Sadly, when it comes down to it, children are necessary for society to function long-term. They are the people who will be financing and effecting your retirement, at least in a well-functioning society. I think it is a sound policy to make sure people can have children without any unnecessary suffering, there’s plenty of necessary suffering in there already.
Nah, human fucking can’t be stopped but even if 99% of the human race was sterile for a geneation the earth would still have more humans left on it than the vast majority of recorded history.
Modern nations should be supporting population declines.
Sadly, when it comes down to it, children are necessary for society to function long-term.
It shouldn’t be sad, this is basic reality. We should love kids and want kids and pressure our own countries to make it easier to have families.
I am really getting worried that the left broadly is turning soft anti-natalist and there is no faster way to end your movement than by not having more people. I feel like “birth rates” and “fertility” are terms that we feel have been co-opted by the right because figures like Elon Musk and the manosphere bros.
How many humans should we aim to have, long term? 20 billion? 50 billion? We’re already on track to reach 10 billion in the next 25 years.
I believe that as a society, we should have a long-term plan and a goal for our species’s population count, because simply offering incentives for continued growth in order to continue funding generational gaps in our pyramid scheme of social welfare is untenable. Ultimately we will reach the logistical capacity of a functional welfare state, to say nothing of all the other problems.
We probably won’t ever hit 11 billion contiguous humans. At least not without colonizing Venus. The birthrates worldwide are dropping quickly, and every time another country passes through the Industrial Age, into the Modern Age, their birthrates fall off a cliff. I suspect we will eventually stabilize around 9 billion people, which is a few billion lower than the maximum projected sustainable population of The Earth.
How many humans should we aim to have, long term? 20 billion? 50 billion?
That’s not what this issue is about, this isn’t “pro-growth” this is about averting economic and logistical collapse across much of the developed world.
Sure, we could do with a reduced population, but it needs to be reduced slowly enough that we don’t see mass casualties and so that our infrastructure, production and logistics aren’t suddenly unmanned, or many, many people will suffer.
We have to understand that the argument for continued population upkeep is about stability not some desire to perpetually increase population. There’s not a sharp, two-sided binary here, the problem is that many, many people in the developed world are having either no kids or not enough to keep up with expected decline and longer lifespans. When we run out of young people to run our cities, our roads, our offices and our shipyards and rail systems, we end up with collapse.
Look into South Korea for a vision of the worst case and think about what will happen broadly when the same syndrome hits other major world powers and logistical hubs.
I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. Continuing to fixate on short-term problems like bridging a generational gap—which incidentally we’ve survived many times in anthropological history—by continuing policies with long-term ramifications is not a good plan.
At some point we need to come to terms with the fact that continuous population growth is not tenable. Whether the population cap is 10 billion or 100 billion, the fact of the matter is that we will eventually hit it. We can’t keep procrastinating because we’re unwilling to resolve the challenges you’ve mentioned in a more effective manner.
Call me an optimist, but if we’re unable to change our habits as a species, perhaps a well-needed revolution will kick us into action.
You and people who raise this notion are all for rapid depopulation when you aren’t imagining it’s you dealing with the impact of billions of people not having enough resources. It sounds a bit entitled.
This is an overly simplified take on a potential coming tragedy, which is a rapid population collapse.
I’m not saying anywhere that we need constant growth or even stable population levels where it is now, we would absolutely do better with about half as many people on Earth.
But if that drop happens too fast, you have no idea how much harm and suffering it will do to society. We’re talking great-filter scenario where there’s simply not enough people to maintain the systems that deliver food to stores, maintenance supplies to the machines that keep your roads paved, antibiotics to impoverished nations, cornmeal to livestock and on and on and on.
And the left is broadly nodding on in agreement with the deranged fucking anti-natalists because we think it’s conservation. When right-wing people like Musk scream about birth rates and fertility, they’re using the coming problem to start seeding racist ideology around the problem and nobody seems to get what they’re doing.
South Korea is going to be one of the first major population centers that ends up with abandoned cities in a couple generations, the only short-term answer is open immigration, but it’s so dire in so many places that there won’t be anyone to enforce borders anyway.
This should NOT be painting a picture in your head of pastoral countrysides and empty cities where you can do all your reading. Think more in terms of millions of starving migrant families, children, lots and lots of elderly people, all walks of life, no resources being moved, no infrastructure being supported. Whole swaths of nations basically being amputated to consolidate manpower where it’s needed to maintain defense, and you better believe there will be wars.
Sadly, when it comes down to it, children are necessary for society to function long-term. They are the people who will be financing and effecting your retirement, at least in a well-functioning society. I think it is a sound policy to make sure people can have children without any unnecessary suffering, there’s plenty of necessary suffering in there already.
Nah, human fucking can’t be stopped but even if 99% of the human race was sterile for a geneation the earth would still have more humans left on it than the vast majority of recorded history.
Modern nations should be supporting population declines.
It shouldn’t be sad, this is basic reality. We should love kids and want kids and pressure our own countries to make it easier to have families.
I am really getting worried that the left broadly is turning soft anti-natalist and there is no faster way to end your movement than by not having more people. I feel like “birth rates” and “fertility” are terms that we feel have been co-opted by the right because figures like Elon Musk and the manosphere bros.
How many humans should we aim to have, long term? 20 billion? 50 billion? We’re already on track to reach 10 billion in the next 25 years.
I believe that as a society, we should have a long-term plan and a goal for our species’s population count, because simply offering incentives for continued growth in order to continue funding generational gaps in our pyramid scheme of social welfare is untenable. Ultimately we will reach the logistical capacity of a functional welfare state, to say nothing of all the other problems.
We probably won’t ever hit 11 billion contiguous humans. At least not without colonizing Venus. The birthrates worldwide are dropping quickly, and every time another country passes through the Industrial Age, into the Modern Age, their birthrates fall off a cliff. I suspect we will eventually stabilize around 9 billion people, which is a few billion lower than the maximum projected sustainable population of The Earth.
That’s not what this issue is about, this isn’t “pro-growth” this is about averting economic and logistical collapse across much of the developed world.
Sure, we could do with a reduced population, but it needs to be reduced slowly enough that we don’t see mass casualties and so that our infrastructure, production and logistics aren’t suddenly unmanned, or many, many people will suffer.
We have to understand that the argument for continued population upkeep is about stability not some desire to perpetually increase population. There’s not a sharp, two-sided binary here, the problem is that many, many people in the developed world are having either no kids or not enough to keep up with expected decline and longer lifespans. When we run out of young people to run our cities, our roads, our offices and our shipyards and rail systems, we end up with collapse.
Look into South Korea for a vision of the worst case and think about what will happen broadly when the same syndrome hits other major world powers and logistical hubs.
I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. Continuing to fixate on short-term problems like bridging a generational gap—which incidentally we’ve survived many times in anthropological history—by continuing policies with long-term ramifications is not a good plan.
At some point we need to come to terms with the fact that continuous population growth is not tenable. Whether the population cap is 10 billion or 100 billion, the fact of the matter is that we will eventually hit it. We can’t keep procrastinating because we’re unwilling to resolve the challenges you’ve mentioned in a more effective manner.
Call me an optimist, but if we’re unable to change our habits as a species, perhaps a well-needed revolution will kick us into action.
You and people who raise this notion are all for rapid depopulation when you aren’t imagining it’s you dealing with the impact of billions of people not having enough resources. It sounds a bit entitled.
I’m confused about your comment. Can you elaborate?
This is an overly simplified take on a potential coming tragedy, which is a rapid population collapse.
I’m not saying anywhere that we need constant growth or even stable population levels where it is now, we would absolutely do better with about half as many people on Earth.
But if that drop happens too fast, you have no idea how much harm and suffering it will do to society. We’re talking great-filter scenario where there’s simply not enough people to maintain the systems that deliver food to stores, maintenance supplies to the machines that keep your roads paved, antibiotics to impoverished nations, cornmeal to livestock and on and on and on.
And the left is broadly nodding on in agreement with the deranged fucking anti-natalists because we think it’s conservation. When right-wing people like Musk scream about birth rates and fertility, they’re using the coming problem to start seeding racist ideology around the problem and nobody seems to get what they’re doing.
South Korea is going to be one of the first major population centers that ends up with abandoned cities in a couple generations, the only short-term answer is open immigration, but it’s so dire in so many places that there won’t be anyone to enforce borders anyway.
This should NOT be painting a picture in your head of pastoral countrysides and empty cities where you can do all your reading. Think more in terms of millions of starving migrant families, children, lots and lots of elderly people, all walks of life, no resources being moved, no infrastructure being supported. Whole swaths of nations basically being amputated to consolidate manpower where it’s needed to maintain defense, and you better believe there will be wars.