[everdrive]

>There is no easy answer, but the only viable solution is building a lot more dense housing and public transit for said urbanism

What about fewer people with the same amount of housing stock? I'm not even arguing that this is the better solution, but I don't even see people entertain it for the purposes of arguing against it.

[mbgerring]

> I don't even see people entertain it for the purposes of arguing against it.

Luckily, we have several recent real-life examples demonstrating why “fewer people” is not a viable solution:

Because you either need to forcibly remove people, which involves an army of stormtroopers kidnapping people off the street and killing innocent people in the process, or you have to control pregnancy and childbirth, involving a level of surveillance and government control over the most intimate parts of our lives, unacceptable to people even in societies that otherwise accept a high level of surveillance and government control, as well as a lot of babies abandoned in dumpsters.

Weighed against the actual consequences of “less people,” just building more houses is very appealing!

[Sohcahtoa82]

> Because you either need to forcibly remove people, which involves an army of stormtroopers kidnapping people off the street and killing innocent people in the process, or you have to control pregnancy and childbirth

I don't think this is true at all.

Birthrates are already declining. All you have to do is give proper sex ed and easy access to birth control and populations will shrink on their own. You don't even have to begin propaganda around overpopulation, though we may need to tone down the "WE NEED MORE BABIES" propaganda that the right is currently projecting.

The fact is, there are a lot of people (18-29% of non-parent adults in the USA, depending on your source) that don't want children. Give them the tools to make sure accidents don't happen (IMO, vasectomies would be more popular if there weren't so many myths surrounding them), and birthrates will decline naturally.

[mbgerring]

Neither the global birthrate, nor the U.S. population, are currently declining. The U.S. population may decline this year following the Trump administration’s massive increase in violent, capricious removal of immigrants regardless of legal status or criminal record.

Birthrates naturally declining is probably a good thing, but it happens too slowly to make a dent in housing prices without additional interventions.

[robocat]

> dent in house prices

Already dented in Italy and Japan:

https://impatria.com/en/magazine/1-euro-houses-italy-foreign...

https://www.akiyajapan.com/japan/cheap-houses

We're propping up house prices in New Zealand by adding 50% immigrants (I think is fantastic - we're now at 30% population born overseas). Stop-gap solution but it is working at present.

[saulpw]

> or you have to control pregnancy and childbirth

People are quite naturally controlling their own quantity of offspring, to the dismay of our leaders who insist on perpetual growth. If we limit immigration (not my preferred approach, but here we are), then the population will naturally start to fall, as is happening in other places.

[pixl97]

I mean, ya, it kind of works. Your economy will go to shit for the most part.

[everdrive]

>Because you either need to forcibly remove people, which involves an army of stormtroopers kidnapping people off the street and killing innocent people in the process, or you have to control pregnancy and childbirth, involving a level of surveillance and government control over the most intimate parts of our lives

I'm really sad to see this response. President deported a large number of illegal immigrants -- to the extent that he was called the "deporter in chief" -- and he did not employ an army of fascist goons. The insane polarization of the last few years has shrunken the scope of people's imaginations, and I'm sure that people think their only choices are "open borders" vs. "barely-trained fascist thugs."

[everdrive]

Sorry, that should be "President Obama"

[Legend2440]

The US population may already be declining. In prior years the only thing keeping it increasing was immigration, and immigration has fallen considerably under Trump:

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/27/nx-s1-5871338/tps-population-...

[mbgerring]

That’s correct, and to my point above, driving immigration down to this degree required a level of violence and cruelty so extreme that even the people who voted for it now disapprove of it. And that’s before the profound economic consequences really hit.

[DiscourseFan]

I think its also quite apparent that building new housing is a whole lot cheaper than killing and forcibly removing people, its just that it also destroys the value of an asset that the majority of families still hold. I mean its very basic of course: capitalism has a tendency to destroy the family unit, home ownership is a means of maintaining the family unit, and force against the destruction of the family requires violence, which is overall unproductive and wasteful. But anything that is unproductive is also freely determined, which is where the vulgarity of fascism lies, in its conflation of freedom with "letting off steam," so-to-speak.

[joinjune]

Short term you might be right. Long term we have seen that western "education" results in declines in birthrates. Demographics are destiny.

[KylerAce]

Birthrates go down in the east too whenever incomes increase (and sometimes without income increasing)

[xnx]

""education""?

[lokar]

I bring it up with some people.

To do this you need to either accept:

- the area becomes an enclave for the wealthy with a high unhoused population, where most youth have to move away. People say they don't want this, I’m not sure they are being honest.

- the government regulates internal migration. You need a permit to move from the Midwest to California.

[jerlam]

> the area becomes an enclave for the wealthy with a high unhoused population, where most youth have to move away.

Yeah, that's already happened. SF is the US city with the least amount of children, where schools have to close due to declining enrollment.

[lokar]

Yep. And on some level, if that’s what these people want, fine. I disagree, but I don’t live there. I do live in CA, and I’m happy the state is pushing back, and this is not a purely local issue.

What really bothers me is the dishonesty. If this is what you want, then own it. Argue for it. Don’t pretend to care about other people.

[Makeitmakesense]

People don't bring it up because it requires doing things most understand to not be options. 1 - how would you stop people from moving to SF if they choose 2 - it stops dynamism for the city. You are here because you were already here is the only requisite.

The prices going up is the market creating the incentive for less people to not move to SF and old guard to stay. You already have that. You are not going to bring down prices while limiting people without legislation that goes into dangerous territory of limiting who can live in one of Americas most dynamic cities.

[mitthrowaway2]

Presently high housing prices are causing this; a lot more people would be living in SF today if there was more supply, which is equivalent to the high prices having kicked people out.

Do you have any policies in mind that could reduce the population without pricing people out? Maybe a Hukou system, or a right-to-reside lottery?

[bwhiting2356]

If you prefer to live in a low density exurb, you have many options for affordable housing, there's just a lack of good paying jobs and services in those areas.

[rsynnott]

... What would the mechanism to achieve fewer people be? The Logan's Run approach?

Governments have mechanisms to make there be more housing, if they want to use them. Only extremely scary governments have mechanisms to make there be _fewer people_.

(Also it doesn't really work; cities which do depopulate tend not to do well, as the depopulation tends to be biased towards the working-age population.)