Quote Originally Posted by Husar View Post
Isn't a refugee someone forced to seek refuge? And why is that definition silly? If you say it is silly, it would help if you explain why.
A simple definition like that makes it very obvious what the problem is: a potentially perpetual refugee status. With that definition, a refugee who refuses asylum in a perfectly safe country with good living standards could still be a refugee, because they at some point were forced to seek refuge.

A more robust definition of 'refugee' would provide good ideas for when a refugee is no more a refugee.

How would the informal version help with anything if the legal one stays the same?
The words media and ordinary people use can have an impact no matter what the legal definition is.

Population decline would help with a lot of issues though, such as pollution etc.
It's just that noone sees this and many have previously claimed that the planet could house a whole lot more humans.
It also seems counter-productive for any country by itself to reduce the population.
The goal is not population decline, but population stability (an average growth of 0 over x years, where x is not too large).

Yet it is natural that the population size oscillates before it settles to something more permanent. The first oscillations might have the largest amplitudes - e.g. once the growth decreases, it might decrease until it is highly negative before it shoots up again (more space might make parents feel like having more kids), but still significantly lower than what it was earlier, provided that the factors that started the first decrease in population are still in place.