This drives people like the author of the article mad, because they think we should do something to prevent that.
I agree. So where is the problem? Replacement is a problem in many parts of the world on the other hand.
Alternative 2: we achieve 5 billion in 2300 because we chose to
The quality of life in alternative 2 is higher because we're not right up against constraints that limit us. People feel more secure because there's less contention over resources, they're more likely to take risks like trying new ways of doing things, etc. There's a greater potential for discovery.
So the problem is that if we let nature force us into Alternative 1, we're in for a worse time than we otherwise would be.
Source? I thought it was expected to stabilize around 10B or so
https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...
Now the issue is both OP and you are taking one of the trend lines rather than looking at the projection spread. Ops seems slightly off as the UN numbers are showing 10B max and 7.4B min.
Estimates for 2100 (from Fig. 6)
================================
- High: 14.0B
- Med: 9.1B
- Low: 5.5B
Are you going to tell him that he needs to change his culture? Arguably he could have a lot to say about our culture spewing out hydrocarbons being damaging to the planet, which would be justified far before we criticise his reproduction.
If you're going to life a modern lifestyle, yes 100%. Modern human lifestyles are hyper energy/resource intensive. The reason people had 14 kids back when is 1. most of the kids died, and 2, the kids were work resources. If 1 and 2 no longer hold, then yea, change.
Although, in this supposed gardener’s culture, one guy had multiple wives, and that is obviously not a dynamic that leads to a steady, peaceful society based on all the prevailing customs around the world.
One thing that I've heard them say they are unhappy about are the marrying of additional wives. One particular conversation was with two wives of the same man. The older wife said that she did not want her husband to marry, but over time she began to like the younger wife. In the particular case of the gardener, his first wife told him to marry because the first two children were born unhealthy.
I'd say about half the Bedouins I speak to have multiple wives.
Because you have no reason to assume they would tell you the truth, or that they are not lying even to themselves. Actions speak louder than words, and 99% of women who attain financial and physical security choose to not have 14, or even 4 kids.
See here:
> Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
As recently as the generation that was born before WWII, even the Boomers, were born into relatively large families. The idea that they hated having so many children would have been foreign to them. On the contrary, it gave them meaning. Family and community life was vibrant. Now, things are desolate. We live in a culture of death.
No one tells them they cannot have 8 or 14 kids. But after having seen what a woman goes through during pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, and child rearing, I would easily say that I would also choose 0, 1, 2, or 3 kids. Certainly not double digits.
Good?
Consumerism as a way of life is hostile to having children. Consumerism construes all of life, and the purpose of life, as consumption and in hedonistic terms. It means that sexual intercourse and sexual relationships are perversely construed in terms of consumption. A sign of this is the 20th century normalization of contraception, where the intrinsically procreative end of sexual intercourse is intentionally and explicitly blocked and frustrated in order to center pleasure (the irony of hedonism is that it actually makes sex less enjoyable, as pleasure sought for its own sake undermines itself, but I digress). In a healthy sexual relationship, children are a welcome result of sexual union. In a consumerist relationship, they are an impediment to hedonistic consumerist indulgence, so much so that abortion is sought when contraception fails. Even the notion of lifelong marriage stands in the way of the consumerist juggernaut, as commitment to one's spouse means denying yourself countless, admittedly shallow and selfish sexual encounters. Consumerism is an agent of social and individual decay.
Furthermore, children cost money. The money you could spend on consumption, on that new Mercedes, may need to go toward the good of a child, which, according to a consumerist calculus, is lost. And how can you keep up with the Jones' when the measure of wealth aren't children, but more stuff? The poor may have had more children in consumerist societies, because various luxuries are out of their reach anyway, so the dilemma doesn't manifest as much. Also, the fish tends to rot from the head down, so it takes a while for the habits of those further up the economic ladder to trickle down.
Of course, not everyone must have children, but healthy societies do tend to have many. If it were simply the case of the former, we would not see the hostility we see toward the latter.
All we have to do is embrace it.
For starters, I think we should increase tax benefits for people who don't have dependents and who are participating in research, or teaching, or nurshing, or ... create a list of activities which we want to see more of but that the market does not prioritize. Let's celebrate, and empower, individuals who take the time they would be spending on their own kids, and instead spend it on solving society's problems.
This would increase the likelihood that somebody without children has the kind of impact which makes them a role model for existing children. This will help erode the idea that people who chose not to have children are somehow defective and will decrease the likelihood that a person decides to have kids.
[1] https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_...
Or they just live in a shitty place under some autocratic/dictator/religious rule. I'm not sure that has much to do with the population size.
If it's clear that there's plenty to go around you can just abandon a bad leader. If not, then maybe tolerating them is a necessary evil (because they control the food).
No. For most of human history we've been lead by shitty autocratic leaders. Now, when there's too little to go around we're more apt to go to war and/or have population migrations which is a different subject.
> If it's clear that there's plenty to go around you can just abandon a bad leader.
If only it were that easy.
I don't know about "only", but I agree that that's the best move: Fewer labyrinthine dependencies, more providing directly for yourself and your neighbors.
But isn't the difficulty of that proposition a direct function of population density? If "locally" means 1000 people on 100 acres, that's a lot different than if "locally" means 10000 people on 10 acres.
---
To put it differently, premises:
1. The planet can sustain 100M of us
2. The planet cannot sustain 100B of us
3. There is uncertainty about whether the planet can sustain 8B of us
Conclusion:
The safer direction for our population to go is down.
I’m pretty sure that the shitty conditions are not caused by a too large population of humans more broadly. If society took the wealth of a few billionaires and distributed it to the most impoverished I think a lot of our overpopulation woes would vanish overnight. Things like tuberculosis medicine costing hundreds of dollars isn’t a population problem.
Maybe, maybe not. Most of impoverished people I know are impoverished because they continue to act irresponsibly with money. Just giving them money without education, handholding and a lot of coaching about how to spend money will mean that money will be distrobuted back away into society and eventually the rich will return to being rich. Of course not everyone is like that, but I'd say 80%. By just redistributing wealth, after 5 years we would reduce amount of poor people by 20%. That's why it's so hard to fight poorness. They require a lot more than just money.
I think people totally underestimate how the current 9 Billion inhabitants of this planet are depleting our oceans of living things and how large a percentage of those inhabitants depend upon the ocean for food. Sounds like one of those externalities Economist only account for after the fact. Ooops - To bad for you starving children in (put your starving country here).
Will technology allow us to sustain larger populations - likely but at what cost.