Too many people?

[Loren Pechtel]

I can hardly find a valid reason why population decline is bad. There are many stories saying it's bad but few providing much support for their argument. Short term the concern seems to be taking care of the elderly and a shrinking workforce to produce all the crap we don't need to buy in the first place. Long term the reason seems to be with a declining population, creativity will necessarily suffer. I don't know if I buy that. It looks like AI will be doing much of the hard and slow research for us soon enough freeing up great minds to be even more creative.

If there's one thing killing this planet it's capitalism. If everyone lived like Americans do, we'd need five earths to support us.

There's also the problem that places like Detroit are experiencing that the infrastructure is built for a higher population.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The economic consequences of reduced population are something that can only exist where productivity is tied to the number of people working in a given economic area - but productivity hasn't been tied to the absolute size of the workforce since the start of the industrial age.

When a single backhoe driver can dig, in an hour, a ditch that previously took fifty men with shovels all day to dig, how is it an economic disaster, or even an economic problem, if a handful of the forty-nine now unemployed former ditch-diggers had never been born?

Sure, our backhoe operator might be diverting far more of his earnings to the support of not only his own aging parents, but also those aging non-parents who chose not to bear his non-existent coworkers; But he can afford to - he's so much more productive, that those pensions are easily within his means.

Well, unless his boss is (mis)appropriating his increased productivity to support the boss's beer-and-hookers fund. But then, if that's the case, the boss can pay to support the old folks, and still have money left over for beer and hookers.

And you continue to think that increased productivity belongs to the worker using the tool. You're forgetting about all the people who made/maintain/supply the backhoe. It's not the beer-and-hookers fund, it's the capital acquisitions fund. In an industrialized economy the tools-per-worker amounts to years worth of income.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Population isn't relevant to any solutions to any of our problems.

So you are saying there can never be too many people? Is that true for all species in an ecosystem?

bilby didn't say anything like that. He said our population isn't relevant to our existing problems.

Simple, imagine, Earth is smacked by an asteroid the size of Rhode Island tomorrow. Is trying to tend and care for 8 billion much different than 1 billion of 100 million when the entire system has been toasted?

Exactly. Colonizing other worlds as a safety net is about not having a single point of failure, not about moving to another world en masse.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I can hardly find a valid reason why population decline is bad. There are many stories saying it's bad but few providing much support for their argument. Short term the concern seems to be taking care of the elderly and a shrinking workforce to produce all the crap we don't need to buy in the first place. Long term the reason seems to be with a declining population, creativity will necessarily suffer. I don't know if I buy that. It looks like AI will be doing much of the hard and slow research for us soon enough freeing up great minds to be even more creative.

If there's one thing killing this planet it's capitalism. If everyone lived like Americans do, we'd need five earths to support us.

The most destructive form of farming is slash and burn farming. The type of cooking that creates the most CO2 is wood firing.

Capitalism is NOT the problem. The free market is our friend here. High CO2 emissions also means less profit. It's a waste both economically and environmentally.

Everybody whining about capitalism really should take a look at all the alternatives humans have ever devised. What's your plan, communism? Because communists have a stellar reputation for environmental work. In capitalism there's a guy who owns the capital. So an identifiable guy we can hold responsible for each problem, and if necessary throw in jail. This is a great tool to protect the environment. The best we've ever come up with so far.

Your problem isn't with capitalism. It's with consumerism. We can have capitalism without consumerism.

 

[Merle]

Uh, assuming you have 200 years to make the correction,

Why would you assume we don't?

and assuming you can reach that average birthrate across the globe.

Why would you assume we can't?

First, I need to make a small correction to my figures. My population figures started at 7 billion instead of 8 billion. If I correct that, it takes 10 generations, about 250 years, to reach 2 billion at the rates you suggest.

That means we might need to react 250 years in advance. If (hypothetically) the planet is in overshoot, with 8 billion people on a planet that can sustainably hold 2 billion, and if we find this will catch up to us 250 years from now, then, if we decided to do something about it, we would need to react now. It takes 250 years. Hence, the need to at least talk about it now.

Personally, I think we have far less than 250 years to react. I think I have explained the reasons here several times. Once again: We are Eating Fossil Fuels, that is, we are burning 10 calories of fossil fuel for every calorie of food we put on the table. The cheapest sources of fossil fuels are rapidly depleting. When shortages get serious, the Green Revolution that sustained our population far above the normal carrying capacity of the Earth will be in jeopardy. I see this getting serious some time in the next 30 years. See The Crash Course, Do the Math, and Our Finite World. Alternates like nuclear energy will help, but they need to deal with problems like The Energy Trap. In addition, resource depletion of many renewable resources, global warming, and pollution are serious concerns.

Regarding the target birthrate, it depends how long we have to react. As we discussed, 1.7 may be adequate if we have 250 years to react. If we have 80 years, we must aim much lower. Hence, the opening post.

Why would I assume we can't reach the desired birthrate? I don't assume that. It depends on a lot of things, including the desired average birthrate, religion, human psychology and the courts. Will the recent Supreme Court decision, for instance, make it harder for even America to maintain the 1.7 births per woman figure you mention?

But anyway, considering all the factors involved, if--hypothetically--we needed to maintain an average birthrate of 1.7 births per woman worldwide for the next 250 years, yes, I do think that would be very hard. Do you think it would be easy?

By the way, you share the solutions suggest by Saier (see the opening post). His solutions are, "Anyone considering parenthood should have all the alternative options at their disposal, including (a) abstaining from sex—in marriage and outside of it, an option few couples choose, (b) using truly reliable forms of contraception, or (c) abortion." And that seems to be very close to your solutions. So in spite of all the smoke I am seeing from your end, when it comes to the solution, you are both saying the same thing. You just seem to have a dispute on what population range would be optimal for planet Earth.

 

[Jarhyn]

Your problem isn't with capitalism. It's with consumerism. We can have capitalism without consumerism.

You cannot have people all motivated by naive selfishness (capitalism) and not have that naive selfishness turn towards pushing more consumption to push towards encouraging the hoarding behaviors of naive selfishness.

It is simply not possible.

Capitalism will always push towards consumerism, driven "stupidism", and oligarchy.

The only mindsets that push away from this are socially driven, on the idea that loving everyone and cooperative goal seeking to the point of accepting the contract of self-sacrifice is the most informed and effective way to attain goals.

The immune system of the human body only works through self-sacrifice of cells.

The failure to self-sacrifice is, in biology, the literal definition of cancer.

We just happen to compose a superorganism, a species, capable of full cooperative integration, assuming we can reject the cancer of naive selfishness.

We need as individuals to react to things which degrade goal seeking potential... And capitalism driven on individual exceptionalism degrades goal seeking potential across the system.

 

[Merle]

Every industrialized society has seen it's birth rate crash because children go from being a benefit (labor on the farm) to a cost. The average person does not consider the value of having their 2.1 children worth it. Why should we think people in the rest of the world will not reach the same conclusions?

We are rapidly trashing the planet. Is this the solution?

Step 1: Industrialize the whole world to European standards.
Step 2: Watch the birthrate decline.
Step 3: Wait 250 years.
Step 4: Our descendants look around and see that a few decades of a heavily industrialized world wiped out all resources and trashed the planet. And they thank us for doing this?

Does that about sum it up?

 

[Merle]

Mine planets, live in space.

Not going to happen. See Why Not Space? and Stranded Resources.

 

[Jarhyn]

Every industrialized society has seen it's birth rate crash because children go from being a benefit (labor on the farm) to a cost. The average person does not consider the value of having their 2.1 children worth it. Why should we think people in the rest of the world will not reach the same conclusions?

We are rapidly trashing the planet. Is this the solution?

Step 1: Industrialize the whole world to European standards.
Step 2: Watch the birthrate decline.
Step 3: Wait 250 years.
Step 4: Our descendants look around and see that a few decades of a heavily industrialized world wiped out all resources and trashed the planet. And they thank us for doing this?

Does that about sum it up?

In the current acceleration of technology we have two options: to destroy the world right away, really really fast, in an attempt to fascistically genocide whichever 20%? 50%? 90%? that whatever 10% decides needs to go...*

Or we push forward through singularity and become something whose existence is not limited by the aggressive demands of the flesh.

In the mean time, we just need to stabilize so the curve stops growing.

I would personally be willing to submit to a destructive scan well before "my time" to get "saved" onto a digital platform with lower energy costs.

At that point I would have the time to wait for better more organic-esque platforms, since digitally imaged systems can't be killed forever short of burning the libraries.

*So, 100% of us with extreme overlapping coverage in both "kill" and "be killed" categories

 

[Merle]

But you can't do any of this. Even if you are right (a big assumption) there is no method to do any of this. Each country does whatever they wants to do. And in most free countries, those citizens basically do what they want to do.

Ok, so if (hypothetically) we ever got to severe population overshoot, and found we had far more people on this planet than it can sustainably hold, then there is nothing we can do about? If that ever happens, let's just have another drink on the deck as we watch the ship we are sitting on go down? Does that about sum it up?

 

[Jarhyn]

But you can't do any of this. Even if you are right (a big assumption) there is no method to do any of this. Each country does whatever they wants to do. And in most free countries, those citizens basically do what they want to do.

Ok, so if (hypothetically) we ever got to severe population overshoot, and found we had far more people on this planet than it can sustainably hold, then there is nothing we can do about? If that ever happens, let's just have another drink on the deck as we watch the ship we are sitting on go down? Does that about sum it up?

As has been discussed, that happens some few millions of years ago, when humans discovered flint tools.

The point is to develop tools that will finally allow us to become sustainable as a species.

It's been a few-million years journey.

 

[Merle]

In the mean time, we just need to stabilize so the curve stops growing.

Which is something people have been saying for decades.

And we just added another billion people.

If (hypothetically) we are in severe overshoot, stabilization might not be sufficient.

 

[Merle]

The point is to develop tools that will finally allow us to become sustainable as a species.

How has that been working out lately? (See You Call This Progress?)

 

[Jarhyn]

In the mean time, we just need to stabilize so the curve stops growing.

Which is something people have been saying for decades.

And we just added another billion people.

If (hypothetically) we are in severe overshoot, stabilization might not be sufficient.

The alternative is global everyone-vs-everyone war.

So either we assume we still can accomplish this in a way that allows people to be as they are and encourage folks in all the ethical ways to attain their dreams of not having children, or we burn the world down in chaos that will be GUARANTEED to wipe us all out along with any life larger than a pinhead.

I vote for the former, and against the latter. The latter is what lies down the path of "deciding who gets to live".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The entire debate is predicated upon the completely false assumption, made by pretty much everyone prior to the middle of the twentieth century, that the fertility rates seen between the mid-Eighteenth and mid-Twentieth centuries represented the fertility rate that humans naturally and inevitably desired - ie. people assumed that family size was a conscious and explicit choice.

But the very instant that a mechanism became available whereby family sizes could be chosen without being subject to large numbers of unwanted "accidents", fertility rates plummeted.

It turned out that unplanned pregnancy wasn't the exception; It was the rule. And once significant numbers of women were empowered to avoid it (without drastic and undesirable changes to the rest of their lives), the entire problem went away.

Leaving just the meta-problem that people are always worrying about the big issues of their youth, even after those issues are resolved. Problems make headlines; Headlines breed fear; Fear stays with us long after it has lost all relevance.

There's two other factors at work:

1) Children used to be of value from a fairly young age. On the farm they soon became a net positive doing simple jobs.

2) Children were your old age security.

Now, neither of these are important factors. The value of children has changed. Children are now effectively a luxury good--great cost but only emotional benefits.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If Malthus was an optimist why aren’t we all dead?

Because we struck oil.

We now use 10 calories of fossil fuels for every calorie of food we eat. The resulting fertilizers, tractors, ovens, and trucks have greatly increased the availability of food. Malthus didn't know that was going to happen.

Malthus made one fundamental mistake (which he couldn't know about): Not realizing what industrialization + contraception would do to the birth rate.

The problem is that the fossil fuels won't last forever. And we really don't have anything that can replace them to the magnitude that fossil fuels are currently used.

Oh? Split CO2. Split water. Combine the hydrogen from the water with the carbon from the carbon dioxide. The result is natural gas--quite usable for cars. Run it off either solar or nuclear. Want something liquid? Split the water. Reduce the CO2 to CO. Run that through the Fischer-Tropsch process. This will tend to produce stuff that's too long and needs cracking (same problem with crude oil--mostly too long), but it certainly can be done.

Everything fundamentally comes down to energy.

And another problem is that fossil fuel have allowed billions to live at a standard of living far above what is natural. The result is a strain on the environment that could some day make population come crashing down. Its called overshoot.

A crash is certainly possible--but it will take out at a minimum 99.99% of the human race whether it comes fast or slow. We would be much better off avoiding it.

Murphy is speaking tongue in cheek when he calls Malthus an optimist. Malthus thought we would slowly reach the limit, and the population would stop growing. He had no idea that vast supplies of energy would allow humanity to far overshoot the capacity of the Earth, resulting in a possible catastrophic collapse.

We are already way overshooting the limit. We will either die back (and overshoot in the other direction due to war--likely taking out the entire human race) or we will learn how to move the limit. Your approach amounts to prolonging the dying, not avoiding it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Because we struck oil.

Now we have nuclear. Malthus neglected the acceleration of technology in his projections.

Ah, you want to go nuclear. We certainly will try that in the future, but it is far less practical as an energy source.

It's by far the most practical we have. Solar is also useful for processes that can readily be turned on/off at the drop of a hat. (Say, cracking water into hydrogen and oxygen. Turn off the power, the production stops but the plant doesn't otherwise mind.)

 

[Elixir]

Solar is also useful for processes that can readily be turned on/off at the drop of a hat. (Say, cracking water into hydrogen and oxygen. Turn off the power, the production stops but the plant doesn't otherwise mind.)

This is what I’d like to see. Because it can be de-centralized. We could have autonomous fuel production stations in the middle of the desert, on city rooftops or anywhere the sun shines, which would make an energy infrastructure that would be far more robust than centralized generation.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And climate change is disrupting supply lines and leading to more severe and frequent weather events in the African Sahel.

Well, that's certainly true. When you have a city of three million people, in a region with annual rainfall of only 100-150mm (a figure that has declined recently due in large part to climate change), the surrounding countryside simply cannot possibly produce enough food for everyone, and starvation and poverty are the inevitable consequence.

Oh, wait. Sorry, those are the figures for Las Vegas, Nevada, which isn't currently the subject of any World Food Programme Emergency status.

No. We have only 2.29 million in the whole county. Probably about 2.1 million for the metro area. (Googlers, beware of misleading data. The city of Las Vegas is only 2/3 of a million, most of us live outside the city limits. The Las Vegas Strip is not in Las Vegas!)

 

[bilby]

By the way, you share the solutions suggest by Saier (see the opening post). His solutions are, "Anyone considering parenthood should have all the alternative options at their disposal, including (a) abstaining from sex—in marriage and outside of it, an option few couples choose, (b) using truly reliable forms of contraception, or (c) abortion." And that seems to be very close to your solutions. So in spite of all the smoke I am seeing from your end, when it comes to the solution, you are both saying the same thing. You just seem to have a dispute on what population range would be optimal for planet Earth

Then you haven't understood my position at all.

I'm not proposing solutions to a population problem, because I'm convinced that no such problem exists.

Insofar as I agree that:

"Anyone considering parenthood should have all the alternative options at their disposal, including (a) abstaining from sex—in marriage and outside of it, an option few couples choose, (b) using truly reliable forms of contraception, or (c) abortion."

...it's because I believe that everyone should have alternative options available in all circumstances, and should be freely permitted to choose to exercise any, all, or none of them, unless those choices significantly adversely impact the lives of others.

Not as the solution to any particular problem(s), but because restricting people's options unnecessarily is both cruel and wasteful.

If a couple wants to have n children, that should be their right. For any value of n. Because freedom is good.

I'm not proposing this as a solution to "the problem" of exponential population growth; I'm observing that it has already eliminated exponential population growth before it could become a problem, and without any requirement whatsoever for any kind of policy decision from anyone.