Falling birthrates is the climate change of the right:
Vaguely tribally valenced for no really good reason
Predicted outcomes range from “total economic collapse, failed states” to “slightly lower GDP growth”
People use it as an excuse to push radical social and political changes when the real solutions are probably a lot simpler if you’re even slightly creative
I wonder what is the optimal population size, because it seems to me that most people say either “more” or “less” (and yes, it seems strongly correlated with the political tribe), but no one ever gives an exact number. I suspect there is no optional number; that the people who say “more” or “less” will keep saying that regardless.
Too bad that more nuanced views, such as “let’s have more good and competent people, but fewer evil and incompetent people” are definitely outside the Overton window. :D
I mean, most moral theories do either give the answers of “zero”, “as large as can be fed”, or “a bit less than as large as can be fed”. Given the potential to scale feeding in the future, the latter two round off to “infinity”.
Falling birthrates is the climate change of the right:
Vaguely tribally valenced for no really good reason
Predicted outcomes range from “total economic collapse, failed states” to “slightly lower GDP growth”
People use it as an excuse to push radical social and political changes when the real solutions are probably a lot simpler if you’re even slightly creative
I wonder what is the optimal population size, because it seems to me that most people say either “more” or “less” (and yes, it seems strongly correlated with the political tribe), but no one ever gives an exact number. I suspect there is no optional number; that the people who say “more” or “less” will keep saying that regardless.
Too bad that more nuanced views, such as “let’s have more good and competent people, but fewer evil and incompetent people” are definitely outside the Overton window. :D
I mean, most moral theories do either give the answers of “zero”, “as large as can be fed”, or “a bit less than as large as can be fed”. Given the potential to scale feeding in the future, the latter two round off to “infinity”.