It’s not even about lack of trust in the future, it’s about what we picture that future to be. I think it’s more about not wanting to continue this unsustainable pyramid scheme based on the myth of infinite growth. Things that grow infinitely kill their hosts, become plagues, destroy ecosystems, and then eventually die out because they have nothing left to live with.
To me, it’s about deciding whether we are going to spread out into the solar system and maybe eventually the galaxy if we manage to survive that long, chasing that unsustainable goal of endless growth like a plague of locusts, consuming everything in our path and leaving behind only destruction and death and waste, until we can find nothing more to consume or until we starve ourselves to death before we can find enough. The other option depends on whether we can see the potential of thoughtful progress, embrace sustainability and think about controlling our growth and maintaining our population at a comfortable level, allowing us to find a more harmonious and intelligent way forward. The question is not whether we can continue to grow unsustainably – we have the ability to continue growing for the foreseeable future and certainly can pursue that if that’s what we decide we want, the question is whether we should, and the answer I think most people would come up with if they actually think about it is that we shouldn’t.
I don’t think most people necessarily think of it in those terms, I think a lot of people just look at things like the cost of living and at their own general happiness and comfort and value they get out of living, and that subtly but consistently influences whether people decide whether to have 0, 1, or 2 kids and stop there, or whether to have 3, 4, 5, or more, with people who are in poorer overall situations tending to have more, not less. This is why developed countries tend to have lower birth rates, typically below even replacement rate. One benefit of the globalization that has been done and the resulting massive wealth transfer to less developed countries is that it is lowering their birth rates and slowing global population growth. That is clearly visible through data. Demographics are a deceptively complicated thing, and are not always intuitive, but we do have a pretty good handle on it despite what it may seem like, and the world population is currently projected to stop growing around what is probably a reasonably sustainable level (about 10 to 11 billion).
The problem is that our attitudes towards sustainability and equality tend to get thrown out the window every time another major technological change or social upheaval happens, and then all bets are off again as we figure out how to fit that back into the new picture of existence and expectations and growth and progress. Some medical breakthrough causing significant human life extensions or essentially immortality could throw the entire population situation completely off base in mere decades and that will rapidly become a serious maybe catastrophic challenge. If you think the housing crisis is bad now, imagine how bad it would be if every homeowner lived for eternity and babies still keep getting born and growing up and then imagine you try to fix it by telling people they have to stop having babies or that they can’t live as long as they want to.
A lot of the population growth we saw in the last century or two, from mere hundreds of millions into the many billions, came about almost entirely due to human life extensions and reduction of infant mortality. And of course that’s a good thing, and we are right to strive for it, but it strains our economic foundation more than anyone realizes. Even small changes to these data points, resulting in people living a little longer on average, can have massive and continuous impacts on population growth until they reach a new equilibrium, which may be far higher than you expect and adds up to enormous amounts of additional resources needed.
Technology has given us all so much more resources than any generation in history, the problem is there are also a lot more people to share it with, so in some very real ways it is in fact less per person. Some of that is intentional, some of it isn’t. The math of demographics and population growth are absolutely relentless and sometimes pretty unforgiving. We have to be really, really smart about it if we want to get ahead of it. And it’s risky business dealing with very sensitive subjects.
It’s not even about lack of trust in the future, it’s about what we picture that future to be. I think it’s more about not wanting to continue this unsustainable pyramid scheme based on the myth of infinite growth. Things that grow infinitely kill their hosts, become plagues, destroy ecosystems, and then eventually die out because they have nothing left to live with.
To me, it’s about deciding whether we are going to spread out into the solar system and maybe eventually the galaxy if we manage to survive that long, chasing that unsustainable goal of endless growth like a plague of locusts, consuming everything in our path and leaving behind only destruction and death and waste, until we can find nothing more to consume or until we starve ourselves to death before we can find enough. The other option depends on whether we can see the potential of thoughtful progress, embrace sustainability and think about controlling our growth and maintaining our population at a comfortable level, allowing us to find a more harmonious and intelligent way forward. The question is not whether we can continue to grow unsustainably – we have the ability to continue growing for the foreseeable future and certainly can pursue that if that’s what we decide we want, the question is whether we should, and the answer I think most people would come up with if they actually think about it is that we shouldn’t.
I don’t think most people necessarily think of it in those terms, I think a lot of people just look at things like the cost of living and at their own general happiness and comfort and value they get out of living, and that subtly but consistently influences whether people decide whether to have 0, 1, or 2 kids and stop there, or whether to have 3, 4, 5, or more, with people who are in poorer overall situations tending to have more, not less. This is why developed countries tend to have lower birth rates, typically below even replacement rate. One benefit of the globalization that has been done and the resulting massive wealth transfer to less developed countries is that it is lowering their birth rates and slowing global population growth. That is clearly visible through data. Demographics are a deceptively complicated thing, and are not always intuitive, but we do have a pretty good handle on it despite what it may seem like, and the world population is currently projected to stop growing around what is probably a reasonably sustainable level (about 10 to 11 billion).
The problem is that our attitudes towards sustainability and equality tend to get thrown out the window every time another major technological change or social upheaval happens, and then all bets are off again as we figure out how to fit that back into the new picture of existence and expectations and growth and progress. Some medical breakthrough causing significant human life extensions or essentially immortality could throw the entire population situation completely off base in mere decades and that will rapidly become a serious maybe catastrophic challenge. If you think the housing crisis is bad now, imagine how bad it would be if every homeowner lived for eternity and babies still keep getting born and growing up and then imagine you try to fix it by telling people they have to stop having babies or that they can’t live as long as they want to.
A lot of the population growth we saw in the last century or two, from mere hundreds of millions into the many billions, came about almost entirely due to human life extensions and reduction of infant mortality. And of course that’s a good thing, and we are right to strive for it, but it strains our economic foundation more than anyone realizes. Even small changes to these data points, resulting in people living a little longer on average, can have massive and continuous impacts on population growth until they reach a new equilibrium, which may be far higher than you expect and adds up to enormous amounts of additional resources needed.
Technology has given us all so much more resources than any generation in history, the problem is there are also a lot more people to share it with, so in some very real ways it is in fact less per person. Some of that is intentional, some of it isn’t. The math of demographics and population growth are absolutely relentless and sometimes pretty unforgiving. We have to be really, really smart about it if we want to get ahead of it. And it’s risky business dealing with very sensitive subjects.