Many people are. Our current global population is massive. Humans and their livestock account for 96% of all mammal biomass on earth and we're rapidly exterminating the remaining 4%. And people want it to grow significantly, e.g., the person I just replied to.
> On the contrary, advocating for population reduction is inherently classist, since this requires government management, and ruling classes will inevitably protect their own ranks first.
No it doesn't, that's just false. The most highly consuming countries on earth have naturally stable or declining populations.
And making arguments about the ruling class protecting their own ranks or deploying authoritarian government control over others doesn't really make sense because they do that now, they'll do that when populations are growing, they'll do that when populations are shrinking. You can't have that as your argument.
However, since they're quite clearly a load of intentional misrepresentation and false equivalences, they don't wash with a critical outside observer.
> You can't have that as your argument
Excuse me, no, as with the previous misrepresentation of countervailing positions, once again you don't get to decide what someone else's argument is. This coercive attitude is consistent, but it doesn't hold any water.
There's no proposal to eliminate governments and ruling classes, so ignoring the realities is facile. The outcome of a downward trajectory is literally killing people, and this is not OK.
If I can make the choice to recycle, eat less cows, cycle instead of walking; why can't I make the choice to have 2 children instead of 5. Or even have 1.
On the contrary, though, advocating for population reduction is inherently classist, since this requires government management, and ruling classes will inevitably protect their own ranks first.
The result of such modes of thinking is not academic. The UK's prime minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, is not the hapless buffoon he plays on camera, and his COVID management policy disproportionately kills the poor by a factor of 3.7[1].
Inequity of survival is the actual consequence of any managed population reduction.
[1] https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infogr...