Hello, my name is Mustafa Yildiz. I am a 22 year old part student part entrepreneur. I would like to use this blog post to tell everyone a little about myself and then move on to what I think is the solution to mr. Smith’s problem.

I am from a Turkish background, I was born in Turkey but I have spent most of my life in Australia. I currently have 4 sisters which all of them are older (yes, I am the youngest and the only boy of the family). Apparently, from what my parents have told me with their stories, my dad didn’t give up on wanting children until he had a son.

Turkey is a good example of a country that is overcrowded. Because there is a continuous cycle of children growing up in big families and then wanting to have a big family themselves. Having such a large population of over 70 million, the government of Turkey does not have the resources to support the large percentage of unemployed people with social security.

Although the exact same thing might not happen here in Australia, I do agree with Mr. Smith to a certain point where our living standards will drop in relation to the overgrowth of the Australian population. Having said that, I am pretty sure we Australians have more land belonging to us on average compared to most other countries.

I will disagree with Mr. Smith on one point, and that is limiting immigration intake can not be a solution in anyway. It may delay people from coming to Australia, but as the population of the whole world grows, Australia will be forced to share its land with other nations.

So, as you have clearly stated, how do we reduce the number of births to a point where there is a decline in the worlds overall population? I would like to answer this question with the following true story:

It was during highschool when a businessman came to our school to make a presentation. He went threw quite a few topics from money to work life to life expenses. While he was talking about money management and life expenses. Most of what he was saying was entertaining and inspirational, but one thing that he mentioned stuck onto me. He told us that the average cost of raising a child into adulthood was 1 million dollars.

Now at the age of 22, I am currently married and have a 2 year old child. Although I am certain it doesn’t cost the average child 1 million dollars in expenses, I do understand that there will be some large expenses involved in raising a child. So, I have decided that I will not have any more children for the rest of my life.

What I am trying to get is, the solution to the worlds growing population is education. Educated minds are more likely to be able to foresee the events of the future. If my parents were educated, I am certain they would’ve stuck with one or two at most children. Because there are still large populations who are uneducated around the world, we stick to our natural instincts in believing that having a lot of children is good for surviving and life in general.

If I had the power to fulfill my dream, I would create an online university that had the ability to teach everyone and anyone in the whole world. Educating everyone in their own language, at their own level of understanding. If the people of the world want the luxuries that we have today, then we all have to work hard for it, making informed decisions for the future. And, in order to make informed decisions, we need to treat everyone equally not discriminating based on their age, gender, race or where they live in the world. As the human race of the world we call earth, we firstly need to learn how to help each other before we learn how to maintain the balance of the finite resources of earth.

Just to recap, this population problem isn’t just a problem that Australia will need to face up to but rather a problem the whole world will need to face. Mr. Smith, I highly doubt that the 1 million dollars you are offering to the people will solve such a big global problem. I believe that the big corporates CEO’s need to pay more attention to these kind of topics and pressure the governments all around the world to take action. Finally, I strongly believe increasing the worlds standard of education will be the solution to the majority of the problems we will face in the future and not just our population problem.