So in the whole anti-natalism/pro-natalism conversation (which I’m mostly agnostic/undecided on, currently), my friend who is a pro-natalist, argued that the success/stability of our world economy is dependent on procreating more children each year than the previous year, so that we not only replace the numbers of the people who existed from the previous generation (and some, to account for the statistical likelihood that many won’t have children or will be sterile or die young etc), but also ensure that the population keeps growing in order to produce more and more human labor to “pay back the debts” of previous generations, because all money is borrowed from somewhere else… this is all very murky to me and I wish someone could explain it better.
She is also of the view that this will inevitably lead to population collapse/societal/civilisation collapse because we live on a finite Earth with finite resources that can’t keep sustaining more humans & human consumption (and are nearing critical environmental crises), but that there isn’t any other option than to keep producing more children because a declining population wouldn’t be able to support itself economically either. Basically the idea seems to be that economically & societally we’re on a collision course for self-destruction but the only thing we can do is keep going and making increasingly more of ourselves to keep it running (however that as individuals, we should be plant-based & minimalist to reduce our impact to the environment, non-human animals and humans for as long as possible). And she is worried about the fact that fertility rates are falling & slated to reach a population peak followed by a decline in the relatively near future.
As I said I’m not sure how I feel about this view but at first glance I think that the effect of having fewer children in providing relief upon the environment and helping safeguard our future is more important than preserving the economy because destroying the actual planet and life itself seems worse than economic downturns/collapses, but I really don’t know enough about economics to say for certain.
My view on it is:
The world turned before we existed, it will keep turning long after we’re gone.
The economy is manmade. It was modelled for humans by humans, and if we have to change how it works for it to survive, we will always find some bullshit new rule to append to the rest.
Making kids to sustain an economy is just a pyramid scheme. Don’t make kids other than because you want them and you want to love them otherwise you’re just scamming them.
That’s an easy one - no. You can look back to various periods during middle ages Europe for examples. An even stronger one would be China from about 400 CE-800 CE
Of course, those weren’t capitalist economies - but they were economies. Capitalism’s instability is what requires constant growth to maintain. The better (and harder) questions would be what to transition to that avoids the issues of feudalism and how to transition with a minimum of societal upheaval (violence and death).
“pay back the debts” of previous generations
It is pretty important to certain capital-holding, debt holding folks that we only talk about “paying back” debts, and ignore the other obvious answer:
Not paying back the debt.
Eventually, when a debt system becomes too burdensome, people respond to it by…not paying.
But avoiding talking about “not paying” is pretty important to anyone who wants to make the system maximally painful, short of not paying.
Naming “not paying” risks causing people to think about “not paying”.
It’s far more complicated than this, but it’s worth staying aware that “not paying” is the real release valve, and most expert analysts are being paid extra to not talk about the topic of “not paying”.
Debt jubilees used to be a thing. I guess we kind of get a limited version of that with student loan forgiveness
but also ensure that the population keeps growing in order to produce more and more human labor to “pay back the debts” of previous generations, because all money is borrowed from somewhere else…
This seems like an issue with accepting the current economic system as the only system or leading to some neo-feudalism.
We could restructure society and the economy so that the “debts of previous generations” weren’t such a fucking weight.
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This is my feeling as well. Let people decide to have children or not and make that choice possible with widely available, cheap and healthy birth control methods and support for parents.
So you are anti natalist (whatever the fuck that even means), congratulations
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Stop trying to force people into shitty, unnecessary binaries.
Especially if one doesn’t even know what it means.
Infinite growth is referred to as cancer. Your friend is obviously right that we cannot sustain infinite growth, but it’s misguided to think that the only way out species can possibly survive to any length is by having more children and increasing our population year over year.
With improving technologies and automations, far less labour is required to achieve the same results. There is no reason we need an infinitely increasing population on our decidedly finite earth just to keep our species afloat. This would take a major restructuring of our social and economic systems to do correctly, otherwise we run the risk of centralized wealth mucking it all up, but the point remains that there’s no necessity to continue reproducing at the rate we have been. This supposed “need” for labour is just capitalist propaganda perpetuating the idea that work is inherently good, all designed to fuel an inherently exploitative economy. Line must go up, otherwise how can the privledged few assure that their net worth continues to grow exponentially?
more and more human labor to “pay back the debts” of previous generations
There is no law of economics stating that a generation of people has to consume more than it produces.
I mean, just as you’ve phrased it, if generations only consume more than they produce in an environment of finite resources, the species would only survive a finite amount of time.
No.
To preface I think reproduction is a very personal choice and right that we shouldn’t force on or take away from anyone ever.
But let me ask you this: the planet we live on is finite. It’s not getting bigger and its resources aren’t getting more. Is infinite growth of population (or anything else, for that matter) possible here? Or will this system eventually collapse?
But to add: the average human is consuming waaaaay less than their fair share of resources. Even the average middle class westerner probably is, and they’re already consuming a whole lot more than average. The planet and environment could sustain a lot more people more comfortably if there weren’t a few obscenely excessive consumers, ie the richest of the rich. That’s probably a better fix than shaming the average Joe for wanting to have kids.
There are also many things we consume only because marketing makes us want them even though we have no real need for them. And many jobs producing completely useless things. Not to mention waste through planned obsolescence, DRM, patents and similar mechanisms that artificially reduce the usefulness of goods below its natural level. We could easily produce everything we need with a fraction of the current work force.
We’d need at least four Earths to sustain humanity if everybody lived like the average middle-class American. That’s probably an underestimate. We’re completely blowing out our fair share of resources.
I said probably because I didn’t know for sure, but damn, I didn’t know how far off I was! Do you happen to know whether Europe and richer Asian countries are similar?
Edit: just saw the link has some examples Edit 2: this says the average American tho, not the average middle class American. Averages will usually be heavily skewed by outliers, ie the super rich
Not really, the average isn’t skewed much, simply because there are so few super-rich in a population of 380 million people. And even then, men like Jeff Bezos and his rocket ship are outliers, most of the billionaires have 1000x more money than the median, but they don’t use anywhere near 1000x the resources. (Warren Buffett, in particular, leads a pretty middle-class lifestyle.)
From what I learned from my environmental sciences degree, the environmental impact comes from hundreds of millions of people living in big houses, driving big cars, eating meat for most meals, and buying scads of consumer goods. (Amazon shipping boxes are a significant environmental challenge all on their own.)
In terms of overall resources, it is probably better that we don’t expand the population.
In terms of economics, we are finding more that, while people are living longer, they aren’t living at the same quality of life, which means their economic utility drops significantly while still requiring an income. The current funding of retirement won’t work going forward. Taxes from the wealthy could pay for it, especially as productivity keeps increasing and the rich seem to gain the most. But, there is going to be a push and shove against it as retirement of that many people effectively becomes an age based universal basic income.
Why do they think population is proportional to ability to “pay back” debts? We have technology. If one example of a “debt” is taking care of the aging baby boomer generation, yeah there was a time when that would have been solely the responsibility of their descendents, but we have improved medical technology to keep old people healthier in life, we have conveniences that make getting groceries, doing activities, or socializing easier, and (in some countries) we have modern social safety nets to ensure that even someone without any living relatives can feel safe knowing that they are taken care of.
Another way to phrase my original question: would it be adequate for us to, instead of increasing the population, to develop a series of sufficiently advanced and efficient robots to do whatever task your friend thinks we need more humans in order to do? Just trying to understand the rationale.
- So in the beginning there were people. And those people had problems (need for food, shelter,…).
- So to fix these problems more efficiently (but far from completely), people invented economies.
- But now these economies require infinite population growth (i doubt that’s actually true).
- Therefore people make more people to sustain the economy. These new people themselves have needs, which did not exist before.
- So these new people now also need to make even more people to sustain the economy.
- Repeat.
So the economy actually amplifies suffering (exponentially), not reduce it.
Also, like others have pointed out: Many economies before industrial agriculture had basically 0 growth, and sustained themselves for centuries.
The economic system is broken. It incentivises infinite growth in a finite environment. That’s just not sustainable and will backfire in one way or another.
What we need as a civilization is a shift in economic values that would push for a more sustainable model. That shift can be seen, but, in my (expert /s) opinion, it’s too little and too late to completely avoid a disaster.
Is your friend a Cold-War era Romanian dictator?
I’m not sure what we’re referring to when we say pay back the debts, but as far as a societal collapse due to constant population growth - is that not just the basis of nature? If resources become scarce, population will decline since you can’t provide for everyone’s needs at that point. If resources are plenty, population can grow. I don’t see how a decline in population leads to societal collapse. Some countries are facing declining populations now, for other reasons, and they’re not collapsing. It’s a potential problem that would need to be faced, but collapse seems extreme to me.
I guess the thinking is that in the past economic growth has been the way governments dealt with paying back debts (or making them look smaller as part of the GDP). Instead of raising taxes or issuing currency to pay back debt, you’d grow the tax base by growing the economy.
MMT is currently challenging this thinking obviously, and the answer to this (as with every other challenge we’re facing, like inequality, pollution, corruption, …) is taxing the rich, not somehow procreating more.
If managed well, a slowly shrinking population can be managed without too much issues and would allow us to live within our planetary means, which are the real contraints on the economy and our survival.
