[malvosenior]

But the original post we're replying to said:

> Having children bestows the incomparable gift of life on other people (your children). Bestowing that gift is the part of having children that makes someone happy. It's not a self centered happiness; the day-to-day of raising children is frequently miserable.

They're not saying they're making the world a better place, they're saying that the person they gave birth to would be happy to be alive and that happiness gives joy to the parent (in addition to satisfying base survival needs I suppose).

> Some of us choose not to participate in this willingly, others will delude themselves into thinking they are somehow separate from the rest of nature in terms of their biological drives.

I don't see anyone deluding themselves other than the people who think not having children is a moral position to take. It's a valid personal choice but nothing more.

[ionised]

> would be happy to be alive

That's debatable, honestly. You can't possibly know the child will be happy to be alive or will live a life without suffering, it's a gamble.

Most people alive on Earth today I would wager experience suffering more than they do happiness.

> happiness gives joy to the parent

Not denying that, but you can't deny that that is a selfish thing, wanting to bestow joy to yourself.

Don't wince in disgust at the word 'selfish'. People do selfish things all the time for mere survival. Again, I wouldn't admonish anyone for it.

> I don't see anyone deluding themselves other than the people who think not having children is a moral position to take

I never said anything of the sort.

[malvosenior]

> Not denying that, but you can't deny that that is a selfish thing, wanting to bestow joy to yourself.

It's only selfish if you disregard other people and/or hurt them in the process of enjoying yourself. There's nothing selfish about bestowing joy on yourself if it's also a net positive for everyone else.

I don't think your use of the world "selfish" in this debate (with me or the other commenters) has helped your argument. It implies something negative where having children is going to be viewed subjectively and objectively positive by most people. Maybe a better term would be satisfying? That covers that the individual parent benefits but also doesn't imply that having children is hurting others.

[ionised]

> Maybe a better term would be satisfying? That covers that the individual parent benefits but also doesn't imply that having children is hurting others.

I certainly wouldn't say satisfying, because you are deliberately ignoring any negative impacts of having children and focusing only on the positives. You say so yourself above.

I don't know if you agree that there can sometimes be negative consequences but you're opting not to speak of them to spare the feelings of parents (perhaps including yourself) or whether you genuinely believe that child birth has no negative consequences on other people or society, ever.

I'd say that's debatable at best. It depends entirely on where you live and what the impact of that child is on society and the environment.

A child's immense carbon footprint throughout life is a good example of how a child being born can be detrimental to the ecosystems we all depend on. That will remain true until (if we ever do) find a way to reduce our carbon footprints to zero or negative and in my opinion, is a reason to limit the number of children you have.

Two kids seems like a good compromise. More than that and you are adding to the problem. 'Be fruitful and multiply' does not serve our species as a mantra as well as it once did.

[malvosenior]

I don't agree. Human's use resources and not all humans will make a massive impact directly but what if one of their grandchildren does? People should have as many children as they feel comfortable with, without judgement from others. There's a lot more to life than minimizing carbon footprint in the immediate term. Otherwise we could just wipe out the human race to create a utopia. Malthusianism has been thoroughly debunked at this point.

[_khau]

> Malthusianism has been thoroughly debunked at this point.

It really hasn't, it has merely been updated, and yet people like yourself deliberately ignore the revisions and always focus on the obsolete original argument from the 1700's.

The only thing that has been debunked was Malthus prediction that human populations grow exponentially whereas the food production grows at an arithmetic rate. That hasn't proven true because we produce more than enough food for everyone (yet people are still hungry), but population it still continues to grow in a way we cannot accommodate even now for a variety of reasons.

Besides, the main thing people disliked about Malthus's initial prediction was not that it simply suggested limiting population growth (although the religious types certainly balked at this), but rather what his predictions implied in terms of future solutions to the problem; i.e. euthanasia, eugenics and mandatory sterilisations.

They are the main reasons people don't like to entertain the idea of population control, which is fair enough; but they are ideological arguments against population control, not practical ones.

I'd suggest reading more about this though, because I think you've just picked up on the 'Malthus was debunked' soundbite that people like to repeat ad nauseaum without really understanding the debate around it and how it has evolved into the modern era.

The peak population numbers provided by the UN that supposedly 'debunked' this theory have been repeatedly updated and revised because they don't hold. Even the idea of a 'peak' population is one that is not univerally accepted as it only factors in prosperity among developed nations leading to lower birth rates. It does nothing to account for the mantra many religions have of 'be fruitful and multiply'.

The religious are going to be primary drivers of population growth going forward while secular societies are those that are falling below replacement rates for births.

It was originally supposed to peak at 9 billion. Then it was revised to 11 billion. Then 13 billion. Now it sits somewhere around 15 billion because the models used to estimate the peak population numbers are imperfect and do not take into account all variables.

Besides, Malthusianism has nothing to do with the point of my post, which is that we are slowly poisoning the ecosystems we depend on because we consume and waste too much.

That is an entirely separate issue to raw population numbers and is an issue of poor waste management, over-consumption spurred by a an addiction to perpetual growth (in capitalist terms) and ineffective logistics.

The main problem isn't how many people we have, that's just an amplifier of other problems. The main problem we have is one of greed and apathy and an insistence on infinite growth on a planet with finite resources.

You've changed the topic of conversation into something else to avoid addressing my point.

Some info:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/01/09/thom...

https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-26-2-t...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43735423?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...

You said:

> There's a lot more to life than minimizing carbon footprint in the immediate term.

Which is a profoundly selfish (yes, selfish, I'll stand by that) sentiment given the shit state our global ecosystems are in as a direct result of our wasteful, greedy culture and highly self-centred, amoral economic model.

If you gave a single shit about the future of the species (as well as other species) instead of just your own DNA you would be trying to minimise your footprint every day.

A relevant quote from National Geographic:

The number of people does matter, of course.

But how people consume resources matters a lot more. Some of us leave much bigger footprints than others. The central challenge for the future of people and the planet is how to raise more of us out of poverty—the slum dwellers in Delhi, the subsistence farmers in Rwanda—while reducing the impact each of us has on the planet.

The population question has not been answered, it has merely evolved and expanded. Anyone suggesting otherwise is deliberately trying to shut down debate.

[malvosenior]

It seems it's you that has changed the topic of our conversation. I said that having children is not a selfish act. Now you say it's not population growth, but lifestyle that is the issue. Great, but that has nothing to do with having children.

The first world is going to be in an actual crisis (not a theoretical future one) if we don't increase the reproduction rate. Look at what is happening in Japan with massive labor shortages, too many elderly to take care of, broken economy...

> The central challenge for the future of people and the planet is how to raise more of us out of poverty—the slum dwellers in Delhi, the subsistence farmers in Rwanda—while reducing the impact each of us has on the planet.

The central challenge to every individual is to survive and reproduce. People know this at a very intrinsic level. Before you can worry about people halfway across the world, you need to be able to eat, put a roof over your head, have children (if you want them -- most do) and support them.

Humanity is not a centrally planned, intelligently designed organism. It's emergent behavior from individuals following their genetic will to participate in evolution.