I think those in favor of higher population should say what they think the ideal human population should be. Most of the hand wringing about population seems to be about whether it should be higher or lower than it is now, but that question seems to be anchored by the current population? If indeed “More Good is Better”, does that imply that an Earth with a trillion people would be better than our Earth today? Because personally, I don’t really agree with that.
As a general rule, it isn’t necessary to agree on the ideal target in order to agree directionally about what to do on present margins. For example, we can agree that it would be good to encourage more effective giving in the population, without committing to the view (that many people would “personally disagree” with) that everyone ought to give to the point of marginal utility, where they are just as desperate for their marginal dollar as their potential beneficiaries are.
The key claim of After the Spike is that we should want to avoid massive depopulation. Whether you’d ideally prefer stabilization, gradual population growth, or growth as fast as we can sustainably maintain without creating worse problems, isn’t something that needs to be adjudicated—and in fact seems a distraction from the more universally agreeable verdict that massive depopulation is bad and worth avoiding.
In my opinion the trajectory of population might be more important than the sheer number you end up with.
Ideal trajectory is that of slow/moderate growth as long as the planets we occupy (Earth and whatever other planet we occupy in the future) can support increasing number of people without significantly compromising living standards and exhausting resources.
After that point population should stabilize. Neither grow nor shrink but stay constant.
Ideally population should stop growing at around 80% of the carrying capacity of the planets we occupy, as approaching 100% would be too risky.
Now population decline is typically a bad trajectory for 2 reasons:
It is a symptom of some problems in society (unless intentional)
Over the long term it leads to extinction
For this reason, I think population decline can only be good as a short term intentional / consensual process in overcrowded worlds.
If we’re already overcrowded (which I doubt), in that case it wouldn’t be too bad if population falls a bit, but it must be a short term and reversible decline.
And we’re witnessing some concerning trends, like TFR staying well below replacement for long term and failing to recover in most of the developed nations. And the developing nations are also on the same track, just lagging a couple of decades.
Even if population decline improves sustainability, that would be a good consequence, but the process itself might still be bad, because it’s not result of intentional decision, but of increasing number of people failing to reproduce in sufficient number due to various limitations of our society. So population decline, even if it improves sustainability (which would be a beneficial side effect), would still reveal some structural problems of our current society and economic system, and these problems would likely still need some fixing even if we decide it’s OK for population to fall a bit for a short while.
The point is that we should be able to reproduce in sufficient number if we want to. It seems that right now we aren’t even able to do it. Most of the people end up with smaller number of kids than what they wanted.
I think those in favor of higher population should say what they think the ideal human population should be. Most of the hand wringing about population seems to be about whether it should be higher or lower than it is now, but that question seems to be anchored by the current population? If indeed “More Good is Better”, does that imply that an Earth with a trillion people would be better than our Earth today? Because personally, I don’t really agree with that.
As a general rule, it isn’t necessary to agree on the ideal target in order to agree directionally about what to do on present margins. For example, we can agree that it would be good to encourage more effective giving in the population, without committing to the view (that many people would “personally disagree” with) that everyone ought to give to the point of marginal utility, where they are just as desperate for their marginal dollar as their potential beneficiaries are.
The key claim of After the Spike is that we should want to avoid massive depopulation. Whether you’d ideally prefer stabilization, gradual population growth, or growth as fast as we can sustainably maintain without creating worse problems, isn’t something that needs to be adjudicated—and in fact seems a distraction from the more universally agreeable verdict that massive depopulation is bad and worth avoiding.
In my opinion the trajectory of population might be more important than the sheer number you end up with.
Ideal trajectory is that of slow/moderate growth as long as the planets we occupy (Earth and whatever other planet we occupy in the future) can support increasing number of people without significantly compromising living standards and exhausting resources.
After that point population should stabilize. Neither grow nor shrink but stay constant.
Ideally population should stop growing at around 80% of the carrying capacity of the planets we occupy, as approaching 100% would be too risky.
Now population decline is typically a bad trajectory for 2 reasons:
It is a symptom of some problems in society (unless intentional)
Over the long term it leads to extinction
For this reason, I think population decline can only be good as a short term intentional / consensual process in overcrowded worlds.
If we’re already overcrowded (which I doubt), in that case it wouldn’t be too bad if population falls a bit, but it must be a short term and reversible decline.
And we’re witnessing some concerning trends, like TFR staying well below replacement for long term and failing to recover in most of the developed nations. And the developing nations are also on the same track, just lagging a couple of decades.
Even if population decline improves sustainability, that would be a good consequence, but the process itself might still be bad, because it’s not result of intentional decision, but of increasing number of people failing to reproduce in sufficient number due to various limitations of our society. So population decline, even if it improves sustainability (which would be a beneficial side effect), would still reveal some structural problems of our current society and economic system, and these problems would likely still need some fixing even if we decide it’s OK for population to fall a bit for a short while.
The point is that we should be able to reproduce in sufficient number if we want to. It seems that right now we aren’t even able to do it. Most of the people end up with smaller number of kids than what they wanted.