But “more people are better” ought to be a belief of everyone, whether pro-fertility or not. It’s an “other things being equal” statement, of course—more people at no cost or other tradeoff is good. One can believe that and still think that less people would be a good idea in the current situation. But if you don’t think more people are good when there’s no tradeoff, I don’t see what moral view you can have other than nihilism or some form of extreme egoism.
Do all variants of downside focused ethics get dismissed as extreme egoism? Hard to see them as nihilistic.
I suspect clarity and consensus on the meaning of “more people at no cost or other tradeoff” to be difficult. If “more people” means more happy people preoccupied with the welfare of the least fortunate, then sure “at no cost or other tradeoff” should suffice for practically everyone to get behind it. But that seems like quite a biased distribution for a default meaning of “more people.”
Do all variants of downside focused ethics get dismissed as extreme egoism? Hard to see them as nihilistic.
I suspect clarity and consensus on the meaning of “more people at no cost or other tradeoff” to be difficult. If “more people” means more happy people preoccupied with the welfare of the least fortunate, then sure “at no cost or other tradeoff” should suffice for practically everyone to get behind it. But that seems like quite a biased distribution for a default meaning of “more people.”