Populations respond to resource availability. If you could interview individual salmon where their population is diminishing they may or may not actually point

Populations respond to resource availability. If you could interview individual salmon where their population is diminishing they may or may not actually point at the problem, say a newly constructed dam. But the actual problem is access to resources. The inverse of course happened post-WWII. The soldiers were coming home and needed places to live and raise children. WWII was the thing that actually pulled the US out of the long term effects of the Great Depression. Mind, the Great Depression is identified with starting in 1929. It’s access to resources, stupid. If you want your populations to grow then incentivize your populations growth. Things that push back look like: bailing out banks and forcing individuals out of their homes in the Great Recession, leaving the minimum wage so low that labor markets fail, failing to police labor employee/employer relationships (see the concept of “wagery”), etc. If you tell your workers to simply “make better choices” you’re not supporting them. You’re telling them to become their own labor dispute lawyers. But of course no average individual worker is going to have the money and time to actually push back legally even if they are wronged. Hence, wagery-your boss becomes something more like a personal tyrant and less of bargaining partner. Things like NIMBYISM and BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) contribute to this. They were also largely not present during the post-WWII period. I mean modern day Las Vegas owes its existence to infrastructure and technological progress. The Hoover dam took a lot of planning and building and the US has a lot of growth over the last century thanks to it. Similar to the highway and road system. NIMBYISM and BANANA point to the stagnation problem in government and a general lack of the US citizen of being informed and performing basic civic duties like voting. Not going to flesh out those points for lack of time. In short, my hot take would be: “if you want your populations to grow then stop worrying about what people are or aren’t doing with their genitals and start asking what you can do to make people feel secure enough to think having a kid or at least bumping uglies is a good idea.” Corporations don’t have genitals.