A trip to Mauritius
Two years ago I had the pleasure of a short vacation in Mauritius. I saw some of the usual tourist sites, but of course I was also interested in the politics and history of this lovely Indian Ocean island.
The flag of Mauritius is 4 simple horizontal stripes, red (symbolizing labor), blue (for the sea), yellow (for the sun), and green (for the land and its abundant agricultural yield).
Mauritius was “discovered” in 1598 by Dutch sailors. Although there were already people living there, this is when the “white” history of Mauritius began. Since then, the rulers of the island have either been whites or those acting as proxies for whites.
While this did not surprise me, eventually I asked myself why? Why do the Whites always end up in charge? I suppose part of the reason might be that Whites have more ambition — why settle for being a village elder when you can become head-of-state instead? (Note — I say “Whites” but we’re really talking about adult white male capitalists here.)
But taking over a whole country requires money and power. These are available to anyone who knows how to do it and has the will to make the hard choices necessary. Just being in charge of the government is not enough; a would-be ruling class needs a good source of income to solidify their position.
Mauritius gained their independence in 1968, but so what? Once the white rulers have established businesses that suck up all the major sources of income, they can do as they please, either directly or through their proxies.
Agriculture is the main source of wealth in Mauritius; in particular, sugar production and export. Mauritian sugar is shipped around the world. But sugar production is labor-intensive; sugar cane doesn’t gather itself. The ruling class needs labor, and at the lowest possible cost.
One “trick” used by the aristocrats is to buy up other businesses and close them; once firms like furniture makers are shut the workers have to find jobs elsewhere. When agriculture is the only sector still hiring, people flock to the agricultural jobs. By keeping the supply of workers just slightly higher than the demand, wages are artifically kept low (and profits high).
Encouraging large families
And how does a government keep the supply of workers up? By encouraging large families, of course. High fertility is touted as “the right thing to do”, even if many couples, left to their own devices, would have fewer. Ample subsidies (per-child monthly benefits) ensure there will be many takers. The ruinous effects of more people looking for work than there are jobs available doesn’t show up for decades.
The push to encourage large families is nothing new. Modern contraception is less than 100 years old; when you can’t stop the kids from coming, one possible solution is to convince yourself that you never wanted it to stop in the first place. And (most) religions — eager to increase the size of their flocks over the centuries — also push for large families.
In many traditional societies, people care for their aging parents. Laudable, but there are other ways to accomplish the same thing (I’m looking at you, government pensions). Also having children is often glorified — having a son or a daughter is “proof” that one is a “real man” or a “real woman”; and that having children “is a sacred duty” (what nonsense!)
The title of this article is “Macroethics and racism”; about how encouraging population growth keeps the impoverished races impoverished. But these techniques do more than that; they can keep the poor people poor no matter what their race is. In the USA in the ’60’s, there was a great movement to try and achieve racial equality. Blacks banded together to demand a more equitable society. But who’s that I see in the background? Whites, adding their voices to the protest. Bless them, for they could see how the system was unjust and needed to be changed, even if doing so would not benefit them directly. Now, or at least until more recent times, the races are more equal. Unfortunately, instead of raising up the status of Blacks, the status of Whites was brought down as a deteriorating economy has “lowered all the boats”. (Now that “equality” has put Whites and Blacks closer together, right-wing Whites are trying to reclaim their former position of primacy through U.S. President Donald Trump. To them, equality doesn’t seem like such a great thing anymore, does it?)
Will society collapse?
From time to time I hear vague pronouncements about how society will collapse if we don’t reverse the declining birthrate; but these pronouncements are always short on details. Let me provide some of those details:
◆ Many countries — particularly the industrialized ones — are ageing societies. People are moving up from middle to old age faster than new people (babies) are entering at the bottom. This results in an unfavorable “dependency ratio” where there are only about 2 income-earners (working taxpayers) for each non-income-earner (children and retirees). All I can say is that in all the industrialized countries, productivity increases over time, making it possible to pay everyone their benefits. The additional expense involved in supporting retirees can easily be absorbed.
In the U.S, there are doom and disaster articles about how the Social Security (government pension) Trust Fund is running out of money. For years, this trust fund has been running a surplus, with the excess being used to buy U.S. Treasury bonds — in other words, excess Social Security taxes being collected were lent to the government to fund general expenses. If that was done during a surplus, then why can’t the general taxpayer fund loan money to Social Security during a deficit? A country as big as the U.S, I’m sure, can handle it. And productivity always tends to increase; this productivity gain can cover any deficits.
The ultimate solution to a shortage of taxpayers is to raise the retirement age. This is politically hazardous; those on the threshhold of hanging up their tools are not going to take kindly to being told they have to wait another few years before they can have their rest. In France in 2023, there were riots when the retirement age was to be raised from 62 to 64. (There is also the problem of those who die before reaching retirement age — they get nothing from a system they paid into all their working lives. I’m sure they would like to get something before it’s too late.)
But the U.S. had the right idea when it comes to the retirement age. Rather than a huge increase all of a sudden, the full retirement age has been raised a few months at a time, depending on when you were born. Those who were affected have had a lot of time to get used to the idea.
◆ Older people are generally in ill health and need lots of expensive medical care. Statistics show that this tends to happen in the last year of their life, whether they are 59 or 79 years old at the time. So it really doesn’t matter when it happens, the cost to society is about the same in any case.
◆ With fewer working-age people paying taxes, there is less money coming in. But a declining population has the advantage of more resources (such as farmland and land for housing) per capita — making life easy in the long run.
◆ In any case, working-age people have to have jobs. Without good employment opportunities, having lots of people of working age accomplishes nothing.
◆ For many people, choosing to have children is just not an option. With low wages and a rising cost of living, two incomes are needed just to get by, even without kids. One wage earner and one stay-at-home just can’t provide enough.
◆ While we can’t simply cancel per-child monthly benefits, we should not add any new benefits — and in countries that are currently very generous, existing benefits shouldn’t be adjusted for inflation. Where payments are already very lavish, it has the effect of making those without children pay to support other people’s children, effectively being punished for not being “fruitful and multiplying”.
But one thing I have to emphasize — if a country ever gets into a declining population situation, they must not try to make up the difference with more immigration — doing so defeats the whole purpose of what I’m trying to say.
I suppose the impovershed countries think the industrialized countries are a bunch of fools, taking in the people they can no longer support so they can get back to making even more babies. Immigration, particularly of those who can’t support themselves immediately on arrival, needs to be strictly controlled, with “family reunifications” neither an exception nor a priority.
So the next time you hear someone warning about the collapse of society unless we reverse declining population — ask yourself how they will benefit from population growth while ******** the rest of us.
Our planet now has over 8.2 billion (thousand million) people on it. How many more do we need?
