In response to "33. In-group, out-group" I have had two contributions from our list.

Ron Pearson writes that the most important issue is world overpopulation and that it should be brought down by increasing automation so that we could afford both a shorter working week and to support old age pensioners. My answer to this is that where we are talking of the mechanical production of goods, or services that depend on mechanics (e.g. the railways, the supply of roads, etc), then automation has probably proceeded at the fastest possible speed already because of competition between suppliers. The problem is that most of the cost of the supply of hardware goods and hardware-based services is not to be found in the mechanical activities but in all the ancillary services that are also required -- research and development, design, marketing, customer relations, maintenance, etc. These are much more costly components and probably more susceptible to inefficiency and bureaucratisation but, nevertheless, automation and cost savings proceed here also, even if not so visibly.

Michael Benfield writes that if developed countries continue with large scale immigration in order that their taxes can pay for the health care and old age pensions of the indigenous population, how can we be certain that they will do so in due course? I think -- other things being equal -- that they probably would, but there are two angles to this that should be discussed.

Confining myself to England, a considerable number of illegal immigrants have already entered the country in addition to the 80,000 or so who have entered as asylum seekers. A recent BBC Panorama programme and some newspaper investigations suggest that there are at least 500,000 illegal immigrants already in the country and probably nearer one million. A few days ago the government admitted that they had lost control in keeping tabs on all this. But these illegal immigrants, unlike the asylum-seeker immigrants awaiting permission, are mostly working. Some of them, by means of forged documents, will have managed to insert themselves into the formal economy and are doing normal jobs and paying normal taxes, but large numbers are also working in the black economy (usually at very low wages), particularly in the building trade and in farming at harvest time. It is estimated that there are something like 200 gangmasters who are suppling forged documents to these illegal immigrants and finding them work.

All the above adds up to an extension of the black economy which already existed even before large-scale immigration. Some five or so years ago, the Treasury estimated this non-taxpaying part of the economy to be about 10% of the whole, though others think it was higher and lay somewhere in the 15-20% range -- nearer to the black economies in some European countries. Now although large numbers of illegal immigrants come and go according to the demands at harvest time, large numbers remain permanently in the black economy. (For example, I have read that there are 70,000 foreign prostitutes alone in this country, brought in mainly by Albanian gangs in recent years. The BBC Today Programme investigation suggested recently that there are also 10,000 child prostitutes.)

Now we know from both our own personal experience, but also from the results of the considerable repertoire of game theory experiments that have been carried out, that once cheating reaches a certain threshold level, then demoralisation sets in rapidly among the more law-abiding part of the population. The degree of trust that is required in a high-tax, welfare state society is now seriously in danger, it seems to me. All this is adding to the increasing lack of credibility in our existing types of governance in western countries. We haven't yet reached the point of a vote of no confidence in a formal way -- that is by even more massive abstentions at general elections -- but we are creeping closer towards that each time, and illegal immigration and the tacit consent to it by government can only add to further demoralisation.

By all means (as western governments are now doing unofficially) turn a blind eye to illegal immigration (and to the extensive world-wide criminal organisations behind it) if it means both peaceful absorption and sufficient taxation to pay for health care and old age pensions. But can we be certain that the black economy will not grow large enough to demoralise the welfare state and to bankrupt the whole taxation system -- and, of course, the legitimacy of government itself?

The second angle is, to my mind, even more important and dangerous. This is that the birth rate of indigenous populations in most advanced countries has now dropped below replacement levels. Also, the evidence so far is that, within two generations, immigrant families, once they have become absorbed into the home culture, will also reduce their family sizes to less than replacement levels.

So, despite all the affluence and prosperity that politicians take the credit for in developed countries, and somehow because of it, people are voting with all the different contraceptive methods that are now available that they have no confidence in the future of mankind.

It is as blunt and simple as that. Quite beside the main thesis of my projected book -- that the initiatory middle-class don't have sufficient time or energy to devote themselves to additional status goods of sufficient impetus to maintain economic growth -- modern society is producing a condition of malaise in which more than one, or at most, two children are too stressful and burdensome for a pair of adults to raise in addition to their jobs and the commuting that's entailed. In effect, people are saying, "We don't want this way of life to continue. We want change."