I like to read Volokh Conspiracy. I enjoy their intelligent and thoughtful commentary on (mostly) legal matters from a conservative/libertarian perspective. But not all participants are cut from the same cloth. Take for example this post by Jim Lindgren, wherein he criticizes Diane Francis for making a pretty stupid argument for population control:

The “inconvenient truth” overhanging the UN’s Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.

A planetary law, such as China’s one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days.

The world’s other species, vegetation, resources, oceans, arable land, water supplies and atmosphere are being destroyed and pushed out of existence as a result of humanity’s soaring reproduction rate.

Lindgren’s response?

A welfare state is in one sense a big Ponzi scheme. Without increasing numbers of people entering the scheme, there is no money to pay the people receiving the money. As Mark Steyn has repeatedly pointed out, you can’t run a welfare state without a growing population.

Francis, a visiting professor at Ryerson University, also blogs at the Huffington Post. BTW, Jim Geraghty reports that she has two children, which is one more than I have.

Huh? So…because Francis is (presumably) a liberal (because only liberals would argue for severe population control) her argument for severe population control is undermined because where would we get the new bodies to pay for the welfare state (which only liberals support)? Also, she’s a hypocrite. I mean, is that the argument? If you can tell you’re smarter than I am.

Filled with nonsequiter-ish snark, Lindgren misses a chance to gut Francis’ stupid argument:

…imagine you are a bit richer. You may have moved to a town, or your village may have grown. Schools, markets and factories are within reach. And suddenly, the incentives change. A tractor can gather the harvest better than children. Your wife may get a factory job—and now her lost wages must be set against the benefits of another baby. Education, thrift and a stake in the future become more important, and these middle-class virtues go hand in hand with smaller families. Education costs money, so you may not be able to afford a large family. Perhaps the state provides a pension and you no longer need children to look after you. And perhaps your wife is no longer willing to bear endless offspring. Higher living standards, better communications and more education enable you to rely on markets and public services, not just yourself and your family.

Macroeconomic research bears out this picture. Fertility starts to drop at an annual income per person of $1,000-2,000 and falls until it hits the replacement level at an income per head of $4,000-10,000 a year (see chart 2). This roughly tracks the passage from poverty to middle-income status and from an agrarian society to a modern one. Thereafter fertility continues at or below replacement until, for some, it turns up again (see article).

The link between living standards and fertility exists within countries, too. India’s poorest state, Bihar, has a fertility rate of 4; richer Tamil Nadu and Kerala have rates below 2. Shanghai has had a fertility rate of less than 1.7 since 1975; in Guizhou, China’s poorest province, the rate is 2.2. So strong is the link between wealth and fertility that the few countries where fertility is not falling are those torn apart by war, such as Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where living standards have not risen.

In other words, raising living standards is nearly as effective as a draconian family size restrictions. What conservative wouldn’t get behind an argument to make everyone richer, and let them have as many kids as they want (because they’ll want less kids)? You can even make the principled argument that the present debated measures to control greenhouse emissions would only slow this process, and result in degradation to the environment as a result of population overgrowth.

Or if you’re Jim Lindgren, you can use it to take a cheap shot at the left that doesn’t connect because it doesn’t make any sense. Which means that I’m apparently a better conservative blogger than Jim Lindgren.