Dutch government wants to cap population at 20m

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/04/dutch-government-cap-immigration-20-million-2050/

by footballersabroad

39 comments

  1. Arbitrary population caps worked so well in China. I’m sure the Dutch government has it absolutely all figured out.

  2. Maybe im really dumb but how do you cap a population… using ethical means

  5. 20.000.001 citizen : “No No No No No, Wait Wait Wait Wait Wait Wait!

  7. Right wing government trying to blame some 30.000 refugees that are let in a year for all the problems while ignoring the 200.000 worker migrants they’ve let in every year for decades because businesses want them to.

    specially blaming them for a lack of housing… after the previous right wing government ended the ministry of housing in 2017, claiming the the housing market was ‘complete’, and that the free market would take care of it.

  8. I wonder how it’ll work though. I get that the natural birth rate isn’t hitting the replacement rate (2.1 or so), so without immigration it doesn’t really need to be “enforced”, it’ll happen anyway…

    But:

    a) can they stop immigration, if they’re within the EU or Schengen Area?

    b) is that sustainable? Seems to be most economies now run almost as a pyramid scheme, where we need an ever growing population in order to take care of the healthcare and welfare costs of the older generations. (Of course, that’s not sustainable either!)

  9. Sometimes I think about the fact that if France had followed the same demographic trend as the neighbors, there would be 100-120 million people in France (maybe more would have migrated to the Americas; maybe less European migrants would have flocked to France from 1880 to 1960; we’ll never know)

    Anyway I already consider my country is overcrowded right now. So I can’t even imagine the Netherlands.

  10. Ok how ? Really wondering about it. Send 20m1th person to Africa 😹 like Brits ?

  11. Why not just create more land lol

    Isn’t that the Dutch way?

  15. There are currently ~18M so that’s only space for ~2M. How are they gonna set that cap?

  16. Now all the people who hate government (and I assume in any European country it’s at least 50%) will have kids just out of spite. Brilliant.

  17. I mean, surely you’d need to have some kind of restriction even for migration from other EU countries, how’s that going to work?

  18. And what happens when they exceed that number? they cull the additional Dutch or they send them to additional Dutch to colonise Mars?

  21. Box box. In in in in! No! Stay out, stay OUT! ” too fucking late now!”

    I volunteer to be scrubbed. This timeline is bonkers.

  22. Before anything, we have absolute looney toons running the country (no I’ll not hear you out) who are scared to death of anyone that doesn’t look north west European. Naturally, our population would decline due to our low birth rate, but we let in 30k immigrants from war torn countries in a year or so. Does that offset it? Absolutely not, our population would still shrink. However, we are pretty capitalist when it comes to letting big NGOs run the show, so we get some 200k labor migrants coming to us a year as well, so every 5 years or so our population grows by 5%.

    In and of itself it’s not a wild statement to say we are overpopulated, and need to curb the growth, I just don’t trust that statement coming from our racist, xenophobic government. Luckily our ruling coalition has a minority in the “first room” (similar to senate), so they’re not getting much of their lunacy codified. So how do we curb population growth? Simple, decrease things like expat permits. We don’t have much of a primary or secondary industry anyway, most people work office jobs that don’t strictly require them to be here anyway. However, we have a massive shortage of technicians, or basically anyone with a more practical than scientific degree/certificate, so construction workers, public transport operators, cleaners, etc. What I predict is our government will try to target rather than help that industry because it’d be easy pickings, and our problems will just get that much bigger.

  23. Interesting solution to a complex problem. Almost like a sci-fi movie. How we manage aging populations and migration will be pivotal in western Europe in the coming decades if we want to maintain economic growth

  25. Senicide would you be an answer to many problems

  29. Meanwhile, countries in Eastern Europe are losing people at an alarming rate. Many would have their population halfed in the next few decades.

    Here is a thought: why does not NL lease some poor, depopulated areas in Eastern Europe, with rights to local self government??? Send the retired there to do small scale, fun farming or something. Win win situation.

  30. The smallish country can’t already handle 18 million. Another 2 million would make it a hellscape imho.

  31. Isn’t this beyond stupid considering how top heavy their population pyramid is?

  32. We need more of this. The planet is  way too overpopulated. 

  34. The Netherlands has a lot of people in a small area.

  36. If you want to cap migration then the yearly intake should be a % of the local newborn to avoid too much enrichment all of a sudden.

    The reality is that they will not be able.

  38. It’s it going to work in a first in, first out policy?

    When a new baby is born the oldest persons implant explodes.

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