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Comment by lich_king | Hacker News Reader

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lich_king·

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> If we didn't have cities, we also wouldn't have eight billion people in the world.

Could you break down the logic that leads you to this conclusion?

Im sure it's deeper than "if cities disappeared right now, a lot of people would disappear with them"

This is obviously not a reversible trend. People having close proximity to one another, creating economies of scale where everyone does what they are best at instead of everyone doing everything for themselves is what allows big cities to be possible.

I'm sure all of this was inevitable as there likely hasn't ever been a time where humans were not getting together to form communities when it was beneficial to do so.

Because the habitable surface of the planet is less than 100 million square kilometers and only a fraction of that is suitable for subsistence farming. The only reason we can accommodate 8 billion is that the majority of them live in high-density settlements and that food is grown on an industrial scale elsewhere.

So what's the solution here? Do we forcibly sterilize people? Lock them up if they have children? What's the anti-growth strategy we're actually advocating for?

You don't need to. Fertility rate per woman in wealthy countries decreases every year.

Growth is natural, overconsumption is not.

> Do we forcibly sterilize people? Lock them up if they have children?

Oh give me a break. Developed countries have had below-replacement fertility rates for decades.

If your goal is to reduce birth rates, we do the things that we already know do that naturally: comprehensive, fact-based sex ed; cheap and easy access to contraceptives; social safety nets and support; etc etc etc.

It's not a mystery and it's not even difficult. You don't need to jump to straight to abhorrent crimes against humanity.

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