Overpopulation Rhetoric is Alarmist and Counterproductive

[kiklion]

Spoiler:

maybeagnostic,

I can't speak for others, so, despite the fact that I have lived in and enjoy living in the city, it's simply... not worth it.

A 2 hour daily commute (two way, walking and subway for me) just... really isn't that bad - it forces me to spend a portion of the day outside, and I get a lot of work done during the commute. If anything, it's probably good for me. It means the place I live is twice as big for half the price. It means we don't have to rent a parking space somewhere. It means we can grow our own food in the garden, which may not save any money but is immensely enjoyable. It means I get to live with TREES. And not bullshit city-park trees, which skeeve me out so much I avoid most city parks like the plague, but real trees. I get to have moss, and ferns, and a hammock, and barbecues, and except for the last one, I've spent time with all of those every day since summer began.

It means I don't have to wait to use the washer/dryer, it means I can wake to the birdsong, it means I DON'T have to listen to the constant sounds of traffic outside the window. It means I can not only get to know my neighbours, but expect them to stick around for years, maybe decades. It means I don't have to listen to the people upstairs having a party late at night. It means the people down stairs don't have to listen to me.

It lets me have fires. By god do I love having fires.

Most of all, it means I get to feel a sense of pride and responsibility for where I live. It is mine, and I can do things that make it better, make it fit me more, and there is no one that can or will complain. I cannot be kicked out just because the landlord found someone willing to pay more money. It is a home, instead of a place where I live.

And you can't really understand why people would prefer that

And those are just the intangibles. Average classroom size in NYC, ~24 students per teacher. Average classroom size in my school district on Long Island, 13. Where do the kids run to practice track/cross country/sports in the city? Out here we would run to the water and along the beaches, or following the train tracks through the woods. The commute isn't as bad as people say anyway, as long as you leave with enough time to get to work w/ accidents/police activity, driving isn't stressful. My commute is 25 minutes each way. I still have a deli that is 3 minutes away, supermarkets 5 minutes away, theater's 15 minutes... when I would visit my ex in the city we spent more time travelling then when we would hang out out in the suburbs.

Furthermore, aren't there extra city taxes on your income? (At least NYC vs Long Island)

[Vaniver]

Are you assuming additive utility?

No. When someone answers the question "many people alive at low standard of living" or "few people alive at high standard of living", typically they do so based on the question of "low standard of living" vs. "high standard of living", when really it should be "100% chance of low standard of living" vs. "X% chance of high standard of living, 100-X% chance of not existing." Very few people go to Vegas, gamble, and then shoot themselves if they lose- but that's a way you can replicate this on a small scale.

Now, there's no requirement that the desirability curves and supply curves have to be the same, and they almost definitely won't be. It could be that the latter option is better under some preference system- but a preference system that doesn't include the chance of non-existence seems to me like a myopic one.

You're implying that the only way overpopulation can be solved is by killing existing people. That's a straw man, nobody seriously proposes that.

The economically correct solution to overpopulation is to address the fact that a certain luxury good is extremely under-priced. Namely: having children. It creates a negative externality amounting to around $1 million, as the new person needs shelter, food, water etc for their entire life, and the people who decided to have the child only pay a small portion of that cost. Another portion is paid by the government, and the majority is paid by the child, who upon becoming an adult has to find a job to support him/herself in an increasingly tough labor market.

The child doesn't have an "externality"- it's an internality for them! Paying to sustain yourself is about as internal as things get. And you completely neglect the benefits of being alive- it's not clear that the marginal value of a person is lower than the marginal cost (especially children of people responsible enough to take overpopulation arguments seriously).

You can't make the cake bigger

The only hard limit there is solar radiance on the earth- and we use almost none of it. There's plenty of room to grow this cake.

[savanik]

You're implying that the only way overpopulation can be solved is by killing existing people. That's a straw man, nobody seriously proposes that.

Historically, war has been the final solution to severe overpopulation - or specifically, a crippling shortage of basic resources. Nobody proposes it, but that's where it ends up if other actions aren't taken.

[CorruptUser]

Ah, the old repugnant conclusion. This is why I love reading these boards.

Regarding the repugnant conclusion, it's easier to reject if you judge morality not by total utility, but by total external utility. That is, a person is 'good' if as a result of hes actions if the total of everyone else's utility is greater than if se didn't exist, rather than if total utility is maximized. So if adding the extra person to the world makes everyone else's utility go down slightly, even if hes utility gain is greater, said person should not exist.

It's also how you can argue certain businesses or practices are wrong. Ignore logs, costs, etc for a second on the utility. A company that uses false advertising to sell service X for $5 and a cost of $2 to itself when it it only provides $4 in value to its customers has made the customer poorer by $1 and itself richer by $3. Total utility increases by $2 every time a sale is made, but the rest of the world would be better off without the company existing.

[mmmcannibalism]

You're implying that the only way overpopulation can be solved is by killing existing people. That's a straw man, nobody seriously proposes that.

Historically, war has been the final solution to severe overpopulation - or specifically, a crippling shortage of basic resources. Nobody proposes it, but that's where it ends up if other actions aren't taken.

Which is why I propose we literally and metaphorically start throwing condoms at everything.

[CorruptUser]

I'm more of the line of thinking of stopping child benefits at 2 kids and withdrawing aid to areas where the problems aren't temporary.

You have the right to have as many children as you can care for, not what someone else can pay for.

In parts of Africa where food is constantly shipped in, food aid becomes the local industry, and interferes with the local farming economy. It's one thing if there was a drought and all the crops failed, but entirely different if all the crops grew and people are still starving.

[Griffin]

I'm more of the line of thinking of stopping child benefits at 2 kids and withdrawing aid to areas where the problems aren't temporary.

So you're response to people being too poor to be able to afford for their children is... not providing aid for those children? Making them more likely to be criminals, more likely to be a burden on society, and more likely to repeat the cycle.

Wait... are trying to bring down global standards of living or bring them up? I do forget sometimes, when people start proposing No Child Left Behind writ large...

[kiklion]

Spoiler:

Are you assuming additive utility?

No. When someone answers the question "many people alive at low standard of living" or "few people alive at high standard of living", typically they do so based on the question of "low standard of living" vs. "high standard of living", when really it should be "100% chance of low standard of living" vs. "X% chance of high standard of living, 100-X% chance of not existing." Very few people go to Vegas, gamble, and then shoot themselves if they lose- but that's a way you can replicate this on a small scale.

Now, there's no requirement that the desirability curves and supply curves have to be the same, and they almost definitely won't be. It could be that the latter option is better under some preference system- but a preference system that doesn't include the chance of non-existence seems to me like a myopic one.

You're implying that the only way overpopulation can be solved is by killing existing people. That's a straw man, nobody seriously proposes that.

The economically correct solution to overpopulation is to address the fact that a certain luxury good is extremely under-priced. Namely: having children. It creates a negative externality amounting to around $1 million, as the new person needs shelter, food, water etc for their entire life, and the people who decided to have the child only pay a small portion of that cost. Another portion is paid by the government, and the majority is paid by the child, who upon becoming an adult has to find a job to support him/herself in an increasingly tough labor market.

The child doesn't have an "externality"- it's an internality for them! Paying to sustain yourself is about as internal as things get. And you completely neglect the benefits of being alive- it's not clear that the marginal value of a person is lower than the marginal cost (especially children of people responsible enough to take overpopulation arguments seriously).

You can't make the cake bigger

The only hard limit there is solar radiance on the earth- and we use almost none of it. There's plenty of room to grow this cake.

Why does the chance of not existing even matter? I think i am completely misunderstanding what is going on. As I see it, those who don't exist, don't care much that they don't exist. I don't think people were advocating lowering the population through 'trimming the fat', which would give everyone a chance to no longer exist.

I'm more of the line of thinking of stopping child benefits at 2 kids and withdrawing aid to areas where the problems aren't temporary.

So you're response to people being too poor to be able to afford for their children is... not providing aid for those children? Making them more likely to be criminals, more likely to be a burden on society, and more likely to repeat the cycle.

Wait... are trying to bring down global standards of living or bring them up? I do forget sometimes, when people start proposing No Child Left Behind writ large...

I don't understand the connection with No Child Left Behind. That is/was a system that punished schools for accurately ranking students if it meant that student fell behind his peers.

If birth control was readily available, than these people have made the choice to try to have more kids, and are being a burden on society and society shouldn't encourage people to do that.

It does bring up other issues though, such as the ones facing china. I saw an article recently about a town in china without any women. Can't find it again however.

[Griffin]

No Child left behind -> Punished those who are worse off (the students), by making them more worse off (by withdrawing funds the school needs to help them), as an attempt to make everyone better off.

Current proposal -> Punish those who are worse off (the children of poor mothers with poor judgement), by making them more worse off (by withdrawing funds the mother needs to care for them), as an attempt to make everyone better off.

See the connection?

If birth control was readily available, than these people have made the choice to try to have more kids, and are being a burden on society and society shouldn't encourage people to do that.

Punishing poor children for the poor judgement of their parents, leads to resentful and distrusting poor children, often developmentally, nutritionally, and educationally disadvantaged... making them more likely to have poor judgement themselves when they become adults. And lets be honest, those receiving the bulk of the punishment here would be children by the very nature of the proposed plan.

Also, birth control (and education and reinforcement and cultural pressure to use it) is NOT readily available (or affordable) for the exact groups we're discussing here.

[LaserGuy]

I'm more of the line of thinking of stopping child benefits at 2 kids and withdrawing aid to areas where the problems aren't temporary.

When we live in a world where rape is not a problem, abortion, sex education, and contraception are free, easily accessible, and not taboo, then this proposal might be worth considering.

[Goplat]

When someone answers the question "many people alive at low standard of living" or "few people alive at high standard of living", typically they do so based on the question of "low standard of living" vs. "high standard of living", when really it should be "100% chance of low standard of living" vs. "X% chance of high standard of living, 100-X% chance of not existing." Very few people go to Vegas, gamble, and then shoot themselves if they lose- but that's a way you can replicate this on a small scale.

Now, there's no requirement that the desirability curves and supply curves have to be the same, and they almost definitely won't be. It could be that the latter option is better under some preference system- but a preference system that doesn't include the chance of non-existence seems to me like a myopic one.

As far as can be observed, the only people who have preferences at all are people already born. Maybe in your religion, there's disembodied souls floating around everywhere thinking "Gee, I sure wish another human would be born so that I can maybe get incarnated into the body and finally have nonzero utility". But a secular society has no justification for taking such souls into account.

You're implying that the only way overpopulation can be solved is by killing existing people. That's a straw man, nobody seriously proposes that.

The economically correct solution to overpopulation is to address the fact that a certain luxury good is extremely under-priced. Namely: having children. It creates a negative externality amounting to around $1 million, as the new person needs shelter, food, water etc for their entire life, and the people who decided to have the child only pay a small portion of that cost. Another portion is paid by the government, and the majority is paid by the child, who upon becoming an adult has to find a job to support him/herself in an increasingly tough labor market.

The child doesn't have an "externality"- it's an internality for them! Paying to sustain yourself is about as internal as things get.

It's not supporting oneself that's the externality, it's the need to do so having been created (by others' decisions) in the first place. If someone breaks my window and, rather than leaving it broken, I decide to pay Bob's Window Repair Co. to fix it, the latter transaction is presumably a net benefit to me when considered alone, but on the whole I have taken a loss. The same is generally true if I am born into modern-day human society and, rather than starving in the street, I try to earn a living. Being born as a human is a burden, not a gift. Is it better than some hypothetical existence as a disembodied spirit just waiting eternally? Probably, but that's a bogus comparison as discussed before. Is it better than the average existence of a sentient lifeform? That's the real ethical question.

[kiklion]

No Child left behind -> Punished those who are worse off (the students), by making them more worse off (by withdrawing funds the school needs to help them), as an attempt to make everyone better off.

Current proposal -> Punish those who are worse off (the children of poor mothers with poor judgement), by making them more worse off (by withdrawing funds the mother needs to care for them), as an attempt to make everyone better off.

See the connection?

If birth control was readily available, than these people have made the choice to try to have more kids, and are being a burden on society and society shouldn't encourage people to do that.

Punishing poor children for the poor judgement of their parents, leads to resentful and distrusting poor children, often developmentally, nutritionally, and educationally disadvantaged... making them more likely to have poor judgement themselves when they become adults. And lets be honest, those receiving the bulk of the punishment here would be children by the very nature of the proposed plan.

Also, birth control (and education and reinforcement and cultural pressure to use it) is NOT readily available (or affordable) for the exact groups we're discussing here.

Similar to laserguys context, if we are talking about a future with controlled growth, I would assume we are talking about a future where having a child is a choice and if you did not want to have one it would be near impossible to have one. In this situation you aren't punishing the child (I wouldn't say remove any child benefits such as tax deductions, but instead limit them to only 2 children similar to the mortgage interest only being on your primary house), you just aren't helping them out. If you have a good friend who is very successful and treats you to lunch every day, he should not feel bad because you decided to start bringing someone else with you expecting to continue to get the free lunch for all.

[CorruptUser]

I'm more of the line of thinking of stopping child benefits at 2 kids and withdrawing aid to areas where the problems aren't temporary.

So you're response to people being too poor to be able to afford for their children is... not providing aid for those children? Making them more likely to be criminals, more likely to be a burden on society, and more likely to repeat the cycle.

Wait... are trying to bring down global standards of living or bring them up? I do forget sometimes, when people start proposing No Child Left Behind writ large...

You assume that without benefits, people will continue to have just as many children in poverty. You'd be surprised at how many people have extra children just for the child benefits, despite how dismal they appear to be. Why do you think people become "foster parents"? Fuck foster homes and the people who run them. Anyway, subsidizing extra children will result in more children in poverty, so the cycle repeats more often if the child benefits exist.

Oh, I should also mention that I believe in taxpayer-subsidized abortions and free contraception.

[Zamfir]

You'd be surprised at how many people have extra children just for the child benefits, despite how dismal they appear to be.

You have numbers on that?

[CorruptUser]

Mostly anecdotal admittedly, including people I know who work in Social Services (both public and quasi-private), and of course media loves to claim it too. It's difficult to determine whether someone is giving birth for the money or for a child, which is why I pointed out foster homes; those are people raising children for the money. Oh sure, they claim to do it because they want to help the poor children, but if that was true you'd see the same if not greater percentage of wealthy people becoming foster parents (assuming kindness is independent of wealth). Again, fuck foster homes.

[Heisenberg]

Being born as a human is a burden, not a gift.

Thankfully, we all have chosen to continue living today, so I think it's safe to say that in general the benefits of life outweigh the costs.

I don't know about you, but I'd happily pay over a million dollars to continue living. And that's just it, we could each get by on far less than that if we just gave enough of a shit to stop living with wanton disregard for resource management.

[Zamfir]

Mostly anecdotal admittedly, including people I know who work in Social Services (both public and quasi-private), and of course media loves to claim it too. It's difficult to determine whether someone is giving birth for the money or for a child, which is why I pointed out foster homes; those are people raising children for the money. Oh sure, they claim to do it because they want to help the poor children, but if that was true you'd see the same if not greater percentage of wealthy people becoming foster parents (assuming kindness is independent of wealth). Again, fuck foster homes.

Is there such a large supply in the US of people who want to become foster parents? I didn't know that

[CorruptUser]

The reimbursement is up to $8k/yr, which while not a lot to care for a person, in terms of the poverty line ($10890 + $3820*(extra persons)), two foster parents with 4 kids are above poverty line. According to the link, you can't be a foster parent if you don't have a job in order to support the kids, but if you work full-time you also can't be a foster parent (Kafka would be proud); I guess the expectation is the father works and the mother is the stay-at-home foster parent. The limit (varies by state) is around 6 children in a home, and there are over a half million people in care, so there must be around at least 100,000 foster parents.

[Angua]

If you can't be a foster parent with a fulltime job, it's not surprising that most of the middleclass where both parents have full time jobs don't do fostering.

For what it's worth, I have known some foster parents who didn't seem to be doing it for the money.

[CorruptUser]

If you can't be a foster parent with a fulltime job, it's not surprising that most of the middleclass where both parents have full time jobs don't do fostering.

For what it's worth, I have known some foster parents who didn't seem to be doing it for the money.

Yeah, not everyone in the care is doing it just for the money. But I know too many people who've had horrible experiences with it to think that the profit-oriented ones are just anomalies. I have to wonder if the foster parents would've just adopted the kids if it was really not about the money.

But the upperclass, for the most part, are not becoming foster care, despite being able to afford it and not necessarily having both parents working. Sometimes they adopt the kids, but I don't think that's the same thing.

[Vaniver]

As I see it, those who don't exist, don't care much that they don't exist.

Would that not suggest that while attempted murder is a serious crime, successful murder is a sunk cost that we might as well forgive?

Being born as a human is a burden, not a gift.

I find this hard to reconcile with the commonness of human happiness and the infrequency of human suicides.

It's also hard to reconcile with your unwillingness to consider ending people who already exist. If their simple existence is a burden, shouldn't they be happy to be rid of it? Instead, they seem to treat their remaining years as a dear asset, not a liability.

But even if we said that we weren't going to continue creating humans until the newborn human looked around and decided that suicide was the best way forward, but that we were just going to continue creating humans until the marginal benefit of that human no longer exceeded the marginal cost- I think we would stabilize at a large population with overall low levels of consumption, rather than a smaller population than we have now and levels of consumption similar to what we have now. Now, if that were our goal we would almost certainly implement some sort of eugenic program, since the marginal benefit and marginal cost of people vary widely, and how effective that program is could have a significant impact on the resulting population size.

[addams]

You're implying that the only way overpopulation can be solved is by killing existing people. That's a straw man, nobody seriously proposes that.

Historically, war has been the final solution to severe overpopulation - or specifically, a crippling shortage of basic resources. Nobody proposes it, but that's where it ends up if other actions aren't taken.

Oh; How wrong you are.

I don't have the papers. There were more than one paper done on the subject. The numbers needed to be done over and over, because, the results were counter intuitive. The numbers were paradoxical.

Human populations not only bounce back after war, they spike. Then, the numbers level off a bit at a higher number. Humans may be a bit like starfish.

I read a bunch of that stuff. It is one more good reason to not kill people wholesale. It makes overpopulation worse.

My personal stance is that the number of us is not the problem. The problem is that so fricking many of us are jerks. Fewer jerks=Increased quality of life for all.

Oh, yes. I know about the numbers. The point has been made on this thread; Better technologies allow many people to live better today than the most advantaged did in ages past.

We could only imagine cell phones and cars in the past, now these things are common. Who among us knows what wonders or horrors lay ahead for Humans?

Dr. Barnett was not a wing nut. He said, "Mind may yet guide man's destiny in a capricious universe."

Selfish narrow minded rich people are a thorn in the side of the Human Family. Not all rich people are that way. Thank God.

[Goplat]

Being born as a human is a burden, not a gift.

I find this hard to reconcile with the commonness of human happiness and the infrequency of human suicides.

Humans generally aren't happy, at least not compared to animals whose instincts are aligned with what they need to do to survive (who thus get survival "for free"). However, suicide is undesirable due to the effects it has on others.

It's also hard to reconcile with your unwillingness to consider ending people who already exist. If their simple existence is a burden, shouldn't they be happy to be rid of it? Instead, they seem to treat their remaining years as a dear asset, not a liability.

People would be even less happy in a society where at any moment they or their loved ones could be eliminated due to winning Vaniver's Random Death Lottery.

But even if we said that we weren't going to continue creating humans until the newborn human looked around and decided that suicide was the best way forward, but that we were just going to continue creating humans until the marginal benefit of that human no longer exceeded the marginal cost- I think we would stabilize at a large population with overall low levels of consumption, rather than a smaller population than we have now and levels of consumption similar to what we have now.

Only if you're measuring costs and benefits the wrong way. You need to average people's utilities, not sum them. Summing doesn't even make any sense since there's no way to know where to put the zero point: do utilities range from [0,1] or [-1,1] or [-1,0] or what? With averaging it makes no difference.

And anyway, you may think that it's more moral to have a future with 100 billion people living in little cages, with 1 hour of electricity a day, allowed one five-minute shower per month, eating bugs because other forms of food cause too much global warming, etc. But the only people who get to influence policy are people already alive, so if it's possible for people alive today to maintain a high-consumption lifestyle by keeping population under control, they would be irrational not to do so.

[quantumcat42]

Vaniver's Random Death Lottery.

This would make a fantastic carnival game.

[sourmìlk]

In defense of CorruptUser, there are at least some groups of people who have more children for the aid money. I recall listening on KFI or NPR (forget which) about a group of Orthodox Jewss in LA who have more children so that they can live off the welfare money so they don't have to get jobs so they can study Torah.

[Heisenberg]

However, suicide is undesirable due to the effects it has on others.

If you're speaking from personal experience, in that you truly think that life is a burden and the only reason not to end it is how it would make others feel, I strongly encourage you to seek help. I am not a doctor, but that sounds like you may have a serious condition.

And anyway, you may think that it's more moral to have a future with 100 billion people living in little cages, with 1 hour of electricity a day, allowed one five-minute shower per month, eating bugs because other forms of food cause too much global warming, etc.

Take a look at the article again. Birth rates have been dropping for a long time, and total population is expected to level out and begin dropping in the next 40 years. Maybe even before the 10 billion mark.

[morriswalters]

Is there any reason to believe that the ten billion mark will occur without irreversible changes occurring?

[Griffin]

which is why I pointed out foster homes; those are people raising children for the money.

Must... resist... urge... to...

Okay. Completely calm. While I admit there might be some of these, is that a /bad/ thing as long as procedures are in place to insure they take decent care of the kids? We've got a lot of extra kids whose parents won't or can't take care of them (and we'll have a lot more if we withdraw support, as you suggested, since the stupid parents will probably go back to popping them out and tossing them out with the subsidies ended). Those who run orphanages are often in it for the money, too. Many of the social workers I've met certainly don't give two shits about actually helping the people they're supposed to be helping - a lot of them do the minimum required to pull in a paycheck. Heck, I even know fireman, those valient heroes, and police officers, defenders of liberty who are, get this, in it for the money.

This doesn't mean they don't do their job well. (And I'm quite intimately familiar with the fact that some foster parents don't, and we need better ways to get them out of the system - but there are already more kids than the system can handle, so its hard)

If there's any problem in what you said, its the fact that we don't pay foster parents ENOUGH. Raising a kid is hard work. Raising a kid who came from a broken home and has been separated from their parents, likely leading to all sort of psychological and behavioural issues, is even harder. If we gave them more compensation, enough to not only care for the get properly (and the stipend isn't even enough for that, meaning you end up with foster parents who don't bother or who are willing to pay out of pocket for the right to take care someone elses kid), we might be able to increase the number of quality parents, kick out the abusers, and attract more upper class and upper middle class families (who are currently far more likely to adopt, because then they get to take care of their own kid instead of someone elses, a far more appealing prospect).

Fostering is a hard fucking job, with no compensation if you do it well, so I'm not sure why you seem to hold such vitriol towards the fact that people get 'compensated' for doing it.

[Adam H]

I consume a lot. But I produce more. How could I not? I make money for my employer doing useful and productive things, and they pay me less than they earn from my services, and I don't even spend all that money I make on consumables.

So it irks me to hear that I consume "too much". You know, there's a much easier way to save the poor people of the world then consuming less. You could help them. I am much sadder that people don't send out more food and relief supplies than I am that people leave their sinks running when they brush their teeth (though that does annoy me).

And the end is not nigh. Take down your signs and go home people. In fifty years nuclear power will be the norm and in 100 years hydrogen power will be the norm and in 200 years unobtanium power will be the norm. Likewise, to say that we'll run out of water is ludicrous. We can easily purify ocean water and other undrinkable water. Yes it's bloody expensive NOW, but to think we'll run out of water before we figure out how to access it is just ridiculous (from what I understand).

[morriswalters]

I posted this in the nuclear power thread, could someone check my math?

Build. More. Nukes. Seriously. Every day we don't, PEOPLE DIE. Every single day.

They are breeding faster than they are dying, mostly in places that don't use power like the US. Just out of curiosity how many gigawatt reactors would we need to build to supply power to a population of 8 billion at the rate of consumption in modern industrialized countries? Some numbers for you, using data from the Wikipedia. The population of the US is 313,382,000 and China is 1,347,350,000, which by my calculator means that China is about 4.3 times the size of the US. Total world consumption is listed as 20,261TWh. The US uses 4,369TWH's and China uses 3,457TWh, let us assume that China used power the way the US does. So multiply our consumption by 4.3 and we end up with China's consumption at our rate. 18786.7TWh. The sum of those two numbers is greater than sum total of power generation of the entire planet. My mind gets numb with the numbers. If you calculate the numbers for the average use of power by one person in the US multiplied by the expected population in the year 2050 which I will call 8 billion, I get 111531.6TWh's. I don't really trust these numbers but I present them for purposes of illustration. That is 6 times, give or take, the current amount we generate. Does any want to speculate the outcome if we tried to build our way to that? That's what is implied by continued growth.

[gmalivuk]

Is there any reason to believe that the ten billion mark will occur without irreversible changes occurring?

Irreversible changes have *already* occurred, so what's your point?

[CorruptUser]

which is why I pointed out foster homes; those are people raising children for the money.

Must... resist... urge... to...

Okay. Completely calm. While I admit there might be some of these, is that a /bad/ thing as long as procedures are in place to insure they take decent care of the kids? We've got a lot of extra kids whose parents won't or can't take care of them (and we'll have a lot more if we withdraw support, as you suggested, since the stupid parents will probably go back to popping them out and tossing them out with the subsidies ended). Those who run orphanages are often in it for the money, too. Many of the social workers I've met certainly don't give two shits about actually helping the people they're supposed to be helping - a lot of them do the minimum required to pull in a paycheck. Heck, I even know fireman, those valient heroes, and police officers, defenders of liberty who are, get this, in it for the money.

I think we are getting a bit off topic, I brought up foster parents as an example of people who are raising kids for the money, not that foster care shouldn't exist at all. Yes, I admit that saying that 'I am biased against the foster care system' is an understatement. They do provide a service, taking care of children that would probably be worse off without the system. Sometimes. But I don't think it's best for society to have people producing kids for money. It's OK to have firefighters putting out fires for a paycheck and benefits, but it is not OK for the firefighters to produce said fires.

Zamfir wanted numbers on how many children are born for the benefits, and it's not an easy statistic to collect. "Hello sir, can you complete a short telephone survey for me? Question 1, have you ever considered having an additional child for the benefits?" So yeah, there is going to be a lot of speculation rather than hard numbers. But I know people who have held off having children in order to better afford it (that's what Planned Parenthood is about: planning parenthood), so it seems to me the reverse is true, that there are people who would have more children if they had extra income.

[morriswalters]

Is there any reason to believe that the ten billion mark will occur without irreversible changes occurring?

Irreversible changes have *already* occurred, so what's your point?

Collapse of the world economy, permanent reduction in the standard of living.(the US is showing the strain now) Collapse of the world fisheries.(underway to at least some degree now, and consider how important they are to prevent hunger) War over scarce resources.(keep an eye on India and China or India and Pakistan) Failure to reach consensus on global warming or the inability to reach a consensus on how to deal with it.(thereby leading to the situation where we don't do anything until it is way to late) Failure to find more efficient technologies to replace nuclear reactors.(fusion is always forty years off) Depletion of aquifers in arid areas currently used for agriculture.(already problematic in the Midwest) I guess what I'm saying is we are fucked, well perhaps I should say the the current generation could be. Here's the deal from my point of view. Believing that future technologies will bail us out is a strategy that hasn't worked out so well, it only manages to push the problem forward, not solve it. These are not things that will happen only things that could happen. You are lucid and knowledgeable, look at the numbers in my previous post and tell me, are they wrong? And if not are there any implications? Do you think that China or India to name two will settle for a lower standard of living than we, in the US, have now?

[Goplat]

If you're speaking from personal experience, in that you truly think that life is a burden and the only reason not to end it is how it would make others feel, I strongly encourage you to seek help. I am not a doctor, but that sounds like you may have a serious condition.

I see you're trying to undermine my argument by painting me as some whiny emo kid who writes goth poetry on his LiveJournal about how life sucks because his girlfriend dumped him or his mom cancelled his WoW subscription or whatever. I will refrain from expressing indignation at this portrayal as such might, itself, be construed as whining. Instead I will point out that my post could not even in principle be based on personal experience (due to the lack of anything to compare it to). It is a generally accepted fact that humans living in modern society are less happy than humans living in more "natural" conditions, the latter often being described as the "original affluent society". While I am certainly no primitivist, I do recognize that population size entails a tradeoff between being able to make better use of resources and having fewer resources per person, and letting the population continue to increase is certainly going in the wrong direction away from the optimum.

Take a look at the article again. Birth rates have been dropping for a long time

Among middle-class educated white Europeans maybe. The overall growth rate of population is asymptotically equal to that of the fastest-growing demographic (all others eventually become insignificant). As long as there is any subset of humans with a positive growth rate, the long-term overall growth rate is positive.

[lutzj]

The overall growth rate of population is asymptotically equal to that of the fastest-growing demographic (all others eventually become insignificant). As long as there is any subset of humans with a positive growth rate, the long-term overall growth rate is positive.

Except that population growth rates change over time with changes in technology, culture, education and available resources. You can't just look at 2012 fertility rates and extrapolate that the world will be populated by 100 billion Nigerians in a few centuries.

[thc]

Regarding the repugnant conclusion, it's easier to reject if you judge morality not by total utility, but by total external utility. That is, a person is 'good' if as a result of hes actions if the total of everyone else's utility is greater than if se didn't exist, rather than if total utility is maximized. So if adding the extra person to the world makes everyone else's utility go down slightly, even if hes utility gain is greater, said person should not exist.

I don't think this even avoids the repugnant conclusion. All you'd need to do is alter the parameters of mere addition at each step so that the total utility of the other N-1 people is increased rather than the total utility of all N people. You still could have a decreasing average utility at each step.

When you evaluate a person's worth, you're saying that his utility has a different value than everyone else's? To me, the question of "why" comes up again. It doesn't feel as intuitive as valuing utility as all the same.

[gmalivuk]

The overall growth rate of population is asymptotically equal to that of the fastest-growing demographic (all others eventually become insignificant). As long as there is any subset of humans with a positive growth rate, the long-term overall growth rate is positive.

Except that population growth rates change over time with changes in technology, culture, education and available resources. You can't just look at 2012 fertility rates and extrapolate that the world will be populated by 100 billion Nigerians in a few centuries.

People from Niger are Nigerien, incidentally, with Nigerians being from Nigeria (which has a much lower though still relatively high birth rate).

[lutzj]

People from Niger are Nigerien, incidentally, with Nigerians being from Nigeria (which has a much lower though still relatively high birth rate).

I picked Nigeria because I saw some article a year ago predicting that Nigeria's population would top out at around 400 million by 2050 or something else ridiculous. It has a rare combination of a high birthrate and a very large population to begin with.

[CorruptUser]

Regarding the repugnant conclusion, it's easier to reject if you judge morality not by total utility, but by total external utility. That is, a person is 'good' if as a result of hes actions if the total of everyone else's utility is greater than if se didn't exist, rather than if total utility is maximized. So if adding the extra person to the world makes everyone else's utility go down slightly, even if hes utility gain is greater, said person should not exist.

I don't think this even avoids the repugnant conclusion. All you'd need to do is alter the parameters of mere addition at each step so that the total utility of the other N-1 people is increased rather than the total utility of all N people. You still could have a decreasing average utility at each step.

When you evaluate a person's worth, you're saying that his utility has a different value than everyone else's? To me, the question of "why" comes up again. It doesn't feel as intuitive as valuing utility as all the same.

If the total utility of the N-1 people is increased, or even remains the same, there is no repugnant conclusion. The start is a world with a few really rich people. The result is a world with a few really rich people, a few rich, a few middle-class, a few lower-middle class, etc. The repugnant conclusion is a crowded hell-hole where everyone is barely surviving. The philosopher was arguing that it was better to have a few really well off people than many people in misery, but utility theory says otherwise. The addition of the parameter that the new people don't injure the old is that the happy people are no worse off by the addition of new people.

The repugnant conclusion relies on adding people that harm everyone else, but slightly less than they benefit from said harm. I contend that it is not morally right to injure someone else to help yourself, even if you gain more than the other person loses. In such a scenario, where I harm the rest of the world for my own gain, the rest of the world would be better off without me. Of course, when another man's bread is all that prevents me from starving...

It's an axiom of utility theory to assume that you can measure people's happiness or utility, and that the addition of X utility to one person is morally equivalent to the addition of X utility to another. It doesn't need to be proved, as an axiom, but it can be attacked.

[Adacore]

The population of the US is 313,382,000 and China is 1,347,350,000, which by my calculator means that China is about 4.3 times the size of the US. Total world consumption is listed as 20,261TWh. The US uses 4,369TWH's and China uses 3,457TWh, let us assume that China used power the way the US does. So multiply our consumption by 4.3 and we end up with China's consumption at our rate. 18786.7TWh. The sum of those two numbers is greater than sum total of power generation of the entire planet. My mind gets numb with the numbers. If you calculate the numbers for the average use of power by one person in the US multiplied by the expected population in the year 2050 which I will call 8 billion, I get 111531.6TWh's.

Your figures look about right, but I'm not sure it's as big a problem as you're making it out to be. Again using figures from Wikipedia, in the 15 years from 1983 to 2008 global electricity production more than doubled, from ~9000TWh to ~19000TWh. If that trend continues, electricity generation would be 38000TWh by 2023, 76000TWh by 2038 and 152000TWh by 2053, significantly outpacing your expected 111500TWh power requirement, even if we have uniform global consumption at current US levels.

I suppose it should be added, though, that the one thing that will be needed to de-carbonise the economy, if we want to do that, is a huge amount of new electricity generation capacity. A lot of the things that currently rely on fossil fuels (transportation and heating, especially) will have to move over to electric power, which will, according to a research project I participated in last year, require an electricity supply around 2.5 times the current western levels, thus your estimate for the required power for a world of US citizen equivalents should probably be about doubled. Economical fusion power would be an extremely useful thing to have to help achieve that...