Comments on:

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 06:26:50 +0000

The birthrates in european countires will be self-correcting, but *only* if immigration is discouraged. Immigrants will naturally reduce the fertility of the native population, gradually leading to a replacement of the current population with with Muslim immigrants.

By: Daedalus Mugged

Daedalus Mugged — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 11:15:03 +0000

I agree that the overall size of populations is not particularly relevant. A population of 10m Italians could keep the boot Italian. The difficulties arise when proportions change. Mix every Italian into India, and there would be no Italian culture, just barely an Italian impression on Indian culture.
The ‘problem’ is that proportionately, several European countries are doing that dilutive mixing in their own countries. Italy isn’t a particularly good example of this, but look at Holland. It is quite likely that within another generation, the culturally Dutch will be a distinct minority in Holland. In a generation after that, there might not be anything culturally Dutch left…just a minor Dutch impression on an ascendant follow on culture.
Without any judgement of good or bad, the culture of many European countries is changing, and fast. Take a European country liberal enough to legalize gay marriage, but still outlaws polygamy. Want to bet that 50 years from now that isn’t reversed? That is cultural change. And absolute population numbers are irrelevant to it…it is about proportions.

By: william

william — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 23:21:32 +0000

A kid-friendly society is a suburban society: “walkability” et al are attractive mostly to people with no kids, or only one.
That’s only because the American suburb has metastatized to the point where having kids means having to drive them everywhere all the time. I grew up in a suburb of Belfast, Northern Ireland, and walked or cycled or took the bus everywhere. You can have places that are low density enough that there are houses with yards, but high density enough that buses work and there are sidewalks along the road, not just from the front door to the garage.

By: Rob Salkowitz

Rob Salkowitz — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 22:13:43 +0000

“For a “country” of celibates to complain about low birthrates seems a bit odd.”
Wish I’d written that! Very interesting piece. The problem is, Europe doesn’t exist in a vacuum. As its population declines and its culture and economy wane as a result, the slack will be picked up by areas with more youthful, dynamic, growing populations. Those places are most likely to be home to religious fundamentalists whose contributions to world culture I shudder to imagine.

By: Barbara

Barbara — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 21:01:07 +0000

Try to remember that the Renaissance, in some ways, the cultural high point in Italian history, was accomplished with many fewer people.
Here is a European population trendline:
1500
around 80 million (basically, the first century by which Europe had recovered from the Plague in terms of population trends)
1600
around 100m.
1700
Around 120m
1750 – 1845 major growth.
Very high growth 140m in 1750 to 250m in 1845 (half of world population).
1914: 450m., not including emigration of unheard-of proportions. Could have been 500m.
Innovation is the difference between being able to comfortably support 80 million and 450 million+ people.
The question is, will people change their expectations about work? Will they devalue children and education, or to the contrary, will they encourage and support them?
We grew up in a world that is used to having a lot of young people and the accepted outlook is that a lot of young people generally leads to cultural ferment and vitality but is it inevitable? Isn’t it possible that having fewer people can also lead to innovation, such as, for instance, labor saving devices that avoid the need for certain types of manual labor?
The Plague was good for workers.
There are just too many variables to work out a final equation.

By: paul

paul — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 14:12:08 +0000

I’m still trying to figure out how “yard” automatically equals “suburban”. Maybe you have to live in the suburbs for a two-acre plot, but quarter-acre (that’s roughly 50×200) or smaller zoning is typical of many towns and small cities, and works reasonably well with neighborhood stores, restaurants and other amenities. “Downtown” areas might have higher densities (especially if you can get away from the multiple acres needed for parking lots). Oddly enough, both the small city I grew up in in the US and the towns where various cousins live in europe have these characteristics. Heck, even the cousins who live in an urban center like Berlin have a yard. The US does sprawl amazingly badly.

By: M. Simon

M. Simon — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 06:42:36 +0000

Here is the url: http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2005/11/is-addiction-real.html

By: M. Simon

M. Simon — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 06:35:31 +0000

Funny you should mention addiction.
Yes, the first thing you must do is to admit you have a problem. It is just that the real problem is not the addiction.
Is Addiction Real?

By: Andy Sabl

Andy Sabl — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 03:34:26 +0000

I picked Tulsa not because there’s anything wrong with it but because I read somewhere that it’s widely used for market research on the grounds that it’s “typical”�the median American city across many dimensions. How typical it feels like to live there I don’t know: I’ve never been there. I got the house at random, based on the price range, off a rental listing site. Absolutely no offense meant in either case.
As for Troy, New York: there are other places called that (including one in California) but I’ve only been to the one in New York and wanted to speak of what I knew. Whether Hector and Aeneas’ home town is a nice place to live I also don’t know.

By: adamsj

adamsj — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 02:40:55 +0000

How did you come to pick that particular house in Tulsa–in fact, how did you come to pick Tulsa? It’s a lovely city, y’know.

By: Robert Waldmann

Robert Waldmann — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 23:54:18 +0000

Why do you add the unnecessary “New York” after “Troy”. I understand housing is quite cheap in Troy Asia Minor yet the population hasn’t bounced back.
True the houses are fixer uppers, but in many parts of Europe the material house, you know walls and roof and stuff, has less than half of the value of the legal house, that is permission to build a house. That is to say, a large meteor could only cause a house to lose about one third of it’s value.
Believe me, I have seen some expensive ruins near Florence and Rome. What’s worse is that a woman to whom I am married has seriously considered trying to convince me to buy them to house us and our two daughters (so she did her part to prevent the depopulation of Italy). Actually only one of our daughters was born in Italy, which reminds me that the way Italy treats women bearing children it doesn’t deserve to have any.

By: Dan K

Dan K — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 21:17:35 +0000

You know, Europe – as in EU – has had quite a population growth the last five years. So Italy has a stagnating population. Well, Cincinatti isn’t doing too swell neither. And? Actually, all this inconsistent alarmism about Europe on American blogs – too much (muslim) immigration, to little immigration, too much (musliminduced) population growth, stagnating populations – pisses me off. Can you Americans please fix your current account deficit and stop consuming like hell – first is potentially wrecking havoc with the world economy, and the second is wrecking havoc with our natural resources and the climate. When you have done that, you can go back bitching about European decline .

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 20:19:23 +0000

I have a long-ish reply on these issue (with no URLs) that’s waiting for approval on the previous post. Is there some length threshold that activates the need for approval?