So in the whole anti-natalism/pro-natalism conversation (which I’m mostly agnostic/undecided on, currently), my friend who is a pro-natalist, argued that the success/stability of our world economy is dependent on procreating more children each year than the previous year, so that we not only replace the numbers of the people who existed from the previous generation (and some, to account for the statistical likelihood that many won’t have children or will be sterile or die young etc), but also ensure that the population keeps growing in order to produce more and more human labor to “pay back the debts” of previous generations, because all money is borrowed from somewhere else… this is all very murky to me and I wish someone could explain it better.
She is also of the view that this will inevitably lead to population collapse/societal/civilisation collapse because we live on a finite Earth with finite resources that can’t keep sustaining more humans & human consumption (and are nearing critical environmental crises), but that there isn’t any other option than to keep producing more children because a declining population wouldn’t be able to support itself economically either. Basically the idea seems to be that economically & societally we’re on a collision course for self-destruction but the only thing we can do is keep going and making increasingly more of ourselves to keep it running (however that as individuals, we should be plant-based & minimalist to reduce our impact to the environment, non-human animals and humans for as long as possible). And she is worried about the fact that fertility rates are falling & slated to reach a population peak followed by a decline in the relatively near future.
As I said I’m not sure how I feel about this view but at first glance I think that the effect of having fewer children in providing relief upon the environment and helping safeguard our future is more important than preserving the economy because destroying the actual planet and life itself seems worse than economic downturns/collapses, but I really don’t know enough about economics to say for certain.
“pay back the debts” of previous generations
It is pretty important to certain capital-holding, debt holding folks that we only talk about “paying back” debts, and ignore the other obvious answer:
Not paying back the debt.
Eventually, when a debt system becomes too burdensome, people respond to it by…not paying.
But avoiding talking about “not paying” is pretty important to anyone who wants to make the system maximally painful, short of not paying.
Naming “not paying” risks causing people to think about “not paying”.
It’s far more complicated than this, but it’s worth staying aware that “not paying” is the real release valve, and most expert analysts are being paid extra to not talk about the topic of “not paying”.
Debt jubilees used to be a thing. I guess we kind of get a limited version of that with student loan forgiveness
more and more human labor to “pay back the debts” of previous generations
There is no law of economics stating that a generation of people has to consume more than it produces.
Is your friend a Cold-War era Romanian dictator?
To preface I think reproduction is a very personal choice and right that we shouldn’t force on or take away from anyone ever.
But let me ask you this: the planet we live on is finite. It’s not getting bigger and its resources aren’t getting more. Is infinite growth of population (or anything else, for that matter) possible here? Or will this system eventually collapse?
But to add: the average human is consuming waaaaay less than their fair share of resources. Even the average middle class westerner probably is, and they’re already consuming a whole lot more than average. The planet and environment could sustain a lot more people more comfortably if there weren’t a few obscenely excessive consumers, ie the richest of the rich. That’s probably a better fix than shaming the average Joe for wanting to have kids.
We’d need at least four Earths to sustain humanity if everybody lived like the average middle-class American. That’s probably an underestimate. We’re completely blowing out our fair share of resources.
I said probably because I didn’t know for sure, but damn, I didn’t know how far off I was! Do you happen to know whether Europe and richer Asian countries are similar?
Edit: just saw the link has some examples Edit 2: this says the average American tho, not the average middle class American. Averages will usually be heavily skewed by outliers, ie the super rich
Not really, the average isn’t skewed much, simply because there are so few super-rich in a population of 380 million people. And even then, men like Jeff Bezos and his rocket ship are outliers, most of the billionaires have 1000x more money than the median, but they don’t use anywhere near 1000x the resources. (Warren Buffett, in particular, leads a pretty middle-class lifestyle.)
From what I learned from my environmental sciences degree, the environmental impact comes from hundreds of millions of people living in big houses, driving big cars, eating meat for most meals, and buying scads of consumer goods. (Amazon shipping boxes are a significant environmental challenge all on their own.)
Japan’s population has been in decline since about 2005 and they haven’t exploded in a fireball yet.
I think neo nataliam started as a very extreme view. I didn’t think it was quite as sarcastic as A Modest Proposal, but it has the same vibe to me. I’d be suspicious of anyone talking it seriously at face value. Maybe they aren’t being malicious, but they’re at least unsophisticated.
We don’t need infinite population growth to support the economy but eventually we are going to hit a point where we have to support more retired people than workers. At that point the economy will slow down as there is less demand because people will lose their jobs because of the less demand. People will also be spending more of their time and incomes taking care of their older relatives.
Our current Ponzi scheme, robbing Peter to pay Paul, method of funding social security will break down at that point and we will have to decide whether we send mom and dad and grandpa and grandma to the poor house, increase taxes on the workers who still have their jobs, or redistribute wealth from the 1%.
People won’t vote for the first 2, so we might actually get socialism at that point but it will hurt a lot on the way there.
Not that I am a huge fan of him in general but you should watch this. Also there is no debt that’s not imaginary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTznEIZRkLg&t=28 It is not strange that relatively rich people have fewer child than poor people. Rich people don’t need a buffer for kids dying and being providers at your old age. The answer to population growth is obvious and anyone arguin anything else is speaking in their own interest. Equality in lifestandard, money and life.
No, you cannot keep the population infinitely growing just to maintain the pyramid the economy is built on. I think greed clouds our vision, it would and will be possible with automation and AI to have a rich and technologically evolving economy with fewer people, the problem is people seem to feel they need to exploit other people or it’s not a reasonable economy.
