The societies we live in are a precarious balance based on assumptions like we can grow food and we don't all try to kill each other. One part has become: our population continues to grow. It is less dramatic than those others, but it's impact should not be ignored.
Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed
11–20 of 109 posts
Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
My grandparents are dead, but I doubt they would have much to say about it; they had kids (in the 1940s) because their parents would not accept anything less; religion + marriage + kids. They often told me and my parents they didn't want kids and they were supposed to have as many as possible but they only had one and promised to have more but never did. But what great insights would they come up with pray tell? In t…
If it wasn't for your grandparents you wouldn't be here. That's what is else, your very existence! I'm sure you would agree, your life has value and meaning beyond a utilitarian or disposable cog in a wheel. By extension therefore all lives are equally valuable and necessary.
"You, an existing person, find you prefer to stay alive" is not an argument for "more babies are always better". If the reason that there are fewer babies is that potential parents don't want them, then it's possible that there are exactly the right amount of babies, and the ensuing problems should be solved by other means than pressuring these unenthused couples to reproduce.
I think that creating more happy people is better, not more people per se.
Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed
#13Besides feeding the economy (and by that, I mean buying consumerist stuff from large corps) and providing the army with cannon fodder, I still haven’t haven’t heard a lot of good arguments for having these babies. Humanity would shrink (I think this is calculated to start after 2050 or so), but besides those two reasons, does that matter? Where is the foundation of the argument that we must have population growth to…
An aging population that lives longer and longer + shrinking workforce means
- the pension system can't be sustained, but also
- more and more people need support of doctors, nurses, care homes, etc. but can't find it or it becomes more and more expensive (but see problem above regarding their pensions).
Historically children take care of their parents when they are old and in need; in the past century more and more of this has been delegated to society at large. In both cases though you need young people.
Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed
#14"the whole world":
- economists & businesspeople who can't conceive of a world without growth
- religious people who think God wants them to be fruitful and multiply
- atheists who think we have some kind of evolutionary imperative
- parents who think that being childfree is an affront to their choices
Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed
#15Archived version: https://archive.is/dQdUP
Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed
#16Besides feeding the economy (and by that, I mean buying consumerist stuff from large corps) and providing the army with cannon fodder, I still haven’t haven’t heard a lot of good arguments for having these babies. Humanity would shrink (I think this is calculated to start after 2050 or so), but besides those two reasons, does that matter? Where is the foundation of the argument that we must have population growth to…
> I still haven’t haven’t heard a lot of good arguments for having these babies.
A larger population means bigger numbers on the everything that's on a normal distribution, like intelligence. That one genius in a 100 million? With 1B population, you only have 10 of them. With 8B population, there are 80. That's 8x more chances one of them does or finds something revolutionary, 8x chances that person is not perishing somewhere in a cobalt mine as a kid. It slashes times waiting for a genius to appear 8x.
A bigger population also enables extreme specialisation in very niche fields. It enables bigger recruitment pools for complex processes and manufacturers like, for example, ASML.
It's, in a short word, massive parallelism.
Now, a counter-argument to everything I said is looking at the demographics of geniuses, revolutionaries, specialists and noticing most of them were well-fed, well-educated and raised in stable, liberal societies (liberal as opposed to, say, taliban-like societies). So, in theory, we could get by with a smaller population, if it was a rich, western-like, population. In that case, the only constraint would become genetics; so an 100M population would have to wait a couple of generations for their genius, instead of a 8B pop potentially getting them all at once.
Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed
#17Besides feeding the economy (and by that, I mean buying consumerist stuff from large corps) and providing the army with cannon fodder, I still haven’t haven’t heard a lot of good arguments for having these babies. Humanity would shrink (I think this is calculated to start after 2050 or so), but besides those two reasons, does that matter? Where is the foundation of the argument that we must have population growth to…
> I still haven’t haven’t heard a lot of good arguments for having these babies. A larger population means bigger numbers on the everything that's on a normal distribution, like intelligence. That one genius in a 100 million? With 1B population, you only have 10 of them. With 8B population, there are 80. That's 8x more chances one of them does or finds something revolutionary, 8x chances that person is not perishing…
Seems like a balancing act... If all 8B people have western living standards, we'll boil the planet up even more quickly than at the current rate...
Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I still haven’t haven’t heard a lot of good arguments for having these babies. A larger population means bigger numbers on the everything that's on a normal distribution, like intelligence. That one genius in a 100 million? With 1B population, you only have 10 of them. With 8B population, there are 80. That's 8x more chances one of them does or finds something revolutionary, 8x chances that person is not perishing…
Seems like a balancing act... If all 8B people have western living standards, we'll boil the planet up even more quickly than at the current rate...
Well-fed, well-educated and safe doesn't necessary imply western living standards.
Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed
#19Besides feeding the economy (and by that, I mean buying consumerist stuff from large corps) and providing the army with cannon fodder, I still haven’t haven’t heard a lot of good arguments for having these babies. Humanity would shrink (I think this is calculated to start after 2050 or so), but besides those two reasons, does that matter? Where is the foundation of the argument that we must have population growth to…
> I still haven’t haven’t heard a lot of good arguments for having these babies. A larger population means bigger numbers on the everything that's on a normal distribution, like intelligence. That one genius in a 100 million? With 1B population, you only have 10 of them. With 8B population, there are 80. That's 8x more chances one of them does or finds something revolutionary, 8x chances that person is not perishing…
I always hear this from people who are unwilling to fix current problems. They always push it onto some future genius that is going to pop up and act as the second coming of Jesus. In reality the average person is already more intelligent both in terms of education and IQ than people from a hundred years ago. The difference is that you are no longer losing them to mining accidents. Meanwhile the growth strategy glorifies the mining accidents as something that can be compensated simply by having more people. It's ok if our "geniuses" die, because we have eight times more. There is a deeply misanthropic logic behind this since one is discounting vast amounts of the population.
Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like a balancing act... If all 8B people have western living standards, we'll boil the planet up even more quickly than at the current rate...
Well-fed, well-educated and safe doesn't necessary imply western living standards.
Not clear to me that Western living standards really imply Western resource usage.
Like: flying costs a lot in terms of resources, but is it more than 1% of the perceived living standards?