Or just have everybody kill everybody else. Reduce the population and you reduce demand for housing, food, energy, and all those other pesky necessities of life that have become too expensive.

/s, but history shows that this is how things usually end.

Yup. I see this as increasing pressures. What matters is the rate of increase.

Everyone is competing to ensure they are not at the bottom. But:

- will the pressure rise slowly enough to simply pressure those at the bottom to have less children.

- will the pressure rise cause those at the bottom to explode. IE riots in the streets etc

I think the second option as more likely. By definition, those in power are out of touch with those at the bottom.

It's a coordination problem. They'll vote for people who prevent it locally, but if you move power a bit up to the state level there isn't nearly so much interest in preventing it, which is why other countries don't have this issue outside the Anglosphere.

Even moving from per-district to at-large city council members is enough to improve things, though we seem to be moving in the other direction there.