Peter: I have no “fervor for population control,” nor even a liking for it. Just yesterday on this site, here I was saying that people should be left alone to regulate these things for themselves. Populationwise, I’m a libertarian–more of one than most of my NR colleagues, since I would allow “regulate” to include “abort.”

However, you have somehow set off my ideology detector. I see it is blinking red. I am not sure why, but I think I am getting a whiff of: “More people is better! More people is better! Anywhere and everywhere, more people is better!” More people might indeed be better in some circumstances; in others, not. I am not a great fan of old Malthus, but he was not totally out of his gourd. It is indisputable (well, it seems so to me) that there is SOME upper limit to the number of people the earth (or China, or Monaco) can support. Possibly we are nowhere near that limit, and population-worriers are shying at shadows; possibly we have long ago exceeded it and will soon see the demographic ax fall. That’s stuff we can argue about. That the limit exists, however, is really, surely, not arguable. (I was going to add: “Remember Captain Maclear’s Rat.” In the folklore of my childhood, this little fellow, native to Christmas Island, proliferated himself to extinction. Checking with Wikipedia, I see that the introduction of disease-bearing black rats from visiting ships may have had something to do with it. In any case, demographic boom-and-bust cycles are certainly a feature of the natural world–see here for example And Captain Maclear’s rat, with which the island was once wellniogh paved, is now, for whatever reason, thoroughly extinct.) Incidentally, the great overcrowding crisis caused by floods of refugees into 1950s Hong Kong was alleviated at last by a massive program of public housing, built by the government. There is a good survey, with pictures, here. Even today, over 50 percent of Hong Kongers live in public, subsidized housing. The Hong Kong Housing Authority is, I believe, the world’s biggest landlord. I know Hong Kong well, spent some of my formative years there. It ain’t all capitalism.