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That's only if our current economic model stays the same. At the moment most developed countries rely on immigration to create growth by adding more consumers.
by rdm_blackhole 8y ago
That's only if our current economic model stays the same. At the moment most developed countries rely on immigration to create growth by adding more consumers.
However, it is changing, as the world develops, fewer people are born and within a century our population growth will flatten and our global population will even decline to the 2000's level.
Children should not be made just to keep society going. That's quite a selfish reason to have a child, to be honest.
- Robotbeat 8y agoThat’s the opposite of selfish.
- rdm_blackhole 8y agoDo you care to elaborate?
- Robotbeat 8y agoDoing something that’s essential to society but which requires enormous amount of individual sacrifice and cost. Voluntarily.
- rdm_blackhole 8y agoAnd That's where we disagree. Having kids is not essential to society. Actually, society would be better off if we just maintained our current population level and learned to live with the resources at hand instead or ever expanding and depleting the ocean, the underground and the forests until there is nothing left. If you consider having kids as an individual sacrifice, then maybe you are having kids for the wrong reasons. People should not be forced to have kids to perpetuate society or because its good for the economy or because the government( of any country) says we should.
- intuitionist 8y agoYou realize that in order to maintain our current population level, people still have to have kids, right?
- kelnos 8y agoWhy is maintaining our current population level something we should shoot for? Arguably the world is already overpopulated, if you consider resource usage per person.
- sidlls 8y agoHaving kids is not essential to society. Could you please explain what happens in, say, 80 years (or so) if we collectively stopped having kids? The answer is this: human beings cease to exist. Now, that may be something you view as a goal to achieve, and in the absolutely trivial (and meaningless) sense that everything (including our existence as a species) is optional you'd have a point. Beyond that trivial and meaningless sense, however, you're simply arguing about how many children we should have.
- isoskeles 8y agoLet's not forget the most devastating aspect of overpopulation, more and more people around to spout the same unproven theories over the last 50 years about "forest" and "underground" depletion.
- kelnos 8y agoIf the majority of people's stated reason for having children was to ensure the survival of the human race, maybe that argument would hold water. But most people's desire to have children center around selfish things, like continuing their family line, or because their parents want grandkids, or because "that's just what you do to get to the next life stage", or because their religion pushes them to, or "John and Jane have such a beautiful child and I want one too", or because they want a small version of themselves that will love them, or truly foolish things like believing a child will save a bad marriage. And I'm not even saying selfish acts are bad! People do selfish things all the time, and as long as those things don't harm anyone else, so what? But I wish people would give more thought to the social, financial, physical, emotional, and mental implications of having a child before doing so, rather than just taking it as a given that it's what they're supposed to do. At least there are some people who have kids because they genuinely want to nurture, educate, and mentor a new human, but I'd be hard pressed to find someone who'd say "to ensure the future of humanity" is one of their top reasons for having children.
- eeZah7Ux 8y agoWith 7.7 billion people and a world the brink of collapse having kids is not helping anyone.
- sidlls 8y agoChildren are literally the entities that make our shared future viable. If we don't reproduce at a sufficient rate we literally, as a species, will not be able to sustain our own existence. And considering how much more personally expensive (both in yes of resources and one's self) we have made raising children over the years it's the absolute opposite of selfish to have them.
- kelnos 8y agoHow many people have you met that tell you that they're having children because they want to ensure the future of humanity? I'd bet not many, if any at all. What you describe might be considered selfless, most parents have kids for fairly selfish reasons. There's (usually) nothing wrong with that, of course, but let's not try to paint a rosy picture that doesn't exist.