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Comment by SmokyBourbon | Hacker News Reader

The fact is overpopulation isn't an issue, it's a myth.

World population is decellerating at a rapid pace and will begin decreasing within decades. It's painfully obvious to anybody who looks at the numbers. But science fiction has convinced everyone otherwise.

Just look at all the countries with programs trying to entice their citizens to start families and make babies. Governments know its going to be a catastrophe.

Our governments spend money at a rate that only a larger population in the future can afford to pay for. If families aren't producing above the replacement rate, we're doomed.

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It's not painfully obvious to UN or anyone else noteworthy.

Was it also painfully obvious that USSR was going to break up and Russia would have stalled with population growth? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Populati...

None of the current trends made sense 30 yrs ago. And in 30 yrs there could be major geopolitical changes that would make current projections useless.

"Overpopulation"-hysteria is a short-sighted, semi-genocidal ideology (see: People's Republic of China). The same people that a decade ago were worrying about overpopulation in Germany are now clamoring for more migrants from the Global South countries to keep up population growth ("these are our future engineers and doctors"). Proof of how unworkable it is.

European economies would simply collapse without population growth to feed social security. And aging populations are a ridiculously undesirable outcome for any country

Current projections aren't useless. The higher your socioeconomic status, the lower your fertility rate, period. The correlation couldn't be clearer. Geopolitical events could cause temporary changes but obviously wouldn't change the underlying trend. Bringing up the existence of Black Swans to disprove trends is logically flawed.

So there's a clear downwards pressure on fertility rates, in the West, which includes propaganda about "overpopulation" that obviously quite a few people believe in, and that guides their decisions; it also includes socioeconomic improvements. What possible trend could act as an upward pressure?

Is there anything more pathological (psychologically-speaking) than the belief that humans are themselves a pathology

"The higher your socioeconomic status, the lower your fertility rate, period."

Only in a portion of Western culture that has very similar cultural and religious values and also incidentally responsible for a relatively rich middle class.

Counter examples:

Haredi Jews

Hong Kong

Macao

So your predictions are contingent on the assumption that the culture won't change or that specific religions wouldn't be more prevalent.

But the worry about overpopulation has been damn near constant.

Rebuked again and again and again each time we reached the previous "unsustainable" threshold.

"The fact is overpopulation isn't an issue, it's a myth."

Global population isn't evenly distributed. Some countries and areas are definitely overpopulated.

What constitutes overpopulation can vary according to climate and economic changes. Just look at Syria, where unprecedented drought caused 75% of the country's farms to fail, led to mass migration from rural areas to cities, and ultimately to civil war and significant depopulation.

"Our governments spend money at a rate that only a larger population in the future can afford to pay for. If families aren't producing above the replacement rate, we're doomed."

No, it's a myth that populations need to be perpetually growing in order to maintain economic growth. Growth can also be achieved through technological development.

Developments in Robotics, AI, etc will improve labour productivity, meaning we can continue to raise living standards without necessarily increasing population in perpetuity.

Yeah I really don't understand why people have this notion that population growth is necessary for economic growth. It doesn't even follow that aggregate (i.e. non per-capita) economic growth results in a higher average standard of living. I wish I could say this nonsense is only perpetuated by politicians, who do whatever they can to juice GDP so they can boast to the electorate about how much 'economic growth' they achieved. But this would be untrue. Even certain national economic policy institutions fall in to this trap when they really ought to know better.

The other thing worth noting is that economic growth, socially liberal (historically speaking) attitudes towards sex and gender equality, and sustainable population all go hand in hand. On the economic side of things, there's a fairly well established 'demographic transition' model that suggests that when a society reaches (roughly) a 'first-world' level of development, population growth tends towards 0: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/De...

Put simply, one of the best things we can do if we're concerned about overpopulation is to aid economic development in the 'third-world'.

>Global population isn't evenly distributed. Some countries and areas are definitely overpopulated.

Do you mean the West, or for example Africa? The West is often brought up, but it's below replacement level. Africa will definitely have problems, and we need to a) bring them safe, effective birth control, so they can make their own choices, and b) solve infant mortality.

The goal should be 2.0 fertility rates everywhere. "Overpopulation" isn't even remotely a problem anywhere in the West, the opposite is.

>What constitutes overpopulation can vary according to climate and economic changes. Just look at Syria, where unprecedented drought caused 75% of the country's farms to fail, led to mass migration from rural areas to cities, and ultimately to civil war and significant depopulation.

1) You haven't established that the Syrian population was "too high for its natural carrying capacity", which is a normative and not positive statement. A drought doesn't necessarily signify that. This is a social and political problem (did they not receive pensions?), not an overpopulation problem.

2) Are you arguing that, because many died as a result of the drought, many shouldn't have been born in the first place? Seems circular.

>No, it's a myth that populations need to be perpetually growing in order to maintain economic growth. Growth can also be achieved through technological development.

Many countries in the West are below replacement levels. That carries its own problems. The people campaigning against overpopulation seem to also be targeting the West, which I find absurd.

"Overpopulation" isn't even remotely a problem anywhere in the West, the opposite is."

I guess it depends how we define overpopulation.

I'd argue that overpopulation is a problem in, for example, England. Not in the sense that there isn't enough food, of course, but in the sense that high population density negatively affects quality of life, harms the natural environment, and results in poor, overcrowded, and unhealthy living conditions for many people.

Much of Africa, on the other hand, is not densely populated at all compared to Western Europe or East Asia.

"Many countries in the West are below replacement levels. That carries its own problems."

It does if we end up with a significantly top-heavy population chart, with not enough economically active young people to support the elderly. But slowing or stopping population growth does not mean an end to economic growth.

A steady population is a good goal to aim for, but that doesn't mean we should be afraid of falling populations in some areas. If we can return some areas to nature, reducing the environmental footprint of our species while maintaining and improving our quality of life, then that's a good thing.

> The goal should be 2.0 fertility rates everywhere.

It should technically be slightly above that to replace the portion of the population that dies before baring two kids.

No argument with any of that, but I think that the theme of the movie in question was merely using a population crash as a proxy to explore what happens to society when it has lost all hope for the future. I don't believe it was actually trying make any statements in particular regarding risks around population growth (or decline).

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