3 ms·

Sure the US could probably exist with 250MM people, in the sense that there are certainly countries which are smaller than that which are doing well. But the pa

by cactus2093 5y ago

Sure the US could probably exist with 250MM people, in the sense that there are certainly countries which are smaller than that which are doing well. But the path to get there would be shockingly painful and result in a huge decrease to the average quality of life. The path to get to 500MM or 1B people on the other hand would bring about a huge increase to the average quality of life. You have it backwards thinking that life is better if the population shrinks. This is getting into a whole other can of worms but I firmly believe the most moral path for the US to aim for is the latter.

mc32 5y ago
Could we? Maybe. I don't think we want to. Not the way we consume our resources. We already have water issues in much of the country when there is a drought. We do not need that many people. The planet does not need it. We need to learn to live with less and without never ending growth. Just as we target the 1990s or some other period for C02 production, we should do the same for population stabilization. A couple of droughts here and there (as we used to suffer from in the past) and we'll have massive hunger and famine problems. We need slack in the system for safety. We cannot operate at the limits and not expect catastrophes.
- astrange 5y ago
  Peak water use in the US was decades ago and isn't related to population growth, nor does economic growth require increased resource use. It requires efficiency. Degrowth is just killing people, in which case the people proposing it rarely want to go first.
  - mc32 5y ago
    Population decline is not killing people. Japan and S Korea aren't killing anyone.
    - andrewjl 5y ago
      Economic stagnation, caused by population decline in the absence of robust productivity growth, leads to social problems and the so-called "deaths of despair" in the US. Haven't seen statistics on elsewhere.
    - astrange 5y ago
      It does because the people left alive will be old and need medical care, and you won't have any healthcare workers. That and you'll increase inequality which will cause people to kick you out and elect fascists. (One reason for the California housing crisis is that 70s degrowth/pastoralist environmentalists thought it would encourage population decline if no-one could afford to buy a house and have children.)
- cactus2093 5y ago
  > We do not need that many people. The planet does not need it. We need to learn to live with less and without never ending growth. This is where I really think it gets into the grounds of a moral or philosophical argument. Life without this neverending economic growth is nasty, brutish, and short. We would never have advanced modern medicine, increased lifespans, or invented any of the conveniences we all use every day without it. There are no systems other than broad economic/productivity growth that have ever worked on a large scale for improving the living conditions for humanity. And we still have a long way to go to make life better for the poorest communities around the world. Denying this type of progress to future generations of humans, for a purely aesthetic reason such as we're comfortable enough today in our upper middle class lifestyles and we just kind of feel like we don't need more people around, is unconscionable. There is plenty of water on the earth, and capacity for clean energy production, it's just a question of how do we harness it effectively while mitigating the downsides. I'm all for making some short term sacrifices and paying some costs now to avoid the worst of climate change, but that does not mean accepting that the future for humanity should be degrowth.

mc32 5y ago

Could we? Maybe. I don't think we want to. Not the way we consume our resources. We already have water issues in much of the country when there is a drought. We do not need that many people. The planet does not need it. We need to learn to live with less and without never ending growth. Just as we target the 1990s or some other period for C02 production, we should do the same for population stabilization. A couple of droughts here and there (as we used to suffer from in the past) and we'll have massive hunger and famine problems. We need slack in the system for safety. We cannot operate at the limits and not expect catastrophes.

astrange 5y ago
Peak water use in the US was decades ago and isn't related to population growth, nor does economic growth require increased resource use. It requires efficiency. Degrowth is just killing people, in which case the people proposing it rarely want to go first.
- mc32 5y ago
  Population decline is not killing people. Japan and S Korea aren't killing anyone.
  - andrewjl 5y ago
    Economic stagnation, caused by population decline in the absence of robust productivity growth, leads to social problems and the so-called "deaths of despair" in the US. Haven't seen statistics on elsewhere.
  - astrange 5y ago
    It does because the people left alive will be old and need medical care, and you won't have any healthcare workers. That and you'll increase inequality which will cause people to kick you out and elect fascists. (One reason for the California housing crisis is that 70s degrowth/pastoralist environmentalists thought it would encourage population decline if no-one could afford to buy a house and have children.)
cactus2093 5y ago
> We do not need that many people. The planet does not need it. We need to learn to live with less and without never ending growth. This is where I really think it gets into the grounds of a moral or philosophical argument. Life without this neverending economic growth is nasty, brutish, and short. We would never have advanced modern medicine, increased lifespans, or invented any of the conveniences we all use every day without it. There are no systems other than broad economic/productivity growth that have ever worked on a large scale for improving the living conditions for humanity. And we still have a long way to go to make life better for the poorest communities around the world. Denying this type of progress to future generations of humans, for a purely aesthetic reason such as we're comfortable enough today in our upper middle class lifestyles and we just kind of feel like we don't need more people around, is unconscionable. There is plenty of water on the earth, and capacity for clean energy production, it's just a question of how do we harness it effectively while mitigating the downsides. I'm all for making some short term sacrifices and paying some costs now to avoid the worst of climate change, but that does not mean accepting that the future for humanity should be degrowth.