[mchanson]

This is a super messed up view point. Eugenics by horrible disease?

In any case lower childhood mortality actually reduces birth rates. So your goal of less people will be met through a moral and ethical action of creating medicines rather than purposely not.

[galangalalgol]

Also, it should be considered that one of the causes for decreased gdp in a region is disease burden. I don't know anyone with malaria, but from what I have read, it is not conducive to extreme productivity. The global north may get a taste of this with long covid. I don't know how it would be studied given the lack of a reliable diagnosis, but I suspect quiet quitting amongst other post pandemic attitude shifts is related to mild cases of this fatigue. We just seemingly all care less about things, which is maybe good for gdh, but not for gdp.

[concordDance]

> In any case lower childhood mortality actually reduces birth rates.

The confounders are way too strong to conclude this. Too many things correlate together.

[cycomanic]

The (strong) correlation has been shown again and again over many different populations, geographical areas and historical data, so this is in no way a controversial conclusion.

[Vecr]

Well, it's correlated, but generally household income is considered to be more causal for both reduced mortality and reduced fertility.

[concordDance]

And the confounders of wealth, contraception and women's education are just going to be ignored are they?

[sdfghswe]

> Aren’t there unintended consequences to raising the reproduction rate of a population that is already incapable of effectively supporting itself?

He sounds like he's just one step short of picking up a gun and start shooting the undesirables.