very persuasive.  This is the Santa Claus scenario: “our beliefs are so good that we convey them to our children in the same way we tell them about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny!”  Of course, for certain beliefs, this is a feature not a bug.

Who are these people who are gesturely wildly at pie charts showing future racial breakdowns, and why aren’t I going to their houses and kicking them in the shins?  Aren’t we past that by now?  Here’s my message to both future dictators and future libertarians (and everyone in between): who cares what color they are if they believe the “right” thing?  Whatever resources you expend convincing and persuading will be more effectively spent than raising a kid for 20 years, I can guarantee that.  And just maybe, if you focus less on your kids being bulwarks against the encroaching beliefs of evil foreigners, you’ll enjoy the process a bit more.