5 ms·

I don't get the argument against having less children. It would be different if the human race was really dying out. But it seems like most of our problems are

I don't get the argument against having less children. It would be different if the human race was really dying out. But it seems like most of our problems are caused by overpopulation. If the future generations only have 3.5 billion people, 1 billion, 10 million, I don't see how we'd be worse off. Fields like production, retail, maintenance, etc. would have less workers, but also proportionally less demand. Fields like research and academia would also have less people, probably leading to less discoveries, but how much? and how much would it matter? We lose resistance to extinction if there's a deadly disease that kills almost 100% of the population, but we gain resistance from transmissible diseases. And I know there are tons of people who still really want to have kids. And smart / talented / skeptical people who want to have kids.

Swizec 5y ago
> I don't get the argument against having less children. The [current] economic model presupposes infinite growth. You can't have infinite growth with a declining population.
- arvinsim 5y ago
  True. Even if we do find a solution to replace the current economic model, the transition would be messy with a high chance of violence.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  You can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet, either.
  - gruez 5y ago
    colonize other planets then?
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      I hope we do eventually and specifically outside this solar system, which has a clock that’s shorter than the heat death master clock.
    - mathematically 5y ago
      Technology for doing so does not exist. Before we can terraform other planets we'll have to learn how to terraform this one. Global warming is actually a great challenge and overcoming it would mean developing the technology that would help colonize other planets, e.g. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/myco-architecture https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/myco-architecture.
    - pyuser583 5y ago
      How would that help? If half the population of earth (randomly chosen) moved to an inhabitant planet in another solar system, wouldn’t the reduction in population shrink the economy?
      - gruez 5y ago
        Presumably there would be trade between the planets. Did european colonization of the americas shrink population in europe?
        pyuser583 5y ago
        Parts of it. Ireland’s population shrunk consistently from 1800 to 1960, mostly due to expatriation. Economy mostly grew. The economics are complicated - they were part of then British Imperial economy, which good or bad depending on specifics (corn laws, famines, etc).
stormbrew 5y ago
A somewhat unstated reason why decreasing birth rates are considered alarming is because our entire economic system is built around growth that's only really possible if both the labor pool and/or the consumer pool grow. The only two ways that can happen are if we make new workers and consumers (birth, immigration) or we make people who weren't previously workers or consumers into those (this happened post-WWII when women entered the workforce in larger numbers and was probably part of why economic growth was so strong for so long after the war). Fundamentally, if the number of people participating in the economy shrinks, the economy will shrink, and our late capitalist system is extremely ill equipped to deal with that. Now there's also a powerful movement against immigration, that is also aggressively for increasing birth rates to fend off an imagined conspiracy to "replace" them, which makes this a particularly thorny problem for the political class.
- pyuser583 5y ago
  There’s no reason our economic system requires population growth. There are certainly examples where shrinking populations corresponded with higher growth: Ireland had a shrinking population and growing economy from 1850 to 1960. The issue is a population that has a massive number of elderly to care for while having few young people to do it. Ireland had no problem having tons of kids who left the country upon reaching adulthood, even though the total population was shrinking.
  - stormbrew 5y ago
    Capitalism is a global system (at least at this point). Certainly you can have pockets that experience abnormal growth[1] because no country is a closed system. If businesses in one country have new markets open to them outside their borders that's just another way of adding to their economy. And definitely an aging non-working population can be a downward drag on a capitalist economy as well. Even though they live longer, they are still to some extent "exiting the economy" since they usually live off fixed incomes and don't contribute to the labor pool. In aggregate, though, you still need growth to make capital investment make sense. There may be other ways to achieve it than population growth overall, especially in small niches, but if you lose that source of growth it should have ramifications on the economy, even if they're counteracted. [1] Do you have a source on the ireland thing? I'm not really finding anything. And which Ireland for that matter? There are effectively at least three polities called that in that period. All with very different access to markets, political situations, etc.
pupppet 5y ago
Capitalism demands an ever increasing number of mouths to feed.
- gruez 5y ago
  How does capitalism (ie. "private means of production") translate to "ever increasing number of mouths to feed"?
  - rackjack 5y ago
    If we interpret "ever increasing number of mouths to feed" as "more people", we can imagine the following: I sell a product. The more people buy my product, the more money I make. The more people there are, the more people will buy my product. The more people there are, the larger the labor pool I can choose from. The larger the labor pool I can choose from, the more the workers' wages get depressed, so my profit margins get bigger. So the more people there are, the more money I make. Obviously this is highly reductionist. Also, I don't think saying capitalism "demands" increased population growth is quite right. We can certainly imagine individual businesses who would not like population growth (e.g. mom-and-pop stores who know that increased local population increases the likelihood of a Walmart being erected and putting them out of business). But on the whole, I think the presence of capitalism trends towards increasing population.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >The more people there are, the larger the labor pool I can choose from. The larger the labor pool I can choose from, the more the workers' wages get depressed, so my profit margins get bigger. This this true? It presumes a bigger labor pool competing for the same amount of available jobs, which isn't true. As the economy grows, there are also more consumers who demand more products, which requires more workers/jobs.
  - pupppet 5y ago
    Companies must grow, simple as that.
beaconstudios 5y ago
as people get older, they become infirm and require support; not just directly (relatives or nursing homes looking after their basic needs) but financially. Society is a pyramid, and when a pyramid narrows at the base, it becomes unstable. Also, our problems (presumably the myriad environmental ones) aren't caused by overpopulation, they're caused by rampant corporate polluting in service to individualistic consumer culture.
- arvinsim 5y ago
  Agreed. Overpopulation is an outdated boogeyman. Climate change IMO is the more pressing concern.
  - mathematically 5y ago
    What do you suppose is the root cause of global warming?
    - hammyhavoc 5y ago
      Prioritizing profit before planet and people.
      - mathematically 5y ago
        That's definitely part of the problem.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
      A build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. What are you getting at? If everything were electric and nuclear, green hydrogen, whatever, we wouldn’t have this particular problem, so it can’t be population alone.
      - mathematically 5y ago
        You're correct so I'll explain what I was trying to get at. At the moment, focusing on dwindling birth rates is nonsensical because the world population is projected to be 10B people by 2050. So the issue isn't lack of people, it's the inability of various nations to properly coordinate a response to an existential crisis (global warming and increasing volume of CO2 in the atmosphere: https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-relentless-rise-of-carbon-dioxide/ https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-re...). Dwindling birth rates in Britain should be the last thing anyone is worried about if their real concern is not having enough people in the future. I mean if they're really concerned about lack of Brits then I guess it makes sense, but globally, on a planetary scale, worrying about local birth rates is not really something to be concerned about.
sbierwagen 5y ago
>10 million A world population that small certainly wouldn't sustain semiconductor manufacturing, even if you concentrated them in one region.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  lol a world population that small probably couldn't sustain iron smelting. Have fun digging for grubs and shivering through the winter huddled around the campfire.
  - sbierwagen 5y ago
    Iron mining has been done at small scale for thousands of years. A population of 10 million is the population of England circa 1812. Machine tools, glass optics. Electricity should be possible. Powered flight, if you had hydrocarbons. Oil would be a problem. All the easy deposits are tapped. A successor civilization would have a hard time progressing past steam power. A lot depends on how we crash to 10 million. If all the wells are shut down cleanly, thoroughly documented, then the people blink out existence, then the 10 million could live quite a white just on today's reserves. If we end up at 10 million after decades or centuries of warfare, then there won't be any oil left. (Plus the sea would be a lot higher, and many oil deposits would be in places where summer temperatures would be fatal for humans) Liquid fuels can be made from steam cracking of coal hydrocarbons, but they're expensive. No nuclear power, no turbines, none of the exotic metals that require electron-beam vacuum furnaces. No pharmaceuticals, no long supply lines, limited manufacturing specialization or economies of scale. Fasteners would be expensive again. Fabric would be expensive. Probably the number one most important thing to get working again is production of artificial fertilizers. Without that you're stuck with organic agriculture and 1 out of 2 people working in the fields. And somehow I get ten sentences into this comment before remembering about a book I read that made the exact same point about fertilizer: https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Rebuild-Civilization-Aftermath-Cataclysm/dp/0143127047 https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Rebuild-Civilization-Afterm...
kongolongo 5y ago
>But it seems like most of our problems are caused by overpopulation. That's too broad of a generalization and not true globally, some countries problems are exactly because of underpopulation. The problem isn't homogeneous throughout the world. It's highly dependent on what populations you're talking about and their circumstances. >Fields like production, retail, maintenance, etc. would have less workers, but also proportionally less demand. In some developed countries where recently the birthrates hover very slightly to sometimes below replacement rates can lead to a whole hosts of problems. For example take into account age proportionality as a result of extremely low birthrates in Japan, an ever increasing older and retired population does not have enough younger labor to produce good/services for basic societal function. There's also problems of gender imbalances like in India or China also causing massive issues in the coming generations.

Swizec 5y ago

> I don't get the argument against having less children. The [current] economic model presupposes infinite growth. You can't have infinite growth with a declining population.

arvinsim 5y ago
True. Even if we do find a solution to replace the current economic model, the transition would be messy with a high chance of violence.
sokoloff 5y ago
You can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet, either.
- gruez 5y ago
  colonize other planets then?
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I hope we do eventually and specifically outside this solar system, which has a clock that’s shorter than the heat death master clock.
  - mathematically 5y ago
    Technology for doing so does not exist. Before we can terraform other planets we'll have to learn how to terraform this one. Global warming is actually a great challenge and overcoming it would mean developing the technology that would help colonize other planets, e.g. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/myco-architecture https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/myco-architecture.
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    How would that help? If half the population of earth (randomly chosen) moved to an inhabitant planet in another solar system, wouldn’t the reduction in population shrink the economy?
    - gruez 5y ago
      Presumably there would be trade between the planets. Did european colonization of the americas shrink population in europe?
      - pyuser583 5y ago
        Parts of it. Ireland’s population shrunk consistently from 1800 to 1960, mostly due to expatriation. Economy mostly grew. The economics are complicated - they were part of then British Imperial economy, which good or bad depending on specifics (corn laws, famines, etc).

stormbrew 5y ago

A somewhat unstated reason why decreasing birth rates are considered alarming is because our entire economic system is built around growth that's only really possible if both the labor pool and/or the consumer pool grow. The only two ways that can happen are if we make new workers and consumers (birth, immigration) or we make people who weren't previously workers or consumers into those (this happened post-WWII when women entered the workforce in larger numbers and was probably part of why economic growth was so strong for so long after the war). Fundamentally, if the number of people participating in the economy shrinks, the economy will shrink, and our late capitalist system is extremely ill equipped to deal with that. Now there's also a powerful movement against immigration, that is also aggressively for increasing birth rates to fend off an imagined conspiracy to "replace" them, which makes this a particularly thorny problem for the political class.

pyuser583 5y ago
There’s no reason our economic system requires population growth. There are certainly examples where shrinking populations corresponded with higher growth: Ireland had a shrinking population and growing economy from 1850 to 1960. The issue is a population that has a massive number of elderly to care for while having few young people to do it. Ireland had no problem having tons of kids who left the country upon reaching adulthood, even though the total population was shrinking.
- stormbrew 5y ago
  Capitalism is a global system (at least at this point). Certainly you can have pockets that experience abnormal growth[1] because no country is a closed system. If businesses in one country have new markets open to them outside their borders that's just another way of adding to their economy. And definitely an aging non-working population can be a downward drag on a capitalist economy as well. Even though they live longer, they are still to some extent "exiting the economy" since they usually live off fixed incomes and don't contribute to the labor pool. In aggregate, though, you still need growth to make capital investment make sense. There may be other ways to achieve it than population growth overall, especially in small niches, but if you lose that source of growth it should have ramifications on the economy, even if they're counteracted. [1] Do you have a source on the ireland thing? I'm not really finding anything. And which Ireland for that matter? There are effectively at least three polities called that in that period. All with very different access to markets, political situations, etc.

pupppet 5y ago

Capitalism demands an ever increasing number of mouths to feed.

gruez 5y ago
How does capitalism (ie. "private means of production") translate to "ever increasing number of mouths to feed"?
- rackjack 5y ago
  If we interpret "ever increasing number of mouths to feed" as "more people", we can imagine the following: I sell a product. The more people buy my product, the more money I make. The more people there are, the more people will buy my product. The more people there are, the larger the labor pool I can choose from. The larger the labor pool I can choose from, the more the workers' wages get depressed, so my profit margins get bigger. So the more people there are, the more money I make. Obviously this is highly reductionist. Also, I don't think saying capitalism "demands" increased population growth is quite right. We can certainly imagine individual businesses who would not like population growth (e.g. mom-and-pop stores who know that increased local population increases the likelihood of a Walmart being erected and putting them out of business). But on the whole, I think the presence of capitalism trends towards increasing population.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >The more people there are, the larger the labor pool I can choose from. The larger the labor pool I can choose from, the more the workers' wages get depressed, so my profit margins get bigger. This this true? It presumes a bigger labor pool competing for the same amount of available jobs, which isn't true. As the economy grows, there are also more consumers who demand more products, which requires more workers/jobs.
- pupppet 5y ago
  Companies must grow, simple as that.

beaconstudios 5y ago

as people get older, they become infirm and require support; not just directly (relatives or nursing homes looking after their basic needs) but financially. Society is a pyramid, and when a pyramid narrows at the base, it becomes unstable. Also, our problems (presumably the myriad environmental ones) aren't caused by overpopulation, they're caused by rampant corporate polluting in service to individualistic consumer culture.

arvinsim 5y ago
Agreed. Overpopulation is an outdated boogeyman. Climate change IMO is the more pressing concern.
- mathematically 5y ago
  What do you suppose is the root cause of global warming?
  - hammyhavoc 5y ago
    Prioritizing profit before planet and people.
    - mathematically 5y ago
      That's definitely part of the problem.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
    A build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. What are you getting at? If everything were electric and nuclear, green hydrogen, whatever, we wouldn’t have this particular problem, so it can’t be population alone.
    - mathematically 5y ago
      You're correct so I'll explain what I was trying to get at. At the moment, focusing on dwindling birth rates is nonsensical because the world population is projected to be 10B people by 2050. So the issue isn't lack of people, it's the inability of various nations to properly coordinate a response to an existential crisis (global warming and increasing volume of CO2 in the atmosphere: https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-relentless-rise-of-carbon-dioxide/ https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-re...). Dwindling birth rates in Britain should be the last thing anyone is worried about if their real concern is not having enough people in the future. I mean if they're really concerned about lack of Brits then I guess it makes sense, but globally, on a planetary scale, worrying about local birth rates is not really something to be concerned about.

sbierwagen 5y ago

>10 million A world population that small certainly wouldn't sustain semiconductor manufacturing, even if you concentrated them in one region.

bpodgursky 5y ago
lol a world population that small probably couldn't sustain iron smelting. Have fun digging for grubs and shivering through the winter huddled around the campfire.
- sbierwagen 5y ago
  Iron mining has been done at small scale for thousands of years. A population of 10 million is the population of England circa 1812. Machine tools, glass optics. Electricity should be possible. Powered flight, if you had hydrocarbons. Oil would be a problem. All the easy deposits are tapped. A successor civilization would have a hard time progressing past steam power. A lot depends on how we crash to 10 million. If all the wells are shut down cleanly, thoroughly documented, then the people blink out existence, then the 10 million could live quite a white just on today's reserves. If we end up at 10 million after decades or centuries of warfare, then there won't be any oil left. (Plus the sea would be a lot higher, and many oil deposits would be in places where summer temperatures would be fatal for humans) Liquid fuels can be made from steam cracking of coal hydrocarbons, but they're expensive. No nuclear power, no turbines, none of the exotic metals that require electron-beam vacuum furnaces. No pharmaceuticals, no long supply lines, limited manufacturing specialization or economies of scale. Fasteners would be expensive again. Fabric would be expensive. Probably the number one most important thing to get working again is production of artificial fertilizers. Without that you're stuck with organic agriculture and 1 out of 2 people working in the fields. And somehow I get ten sentences into this comment before remembering about a book I read that made the exact same point about fertilizer: https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Rebuild-Civilization-Aftermath-Cataclysm/dp/0143127047 https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Rebuild-Civilization-Afterm...

kongolongo 5y ago

>But it seems like most of our problems are caused by overpopulation. That's too broad of a generalization and not true globally, some countries problems are exactly because of underpopulation. The problem isn't homogeneous throughout the world. It's highly dependent on what populations you're talking about and their circumstances. >Fields like production, retail, maintenance, etc. would have less workers, but also proportionally less demand. In some developed countries where recently the birthrates hover very slightly to sometimes below replacement rates can lead to a whole hosts of problems. For example take into account age proportionality as a result of extremely low birthrates in Japan, an ever increasing older and retired population does not have enough younger labor to produce good/services for basic societal function. There's also problems of gender imbalances like in India or China also causing massive issues in the coming generations.