Your comments have been breaking the HN guidelines a bunch. We ban accounts that do that, so please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here. That means commenting thoughtfully and avoiding flamebait and flamewars.

Overpopulation is just the symptom of a problem. It will cease to be an issue if living standards increase around the world.

I think this is the crux of the issue.

Many folks pine for yesterday, but honestly until/unless we all embrace (and stop demonizing) birth control and increase the meaningfulness of lives worldwide, there will continue to be massive ecological damage just from people, leave alone industry.

You have that backwards. Pretty much everything else is a symptom of overpopulation, which is the root problem.

No matter how green and efficient we are, if the population keeps growing it won't really matter.

But the population doesn't grow much where standards of living are high. People have lots of kids in poor areas because their survival rates are relatively low, and need them for labor. As conditions improve, birth rates lower.

The argument is that when people have better living conditions, they have less babies. Namely, babies will survive so two people will only have one child.

But living conditions have drastically improved over recent decades for 90% of the population. What makes you think things have peaked now?

Also, capitalism would greatly benefit from improved economic conditions around the world.

>You really think you can improve the living standards for 90%+ of the world population?

Yes? Why would that not be possible?

If you're referring to the 2016 ILO report[0][1], that was a short-term trend partially attributable to the refugee influx. Overall, global poverty has been on a steep downward trend for decades.

[0] http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcom...

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/19/poverty-increasing-in-develo...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

You are right (because out of control overpopulation is almost always a precursor species extinction event, true for any species in this planet, no reason why it isn't true for humans) and I agree with you. Population control is hard because most of democracies believes that reproductive rights is a basic human right, government cannot control it or take it away.

But one country AFAIK, China, did it (control population via fiat) and got overwhelmingly criticized all over the world. But in hindsight, China probably won't make it without it - still barely making it with 1.5 billion people today.

The total cost of human living is the entire cost of basic needs (food, water, waste management etc.), education, social, interactive and the change of natural environment, a lot folks forget about that bigger picture.

> China wouldn't have started this if there was no good reason for it

What makes China not a) stupid or b) irrational or even c) mostly religious?

You are being downvoted because population control is often a totalitarian idea. There are few things that are more ingrained in us as a species as the urge to procreate. Taking that possibility away from people is extremely oppressive. Your animal analogy also doesn't help as a literal interpretation of it would seem to support genocide.

There are other ways of addressing this problem. For example, birth rates have consistently been shown to be inversely effected by education rates and standard of living. Population growth will therefore decrease if we raise the education level and standard of living of the world.

Our economic systems do not support that solution, and I'd bet my life on it this will never happen. In theory a lot of things are fine, reality is ugly, very ugly.

In regards to your edit, that looks like a false dichotomy. I don't think everyone who disagrees with population control is anthropocentric, illogical, irrational, etc. For me, I just don't want any government to have that much power. There are lots of other arguments, population control is not the only answer, we have saved other species without it.

Insulting downvoters just weakens your position.

Just as a note, I don't think it's fair to make that comparison you make in your edit. One thing is that we want to reduce risks with other species, to keep a "normal" balance, with "normal" meaning "what we've been seeing the last days we've been taking notes", and another what affects us personally. Are we willing to take some risks with overpopulation? Otherwise, are we willing to take some risks to prevent overpopulation? I think you can't compare the two situations like that.

Personally, I don't know where to stand. I used to believe overpopulation was a big problem we needed to actively tackle. Then I started considering self-regulation theories and the issues with population control methods, and compare it to other global problems. I don't have a clear view anymore. Definitely worth discussing, definitely a very complex situation.

Well, there are several ways to look at this, but we have enough resources to end starvation and enough science to produce those resources both economically and climate responsible.

The fact that we don’t is down to greed. We throw out so much food each year that we could feed 10x populations.

Sure we could kill all humans, but we could also kill all rich capitalists and redistribute wealth better. Obviously the best solution is somewhere in between, but the fact that big parts of society is talking about the extreme is worrying.

Really?

As far as I know there is plenty of space, people just tend to co-locate.

> the vast majority already lives in daily misery and it won't get better

That daily misery is still likely multiple times better than what it would have been 100 years ago. You may consider it misery compared to your own standard of living, but it's entirely possible that 100 years from now someone may consider your current situation as "misery" as well.

If you asked these people you are referring to whether they would rather continue on as they are or be put out of their "misery", I suspect we both know what the answer would be.

Additionally, I don't think it's any more useful to prioritize comfort of all living people than it is to prioritize advancement of the species as a whole. Focusing on both to greater and lesser degrees is worthwhile in my eyes, and advancing the species to the point we can get off planet and colonize other locations also vitally important in my eyes, as making everyone more comfortable (which is not the same as happier) is pointless if we're extinct in 50 years when we could have prevented that.

Colonize other locations? If we can't live in equilibrium with our home planet, there's no way we'd be able to manage a second less habitable one. How about a third? Then we're a plague of locusts, descending, destroying, departing.

Agent Smith was right.

> Then we're a plague of locusts, descending, destroying, departing.

Locusts don't die out though, they just consume enough resources that they can't sustain their numbers, and their population sees a vast drop.

I would much rather humans learned how to utilize resources in a much more stable manner, bit given the option of humans as locusts that strip-mine planets or humans as a species that used to exist until they died out, I'll take the former every time. As long as we exist, so does the possibility we'll change. But I would support us doing what we need to survive as a species even if I knew we would never change.

Species survival and propagation is the name of the game. If you're (the general you) not for that, you're a fairly poor example of a human (which is not meant as an insult, it may very well be that the same things that make someone a bad human make them a good person). I would just prefer if we could achieve both, and be good people and good humans.

There are so many issues with this comment (I appreciate it though, wish we could have a full conversation about this). a) If you'd do some research you'd see that "100y ago" actually was often times better b) Getting off this planet? To where? Colonize Mars? To do what exactly? The category to that jeopardy answer is: Things that won't happen for 200

> If you'd do some research you'd see that "100y ago" actually was often times better

Again, better is relative. If you consider child mortality[1] and dying from sickness important in assessing whether people are better off or not, then those are values that negatively affect the assessment of 100 years ago.

If you consider some other values important (I'm not going to belittle you by assuming I know what you are thinking of, the only ones to that come to mind for me right now seem irrelevant), then that would affect the assessment of 100 years ago positively.

Personally, I think there are far more indicators, and far more important indicators, that affect the assessment of 100 years ago negatively.

1: https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality

Resources are abundant. The distribution is the hard part.

Birth rates are high because of poverty, not the other way around. You need a lot of kids if you want your family to survive harsh conditions. Eliminate poverty and you'll see birth rates go down to a sustainable 2-per-family.

Ultimately most people take it as more or less axiomatic that human life is of greater value than any other kind, and this kind of argument is unlikely to sway them.

Coming from a human?

As opposed to which other species on Hacker News?

Population control only means to limit human populations to a responsible and sustainable level, and brings economic benefits to other humans as well as animals, so I don't understand your sentiment.

Not the parent, but until giraffes and other endangered species can speak for themselves, these statements will keep coming from us.

Although the point could've still been made without sounding misanthropic...

Good thing your parents didn't think the way you do huh?

Western countries aren't nearly as overpopulated as most Eastern countries. Compare the States, one of the larger Western countries, to China. Or India.

It's absolutely an issue, but the West is a saint compared to the East right now.

Yet the US has double the carbon footprint per capita of China and more than 8x that of India. It would be much easier for Western countries to cut their resource consumption in half than for Eastern countries to cut their population in half.

that's literally "ad hominem" & what kind of answer you want to hear now? a) yes I wish too b) lucky me ? in either case it doesn't provide any good points to a solution

Saying that putting children in the world is the most egotistical thing you can do seems like an ad hominem to me, so we'll call it even.

Be the change you want to see in the world: Pledge to not procreate!