Get in, make as much as possible (with little to no regard for others), get out, retire early.

Arguably, this is what the American dream has become. It used to be we wanted middle class wealth, 2.1 kids, and a nice suburban house. But now all we want to do is sell out, retire, and never have to work again. I can relate, even if I lack the skills to play the game.

That’s where we got antiwork, FIRE, etc. It’s true: nobody wants to work anymore. I sure don’t. Maybe we never did.

Quite literally, same here. There’s nothing wrong with bikes, but used cars became unreasonably expensive and younger people never tasted the freedom. Planes are like that with even smaller percentages of pilots and even more unreasonable prices (last affordable in the 1960s, while cars were affordable until the early 2000s or so). People hate what they don’t have or understand. Personal vehicles are incredibly liberating for those of us who get it. We’re being shamed for appreciating an independence everyone should experience, but can’t because there are too many people, too much demand, and all the ecological problems that come with it. Yes, human impact could be reduced if everyone lived in abject poverty, but guess what, poor people in developing countries want Western amenities too. Everyone should.

There’s a lot of land in North Dakota as well. It’s super flat, boring, and winters are ultra cold and windy as hell. There are very good reasons it has a low population. It’s further south than most of the places in Canada you’re talking about.

EDIT: I’d like to add that “we’re not overpopulated, there’s plenty of land!” isn’t really the whole story, either. Occupying every square mile that can be occupied should not be a goal. Leaving more places in a natural state without human impact is highly desirable, IMO.

Huge areas of Canada are at high latitudes and very dark, cold, and inhospitable in the winter. Something like 50% of Canada’s population lives south of the northern extent of the US (i.e. south of Seattle, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, half of MN, and almost all of MT/ND.

https://www.secretmuseum.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/canada-population-density-map-this-is-how-empty-canada-really-is-photos-huffpost-canada-of-canada-population-density-map.gif

Huge areas of Australia are desert.

The population distribution of Canada and Australia is not an accident. The coasts and more temperate climates are much more hospitable.

It sounds like we generally agree that there are structural reasons quite aside from population growth, and agree that they desperately need to be addressed (i.e. regulatory). I’m arguing from the perspective that we should absolutely attempt to address these reasons, but that ANY population growth from any source is essentially adding fuel to the fire.

I think a lot of emphasis gets put on “supply-side” solutions that sound a lot like “just build more houses, NBD!”. From what I’ve observed we can’t get there with the existing land without (IMO) excessive densification and/or sprawl which has an easily-felt deleterious effect on livability. I’ve spent the last couple of decades living in very different places, and watched them change due to growth. In all cases growth has caused traffic that never existed before, MASSIVE crowding of local attractions that can’t be mitigated without restrictive permitting, and astronomical increases in the price of real estate. Without being hyperbolic at all, more population has quite literally been felt as less freedom. Some of this is due to the rise of the global middle class, but they have their hands in my home places at the expense of locals, and it’s gone from great to hellish in about 20-30 years.

The problems with new housing seem to be:

1. limited/no affordable land available in places where people have historically lived (and which have jobs, nice weather, natural attractions, etc)
2. materials are at a premium due to increased global demand (and, admittedly the pandemic)
3. Local first-world labor has never been more expensive - labor doesn’t scale like computing and related tech
4. densification in the form of attached dwellings on small land parcels, and no/fewer personal vehicles is a large decrease in QOL compared to the historic “American dream”

Like if you think you can find 10 million people to give up LA/Seattle/NY/etc and move to central Kansas, where there’s no ocean, no mountains, no lakes, no jobs, and nothing to do, more power to you. People live in interesting places for good reasons, and other places are cheap for good reasons.

An adjacent point: nature abhors a vacuum. If the QOL is better in the US and there are ~8 billion possible candidates for immigration, our population could easily double in a month. The demand is there. We could adopt a policy of open borders until QOL reaches equilibrium at some much lower level and immigration stops - we could also make immigration virtually impossible - or anything in-between. I’m of the opinion that lower influx means > QOL pretty close to 100% of the time.

EDIT: tl;dr - more individuals translates to reduced individual freedom. I’m not going to get weird and libertarian about it, but that’s the relationship I observe.

I appreciate the data-supported arguments but the comment on doubling was a stated goal of the Canadian national government. The Canadian population is presently projected to double in 26 years. Geographically constrained places with high immigration like Australia and Canada are shockingly unaffordable right now. These places are the canary in the coal mine for the US, which may have plenty of usable land on paper, but has the same issues with a self perpetuating cycle of the major metro areas having all the jobs and limited room to grow. The population is up 50% in my lifetime and I think that accurately reflects real estate becoming increasingly unattainable.

Edit: I guess what I’m saying is that housing-as-investment is wrong, but the basis for housing-as-investment (and indeed all investment) is the projection of increased future demand. In developed nations, this comes from immigration. If the population were shrinking indefinitely, housing certainly wouldn’t be increasing in value

That was a different time before a reasonable house in a major metro area cost $500k-$1m. Capitalists want endless population growth forever to make their investments go up, and the only way they can get it in educated nations with low birth rate is immigration. Canada explicitly targets it. The population is doubling at the expense of affordability. I’ll never be able to afford a house because everyone wants to live here, and immigration policy is set by those who favor endless growth.