Derb, I’m not being disingenuous. You may regard the George Osmonds of Karachi as a problem, but it’s not obvious that they’re anything to worry about if you’re in Karachi. Pakistan exports its surplus manpower not just to Britain and Canada but to countries with which it has no imperial ties, such as Scandinavia.

As I like to say, the future belongs to those who show up for it. The guys showing up are the highly fecund Osmond brothers of Utah, and the even more fecund al-Osmond brothers of Yemen, but not the Italians, Germans, San Franciscans, Vermonters, the John Feeneys of this world, or followers of the near parodic Presiding Bishop of the Episcopalian Church:

Episcopalians tend to be better educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than other denominations… We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.

Which is why they’ll be as irrelevant to the future “stewardship of the earth” as, say, the Inuit are today. See also Phillip Longman on “The Return Of Patriarchy“.