I am reposting this article, which was originally published in Spanish. Although it is specific to the Spanish context, the core issues are relevant throughout the Western world and hopefully to this audience.
Increases in population are not progress, and can't be used to bail out failing Ponzi schemes, which fail due to the inexorable laws of mathematics - such as the laws of exponential growth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4 Poltitical leaders tend to be mathematically ignorant, and can't know the consequences of their growth policies...
Importing a million people to bail out a failing Ponzi scheme just kicks the can down the road, and the mathematically inevitable crash will be even worse -
"A Ponzi scheme is a type of fraudulent investment strategy. Typically fraudsters promise very high returns, and use money from new recruits to the scheme to pay off early-stage investors, until the scheme gets so big that the inflow of new money is insufficient; at which point the scheme collapses amid losses and recriminations (Sander, 2009, p.2). The fraud is often assisted by intermediaries who are reckless and negligent, rather than dishonest, and who guide investors towards the scheme. The beneficiaries are either well-informed and dishonest (the scheme promoters), wilfully and negligently ill-informed (intermediaries), or ill-informed but fortunate (investors who withdraw their funds before the collapse). The victims, those left with worthless investments, are both ill-informed and unlucky.
3This is in essence a form of market failure, characterised by extreme asymmetry of information. Investors are actively ill-informed: not only do the scheme promoters mislead and lie to them, but there is also an element of complicity on the part of those who fail properly to scrutinise the misinformation. Thus investors' judgement is distorted by a suspension of the disbelief that would otherwise caution them against opaque accounting and promises of implausibly high returns. In short, the victims believe what they want to believe.
4A further essential precondition for the operation of a Ponzi scheme is a separation between the initial activity (the early investments) and the eventual outcome (the scheme's collapse). The separation is always temporal, but it might also be geographical and social. The victims suffer the consequences of the earlier action of the beneficiaries; victims' inability to detect the fraudulent nature of the scheme can be exacerbated by distance or by unfamiliarity with the nature of apparently sophisticated investment plans." https://journals.openedition.org/sapiens/1083
Increases in population are not progress, and can't be used to bail out failing Ponzi schemes, which fail due to the inexorable laws of mathematics - such as the laws of exponential growth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4 Poltitical leaders tend to be mathematically ignorant, and can't know the consequences of their growth policies...
Importing a million people to bail out a failing Ponzi scheme just kicks the can down the road, and the mathematically inevitable crash will be even worse -
"A Ponzi scheme is a type of fraudulent investment strategy. Typically fraudsters promise very high returns, and use money from new recruits to the scheme to pay off early-stage investors, until the scheme gets so big that the inflow of new money is insufficient; at which point the scheme collapses amid losses and recriminations (Sander, 2009, p.2). The fraud is often assisted by intermediaries who are reckless and negligent, rather than dishonest, and who guide investors towards the scheme. The beneficiaries are either well-informed and dishonest (the scheme promoters), wilfully and negligently ill-informed (intermediaries), or ill-informed but fortunate (investors who withdraw their funds before the collapse). The victims, those left with worthless investments, are both ill-informed and unlucky.
3This is in essence a form of market failure, characterised by extreme asymmetry of information. Investors are actively ill-informed: not only do the scheme promoters mislead and lie to them, but there is also an element of complicity on the part of those who fail properly to scrutinise the misinformation. Thus investors' judgement is distorted by a suspension of the disbelief that would otherwise caution them against opaque accounting and promises of implausibly high returns. In short, the victims believe what they want to believe.
4A further essential precondition for the operation of a Ponzi scheme is a separation between the initial activity (the early investments) and the eventual outcome (the scheme's collapse). The separation is always temporal, but it might also be geographical and social. The victims suffer the consequences of the earlier action of the beneficiaries; victims' inability to detect the fraudulent nature of the scheme can be exacerbated by distance or by unfamiliarity with the nature of apparently sophisticated investment plans." https://journals.openedition.org/sapiens/1083