Comment by quacked | Hacker News Reader

Comment by quacked | Hacker News Reader

There exist few talking points as odious as the myopic GDP-focused complaining about "population decreases" in developing nations and how they must be overcome by the unrestrained importing of labor.

Liberal societal goals (many of which I happen to support) include preservation of the natural environment, robust sovereignty of oppressed indigenous populations, increased availability of housing and resources, and in general an profound sense of the importance of any individual within their community. Every single one of these goals becomes easier to achieve the fewer people there are within a single geographic area, so why are these complaints about declining populations always coming from left-leaning thinkers and speakers? (I know Reuters isn't exactly left wing, but the language they're using is identical to 'progressive' politicians all over the west.)

The time immediately following the Black Death in Europe was a massive boon for the (surviving) commoner. When people talk about declining populations in Western countries, I imagine razing the unsustainable, disgusting post-war boomtowns, layering farmland and forest over their remains, and pushing a philosophy of local self-reliance born out of community solidarity. It is truly unnerving to see so many publications talk about this issue and imply that the only hope for any nation with a declining population is to bring in as much supplementary labor as possible. I can only hope the people of Singapore are happy with whatever their economic leaders have decided is best for them.

Your goals are wildly inappropriate for Singapore, which is a tiny island that has been extensively developed for centuries, and is considerably wealthier than the US. There is essentially zero primary forest left, unskilled foreign workers are far more oppressed than anything approximating an "indigenous population" (most Malays are immigrants and the odd Orang Laut has long since fully assimilated), and Singapore has one of the most successful public housing schemes in the world with something like 80% of the population owning a modern flat.

You're not wrong. I should have done a better job of explaining my point--this discussion about Singapore reminds me of discussion about other wealthy nations that uses the same phrases and focus, which is what I commented on

Singapore itself is a very strange nation, utterly dependent on other nations to provide it with almost everything it uses (food, machinery, raw product, etc). The fact that it can be managed like a reality-themed theme park is a testament to the ability of first-worlders to press-gang the rest of the world into service. Turning it into a real, self-sustaining nation with wildlife and personal independence is impossible.

I knew a few people who were permanent residents in Singapore for work, and they were not "labor". In fact, I think the population drop would be almost all in the high-skilled professional worker cohort. These are exactly the people you need to achieve those lofty goals.

The article says "The total population, which includes foreigners who live, work and study in Singapore but are not permanent residents, dropped by 4.1% to 5.45 million people. hat was largely as a result of a 10.7% decrease in its non-resident population."

There are certainly many high-skilled professional workers in that cohort, including the few Singapore residents I know who left, but it's certainly not all.

Foreign workers dropped by 147,000 and if you dig into that number, a decent amount were Employment Pass workers which are generally "highly skilled". The other tend to be more lower skilled/manual labor jobs.

Malthusianism lives on. Easy to wax lyrical about the Black Death when you haven't lived through the mass extinction of ~50% of your community.

And what about those who didn't, who were born one to four generations after? Malthus is wrong about overpopulation killing through lack of resources, but anyone who disagrees that setting expanding human populations loose on little-populated lands creates more individual agency and personal benefit than trying to fit that same group into an existing crowded and stacked hierarchy is ignorant of history.

Surely you're not implying that population reduction due to a lower birth-rate is as traumatic as living through the Black Death, just because the GP unfortunately used it as an example?

As for Malthusianism - it seems to me the GP is correct in pointing out ecological stress is proportional to human population size, and that the ecosystem is in crisis. Were you hoping we would overlook this fact by calling it "Malthusianism"?

Rarely have I seen so many dishonest arguments compressed into so few words.

> As for Malthusianism - it seems to me the GP is correct in pointing out ecological stress is proportional to human population size, and that the ecosystem is in crisis.

Population size? No, the problem is human greed and corruption.

I'm not saying those aren't a problem. I'm saying that ecological stress is proportional to human population size. Are you claiming we'd have the same ecological problems, of the same severity, if the human population were 1/10th its size?

The claim is so simple and obvious I'm sure you misunderstood it deliberately.

Immigrant bad. Homogenous population good blah blah.

Ah, it's hard to be so ignorant sometimes--when I'm enlightened like you I'll finally be able to understand that relocating 15,000 backwater US conservatives to the Bangkok suburbs would actually be a net benefit for the Thai. Their weak, homogeneous culture needs to be changed for their own good.

It’s a net benefit for the world.

How do you tell these people that they should work less. They'll work more than they need and then fiercely compete for limited "full time jobs" or create new ones that nobody wants. Humans aren't smart enough to do tomorrows work today if the there isn't enough work today.

Yes

Reply on news.ycombinator.com