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> But here is some truth: a reinstatement of the fruitful XXXY family as a primary goal is needful. Certainly so if economic velocity and growth are the metric

> But here is some truth: a reinstatement of the fruitful XXXY family as a primary goal is needful. Certainly so if economic velocity and growth are the metrics you're operationalizing "success" around. I do not believe that is the case for many, and I'd argue that it shouldn't be the case for the global population as it's not a trajectory that be sustained indefinitely without an ability to expand off of terrestrial Earth.

dvt 3y ago
> the global population as it's not a trajectory that be sustained indefinitely It's a bit wild to see Malthusianism alive and well in 2024. He couldn't predict the industrial revolution, and we likely can't predict whatever will come next, either.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  It’s also a bit wild to cite one data point of an unexpected state change and use it to assume with such confidence that another one will occur.
  - karpatic 3y ago
    It's a bit wild to expect more than one in a simple comment change doesn't happen overnight and smart people are saying "it'sa coming"
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      Smart people also say it’s not coming. The correct conclusion is that it’s not clear.
    - jack_h 3y ago
      Malthusianism is from the late 1700s. Another example would be Paul Ehrlich who wrote 'The Population Bomb' in the 1960s with the quote: > The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Smart people make predictions about the future all the time. The problem is the future is hard to predict. The mere fact that birth rates in developed nations are falling below sustainment level calls into question any sort of extrapolation of when or if overpopulation will happen. That's not to say the Earth can support an infinite number of people because it can't; but that doesn't imply any specific trends we see right now will continue into the future.
- HelloMcFly 3y ago
  I don't have to be in the business or habit of making laughably naive or galaxy-brain futurist predictions to acknowledge that habitable square-footage of land available to occupy is for all intents and purposes fixed. I'm not making any predictions, just noting that if we're growing above replacement rate indefinitely we will eventually run out of space barring eventual expansions off the planet. Even if every city on earth became as dense as Tokyo, even if we created all food production in sunless underground bunkers or skyscraper food farms, even if all nutrition becomes paste from compostable tubes, a society that inherently requires population growth indefinitely to function effectively has to get off-planet at some point. This is especially true if you value (as I certainly do) the ongoing existence of land not just for farming and habitation but for the diverse ecologies of flora and fauna to continue to exist. I'm certainly more pessimistic than optimistic about how the rest of the natural world would fare in the next 150 years if we continue on as we have been. But honestly, this to me is a sideshow: given our ability to produce efficiently and often autonomously, we shouldn't require a reliance on constant population growth to function effectively. Maybe that's where I'm being laughably naive.
smitty1e 3y ago
> I do not believe that is the case for many The empirical evidence is overwhelmingly on your side. This does not make childlessness a swift call. Indeed, I would call parenthood (biological or adoptive) an important part of the human experience. Or maybe I just personally wasn't going to grow up without a forcing function.
kmeisthax 3y ago
Malthusians versus pro-natalists: whoever wins, we all lose (our civil liberties)! I'm going to have to write two arguments here, because you're both wrong. The Earth is nowhere near carrying capacity, every advanced economy is looking at underpopulation. At the same time, however, forcing people to breed is inhumane and counterproductive. The root cause here is economic inequality. A large part of environmental damage is caused by a handful of outsize polluters who manage to escape prosecution and liability. People don't have kids because they don't have economic opportunity, because it's been eaten up by perpetually enshittifying monopolies. Who are also those same outsize polluters. Examples of outsize polluters include things like the fishing industry, responsible for one of the largest streams of plastic pollution into the oceans. The agricultural industry uses a majority of the American midwest and west's water, deliberately wasting it in order to retain the legal right to use it in the future, "just in case". And 30% of US greenhouse gas emissions is just industrial emissions. Examples of fertility rates being tied to inequality include countries like South Korea. For the record, almost a quarter of all of South Korea's economic output is just Samsung. 60% of their GDP is chaebols[0]. The chaebols control the political system to a ludicrous degree[2]. They have such deep ties that the South Korean CIA will literally have people writing down the names of people involved in protests so they can add them to Samsung's hiring blacklists. Who the hell would want to have children in such a country? Malthusianism fails as a political philosophy because it ignores the distribution of resources and treats reproduction as a scarce resource that needs to be limited (specifically to ourselves, and people like us, or people we like, etc). This makes it apt for coopting by exactly the kinds of people consuming Earth's limited resources to shift blame. Likewise, pro-natalism wants to blame the victims of income inequality for not having lots of children. This is specifically because it's easier than actually breaking the power systems that are fueling the inequality. [0] Korean for zaibatsu[1] [1] Japanese for chaebol[0] [2] Every South Korean president since the country democratized ends their term in a corruption scandal, followed by their successor pardoning them as a way to pay it forward to future corrupt politicians.
- HelloMcFly 3y ago
  > The Earth is nowhere near carrying capacity This is not my argument, just that a society that only effectively functions with continual population growth is ultimately a Ponzi scheme unless we begin living outside of the Earth's boundary. I'm not making a practical argument, more an argument that no species can grow indefinitely in a closed-loop system. I meant it more as cheeky remark than literal concern-trolling.

dvt 3y ago

> the global population as it's not a trajectory that be sustained indefinitely It's a bit wild to see Malthusianism alive and well in 2024. He couldn't predict the industrial revolution, and we likely can't predict whatever will come next, either.

jncfhnb 3y ago
It’s also a bit wild to cite one data point of an unexpected state change and use it to assume with such confidence that another one will occur.
- karpatic 3y ago
  It's a bit wild to expect more than one in a simple comment change doesn't happen overnight and smart people are saying "it'sa coming"
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    Smart people also say it’s not coming. The correct conclusion is that it’s not clear.
  - jack_h 3y ago
    Malthusianism is from the late 1700s. Another example would be Paul Ehrlich who wrote 'The Population Bomb' in the 1960s with the quote: > The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Smart people make predictions about the future all the time. The problem is the future is hard to predict. The mere fact that birth rates in developed nations are falling below sustainment level calls into question any sort of extrapolation of when or if overpopulation will happen. That's not to say the Earth can support an infinite number of people because it can't; but that doesn't imply any specific trends we see right now will continue into the future.
HelloMcFly 3y ago
I don't have to be in the business or habit of making laughably naive or galaxy-brain futurist predictions to acknowledge that habitable square-footage of land available to occupy is for all intents and purposes fixed. I'm not making any predictions, just noting that if we're growing above replacement rate indefinitely we will eventually run out of space barring eventual expansions off the planet. Even if every city on earth became as dense as Tokyo, even if we created all food production in sunless underground bunkers or skyscraper food farms, even if all nutrition becomes paste from compostable tubes, a society that inherently requires population growth indefinitely to function effectively has to get off-planet at some point. This is especially true if you value (as I certainly do) the ongoing existence of land not just for farming and habitation but for the diverse ecologies of flora and fauna to continue to exist. I'm certainly more pessimistic than optimistic about how the rest of the natural world would fare in the next 150 years if we continue on as we have been. But honestly, this to me is a sideshow: given our ability to produce efficiently and often autonomously, we shouldn't require a reliance on constant population growth to function effectively. Maybe that's where I'm being laughably naive.

smitty1e 3y ago

> I do not believe that is the case for many The empirical evidence is overwhelmingly on your side. This does not make childlessness a swift call. Indeed, I would call parenthood (biological or adoptive) an important part of the human experience. Or maybe I just personally wasn't going to grow up without a forcing function.

kmeisthax 3y ago

Malthusians versus pro-natalists: whoever wins, we all lose (our civil liberties)! I'm going to have to write two arguments here, because you're both wrong. The Earth is nowhere near carrying capacity, every advanced economy is looking at underpopulation. At the same time, however, forcing people to breed is inhumane and counterproductive. The root cause here is economic inequality. A large part of environmental damage is caused by a handful of outsize polluters who manage to escape prosecution and liability. People don't have kids because they don't have economic opportunity, because it's been eaten up by perpetually enshittifying monopolies. Who are also those same outsize polluters. Examples of outsize polluters include things like the fishing industry, responsible for one of the largest streams of plastic pollution into the oceans. The agricultural industry uses a majority of the American midwest and west's water, deliberately wasting it in order to retain the legal right to use it in the future, "just in case". And 30% of US greenhouse gas emissions is just industrial emissions. Examples of fertility rates being tied to inequality include countries like South Korea. For the record, almost a quarter of all of South Korea's economic output is just Samsung. 60% of their GDP is chaebols[0]. The chaebols control the political system to a ludicrous degree[2]. They have such deep ties that the South Korean CIA will literally have people writing down the names of people involved in protests so they can add them to Samsung's hiring blacklists. Who the hell would want to have children in such a country? Malthusianism fails as a political philosophy because it ignores the distribution of resources and treats reproduction as a scarce resource that needs to be limited (specifically to ourselves, and people like us, or people we like, etc). This makes it apt for coopting by exactly the kinds of people consuming Earth's limited resources to shift blame. Likewise, pro-natalism wants to blame the victims of income inequality for not having lots of children. This is specifically because it's easier than actually breaking the power systems that are fueling the inequality. [0] Korean for zaibatsu[1] [1] Japanese for chaebol[0] [2] Every South Korean president since the country democratized ends their term in a corruption scandal, followed by their successor pardoning them as a way to pay it forward to future corrupt politicians.

HelloMcFly 3y ago
> The Earth is nowhere near carrying capacity This is not my argument, just that a society that only effectively functions with continual population growth is ultimately a Ponzi scheme unless we begin living outside of the Earth's boundary. I'm not making a practical argument, more an argument that no species can grow indefinitely in a closed-loop system. I meant it more as cheeky remark than literal concern-trolling.