Population, Fertility, and Liberty
Bryan Caplan
Citation (APA): Caplan, B. (2016). Population, Fertility, and Liberty [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Parte introduttiva
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Population, Fertility, and Liberty By Bryan Caplan
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fretting about the “population problem” for at least fifty years.
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overpopulation
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from mild nudges (like free condoms and sex education) to horrific coercion (like India’s involuntary sterilizations and China’s one-child policy and forced abortions).[ 1]
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x SOLUZIONI PROPOSTE
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Julian Simon,
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high and growing population is good.
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People are the ultimate resource.[ 3]
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Except for the United States and Israel, every modern economy now has fertility below the replacement rate.[ 4]
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INVERSIONE DEL PROBLEMA
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The Case for People
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T
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“How many who would have been a Mozart or a Michelangelo or an Einstein have we buried here?”
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x CLASSICA OMELIA DRL CAPPELLANO MOLITARE
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fewer human beings will be born, each one of whom might be a Mozart
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or simply a joy to his or her family
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The case against population is simple:
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Assume a fixed pie
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The flaw in this argument is that people are producers as well as consumers.
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L ERRORE
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More sophisticated critics of population appeal to the diminishing marginal product of labor.
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RENDIMENTI MARGINALI
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During the last two centuries, both population and prosperity exploded.
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LA RISPOSTA NEI FATTI
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Could rising population be a cause of rising prosperity?
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new ideas are more important than labor or capital.[
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LA GRANDE IDEA
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we know more
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CAUSA DELLA RICCHEZZA
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We know how one man can grow food for hundreds. We know how to build flying machines. We know how to build iPhones. Best of all: Once one person discovers a new idea, billions can cheaply adopt it.
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x ESEMPI
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the source of new ideas.
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LA GENTE
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deleting half the names in your music collection— or
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It increases the demand as well.
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ALTRO EFETTO DELLA GENTE
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Suppose an idea is worth $ 1 per person, but takes a decade to develop. On an island with a hundred inhabitants, the idea would remain undiscovered; inventors are better off picking coconuts. But in a world with seven billion customers, inventors scramble to bring the new idea to market.
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x PIÙ DOMANDA PIÙ INCENTIVI A INVENTARE
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There are far more books, movies, and television shows in English than in Romanian.
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L Lei INGLESE
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Far more writers and directors speak English than Romanian. But demand is also crucial:
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Michael Kremer’s celebrated “Population Growth and Technological Change: 1,000,000 B.C. to 1990” generalizes this insight to all of human history.[ 9]
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x KREMER
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Small, isolated populations in places like Tasmania stagnate
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Large, connected populations in places like Eurasia progress— and
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Despite constant complaints about cities’ crowds and congestion, city folk gladly pay higher urban rents.
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LA CITTÀ ARRICCHISCE
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premiums to live near millions of strangers.
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The obvious answer is choices— choices about where to work, what to buy, how to play, and who to meet.
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COSA SI CERCA? PIÙ YGENTE PIÙ SCELTE
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choices, like ideas, come from people— suppliers
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physical proximity is not essential. Thanks to modern communications
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we all enjoy a vast menu of occupations, lifestyles, hobbies, cultures, and social networks
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The most popular anti-population arguments now come from environmentalists.
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We’re not “running out” of food, fuel, or minerals.
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Despite occasional price spikes, real commodity prices have fallen about 1% per year for over a century.[ 11]
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x PREZZI IN DIM
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Air and water quality in the First World have been improving for decades
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limiting population to counter environmental problems is using a sword to kill a mosquito.
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Pollution taxes and congestion prices
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The most popular argument for population growth, no doubt, is that government retirement systems depend on it.
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PENSIONI
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Social Security and Medicare are pyramid schemes;
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The most neglected benefit of population growth, though, is that more people get to exist.
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GIFT OF LIFE
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everyone is glad
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the magic of hedonic adaptation,
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consider themselves happy— even when severely handicapped or mired in Third World
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a gift so reliably better than nothing?
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Just picture a world so crowded that there’s no room to move.
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IMMAGINAZIONI IRREALISTICHE
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no sign that the real world
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people and good outcomes go hand in hand— and
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Population, Policy, and Persuasion
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T
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Coercive policies to promote fertility
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Romania banned contraception to boost its birth rate.[ 16]
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3 PAESI
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Scandinavia’s “family friendly” parental leave regulations and child care subsidies.[ 17]
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French policy has been explicitly natalist since the 1930s.[ 18]
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decision to have a child is so personal that even nonlibertarians recoil at the prospect of applying social engineering to it.
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Relaxing or abolishing immigration restrictions
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POLITICHE LIBRTARIE
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best available evidence implies that giving parents one-shot tax credits for every child they bring into the world would literally pay for itself.
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x CREDITO
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What is the total “fiscal externality” of a new baby— the
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Second: How much do you have to pay people to persuade them to have another child?
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externality of a new baby are positive and large.
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Wolf et al
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positive externality of $ 217,000 in 2009 dollars— roughly
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Estimates of the responsiveness of fertility
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Milligan (2005),
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It finds that a baby bonus of Can $ 1000— just 5% of per-capita GDP— increased the probability of having a child by 16.9%.[ 25]
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x QUANTO CI VUOLE
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Quebec’s total fertility rate at the time was roughly 1.5, this implies roughly a .25 increase in the total fertility rate. Since you get about one additional child for every four bonuses, the total cost per child created equals 20% of per-capita GDP.
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C
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natalist tax credits are a fiscal free lunch.[ 26]
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government can capture an income stream with a present value of $ 217,000 by foregoing $ 9000
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x CONC
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a viable apolitical remedy for low fertility
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people underestimate not just the social benefits of having kids, but the privatebenefits as well.
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TESI
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Parents emotionally overcharge themselves
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four decades of adoption and twin research
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high-effort parenting is greatly overrated.
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The estimated effect of parents on health, intelligence, happiness, success, character, and values usually ranges from small to zero.[ 29]
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x GEMELLI
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styles within this vaguely normal range are about equally good.[ 30]
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make fewer painful sacrifices,
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focus on enjoying their time with their children.
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kids you want are cheaper than you think.[ 31]
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Buy more.
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Correction on Fiscal Externalities
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T
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Douglas Wolf et al. forthcoming. “The Fiscal Externalities of Becoming a Parent.” Population and Development Review.
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x
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Kevin Milligan. 2005. “Subsidizing the Stork: New Evidence on Tax Incentives and Fertility.” Review of Economics and Statistics 87, pp. 539-555.
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x
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Want to Bet? A Reply to Greg Clark
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T
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Greg Clark freely admits that the last two centuries have been wonderful for mankind. But will current trends continue?
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“for 99.9% of human history, up till 1800, the winner in that competition was resource scarcity.”
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x MALTHUSIANI
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Population, per-capita income, technology, science, literacy, culture, democracy, lifespan, and international trade exploded. Slavery, monarchy, and death from infectious disease withered away; war itself is poised to join them.
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x ULTIMI DUE SECOLI
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New ideas are the main driver
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population increases both the supply and demand for new ideas.
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economies of scale as one social benefit
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X IL MALTHUSIANO
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he neglects the far more important effect on innovation.
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Negative externalities of fertility?
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OB 3
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any negative effect of population on living standards is internal to the family.
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RISPOSTA
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When people think about overcrowding or overpopulation, they typically imagine that if, for example, I had not been born, everyone else would have a slightly bigger share of the pie. The truth is that if I had not been born, both of my sisters would have substantially bigger shares of the pie and everybody else’s share would be pretty much the same as it is now.[ 2]
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x EQUIVOCO SULLE ESTERNALITÀ
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negative externalities, if any, are intra-family.
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Connelly’s Fears
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T
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Connelly doesn’t deny that fertility is good. But he’s afraid of the consequences of admitting that fertility is good.
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it seems like libertarians should be afraid to say that anything besides liberty is good.
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As soon as you say that “prosperity is good,” plenty of statists will leap to advocate state action to increase prosperity.
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you could call the entire Marxist movement “pro-prosperity”— their
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Should libertarians be afraid to praise these as well? I don’t think so.
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The Psychology and Economics of Parenting– Reply to Betsey Stevenson
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T
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Parents are indeed unhappier, but I doubt that
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.....
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in any absolute sense.
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happiness gap between the married and unmarried is vastly greater
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family size is increasing in income after controlling for education— suggesting
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elite values, not high income per se, drives the raw negative correlation between income and number of children.
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Clark’s Muted Malthusianism
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Greg rejects Landsburg’s
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externality, if it exists, is a reduction in wages for other members
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CLARK CONFUTA LAMD
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Caplan’s kids are potentially reducing my kids’ earnings.
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Falling wages are a transfer from workers to employers (and indirectly, to consumers), not a negative externality.
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CONFUTAZIONE DI CLARK
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The more populous periods of human history— most obviously the last few centuries— clearly produced more scientific, technological, and cultural innovations than earlier, less populous periods.
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X + POP + IDEE
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More populous countries today produce many more scientific, technological, and cultural innovations
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why no Industrial Revolution in China by 1 AD, or 1000 AD?
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PUZZLE
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during this period, China wasa major source of new ideas in the world; see Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment.
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x RISP
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The real puzzle comes later, when China stagnates despite its high population. The mainstream solution to this puzzle, which I see little reason to doubt, is that the Chinese government forfeited its many advantages by deliberately suppressing innovation and communication with the outside world.
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x CASO CINA
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Fertility and the Gift of Life
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T
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crimes of anti-natalism are far worse than those of pro-natalism,
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The Cost of Natalist Tax Credits, the Magnitude of Coercion, and the Value of People
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T
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it seems much more wrong to force a woman to have an abortion than to prevent her from having an abortion.
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all else equal, coercing more people is worse than coercing fewer.
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most women do not want and will not seek abortions
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Population, Land, and Movies: Another Reply to Clark
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T
