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Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

It's not as if less people having kids leads to humanity becoming extinct. We're still growing way too fast. Some people will just want them and that's fine.

It's just something that was previously seen as a virtue (or for example for Catholics almost a holy priority) is now becoming a hobby. And if not everyone takes up that hobby we can be sustainable for a lot longer. Even a population decline wouldn't be bad after we've been growing so hard as a species.

Of course we can't keep growing forever. And hoping the future comes up with a magical answer is exactly how we got into the climate mess we're in right now.

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Right, I overstated the implication. More people deciding not to have children does not lead to extinction. It's just that when people say things like "not having kids is good for environment" it comes off as a moral prescription that ought to apply to everyone, and hence those who violate it are the bad guys (selfishly acting to harm the environment). And yet if sustainability -- rather than self-extinction -- is the goal, we need a mix of both types of people.

Am I wrong to interpret it like that?

The ones who insist on having children as an ultimate virtue, I find them to be just as wrong.

Either choice is fine, and the moral objections to either one are unreasonable.

Edit: edited to expand the last sentence.

I didn't mean any moral objection, just to explain why I feel extra good about my decision not to have any kids.

In fact I really hate moral judgments of people's personal lives, like is being done to the LGBT community in the US at the moment.

I see. Well then, my initial gut reaction was unwarranted, thanks for making me realize it.

The west is way bellow replacement rate so feel free to have a few kids, it's not going to change much

Human population is constantly growing. We can import people. Actually a lot of people are willing to join us, no need to breed fresh ones.

I don't think you're up to date with current population trends, it's about to peak in the next decades

But that's good! Let it peak, drop a bit, and stabilise around 2 billion or so. That would be perfect for long-term sustainability.

We've seen the same here in Europe. My parents' generation usually had large families, my generation had mostly 1-2 kids, and these days many families have no kids.

Of course poorer countries and countries that are still very religious are a bit behind but they will catch up too. Humanity won't go extinct, there will always be people happy to have children.

Honest questions: Can we maintain our current tech level with 2 billion people?

And if we can't, is that fair to future generations? Aren't we condemning them to a more miserable life? (On the other hand, if 8 billion people leads to destroying the environment, that also leaves them more miserable...)

Of course we can. Even with a lot less. We can automate the hell out of everything :) In fact there's a big concern that there won't be enough work. Even hypercapitalist countries like the US are thinking about UBI now.

Food will be a bigger problem but less people also means less food needed.

> We can automate the hell out of everything :)

That's what they told us in the 60s/70s/80s and we're still working as much while our standards are lowering but ok, we'll automagically fix things, we're just waiting for the right time

Standards are lowering precisely because there are too many people chasing the same ressources... You can't share everything beyond a certain point. The boomerism view of infinite growth is incredibly stupid especially if you start evaluating material requirement for a standard rich boomer lifestyle.

The only reason we could have so many people on the planet at once is because almost half of them live in poverty, close to animal standard with some human technology sprinkled in some place...

It's just shortsighted to believe that having so many people was sustainable in the first place.

> That would be perfect for long-term sustainability.

I guess if you don't care about your country or continent legacy that could work yes

My country and continent's legacies are the exploitation and misery of people from other continents so I am fine with that.

Remove your doomer glasses and be a bit more objective in assessing your countries achievements. Listening to your kind of folk you'd wonder why people risk their lives to migrate here if it was such a hellscape. Some countries are doing what yours did 3 generations ago right now and they don't have a tenth of your inherited guilt, nor a tenth of the media presence

Up until now it has been growing. What you call "peak in the next decades" are just UN projections.

And that position can still be reassessed in the next 30 years.

I am still not convinced that a globally aging population is a big issue in the long term.

Me neither. China is facing the same thing and we have the boomers getting old.

Such a phase sucks but it's temporary. Eventually the wave of old people is gone and things are back to normal. It's not something we can't overcome.

> Eventually the wave of old people is gone and things are back to normal. It's not something we can't overcome.

What do you mean by back to normal ? The African demographic boom, even if we didn't have our own fertility problem, will ensure there will be no back to "normal". History is never about going back to normal

It mostly depends on what you care about. If you care about excel sheets and mathematical formulas then of course none of it matters in the long term

If you care about quality of life, employment, pensions, shortages, smooth transitions, immigration, it's a whole other story

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