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.
“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
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).
- 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.
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.
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?
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So you are anti natalist (whatever the fuck that even means), congratulations
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Japan’s population has been in decline since about 2005 and they haven’t exploded in a fireball yet.
I think neo nataliam started as a very extreme view. I didn’t think it was quite as sarcastic as A Modest Proposal, but it has the same vibe to me. I’d be suspicious of anyone talking it seriously at face value. Maybe they aren’t being malicious, but they’re at least unsophisticated.
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.
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.
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.
In our current economic system? Absolutely, declining population is a huge problem.
As far as physics? The world doesn’t care about imaginary human numbers. Production continues to soar through the roof
We made all of this up. At any point, we could say “hey, this is a dumb game that’s making people suffer, let’s figure out something else”
Statistically 2.1 births/woman is required to replace the current population.
As for the economic argument, your friend is somewhat correct, except that economies don’t just grow or shrink based on population (it is a major driver). There are too many factors at play to make such a statement.
The finite earth argument is interesting, whilst we are the biggest danger to the biosphere in the short run, we are also the biggest hope. In the long run the biosphere will sort itself out after we are out of the picture.
Taking this argument a little further, we may be the only hope for an intelligent civilisation from this planet. We have taken all of the easy energy resources; which take millions of years to regenerate; so any intelligent civilisation that follows after us will not have the luxury of cheap abundant energy.
So we either sort our shit out, become space faring, and move on with the next phase of the human experiment, or the likelihood of intelligence leaving earth is quite low.We could, reduce ourselves content to “save” the earth and exist here in perpetuity, but I don’t really see that happening. There will always be those that dream and strive, if humans still exist in 10,000 years they will be spacefaring.
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.
No.
