[squarefoot]

Many of us, including the planet under our feet, don't see it as a problem.

https://www.populationmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03...

I don't think there was anyone in the 1960s screaming "oh crap... there's only 3 billions of us around here!". We're so used to think the now and here as normal conditions that we lose focus on the global trend which is absolutely disastrous.

[wool_gather]

It is a bit of a problem inasmuch as core values/ideas are often (not always, but often) transmitted by family connections. So paradoxically, concern for the planet leading you to not have children could reduce the relative number of people who share your concern.

Then again, there are other memes that lead not just to lack of reproduction, but directly to the death of the memeholder, so maybe it's not such a big deal. Still, just another thing to wonder/worry about.

[squarefoot]

Interesting point. Also culture could play a role here; it is possible that concerns about overpopulation are primarily shared among those people who are less responsible for it (living in "western" industrialized countries), so that by having less children they rather reduce the number of people sensitive to the problem than limiting overpopulation in significant figures.

[TangoTrotFox]

It's not just concern on this one issue. In general fertility tends to be strongly correlated with low education, low income, and high religiosity. This is true both inter and intra nationally. Think about what this means. Currently each day about 353,000 babies are born. As people who are educated, wealthy, and secular choose to not reproduce to the point of replacement - it is in a way condemning the demographics of those 353,000 children.

I tend to be aligned with you in the view that Earth having fewer people would is not a problem, but at the same time demographic collapse is very much a real issue. As the only people considering these things would likely be the people that ideally should be pumping out babies left and right if we want to create a better planet not only for humanity but even for the planet itself.

And as an aside this is of course not to say that no great things will come of those 353,000 born into less than desirable situations. But on average people's outcomes tend to be very strongly linked to those of their parents.

[wool_gather]

Well pointed; it's a thing that needs to be considered, but it's a tough position to take and hold. It's an unfortunately short hop from a fact-based "we need to figure out how to create better outcomes" to a really nasty sort of proto-eugenics that says something like "poor people shouldn't be allowed to breed". And proponents of the latter may act like (short-term) allies of the former.

[TangoTrotFox]

Indeed. And the issues immediately start to touch on topics that are going to hit close to traditional partisan divides, making any sort of public discussion impossible in today's deeply polarized political climate. So I think it's mostly best for people to just think about the issues themselves, rather than actually trying to publicly solve the problem. And in fact, one of the most practical points is one that's quite private. It's just considering that how it really is extremely selfish, in terms of societal impact, for those in a pleasant place in life to indefinitely defer on having children.

[greglindahl]

"Limits to Growth" was from 1972, but Mathus' idea dates back to 1798, and he was certainly not the first to bring up the concept.

[tcbawo]

Malthus was probably correct without the invention of fertilizer. Hopefully technology like seaweed and vertical farms come to our rescue!

[Nasrudith]

Even without that his ideas were a daft excuse for starving the poor because it was the 'convenient' thing to do for the people in power because feeding the poor actually working the farms would cut into their short term profits. Look at the Irish Potato Famine. The disporia emigrated and helped drive industrial booms and some like the Carnagies became wealthy. This points to the policies not only being a humanitarian catastrophe but a vast squandering of resources. The events came to a head after the actual man's death but he still bears some responsibility and his followers the remainder.

Meanwhile Ireland is /still/ down in population compared to its peak. Given the evidence I can't help but judge Malthus and his ideals as both stupid and evil. I suppose that describes a lot of downward historical trajectories actually - people in power do something selfish for short term gain because they don't see or care of the costs, ruin the lives of everyone around them a thousandfold and eventually themselves before permanently damaging their institutions.

On another note food is so far from being the limiting or driving factor for population it isn't funny. What truly drives reproduction are the actual incentives - even back in ancient times farmers had explosively sized families while the urbanized tended to have more modest sized ones simply because of other resources constraining. Neither human labor nor water, nor arable land are in scarce globally although all three are mismanaged some.