Well, perhaps the problem isn't where you think it lies.

They may be willing to acknowledge your question and answer it with a whispered "yes", if you at least ask it in a way that cause them no excessive shame. Your denialism that the answer could be yes isn't quite the same thing as it being an "obvious no".

We all wander through a landscape of horrific truths that we blind ourselves to just to remain sane.

I feel there is an untold implication here that people somehow assume that the _other_ 90% would die of starvation. Surely not them!

I don't think that's a good analogy either. It's not like a wish will be granted and we'll all still be here but suddenly without tractors. The alternative to consider is being born into a world where industrialization took off slower and culture had more time to understand the consequences before they got really severe.

So it's just complaining that history didn't happen a certain way? Okay I guess.

I wouldn't mind if 90% of the population had never been born (even myself)

I wouldn't mind to have been born a giant, but here we are.

I get that some folks feel bad about human's impact on the earth, but you're going down a very concerning road here. I'm glad I was born, and I'm glad my child was born. I would love for us to move quicker towards a world that isn't trashing the earth like we are now.

I do however get a little concerned about the opinions of those who wished humans existed in far fewer numbers, especially when that involves a wish for a mass die-off (or cull!). You (or whomever) are free to hold whatever opinions you like, but when people start talking about advocating for allowing or promoting the death of large numbers of people, that's when I ask you to politely fuck off.

I never said anything about a mass die off, nobody is harmed by not having been born in the first place. We don't even need a mass die-off anyhow, we just need population control. Without population control we're going to have a mass die-off though, it's unavoidable due to the inherent unsustainability of our resource use.

I didn't say you were asking for that, but that line of reasoning often trends in that direction, and my opinions were directed those who hold those stronger views.

Do we need population control? For the vast majority of industrialized countries their birth rate is and has been well below replacement levels for decades. We're going to have a much smaller population pretty soon, and there's nothing anyone can do to change that now.

We'll see what plays out in the next few decades, but you've effectively already going to have what you're calling for. I don't think it's going to be a fun situation though - demographic collapse is no joke. Cutting down the replacement population numbers from there just seems like you'd be making a bad situation worse.