"Writing a newspaper column necessarily is a dour exercise most of the time. The point is to highlight things going wrong that ought to be fixed. Occasionally, however, it's worth noting some things that are going right that one hopes can continue. Here, in the midst of a season that calls for reflection and gratitude, is my list:
-- The world's population keeps getting larger. We're on track to welcome our 8,100,000,000th global neighbor in 2024, after population growth of around 70 million this year.
Yes, this is a good thing. People have been going out of fashion since the days of the Rev. Thomas Malthus, and the trend only picked up steam in the 20th century with nonsense such as Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book, "The Population Bomb." Even today, the fashionable rich like to signal their putative virtue by announcing their plans to have fewer children.
But people are an asset, not a liability. On a human level, more people means more family relationships and friendships. The former in particular are in short supply in countries such as China that have had the capacity (and the nihilistic ideological antecedents) to limit population growth in draconian fashion -- with catastrophic social consequences. On an economic level, more people means more potential for innovation and therefore more, rather than less, prosperity." [1]
1. Political Economics: Some Good News, for Once, From 2023. Sternberg, Joseph C. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 22 Dec 2023: A.17.
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