There's no magic number of people that we have to have. The fertility rate will continue to fluctuate depending on the circumstances. Currently the balance of i

There's no magic number of people that we have to have. The fertility rate will continue to fluctuate depending on the circumstances. Currently the balance of incentives-disincentives regarding having kids in many places is simply favoring the "not" side. Having a smaller population with advanced automation technology is completely okay. And if a society feels it really values having more people around through births (and not through migration for example) they can alter policies to support families. (For example see how the child tax credits policy is not made permanent, also it's ridiculously small compared to cost of living and cost of child rearing. Then there's the cost of education, cost of having a bigger house, then there's the whole fucking problem of logistics, which is extremely costly in the US [because streets are not kid safe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43364761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43364761 )