India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

Humans are resources in a general sense. More humans means more resources which you can throw at various challenges, problems. So you are right. More humans has benefits.

But unfettered growth isn't sustainable, this has been proved again and again. So what we need is controlled growth or at least sustainable levels. Right now we are switching into a decrease which will be very jarring and not sustainable.

We've never truly has controlled population growth, we just had unfettered growth, which now has slowed down into a decrease. What is next is for us to increase it again and then have control over this. It is basically getting us to the next level of human development.

We just have to be careful about those that want to exercise differential growth/decrease rates based on people's memberships in ideological, religious or racial groups.

> the first national family planning program

An odd euphemism for a program that, in practice, involved forced sterilizations and eugenics: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30040790

According to Vox: "In 1975, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the declaration of a national emergency. She seized dictatorial powers, imprisoned her political rivals, and embarked, with the help of her son Sanjay, on a mass, compulsory sterilization program that registers as one of the most disturbing and vast human rights violations in the country’s modern history." Source: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/2019/6/5/186...

Of course, as the OP notes, America is partly to blame. The exact quote from Johnson was...a bit more direct:

> When an adviser asked the president if he wanted to promise [Indira] Gandhi more food aid during her visit, he exploded: “Are you out of your fucking mind? … I’m not going to piss away foreign aid in nations where they refuse to deal with their own population problems.”

Source: https://qz.com/india/1414774/the-legacy-of-indias-quest-to-s...

Agreed.

Think about the fact that the result of a low birth-rate with better medical tech keeping older people from dying when they otherwise would have. The result will be a far higher percentage of voters in democracies will be beneficiaries of the work of people younger than them. They will increasingly vote to expand the benefits they receive, at the expense of the younger folks who have to pay higher taxes to fund them.

Perhaps one of the most distinct, and deliberately obfuscated, characteristics of COVID is its steep risk stratification by age. According to the US CDC data here: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics Roughly 94% of all COVID deaths were in people age 50 and up. 28.2% of deaths were in people over the age of 85, 7 years past the average US life expectancy (for men). If you look at the response to COVID in western nations, you can see that the cost/benefit analysis wasn't being evaluated in the context of the vast majority of people dying (and therefore benefiting) were past retirement age, and the vast majority of people bearing the cost of these policies were younger, lower risk people who were put out of work. The government programs that used debt-financed payments to alleviate these issues for the young generated debt that, again, will hurt the younger generations far more than the older.

Even before covid, the USA has universal health care for people over 65, but not for younger people or kids in working class families who aren't broke enough to qualify for Medicaid. I'm 40, so I'm no spring chicken, but western democracies routinely fuck over young people to help the old. It's going to get far worse until it hits an unsustainable level.

I've paid Social Security and Medicare taxes for 25 years, since my first paycheck, and it's not likely I'll ever receive anything from these programs based on current projections.

doesn't matter to be honest. We are already overpopulated and those who says it isn't just doesn't know how many people live under poverty and are simply privileged. I understand if we manage resources properly we have very high carrying capacity but it is not pragmatic to solve all those problems. Human greed, corruption has no bounds and will always hinder and there is no solution, is there? Rules, laws are generally made by elites even in democracy. Further, Nature makes us inherently greedy (selfish genes perhaps?) and many of us can't deny it, can we?

I think people like Elon always says declining fertility is huge problem but i simply don't see it as a problem. People like him will never suffer due to money problems and will live luxurious life. But only people working 996 realize how much exploited we are. And old age is not that big deal because of technology. One person can manage hundreds of people. We can scale a lot.

True. My modest proposal is that we increase population at least to 100 billion (= 100 000 000 000) - or even more!

Number of people does not matter.