New Book "One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger"

Good God, what an asshole.

I ain’t leaving any progeny to this shitshow.

So he thinks we need to compete with China on population?

I'll pass.

That’s some fucked up thinking.

Over 40% of the US in uninhabitable due to terrain or weather.

Obviously, I haven't read the book, but I can't imagine what a polluted mess this would end up being. Let alone trying to take in hundreds of millions of immigrants.

How about we stop trying to be #1 and fix the last 3 decades of downward spiral instead?

Mass immigration is damaging to the environment. It causes population increase in BOTH the country of origin and the destination country, thus depleting resources and lowering quality-of-life. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups have been saying this since the 1970s, but have been recently silenced due to being taken over by a billionaire director with a political agenda. Moderate environmentalists who have recently pointed this out have now been painted as "right-wingers hijacking the environmental movement".

R7, how does emigration out of a country increase the population of that country?

Anti-immigration posters on here. Borders should be open and all are welcome.

This book presupposes our ability to solve so many other problems first (climate change, political gridlock, economic inequality, on and on), just to make this country liveable. If we were advanced enough to solve those problems, we would be wise enough not to keep growing our population through reproduction, and we would be able to share our technology with other poorer countries so that they could improve their standard of living without forcing their people to leave their homes against their will.

insanity

The idea that the government should encourage Americans to have more children is absolutely absurd. Immigration is different since those are lives that already exist.

The whole world needs exactly the inverse of this proposal.

No! We don't need 1 billion people. The average person's quality of life would plummet, and the damage we'd be doing to the environment would be exacerbated. Having the space to accommodate that many people doesn't mean we need to use it for that purpose.

R8 because if people think that they and their children can easily emigrate they have no incentive not to continue to have excessively large families, and worse, no incentive to improve conditions in their own country. If people know that their best option is staying put they are more likely to actually think ahead on how to make it a better place long term

It is heartening to see all the responses from people who see this book and the idea it presents as the utter lunacy it is. There is a need for a global population management strategy, and the lead could be taken by countries like Japan that have already demonstrated success at it

America with a billion people would be hell on earth, as would any country that tripled its population. Both Bangladesh and Pakistan have done what this moron is proposing, neither one is Paradise on Earth by a very very long shot

He discussed it on the Slate Political Gabfest last week. A billion people would mean America would have roughly the same population density as France.

The book is mostly a thought exercise, prompting us to think about solutions presently available for our problems that would be more starkly called for with a billion people.

R7, I'd like to see that study, because it does not sound credible. If you have it available, can you tell me this: does it provide an estimate of population growth in each country in the absence of migration? You are saying that allowing immigration increases population in both countries, but that is kind of irrelevant if the total world population were to grow even faster in the absence of immigration. All data suggests that people in richer countries have fewer children, so moving immigrants who would have had 10 kids in their home country (and whose kids would have had 10 kids each, etc.) to the U.S., where they might have 4 kids (and those kids, being born in the U.S., would have 2 or 3 kids each) would be better for slowing population growth.

I'm the one on DL who keeps saying that the US needs to drastically cut immigration, preferably to zero. People on DL keep disagreeing with me. If not 1 billion, how many immigrants are enough? Because these people are never ever gonna stop until the entire third world lives here.

I listened to the Political Gabfest podcast with this guy.

He never even bothered to sell the idea. So confusing.

R16, wait until Africa’s population really explodes in the coming decades. They’re already at the southern border.

R20 was for R18.

Africa population is doubling every 27 years.

R18, it's not immigrants, it's people period. 1 billion native born Americans would be way too many, and probably far worse than 330 million native born Americans and 670 million immigrants. Where are the policies that will incentivize Americans to have fewer kids?

The West is doomed because of colonial guilt and because eugenics/genetic hygiene is unacceptable in the West

You know who’s going to run things very soon. It’s all about IQ. They’ll fix everything. It’ll be ugly, but they’ll fix things.

R24 I think you’re right.

Africans at the Mexican border. From the AP.

NBC covers Africans at the Mexico-Guatemala borders.

Africans demand entry to claim asylum.

[quote] So he thinks we need to compete with China on population?

China’s population will shrink because of the one child policy, for several different reasons.

R24, you are absurd and frankly disgusting. Look at the biggest driver of migration today: climate change. The average American has 4 times the carbon footprint of the average non-American (which includes other Westerners, meaning the multiple is even larger compared to human beings living in underdeveloped countries). That works out to 4 x 330 million Americans = 1.3 billion Americans, if each had the global average carbon footprint. There are two solutions to this problem: reduce the number of native born Americans, or reduce the carbon footprint of the average American (or both). The latter means a reduction in the standard of living for Americans. This is the only just solution. American consumption of energy and natural resources is destroying the planet and uprooting people from their homes around the world. Once Americans start living within their means and stop imposing hardships on everyone else, then you can talk about "Western guilt".

Central Africa comes to the South. Poetic justice.

R30, you’re an infant and/or low-IQ.

Just let is take the wheel.

Central Africans coming to South Africa.

A "surge" in African immigration is doubling a very small number. People freak out when they read a headline that says such and such has doubled. That's a meaningless metric unless we know the starting number. If One is doubled, the new total is Two. Not very terrifying.

There are two situations that are diametrically opposed in operation here. One is planetary. Our current lifestyle is killing our planet. That includes clearing land to grow food, or, more specifically, to grow animals we fatten and eat. In the process, we are killing off vast ecosystems, causing mass die-offs of species,. We are also fouling the air and water, polluting the ocean and overfishing it. Our planet could probably comfortably sustain 3 billion people living a Western style comfortable lifestyle and meat-centered diet.. It cannot sustain 10 billion people living a western lifestyle without the planet becoming uninhabitable.

On the other hand, the economic system which brings the most comfortable and safest lifestyle to the most number of people is capitalism. Capitalism is completely predicated on growth models, and most importantly on population growth (increasing demand for goods and services). When population plummets, capitalism as an economic engine starts to sputter and then dies. Japan and Europe have been struggling to figure out how to maintain vibrant capitalist economies in the face of plunging birthrates and declining population for several decades. Now China is suddenly coming face to face with the reality that its population is starting to level off, and will decline by 2065 to 1990 levels - 200,000,000 less than its peak, or the entire population of Brazil fewer. Fewer people, less demand for housing. Property values start to decline and then fall rapidly. Older people don't need new washing machines, cars, computers at the same rate that younger people do. The US is at that point in its birthrate. Robust immigration has disguised that drop in birthrate, and kept the US economy vigorous. Now, post COVID and an anti-immigration president, all bets are off. Countries that still have rapid growth rates are mostly in South Asia, Africa, and the middle East.

Europe can function as an overflow sink for Africa and the Middle East. And South Asia.

Keep them coming.

R24 is sadly right. The West will not control the world much longer, it will be Asia's time (mainly China). And yes, the "fix" will be absolutely brutal. They have had the good sense to constrain their own population with the one child policy which was needed, and they are now reaping the benefits. The West has effectively ceded leadership to China due to a loss of confidence in Western culture. Bye bye democracy

China already controls swathes of Africa and much of the third world and own a lot of their infrastucture. They are busy extracting minerals and other resources. I have friends in South Africa seeing this happen

That’s a lot of foreskin!

Matt Y. discussed his book with his Vox colleague Ezra Klein this morning.

[quote]It's not like we can (or should) randomly settle people in Montana.

All 7 billion of the world's inhabitants can fit in Texas with their own tiny houses and a small patch for vegetables. Yet individuals own property the size of small countries. Inequality is the main enemy.

R39, where will they work? What about the environmental impact of settling all those people on unoccupied land? And with climate change, much of Texas is going to become uninhabitable due to drought, wildfires, and flooding. Where are you going to move all those people when they can't live there anymore, and how are you going to manage the mass exodus of Texas refugees to other states?

R39’s vision of paradise is billions of people stuffed in rows of homogenous little huts with just enough space for a vegetable garden.

Talk about living the dream! Good luck motivating the masses to take up arms for that.

There are areas of the world where a man’s masculinity/virility is judged by the number of children he has. Hell, there are some areas of the US where men are proud of fathering many babies by different women. And the Hasidim are hellbent on having 10 children or more.

If a woman doesn’t produce many children a man can divorce her in some place Some men can marry more than one wife in order to produce lots of children. A woman in Africa told my women’s health NP friend that if she used birth control & only had 1 or 2 children her husband would be considered strange & inferior by other men. She had to keep producing to make her husband look good or he would be disgraced.

yikes, I kinda like yglesias at times, but yikes. a billion. I'm crying as I type.

I honestly can't wait for the human race to be wiped out.

R44 if the loon author that OP posted and others get their way and we end up with open borders all over the world, that may be happening in short order.

Obviously the lessons from COVID havent sunk in to some people yet

R9, you can't have open borders and a solid welfare state.

R46 or a solid healthcare system available to all either

You know, I was kind of hoping a pandemic would wipe out a good deal of the earth’s population, I just didn’t expect The US to have one of the highest death tolls. I also didn’t expect a pandemic would mostly kill nursing home-aged people. I was hoping for more of a1918 type event & figures the US wouldn’t make out to badly because we’ve had epidemiologists preparing for the event for decades. We’ve always had some kind of pandemic team available to presidents. Back in the Cold War there was the possibility of “germ warfare” so you bet your ass there were plans in case of a pandemic, and the military & executive branch funded & were updated on it all the time.

Then Putin came along....

Oh dear on my typos

R49 Wot typpos?

The birthrate among native citizens has been rapidly declining. Young adults have been delaying starting families due to more competition for entry level jobs and decreased wages. Part of it has to do with more women pursuing careers after college but it's mostly because of the lack of low skilled labor. Students are unable to support their way through college. Immigration and outsourcing plays a huge role. The growing population is solely because of the birthrates for immigrants. All Democrats and even some Republicans see immigration and free trade as a way to increase their wealth and power, middle class be damned.

Of course you have some of the sheeple here cheering this on because they want less white people.

The only way you’re going to have a densely populated nation and not have chaos or violence is if you also have a population that is educated, law-abiding, and civically-minded. Singapore has one of the most if not the most population density in the world. But its citizens aren’t out there killing each other. Why? Because they have a system in place that emphasizes order over potential chaos, and most citizens have bought into it wholeheartedly. People often chastise Singapore for its relatively crime-free, clean. well-run society without knowing that it is a necessity. Necessity because of the over abundance of people living on such a small country.

Take a country like Japan, which is 3 times more densely populated than Europe as a whole, and 12 times more densely populated than the US. But Japanese people and share cultural and societal values that influence or govern how society operates. It’s much easier to have that than an over-populated country with multiple groups of people each with their own social outlooks and cultures.

Development models ignore sustainability. Why bother to encourage higher birth rates for short term gains when the planet is turning into a garbage dump? Better technology not more people would be helpful

This thread is like catnip for DL, the majority of whom are misanthropes.

R54 Better technology and less people is what Japan has now and trending even more in this direction. Having kids and being a breeder isn’t seen in Japanese culture as the end all and be all, not like how it is here in the US. Less people to work as unskilled labor means they are way more technologically advanced compared to the rest of the world. Good and bad sides to this.

R56 technology turned out not to be so great. Young professionals are competing with teenagers for gig work. There are also plenty of Indian and Chinese programmers willing to work for almost nothing.

[quote] If we were advanced enough to solve those problems

We’re not.