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Short-sightedly, increasing the (young) population is increasing productivity as you said, but when thinking a tiny bit deeper about it, we're already consuming

Short-sightedly, increasing the (young) population is increasing productivity as you said, but when thinking a tiny bit deeper about it, we're already consuming each year twice the resources Earth can provide us, so continuing on this "econo-societal runaway" is completely bonkers. The population should imperatively shrink, it should already be at most half of the current size. With this completely different viewpoint, the real contributors to society wellness are those who have less (or no) children.

ZaoLahma 3y ago
I absolutely agree with you. 100%. The problem is how we can make this transition from a large population to a smaller one with as little suffering as possible. As I said, here we are expected to work into our 70s on average already, which just will not be possible. At some point there won't be enough resources to care for those who can't produce. We need a substantial increase in productivity per individual for society to keep working while the population numbers are decreasing, and that doesn't seem to be happening.
- henearkr 3y ago
  Yeah... the consensus is that the more we wait before reducing willingly the population, the more it will happen suddenly and violently (wars, famines) at the snap point (or at snap points, plural). Not pretty thoughts, but just mechanistically unavoidable... I'd say, let's reduce our comfort, let's do it now, yeah we'll be poorer and all. Still better than the alternative. The point is to go out of our way to remain (and become more) altruistic and united at a global scale... in order to spread evenly the diminishing resources. If everybody gets poor in a similar way, it will reduce anger and unrest. Or avoid wars, if that's a country that would have felt wronged otherwise.
sneak 3y ago
We are not consuming more resources than the Earth can provide. The idea that our population is too big is subjective and arbitrary. The Earth can easily support 2-10x as many humans as presently live on it. Our way of life, however, is quite wasteful and inefficient.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- henearkr 3y ago
  (First, "We are not consuming more resources than the Earth can provide", is a false statement, as right now every year we (the whole Humanity) consume more than what the Earth can regenerate. It's an established fact. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day) Nah, it's both, not either, of these elements of the solution. Only lowering our way or life (in your scenario, lowering it at an unimaginable level), while being twice as many, is unacceptable, as we'll deal with absence or regression of medicine (too costly in energy or resources), drastic reduction or extinction of research and exploration, and end of the "global village" concept because of too expensive communication and transport. Education is at stake too. And only reducing how many we are is as unacceptable, as it implies too much lives lost too suddenly, of course. It must be a combination of both. So, the point I raised stays true, we need (also) to reduce the population. But not only. Right now I'm thinking I found the right way to explain the problem: even if you (and me, and a handful of other groups of humans) would agree to live like ancestral tribes, it would still not be the case of a lot, the vast majority, of people. And they would be much, much angrier of this plan, than of some alternative plan, e.g. to reduce the population and get altogether to a moderately poor level of life (not as drastically poor as if we keep on procreating. Say, way poorer than US citizens, but still wealthier than the average inhabitant of a Third World country). And how to deal with social unrest is crucial, in how we'll solve the equation.

ZaoLahma 3y ago

I absolutely agree with you. 100%. The problem is how we can make this transition from a large population to a smaller one with as little suffering as possible. As I said, here we are expected to work into our 70s on average already, which just will not be possible. At some point there won't be enough resources to care for those who can't produce. We need a substantial increase in productivity per individual for society to keep working while the population numbers are decreasing, and that doesn't seem to be happening.

henearkr 3y ago
Yeah... the consensus is that the more we wait before reducing willingly the population, the more it will happen suddenly and violently (wars, famines) at the snap point (or at snap points, plural). Not pretty thoughts, but just mechanistically unavoidable... I'd say, let's reduce our comfort, let's do it now, yeah we'll be poorer and all. Still better than the alternative. The point is to go out of our way to remain (and become more) altruistic and united at a global scale... in order to spread evenly the diminishing resources. If everybody gets poor in a similar way, it will reduce anger and unrest. Or avoid wars, if that's a country that would have felt wronged otherwise.

sneak 3y ago

We are not consuming more resources than the Earth can provide. The idea that our population is too big is subjective and arbitrary. The Earth can easily support 2-10x as many humans as presently live on it. Our way of life, however, is quite wasteful and inefficient.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
henearkr 3y ago
(First, "We are not consuming more resources than the Earth can provide", is a false statement, as right now every year we (the whole Humanity) consume more than what the Earth can regenerate. It's an established fact. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day) Nah, it's both, not either, of these elements of the solution. Only lowering our way or life (in your scenario, lowering it at an unimaginable level), while being twice as many, is unacceptable, as we'll deal with absence or regression of medicine (too costly in energy or resources), drastic reduction or extinction of research and exploration, and end of the "global village" concept because of too expensive communication and transport. Education is at stake too. And only reducing how many we are is as unacceptable, as it implies too much lives lost too suddenly, of course. It must be a combination of both. So, the point I raised stays true, we need (also) to reduce the population. But not only. Right now I'm thinking I found the right way to explain the problem: even if you (and me, and a handful of other groups of humans) would agree to live like ancestral tribes, it would still not be the case of a lot, the vast majority, of people. And they would be much, much angrier of this plan, than of some alternative plan, e.g. to reduce the population and get altogether to a moderately poor level of life (not as drastically poor as if we keep on procreating. Say, way poorer than US citizens, but still wealthier than the average inhabitant of a Third World country). And how to deal with social unrest is crucial, in how we'll solve the equation.