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by lpcam33 2911 days ago
It's time to question economic growth. We cannot change the whole economy with a green one, we simply don't have the resources. This is just one example of many. What we need it's to take care of what we have right now and create conditions for people to have a good live regardless the economy is growing or not.
2 comments

The only possible way that the billions of people in the Third World will ever have anything approaching a "good life" is by massive economic growth.
First step to creating conditions for 7 or 8 billion people to have good lives is to massively grow the economy.
Doesn't work is massively growing the economy pulls the roof over our head. Considering if we do the worlds poor are the ones to suffer.

That 3 bedroom ranch style house in Bangladesh doesn't help anyone if it's under 2m of sea water.

Congrats you grew the economy. Now you have 16 billion people.
We see lower birth rates when countries grow richer. People have a lot more kids when there's a high chance a lot of their kids won't live long enough to support their parents in old age. Also in richer countries people aren't relying on their kids to support them in old age as much as in poorer countries.
No, FooHentai is right. We're screwed, Malthus-style, in the long run no matter what we do. The problem is that while modernism does tend to moderate fertility, it doesn't do so across the board. Some subgroups nevertheless have fertility far above replacement, and the exponential growth function tells us that these high-fertility groups will come to dominate the population.

In other words, selection pressure ---biological, cultural, doesn't matter --- always wins in the end. Mother nature has the last laugh.

Oh, please mention some of these subgroups by name.
The point I'm making is independent of whatever trap you're trying to set --- the specific groups don't matter. As long as some group has high fertility and is able to pass on this high fertility to future generations, the dynamic I'm describing applies.
So far the evidence is that prosperity reduces (and even reverses) population growth.
Correlation is not causation
Shish kebab is skewered, grilled meat.