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I think it’s because no one ever bothers to support it. You declare that we have “too many people” and “need fewer humans” — but don’t demonstrate that’s true.

I think it’s because no one ever bothers to support it. You declare that we have “too many people” and “need fewer humans” — but don’t demonstrate that’s true. It seems more like an article of faith among a certain crowd. But to people who don’t think that’s true, saying we need fewer people and enacting policies to achieve that seems dangerous: you’re trying to destroy other people’s families for no reason but your religious beliefs.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
What supporting citations would you like? There are 121 million unintended pregnancies globally annually. 2.7 millions children in foster/institutional care. 689 million in poverty and destitution. Rainforests are being clear cut, the planet is well beyond its carbon budget (and Herculean efforts will be required to pull us back from 2C), and there is ample evidence climate change is going to cause famines and heatwaves that will inflict suffering on wide swaths of the global population (with the developing world being hit particularly hard). This is not the fiction that religion is, these are verifiable facts (ourworldindata.org, UN reports). Isn’t it dangerous to have large numbers of people we’re going to just let die when resources are further constrained? It seems a lot safer to argue for family planning for all but the most capable and emotionally invested parents and let everyone else age out with a decent quality of life to responsibly transition to a lower human run rate. No one is arguing for eugenics, family destruction, or similar distasteful policies.
- zmgsabst 5y ago
  > Isn’t it dangerous to have large numbers of people we’re going to just let die when resources are further constrained? You haven’t shown anything like this — merely asserted it based on unrelated facts. You cited raw numbers, but eg, portion of humanity in starvation conditions has gone down as population went up, because the increased wealth of nations allowed for feeding more people. Neither unintended pregnancies nor a fraction of children in foster care seems like something that is solved by having fewer people. In fact, that will get worse (like hunger) as society regresses and we are less wealthy as nations. > No one is arguing for eugenics, family destruction, or similar distasteful policies. You are: Planned Parenthood was founded by a noted eugenicist; the policies to support your vision require massive taxes that stress the young and prevent them from breeding even if they otherwise would want to; etc. You’re just denying your role in that destruction through social policy based on some kind of religious apocalyptic fantasy.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
I think this is demonstrated. We have a global climate and environmental crisis in a world where most human beings are still quite poor and with population still increasing. We're being told that we should travel less, eat less meat, this, that, when most people on Earth actually still struggle to afford these things (I.e. consumption per capita is increasing as people leave abject poverty worldwide) Believing that global population level is fine is not even an article of faith, it simply is denial of reality because it is something some people somehow simply refuse to hear. Lastly, no-one here suggests that we should kill people or whatnot. In Japan and other developed countries population is decreasing naturally, let's just let it instead of panicking.
- zmgsabst 5y ago
  You didn’t support it at all: Your entire argument is “an authority told me so!” and from there you treat it as an article of faith. You’re also ignoring that more people has led to less poverty and the current world is the richest it has ever been — ie, the data which shows more people is good. Global hunger has precipitously fallen, as we’ve had more people and richer nations capable of more aid. > In Japan and other developed countries population is decreasing naturally, let's just let it instead of panicking. It’s decreasing as a result of policies chosen which stress the young and cause them not to breed — saying “well, less people is good, so let’s keep the abuse!” is monstrous.
  - yodsanklai 5y ago
    > You’re also ignoring that more people has led to less poverty and the current world is the richest it has ever been Only if you consider resources are unlimited, and the environment has no value. If you put available non-renewable resources and the environment on the balance sheet, the result is different.
    - zmgsabst 5y ago
      > If you put available non-renewable resources and the environment on the balance sheet, the result is different. Okay — so show me that. What exactly is different if you account for more people making us the wealthiest, least starving time in history? How exactly is the outcome negative? What exactly means that fewer people is the solution to our problems, when historically the opposite has been true? Again, you’re not showing me that — you’re asserting it as an article of faith you expect me to just believe on your say so.
car_analogy 5y ago
Seconding toomuchtodo's comment, I also take issue with > saying we need fewer people and enacting policies to achieve that seems dangerous: you’re trying to destroy other people’s families for no reason but your religious beliefs Trying to conflate a natural (or at least unintended [1]) population drop with some deliberate policy of "family destruction" is the height of dishonesty. [1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/10/18/national/social-issues/yoshihide-suga-infertility-birth-rate/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/10/18/national/social... Japan’s total fertility rate [..] stood at 1.36 [..] The government aims to raise the rate to 1.8.
- zmgsabst 5y ago
  > Trying to conflate a natural (or at least unintended [1]) population drop with some deliberate policy of "family destruction" is the height of dishonesty. Your sibling comments (including the one you support) are arguing that we should continue policies which abuse the young to the point they are too distressed to breed because we have “too many people”. That would be animal abuse if I did it to cows: intentionally abusing a herd so they were too distressed to procreate. I think you not admitting that I’m responding to sentiments expressed in this very thread is dishonest.
  - car_analogy 5y ago
    > we should continue policies which abuse the young to the point they are too distressed to breed Fertility rate: Finland 1.35, Austria 1.46, Switzerland 1.48, Norway 1.53, Kenya 3.4, Nigeria 5.3, Somalia 5.98: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d... Quality of life rank: Finland 11/80, Austria 13/80, Switzerland 1/80, Norway 3/80, Kenya 79/80, Nigeria 80/80, Somalia unranked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index Quality of life and fertility seem to be very strongly anti-correlated. It does not seem like any sort of "policies which abuse the young" are needed to reduce population - education, gender equality, and some baseline material security suffice. That the countries least desirable to live in have the highest fertility, and that there is a global ecological catastrophe slowly unfolding, are both well-documented common knowledge, that you became instantly ignorant of when they became inconvenient to your argument. I would ask you to explain why you think "policies which abuse the young" are what people have in mind, or why they are needed, when obviously what has been shown to work and is popular is raising living standards. But I won't, because given the above, I already know the answer: it's much easier to argue for perpetual population growth if you can pretend the only alternative is "abuse the young to the point they are too distressed to breed".

toomuchtodo 5y ago

What supporting citations would you like? There are 121 million unintended pregnancies globally annually. 2.7 millions children in foster/institutional care. 689 million in poverty and destitution. Rainforests are being clear cut, the planet is well beyond its carbon budget (and Herculean efforts will be required to pull us back from 2C), and there is ample evidence climate change is going to cause famines and heatwaves that will inflict suffering on wide swaths of the global population (with the developing world being hit particularly hard). This is not the fiction that religion is, these are verifiable facts (ourworldindata.org, UN reports). Isn’t it dangerous to have large numbers of people we’re going to just let die when resources are further constrained? It seems a lot safer to argue for family planning for all but the most capable and emotionally invested parents and let everyone else age out with a decent quality of life to responsibly transition to a lower human run rate. No one is arguing for eugenics, family destruction, or similar distasteful policies.

zmgsabst 5y ago
> Isn’t it dangerous to have large numbers of people we’re going to just let die when resources are further constrained? You haven’t shown anything like this — merely asserted it based on unrelated facts. You cited raw numbers, but eg, portion of humanity in starvation conditions has gone down as population went up, because the increased wealth of nations allowed for feeding more people. Neither unintended pregnancies nor a fraction of children in foster care seems like something that is solved by having fewer people. In fact, that will get worse (like hunger) as society regresses and we are less wealthy as nations. > No one is arguing for eugenics, family destruction, or similar distasteful policies. You are: Planned Parenthood was founded by a noted eugenicist; the policies to support your vision require massive taxes that stress the young and prevent them from breeding even if they otherwise would want to; etc. You’re just denying your role in that destruction through social policy based on some kind of religious apocalyptic fantasy.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

I think this is demonstrated. We have a global climate and environmental crisis in a world where most human beings are still quite poor and with population still increasing. We're being told that we should travel less, eat less meat, this, that, when most people on Earth actually still struggle to afford these things (I.e. consumption per capita is increasing as people leave abject poverty worldwide) Believing that global population level is fine is not even an article of faith, it simply is denial of reality because it is something some people somehow simply refuse to hear. Lastly, no-one here suggests that we should kill people or whatnot. In Japan and other developed countries population is decreasing naturally, let's just let it instead of panicking.

zmgsabst 5y ago
You didn’t support it at all: Your entire argument is “an authority told me so!” and from there you treat it as an article of faith. You’re also ignoring that more people has led to less poverty and the current world is the richest it has ever been — ie, the data which shows more people is good. Global hunger has precipitously fallen, as we’ve had more people and richer nations capable of more aid. > In Japan and other developed countries population is decreasing naturally, let's just let it instead of panicking. It’s decreasing as a result of policies chosen which stress the young and cause them not to breed — saying “well, less people is good, so let’s keep the abuse!” is monstrous.
- yodsanklai 5y ago
  > You’re also ignoring that more people has led to less poverty and the current world is the richest it has ever been Only if you consider resources are unlimited, and the environment has no value. If you put available non-renewable resources and the environment on the balance sheet, the result is different.
  - zmgsabst 5y ago
    > If you put available non-renewable resources and the environment on the balance sheet, the result is different. Okay — so show me that. What exactly is different if you account for more people making us the wealthiest, least starving time in history? How exactly is the outcome negative? What exactly means that fewer people is the solution to our problems, when historically the opposite has been true? Again, you’re not showing me that — you’re asserting it as an article of faith you expect me to just believe on your say so.

car_analogy 5y ago

Seconding toomuchtodo's comment, I also take issue with > saying we need fewer people and enacting policies to achieve that seems dangerous: you’re trying to destroy other people’s families for no reason but your religious beliefs Trying to conflate a natural (or at least unintended [1]) population drop with some deliberate policy of "family destruction" is the height of dishonesty. [1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/10/18/national/social-issues/yoshihide-suga-infertility-birth-rate/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/10/18/national/social... Japan’s total fertility rate [..] stood at 1.36 [..] The government aims to raise the rate to 1.8.

zmgsabst 5y ago
> Trying to conflate a natural (or at least unintended [1]) population drop with some deliberate policy of "family destruction" is the height of dishonesty. Your sibling comments (including the one you support) are arguing that we should continue policies which abuse the young to the point they are too distressed to breed because we have “too many people”. That would be animal abuse if I did it to cows: intentionally abusing a herd so they were too distressed to procreate. I think you not admitting that I’m responding to sentiments expressed in this very thread is dishonest.
- car_analogy 5y ago
  > we should continue policies which abuse the young to the point they are too distressed to breed Fertility rate: Finland 1.35, Austria 1.46, Switzerland 1.48, Norway 1.53, Kenya 3.4, Nigeria 5.3, Somalia 5.98: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d... Quality of life rank: Finland 11/80, Austria 13/80, Switzerland 1/80, Norway 3/80, Kenya 79/80, Nigeria 80/80, Somalia unranked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index Quality of life and fertility seem to be very strongly anti-correlated. It does not seem like any sort of "policies which abuse the young" are needed to reduce population - education, gender equality, and some baseline material security suffice. That the countries least desirable to live in have the highest fertility, and that there is a global ecological catastrophe slowly unfolding, are both well-documented common knowledge, that you became instantly ignorant of when they became inconvenient to your argument. I would ask you to explain why you think "policies which abuse the young" are what people have in mind, or why they are needed, when obviously what has been shown to work and is popular is raising living standards. But I won't, because given the above, I already know the answer: it's much easier to argue for perpetual population growth if you can pretend the only alternative is "abuse the young to the point they are too distressed to breed".