Hacker News Reader

Comment by ziml77 | Hacker News Reader

Why not? What is the issue with regressing the human population to something more easily sustainable?

From a selfish angle (since that seems to be the natural state of humans), you will be able to waste more while in aggregate doing less damage to the environment. Even as someone who tries to care about not destroying the environment too badly, that sounds pretty awesome.

View on HN

Unfortunately, increased population is a bit like a one-way door. A rapidly shrinking population would be disastrous to society. Think about it, for every childless person, the child of someone else will have to care for them in old age. Someone else's children will have to produce the goods and services that the childless old person needs to survive.

I'm all for a lower population, but I think it'd have to happen very slowly, unless we have reached a level of automation and robotization that can sustain a huge aging population.

>the child of someone else will have to care for them in old age.

The old person might want someone else's child to care for them. But someone else's child will not have to care for them.

>But some else's child will not have to care for them.

Generally it's considered a burden of society to take care of their elderly. Thus 'someone else's child' will have to take care of the childless elderly in some form or another.

Depends on the ability of the elderly to obtain that labor. They typically have a decent amount of political power, but it is certainly possible for quality of care to decline in the event that the cost of their care rises too high.

I do agree that it shouldn't be sudden. It's mostly the fear of any population decline or stagnation that bothers me.

I do also think that we have the capability of automating more than we currently do. We just haven't gone that far because it would cause job shortages.

> A rapidly shrinking population would be disastrous to society.

Who said population should be shrinking _rapidly_? Making world population size constant would be a big win for environment already.

It's already shrinking in the whole western world, as well as China, South Korea and Japan AFAIK. Rapidly in many places. So despite large increases in places like Nigeria, we're still reaching an equilibrium soon without encouraging even lower birth rates in struggling western countries.

> So despite large increases in places like Nigeria, we're still reaching an equilibrium soon without encouraging even lower birth rates in struggling western countries.

What are you basing these claims on? Projections that I saw predict further population increase for at least next 50 years. And even though sources disagree when the population will peak, none of them forecast _rapid_ population shrink after the peak.

No, it's not shrinking at all. You fail to take into account that as many as 4 generations are alive at once, hence an actual decline is very far away.

Likewise, first a population peak of 8 billion was predicted, now it's 10-11 billion.

Let me rephrase, I should have said: rapidly _aging_ population. You're right the population is not shrinking that quickly even in Japan. But it's the aging of the population that is the dangerous part, not the shrinking.

> What is the issue with regressing the human population to something more easily sustainable?

The only reason I’ve been given has been related to the economy. There’s a limit to economic growth (there’s always been a limit, but this “accelerates” it) with a declining number of workers and consumers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com