From: Population Competition for Security or Attack, Jack Parsons, 2001, Population Policy Press, ISBN 0-9541978-1-X.

"Balancing numbers and resources to ensure an acceptable quality of life is an ancient idea. Possibly the oldest literary document extant – a Babylonian poem baked on a clay tablet, ‘Atra Hasis’ – calls for a large population reduction to improve the peoples’ lot. Similar ideas occur in ancient Hindu and Greek scholarship, (eg, Plato & Aristotle), the Bible, JJ Rousseau, the folkways of traditional societies, and so forth. Nevertheless, the expression ‘optimum population’ was formulated – by the Swede, Kurt Wicksell – only in 1911 . This was taken up by economists, given a rather mechanistic definition – the population size at which income per capita is maximised – and commonly depicted by two intersecting lines on a graph allegedly indicating the best population size in those conditions. Despite this, the majority of economists and men and women of affairs have rejected the optimum concept for all practical purposes on two grounds. The first is that the size of an optimum population can never be precisely calculated. The second is that even if this could be done, the situation would soon change – perhaps dramatically – and render the figure invalid." Jack Parsons, Patron, Optimum Population Trust

Notes: While accepting that these arguments have some force, since the mid 1960s Jack Parsons has systematically opposed their use to reject the optimum concept. His book Population Versus Liberty, [Pemberton Books, 1971] included a chapter on the optimum under the heading ‘Freedom to Choose’, and – in an appendix – took up the perplexities expressed in the First Report of the Select Committee on Science & Technology about the meaning of the optimum concept and the unwillingness of academics to give the Select Committee members any help. Jack Parsons proposed that both academics and policymakers should set aside the alleged problems of precise definitions and inevitable change and then set to work practically for the attainment of what he called the quasi-optimum, defined as: a population size which is reasonably acceptable to a democratic society and which the environment can sustain as far into the future as can be foreseen (Appendix B, p. 395). In his second book Population Fallacies* [Pemberton/Elek, 1977], there is a substantial section on various population growth and control curves, and a sub-section entitled ‘The fallacy of the unattainable optimum.’ The final chapter of his most recent book Human Population Competition [ Lewiston, NY. Edwin Mellen Press, 1998] is devoted to the optimum concept. It refers to scholarly notions on carrying capacity, gives examples of acceptable numerical balancing policies in many spheres – notably the manpower of armed forces – and sets out his latest population fallacy: ‘the fallacy of the perfect policy.’ This refers to the fact that in virtually no sphere in any society at any time are policies founded on exact calculations or the intention to be permanently relevant. If this is the case then the rejection on these two grounds of the optimum concept only is a case of ‘special-pleading’ of an unacceptable kind. The Royal Commission on Population strongly recommended in 1949 that an effective population policy was an essential component of good government. In his work Jack Parsons explains that all policies need goals: that a sane and effective population policy should cover a number of vital aspects of national activities, quality of life, natural and other resources, technology, agriculture, health, education, training, employment, transport, foreign trade, age and spatial distribution, pensions, migration and pollution; and that a major goal should be a 'ball-park' figure for overall population size. *(2002) Updated 4th edn. of the 1998 work under a new title Population Competition for Survival or Attack in interactive form on CDROM, from Population Policy Press.