Lennarts Christmas text

If you ask a local politician in a town or a smaller region about the way they view growth of the local population you always get the same answer. They think, wish or at least hope that their population will grow. Hereby they see a lot of benefits. More money through tax is making the town wealthier, maybe money to a new school or a new shopping centre. The benefits always are so great with a growth of the population, so they want to plan it and no one really want to see the costs for it.

If you instead ask a regional politician in a region or a smaller state about the way they view growth of the local population you always get the same answer. They think, wish or at least hope that their population will grow. Hereby they see a lot of benefits. More money through tax is making the region wealthier, maybe money to a new school or a new shopping centre. The benefits always are so great with a growth of the population, so they want to plan it and no one really want to see the costs for it.

If you then ask a politician active in the government of a whole nation about the way they view growth of the population you always get the same answer. They think, wish or at least hope that their population will grow. Hereby they see a lot of benefits. More money through tax is making the country wealthier, maybe money to a new school or a new shopping centre. The benefits always are so great with a growth of the population, so they want to plan it and no one really want to see the costs for it.

When you add all these wishes to a world level the result is radical. But you insist my model is to simplified! Nowadays only poor people in poor countries get many children? Yes, the number of children per woman or family is decreasing in most countries. But here you also have a gigantic migration on different levels. And still the population of the world is increasing in a gigantic test to see how many there was room for before the bacterias consumed us.

In the meantime many are starving to death, others kill each other in wars and children are forced to grow up under disgusting circumstances.

Priced economists call that growth of markets. The real name is cancer on humanity. If we only hold the population around the number of one billion people all resources including water and food will be enough to give a reasonable life to anyone everywhere.

The economists call that regression. But we do not need to listen to their theories that never fulfill.

The great paradox around the growth of population is that nothing really force us to let the population grow. The balance in population between different regions is really good for all parts. To get functional societies everywhere.

The only argument against it is the old liberal freedom argument that people must have the right to live whereever they wish to live. It is easy to see that the argument is false. I can not move into the central parts of Stockholm. I have to buy my way in there. You do not need 150 000 new immigrants to realize that they all can not live on a small exclusive island like Lilla Essingen. What would then happen if 500 000 000 people from India or China would want to move to some part of Sweden?

It is in the planning of the town, as well as in the planning of the region and also, at the same time, the planning of the whole country this kind of problems are to be solved. There are no single solutions. In times of elections the politicians talk on all levels of these problems, but between elections they work on getting more traffic jams in the Cities and turning recreation areas into sky scrapes.

Here in India they have actually the same problems as in Sweden. The only difference is that here everything is much bigger and easier to realize. Of course India does not let people who want so live in Delhi. They just started to deport 4,5 miljon workers from town, who illegally had moved there. All the people I saw sleeping in the streets and some more. I wonder when they will have sneaked back again.

But the solutions are not out of reach. You can still organize the grounds for a decent life for people.

Mother, what is that black on the wall over there? They are bacterias. They have come to eat us.

Goa the 24 of December 2016

Lennart