A World Without Babies: Private choices and potent public consequences

Disappointing for this viewpoint to persist in a world exceeding a majority of planetary boundaries and carrying capacity when half the global population (4B vs 8B-10B) being steady state (or perhaps a bit less, depending on where the total fertility rate lands) would be just fine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day

Of particular note is the the author’s mention of new life potentially having less value (“slumping”); on the contrary, there is plenty of life today that is already treated as low value with no one coming to help. But “more people please,” for equal helpings of economic and ideological reasons.

Random example: https://reliefweb.int/report/world/suffering-silence-10-most...

I look forward to a future earth with fewer people.

More people than in the 1950s, to be sure, and the world didn't end then.

This "argument" is bad faith and predicated on living within our means being a bad thing a priori with no demonstration that this is in fact true.

    When future historians look back on the last half century, I suspect they will pass over war, terror, and populism to settle on infertility as the decisive event of the age. 

Let's be clear, "infertility" is, in the eyes of the WHO:

    a disease of the male or female reproductive system defined by the failure to achieve a pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse.

and the worlds population is having fewer children in advanced economies largely through choice not disease.

It's well past time to start evaluating economies without the assumption that unlimited growth is the one and only tue goal and measure of success.

"The World" aka USA. That old American thing of projecting its reality to the rest of the world. I mean, ok I get the point that its a global phenomenon but most of the projected consequences or hypothesized causes by the author are americanized conditions applied to the rest of the world..

This feels like such a dogwhistle for blaming women for getting educated and wanting more.

Sheryl Sandberg criticized women in her book, Lean In to not pick a career based on if it would be good for having children when you weren’t even in a relationship. But so few of us can afford outside help and we can see that for most het couples that work is gonna fall squarely on the woman.

There are many people that want children or more children but doesn’t have the resources for them. Why not pay every parent 10k per child until the child is 10 years old? Subsidize fertility treatment? Work to make the corporate world more family friendly?

I know the author claims that those with the best quality of life still have low birth rates, but what are those societies pushing?

Corporations are strongly pushing natalism which seems to have found a home in contrarian conservative politics. The formulae is simple, more consumers and thus better prices for goods which corporations make and the assets they own. There are more workers competing for the same jobs so their input costs are cheaper. The actual costs associated with large populations are externalized. Keeping a ponzi economic system going is simply a bonus. I'm a foot-voting libertarian (anti-corporatist) not a commie but this shit stinks.

We're not going to get greater innovation out of more people if those people have to spend their lives toiling to survive while eating increasingly unhealthy food. I don't see why we couldn't have graceful degradation of the population. The idea that we'll need many people to look after us as we get old is predicated on people living rather unhealthy lifestyles. We would be far better off looking after our health and being good stewards of the environment.

Selfishness and lack of sense of sacrifice.