The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich has turned out to be almost exactly wrong. Here's a good pod on the subject: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Lk2wsYafTyo

The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich has turned out to be almost exactly wrong. Here's a good pod on the subject: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Lk2wsYafTyoPA2hrNVN8e?si=L551KEdWQR-XA-xufkHnqA&utm_source=copy-link&nd=1&dlsi=31fd9b1458614717 https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Lk2wsYafTyoPA2hrNVN8e?si=L... For some strange reason this line of thinking had tremendous influence on the left, at least in the West, despite the fact that there has always been a huge undercurrent of racism in overpopulation discourse. This pod does a decent job calling that out. I remember watching an overpopulation alarmist documentary as a teenager and thinking -- without any prompting -- that the whole thing came off as super racist. Any time they wanted to show the looming population catastrophe they always showed hordes of people with dark skin. Ehrlich continues to be treated like an economist -- meaning, given intellectual credibility despite a track record of having been consistently wrong. This doesn't mean I buy into underpopulation hysteria either. I see them making the same mistake: assuming that current trends will continue indefinitely. It's entirely possible that things like the childfree movement will cause a population rebound. How? By selecting out of the gene pool whatever traits make people more reluctant to reproduce. Until recently reproduction was pretty automatic, allowing those traits to persist, but after a few more generations of reproduction being solidly optional we could end up with a population composed of almost 100% people with intense "biological clocks" and a strong urge to have babies. The present decline in fertility could be like a "bear trap" on a bull market stock graph.