Selfish reasons to want more humans
rootsofprogress.org
Selfish reasons to want more humans
1–10 of 480 posts
Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans
#2This could easily all be arguments for why you personally should want a more equitable world where we don’t have a Third world full of unhappiness and wasted tallent.
Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans
#3Wow, it’s so easy when you don’t have to consider downsides!
Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans
#4On the other hand if there are only two people you can probably pollute as much as you are capable of without worrying (too much).
Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans
#5I really believed this argument growing up in a white, middle class household in the 1980s. I’m more skeptical now, after two decades of helping build our current technocracy. I think there is a sweet spot between the dystopian lawlessness of prehistory and early human history, and the dystopian future of rapacious consumption and late stage capitalism.
Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans
#6Not selfish enough, sorry. Empower the human, regardless of total fertility rate decline trajectory (~40% of global annual pregnancies are unintended; assuming reproductive wishes are affirmed [less or no children], extrapolate future total fertility rate accordingly [points down]).
> bigger societies are better for everyone.
This does not appear to be the case based on the evidence. Bigger societies are better for those in political power, with economic control, and anyone who is a beneficiary of excess/surplus. We should do what is best for the human, not the machine. We already do not properly provide for hundreds of millions of people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_environmen... ("Wikipedia: Human impact on the environment")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_environmen... ("Wikipedia: Climate Change Flowchart")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries ("Wikipedia: Planetary boundaries")
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... ("HN: Planetary boundaries search")
https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#empowerment-of-wom... ("Our World in Data: Fertility Rate - Empowerment of Women")
https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-u... ("Guttmacher Institute: Unintended Pregnancy in the United States")
https://www.unfpa.org/press/nearly-half-all-pregnancies-are-... ("UNFPA: Nearly half of all pregnancies are unintended—a global crisis, says new UNFPA report")
https://www.worldvision.org/sponsorship-news-stories/global-... ("Fast facts: Global poverty")
(thesis arrived at by a preponderance of all available information)
Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans
#7Is there any discussion of how we would do this in the article, or is it entirely fantastical discussions of what is possible, and how great the world could be?
Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans
#8The population growth rate needs to be controlled, even reduced, to reduce the pressure on natural resources and slow down the climate change.
John Baez, mathematician at UCR, talks about this approach among a number of others, such as, reducing air travel for conferences.
Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans
#9I'm pretty sure there's too many people on this rock already
Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans
#10> Economies of scale. In particular, often total costs are a combination of fixed and variable costs. The more output, the more the fixed costs can be amortized, lowering average cost.
Except that after a certain point total costs increase again as the raw inputs become more scarce and expensive to obtain.