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Comment by yeahitslikethat | Hacker News Reader

"They found that something cataclysmic happened around 1980. As Ronald Reagan was winning the White House, the top 0.1% controlled 7% of the nation’s wealth. By 2014, after a few decades of booming markets and stagnant wages, the top 0.1% had tripled its share, to 22%, a bit more wealth than the bottom 85% of the country controlled."

Then later. ..

"When Reagan cut the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% across eight years, and later, when Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush slashed tax rates for investors, they were doing so on the advice of economists. The prevailing belief, backed by theoretical models, was that lower taxes on the wealthy would stimulate more investment and thus more economic growth. The real world hasn’t been kind to those theories."

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> would stimulate more investment and thus more economic growth. The real world hasn’t been kind to those theories

Economists need to stop optimizing for growth and start optimizing for fixed size. Once we run out of third-world countries to pump investments into and get cheap gadgets, there will be no more economic frontiers (or they would have been found already). Not to mention, our obsession with growth is destroying the planet we depend on.

I heard an interesting idea the other day: give all males a vasectomy (or some form of long-term birth control) at the age of 14. The purpose is to make having children a conscious decision instead of a "whoops!" and put downward pressure on the overall population.

> I heard an interesting idea the other day: give all males a vasectomy (or some form of long-term birth control) at the age of 14. The purpose is to make having children a conscious decision instead of a "whoops!" and put downward pressure on the overall population.

Wtf did I just read?

I've heard this suggested seriously in a number of places lately. (Often in response to the recent abortion bans - there's a "Men cause 100% of unintended pregnancies!" meme going around.) Don't necessarily agree with it, just like I don't agree with the abortion bans, but be aware that there is a sizable contingent of people who seriously want this to happen.

Is it really serious, or is it just counter-trolling?

I think it started as counter-trolling, and then a bunch of people were like "Wait, that's actually a pretty good idea." Which is the danger of trolling in the first place...you might dredge up some idea that's better left alone.

"Trolling is a art" afterall.

I suspect it's what you are characterizing as "counter-trolling*, but with intent to make a point: Pregnancy isn't something women do by themselves. There's going to be a man involved.

Historically, we have generally tried to hold both parties responsible. Women were expected to refuse to put out until marriage. If you got a girl "in trouble," shot gun weddings were a thing.

But men were generally expect to earn the primary income and women were expected to primarily care for the family and maybe supplement the income. With people generally having fewer kids on average and women more often expecting real careers with status, income and job satisfaction, things have gotten vastly more complicated and "you two need to just get hitched" is not sitting well with most folks.

(There's a lot I'm leaving out. This isn't intended to be comprehensive, just a thumbnail sketch.)

>Pregnancy isn't something women do by themselves. There's going to be a man involved.

Plenty of women use sperm banks...

This is very much the exception and yes, a man is involved, but the transaction is 100% voluntary on the part of the woman without any specific intent towards that specific woman on the part of the man.

Use of sperm banks and unintended, accidental pregnancy are pretty much mutually exclusive.

I'm suggesting it seriously. Our planet is already butting heads with climate disaster, and one of the more obvious problems is the sheer number of people on the planet that are creating byproducts and waste.

Given finite resources, you cannot have infinite population. So you can either restrict population growth or let it balloon out of control and deal with much worse consequences. It's not a matter of personal liberties, it's a matter of resource management. And without effective resource management, there is no personal liberty.

> put downward pressure on the overall population.

Most of the developed world already has below replacement-rate fertility (in some cases significantly below).

Many "first world/developed" countries are already starting to rely on immigration to have a ~2.1 birth rate (necessary for non declining population levels). I doubt vasectomies would fly in other countries.

Not to mention the idea of vasectomies for every teen is unfeasible and dumb.

> “Economists need to stop optimizing for growth and start optimizing for fixed size.”

this is too abstract, general, and more importantly, unsupported. we have no idea what the future holds, especially about what markets will open up and where capital (which is a proxy for human focus and effort) will flow. we don’t know how many people the world can hold, especially as we solve the problems we create while growing (a principle challenge of civilizations), and whether we will eventually colonize other worlds. humans are ingenious and continually defy such simple characterizations.

in any case, i do agree we citizens should constantly monitor and assess the effects of monetary policy on the wider world. the govt’s interest in inflation is principally for growth (money devalues unless you keep making more) and our central control of interest rates is in service of making sure we grow faster than our neighbor to preserve our economic lead and the global political power that confers. it’s ok to sometimes slow down and enjoy the fruits of our collective labor.

> we don’t know how many people the world can hold

We DO know that at our current population and current level of technology and/or level of comfort, the world CANNOT hold the number of people that are currently occupying it. That's why we're facing climate disaster and unprecedented levels of pollution. There's just too many of us.

So, the answer is to, if not shrink the population, at least not keep growing it incessantly. People are acting like population controls are some huge affront to them. In a place with limited resources, you need to limit the number of mouths to feed, or resource shortages (or evironmental catastrophe) will do it for you, and much more violently.

>We DO know that at our current population and current level of technology and/or level of comfort, the world CANNOT hold the number of people that are currently occupying it.

Do we? I'm pretty sure that the simple fact these people ARE currently occupying the globe proves this false.

Now, if you mean cannot forever hold this many people, well, perhaps - but assuming all technological advancement and rollout will cease seem to fly in the face of history.

> Do we? I'm pretty sure that the simple fact these people ARE currently occupying the globe proves this false.

Right, and the earth is being destroyed rapidly because of it. And "technology will save us" may be true, but why not also try to fix the real problem?

Ah, yes, the ultimate "fuck you, got mine" sentiment in action: benefiting from the level of unprecedented wealth and prosperity we live in, which came from humanity spreading around the globe and ingeniously utilizing its resources, and now wanting to pull the ladder of life itself up away from the next generation.

Remember, rising empires build roads, and declining empires build walls. The way out of the current climate crisis is not to wall off what we have and die in stasis; I'm afraid the only way out is through, and we're not going to get there by dwindling our own population.

> Remember, rising empires build roads, and declining empires build walls.

That’s a fine statement but the wall building is a symptom of decline, not a cause of it. I don’t think the Roman Empire would have reversed it’s decline by building more roads to Scotland and Germany.

> benefiting from the level of unprecedented wealth and prosperity we live in, which came from humanity spreading around the globe and ingeniously utilizing its resources, and now wanting to pull the ladder of life itself up away from the next generation.

Uh, where else on the globe do we have to spread? What new resources are there for us to discover?

The time period where a growing human population could grow their standard of living by moving into pristine lands and exploiting their natural resources is basically over. Lands are either already being exploited, or are intentionally protected. And the side effects of exploitation are starting to balance against the benefits.

We can't think about burning the next 1,000 tons of coal, the same way we thought about the first 1,000 tons of coal humanity burned.

I think you've got the idea that a growing human population was a major factor in building wealth and prosperity, which is not really true. Our ability to adapt to and exploit new areas of the Earth allowed us to grow wealth and prosperity despite steep population growth.

I'm not advocating for forced sterilization. But it is absolutely true that humanity cannot continue to grow its standard of living by just keeping on with what worked 100 years ago.

Humanity has occupied effectively the full extent of the globe since the last Ice Age ended 10,000 years ago. Any increases in territory since then have come at the expense of some group that was living there before.

> rising empires build roads, and declining empires build walls

The first half is true, because roads are a key instrument of military invasions, and that's how empires rise.

The second half is true in that all empires of any scale build walls regardless of whether they're rising or declining. An empire with no walls is an empire that belongs to someone else.

But neither of those seems like an especially deep or compelling point.

> "Good fences make good neighbors" experienced early retirement. In its place came the untested phrase, "Build bridges, not walls." If nothing else, the new slogan seemed designed to give military historians fits. Throughout history, bridge building had been recognized as an act of aggression.

( https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501172700/ )

"Optimizing for fixed size" implies that comparative advantages are not a thing, and economic growth only comes from exploiting poorer countries (at least, as far as I can understand).

Do you really believe this?

Our current economic system's growth is based off of exploitation. As far as growth in general, I think there are very few frontiers left. Almost all usable land has been claimed. Almost all minable resources are being extracted. There are certainly going to be technological gains that will increase quality of living, but is that "growth" in the sense that we're producing more than before?

People seem to be really offended by the idea of not having a growth economy. As if it's some horrible thing that at some point our population will remain constant and we can find an economic model that doesn't rely on consuming an ever-growing amount of resources (blasphemy).

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