Free to Live Well and then Be Forgotten
What is forgotten amidst all the public and private handwringing is that birthrates have very little to do with the all-important factor when it comes to economic growth: gross domestic product per worker. . . .
People ultimately trade products for products, so if labor productivity is rising, the level of population growth (or decline) isn’t much of a factor.
As the ILO study shows, U.S. workers are the most productive in the world by a wide margin ($63,885 per worker), followed by Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France. Though the U.S. birthrate is still thought to be high enough to sustain population growth, it’s ultimately not very relevant. The more important factor here is that worker productivity and output continue to rise.
Mark Steyn responds here, but he doesn’t quite hit the heart of the issue. He can’t resist the technical point that economic output per worker is a poor metric, and that Tamny ignores the special costs that distinguish immigration from trade in commodities. And Steyn mocks what he calls “economic reductionism”, in which economists assume that people will always do what is in their economic self-interest.
I want to go a little deeper. The problem with economic reductionism isn’t just that it’s factually wrong, but that it carries dangerous moral premises. Mr. Tamny’s thinking is fundamentally hedonistic: If we’re all able to consume lots of economic goods, then that is what we ought to do. It’s simple utilitarianism: As long as everybody is happy, then everything is good.
The alternative is to value life more than happiness. Happiness usually promotes life, but not always and especially not in our era. Life is often painful, and we must choose between accepting the pain and embracing life or avoiding pain and hoping that life will somehow manage of its own.
Raising children is tough. It’s expensive. It’s a hassle. It’ll cost you all sorts of sleep and seriously cut into your sex life. It’ll mean that you can’t go out in the evening whenever you want, nor can you conveniently rent and watch whatever movie you want. But if you really want to live, if you really want some trace of your life to still exist a century hence, then making and raising children is the easiest, most effective way to do it.
That’s how I see the demographic crisis: Lots of people are choosing pleasure over life, and technology is making it easier for them to do so. With population big turning point is probably birth control, which severed the link between reproduction and sexual pleasure. Now westerners are freer than ever to enjoy themselves and then be forgotten.