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I don't think they are suggesting that people should starve. They are suggesting that we need to stop making so many damn people, so that we can transition to b

I don't think they are suggesting that people should starve. They are suggesting that we need to stop making so many damn people, so that we can transition to better farming methods (among other things). From my uneducated perspective, the pain of "not having enough young people" due to declining population growth is a temporary problem, whereas reducing the long-term population growth trajectory is still a good thing. Is that wrong?

colechristensen 5y ago
> Is that wrong? Yes. The world doesn't have an overpopulation problem. It is clear that when economies develop and infant mortality goes down, people start having many fewer children after a few generations. Most of the world's advanced economies are in population decline already when you discount immigration. ' > the pain of "not having enough young people" due to declining population growth is a temporary problem The world economy was set up to grow which requires a constant growing population. What we're in for is a long term global population decline, maybe starting as soon as 2040. With lengthening life spans (covid aside) you have a younger generation perpetually having to do the work for more and more people as the elder generation ages out of the workforce but still needs to be fed, entertained, and cared for. It isn't "temporary" but could last centuries.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  > The world economy was set up to grow which requires a constant growing population. What we're in for is a long term global population decline, maybe starting as soon as 2040. With lengthening life spans (covid aside) you have a younger generation perpetually having to do the work for more and more people as the elder generation ages out of the workforce but still needs to be fed, entertained, and cared for. It isn't "temporary" but could last centuries. I think the parent is thinking longer term where "centuries" is temporary. Over a longer time horizon like this it's pretty clear that "an economy set up to grow" isn't sustainable in that we have finite resources and thus cannot grow infinitely. Which leads to the opposite conclusion to yours: that we need not to have a constant growing population (ideally over the long term it should be a roughly stable population).
  - noduerme 5y ago
    >> Over a longer time horizon like this it's pretty clear that "an economy set up to grow" isn't sustainable Really? The resources as we open up the moon, Mars, and the rest of the solar system are almost infinite. So is the space. Perhaps humans are programmed to reproduce too much, to grow constantly. But we have only begun to touch the edge of the womb, with one little toe. It's quite possible we are the only species within 100 light years capable of spaceflight of any sort. Think about this: There are 7.5 billion humans. In one place. That's it. It's really not much. That's the number of bacteria living on your shower curtain. One comet hit, one nuclear war, one bad flu, it's finished. 1 million years from now, if we're gone, there will be a thin layer of strange plastics and metals, maybe 10cm thick at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe 5 million years from now, the octopus will become civilized, and they'll discover this weird layer. They'll burn it for fuel and end up dying from the radiation. A few million years after that, the rat will become civilized. 50 million years from now it won't matter at all. But right now we're part of a very interesting project, as far as we know maybe the most interesting project that has ever been generated by this galaxy of 100 billion stars in 5 billion years. This generation right now that we're living in. So you think there are too many people?!
noduerme 5y ago
Uh, in an abstract way it's not wrong; I don't have kids and probably won't have 'em, and I'm not real happy about paying for other people's kids. But let me just give you a nauseating example of how your kind of thinking is real close to the edge of the rails... I was in Spain and through some friends I was hosting an American couple, showing them around town. The wife was a bicycle racer and the guy was in the Air Force, logistics guy recently back from sitting somewhere air conditioned. So we had a few drinks and he told me about his views. He had a very negative opinion about Medecins Sans Frontieres, I'm not sure if they had done him wrong somehow (they saved my life, once, so I had a positive opinion of them, and we argued). He said this: "Why should we give aid to Africa? They just make more babies. The population is already too high." I asked him, "Do you mean we shouldn't make drugs available?" He responded in the affirmative. He said, "Until they can make those drugs for themselves, why should we white europeans give them drugs to make more children?" There was nothing humanitarian in his statements, he was purely a racist. It was one of (not the) most outright racist things I've ever listened to. I sat and absorbed it as we drank wiskey on my balcony. Then I told him he was a racist piece of shit, and kicked him and his-- wife who fell asleep on my couch, out of my house. Now, even though I don't have kids and don't want them, do I think your Malthusian theory about growth trajectory is wrong? Yes.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  What does me thinking that there are too many people in the world have to do with some sociopathic racist American?
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Simply that that's where this type of thinking leads, once you begin reducing living people into the category of "too many". I think it's okay if you want to pay people not to have children. I don't have kids and it annoys me to pay for other people's kids. But when you begin speaking of the world in terms of overpopulation -- of too many living people -- the next question is "who should be eliminated?" So who do you think should be eliminated? I think if you hate your own kind enough to want them dead, then you've gone too far -- this road leads you to become like the sociopathic racist. //--> Me, Jew whose great-uncle and aunt survived Auschwitz. The world was made better, for other people, because they survived.

colechristensen 5y ago

> Is that wrong? Yes. The world doesn't have an overpopulation problem. It is clear that when economies develop and infant mortality goes down, people start having many fewer children after a few generations. Most of the world's advanced economies are in population decline already when you discount immigration. ' > the pain of "not having enough young people" due to declining population growth is a temporary problem The world economy was set up to grow which requires a constant growing population. What we're in for is a long term global population decline, maybe starting as soon as 2040. With lengthening life spans (covid aside) you have a younger generation perpetually having to do the work for more and more people as the elder generation ages out of the workforce but still needs to be fed, entertained, and cared for. It isn't "temporary" but could last centuries.

nicoburns 5y ago
> The world economy was set up to grow which requires a constant growing population. What we're in for is a long term global population decline, maybe starting as soon as 2040. With lengthening life spans (covid aside) you have a younger generation perpetually having to do the work for more and more people as the elder generation ages out of the workforce but still needs to be fed, entertained, and cared for. It isn't "temporary" but could last centuries. I think the parent is thinking longer term where "centuries" is temporary. Over a longer time horizon like this it's pretty clear that "an economy set up to grow" isn't sustainable in that we have finite resources and thus cannot grow infinitely. Which leads to the opposite conclusion to yours: that we need not to have a constant growing population (ideally over the long term it should be a roughly stable population).
- noduerme 5y ago
  >> Over a longer time horizon like this it's pretty clear that "an economy set up to grow" isn't sustainable Really? The resources as we open up the moon, Mars, and the rest of the solar system are almost infinite. So is the space. Perhaps humans are programmed to reproduce too much, to grow constantly. But we have only begun to touch the edge of the womb, with one little toe. It's quite possible we are the only species within 100 light years capable of spaceflight of any sort. Think about this: There are 7.5 billion humans. In one place. That's it. It's really not much. That's the number of bacteria living on your shower curtain. One comet hit, one nuclear war, one bad flu, it's finished. 1 million years from now, if we're gone, there will be a thin layer of strange plastics and metals, maybe 10cm thick at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe 5 million years from now, the octopus will become civilized, and they'll discover this weird layer. They'll burn it for fuel and end up dying from the radiation. A few million years after that, the rat will become civilized. 50 million years from now it won't matter at all. But right now we're part of a very interesting project, as far as we know maybe the most interesting project that has ever been generated by this galaxy of 100 billion stars in 5 billion years. This generation right now that we're living in. So you think there are too many people?!

noduerme 5y ago

Uh, in an abstract way it's not wrong; I don't have kids and probably won't have 'em, and I'm not real happy about paying for other people's kids. But let me just give you a nauseating example of how your kind of thinking is real close to the edge of the rails... I was in Spain and through some friends I was hosting an American couple, showing them around town. The wife was a bicycle racer and the guy was in the Air Force, logistics guy recently back from sitting somewhere air conditioned. So we had a few drinks and he told me about his views. He had a very negative opinion about Medecins Sans Frontieres, I'm not sure if they had done him wrong somehow (they saved my life, once, so I had a positive opinion of them, and we argued). He said this: "Why should we give aid to Africa? They just make more babies. The population is already too high." I asked him, "Do you mean we shouldn't make drugs available?" He responded in the affirmative. He said, "Until they can make those drugs for themselves, why should we white europeans give them drugs to make more children?" There was nothing humanitarian in his statements, he was purely a racist. It was one of (not the) most outright racist things I've ever listened to. I sat and absorbed it as we drank wiskey on my balcony. Then I told him he was a racist piece of shit, and kicked him and his-- wife who fell asleep on my couch, out of my house. Now, even though I don't have kids and don't want them, do I think your Malthusian theory about growth trajectory is wrong? Yes.

nerdponx 5y ago
What does me thinking that there are too many people in the world have to do with some sociopathic racist American?
- noduerme 5y ago
  Simply that that's where this type of thinking leads, once you begin reducing living people into the category of "too many". I think it's okay if you want to pay people not to have children. I don't have kids and it annoys me to pay for other people's kids. But when you begin speaking of the world in terms of overpopulation -- of too many living people -- the next question is "who should be eliminated?" So who do you think should be eliminated? I think if you hate your own kind enough to want them dead, then you've gone too far -- this road leads you to become like the sociopathic racist. //--> Me, Jew whose great-uncle and aunt survived Auschwitz. The world was made better, for other people, because they survived.