[lpcam33]

What would happen if we put the externalities to the level they need to be is that the local economy would be more efficient that the global economy. The important organizations are not "too big to fail" they are "to big to succeed". It's physically impossible to continue buying stuff from the other side of the world that could be done near where we live. Also we need to consume less useless stuff, invest in repairing and maintaining what we have and implement measure to greatly reduce planned obsolescence

[groestl]

I generally agree, but I think it's important to mention that factoring in externalities yields some surprising results on the local/shipped goods dimension. For example, in California, Chilean wines perform slightly better than local wines when it comes to CO2 emissions, and Austrialian wines are almost equivalent to Californian wines. This is due to transport in bulk by ship being much much better that by truck over land.

[usrusr]

Reproduction permit auctions are incompatible with the current release of ethics. Also, pensioners insist that growth must not stop while they live out their hard earned sunset years.

[collyw]

> Reproduction permit auctions are incompatible with the current release of ethics.

Care to expand on that? I haven't thought it through very deeply, but are there some options that could be ethically acceptable? Reproducing until we run out of resources doesn't seem like a great alternative and I struggle to see that as more ethical.

Personally I think that monetary incentives not to reproduce could be a good option.

[usrusr]

Well, rich parents for everyone! Mostly kidding, but it would be a side effect of "reproduction permit auctions" (until banks invent the parenting loan, then it would become a race to the bottom, poor parents for almost everyone)

Deciding who can reproduce and who cannot is generally seen as the most evil thing next to outright killing. Because it can be used (and was used!) as a form of soft genocide and because it goes completely against the individualism that derives from a non-collectivist reading of equality. That's like giving the finger to 300 years of progressive history. But reproduction controls are not uncommon in other/earlier societies. Strict marriage requirements don't put a cap on children per marriage, but marriage was often a privilege, requiring land, some lord's permission or just a hefty bride price. Of course those where all in the context of seemingly unconstrained growth headroom and the motivation was mostly child welfare (or just a show of power). Nonetheless, once progressive individualism had liberated is from those limits, the number of childless individuals has fallen quite a bit I think. (I'm not an historical anthropologist or whatever field would actually research that, this is just my personal impression)

So much for why the topic is such a hot potato. Particularly principled persons might actually prefer to knowingly condemn everyone to heroic starvation than ever allowing reproduction controls.

A look at Chinese 1CP (an outside, uninformed look but still a look, ok?): it tried to be fair, in a socialistic way. Everyone can have one child! But the most notorious side effects, like the mysterious case of the gender imbalance and the loss of siblinghood are not generally inherent to reproduction control, they are specific to their method of making it fair. But 1CP was an extreme measure anyways, 2CP and the fair way becomes perfectly fine I guess. Except for the issue of enforcement of course, basically unsolved.

This is where incentives come into the picture. But they will forever be at odds with the desire to avoid child poverty, it's difficult.