Ep. 134: Do intellectuals and environmentalists want to reduce the world’s population?

The Mindcrime Liberty Show discusses whether environmentalists would prefer a world with fewer people. Environmentalists of the Left as well as the Right have pursued a variety of policies in particular forms of birth control as well as higher education for girls which has lowered the birthrate in most, if not all, industrialized developed countries. Intellectuals like JS Mill spent a night in prison for the crime of distributing materials related to birth control and abortion. Many traditional people of the Right have complained about the effects of industrialization and urbanization on the family as well as its secularization tendency. Aristotle seems to suggest that a polis over a 100,000 persons is simply too big to govern with his ideal form of government. Would plenty of intellectuals prefer a smaller population? If people are a good thing isn’t it great that industrial modernity has more of them? What would be the ideal population?