Re: Religion, Morality & Economics
Wow, lots of stuff going on here, I'll try to take them in order:
1. I disagree that all moral codes come from religious belief. Doesn't seem like you're hanging your argument on that premise yet, so I'll just leave it at that. But if that's an axiom necessary for your position, it'll need further justification, I think.
2. You say the only way to stop population growth is by 'forcibly' limiting it. I'm not entirely convinced of this. In much of the westernized world, population growth has slowed to just barely (or not even) the level of sustaining the current levels. I think an argument can be made that lifting people out of poverty can be an effective way to limit population growth. For most people (though certainly not all, Mormons being a very good counter example), when they become wealthy enough to be in control of their own reproduction (there's an angle of this that includes legal access to birth control, as well as just economic ability to afford it), they tend to bring their reproduction rates way down. I think a strong case can be made that it'd be more ethical to get people to the place where they could limit their own birth rate by choice rather than forcing it upon them.
3. I think we might need to firm up what we mean by "economic growth," since most people might off the ball think "oh yeah, that's good, we need to pursue it," but as katisara eludes to, there are ways to get economic growth without anyone actually being any better off. Growth for growth's sake isn't something I think we necessarily should pursue (if it were, we might as well just say population growth for population growth's sake is something we should pursue, and end the discussion there). If people will be better off on average that's a probably a good thing, though other measures (such as making the worst-off person better off) might be better.
4. While healthcare is expensive, I'm not sure that it's true that getting rid of socialized healthcare in the uk would make "the majority" better off. The cost wouldn't go away, they'd just be shifted on to others, in many cases people who couldn't afford to pay for healthcare, which could easily lead to crime and other problems. It's not as simple as "how much to do we pay now? Okay, let's just not pay it, and we'll have that much more money!" It's the old economics saying that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Every decision, even decisions not to spend money, will come with some cost. And it's possible that those costs will be greater than the money saved by not paying for healthcare. Now, some individuals will obviously better off, and some will obviously be worse off. Saying we'd be better off 'on average' is a tough call on that one, I'd argue, and again, other measures may be better (for example, if we took everyone's money and gave it to me, we'd still have the exact same amount of money on average as we all did before, but pretty much everyone would be worse off).