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[smjjames]

When the bacteria of a petri dish maximize their resource use they're riding high, being the best bacteria they can be, right before they all die.

I answered your metaphor with a metaphor with the intent to demonstrate that metaphor was not sufficient proof.  I could respond to this metaphor with yet another metaphor but that would be taxing.

I think single child policies are bad economics and bad economics do not promote environmentalism.

China did have to do it to keep their population from spiralling out of control, or something.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

My statement about "cancer" wasn't fully metaphorical, that's much how our current resource usage actually acts. This is the inevitable consequence of the growth model.

Softer policies would have been acceptable during softer times. We are on a time limit and we've squandered almost all of that time. A one-child policy, amongst other radical reductions, will be necessary at this point. Of course, we could just wait for storms and wars to overwhelm our population growth, but I rather think people would want to avoid that if they weren't irrational.

If not for the massive political alignment to use traditionalist and religious rhetoric to pass policies encouraging women to have children instead of taking the pill, we might not have had such a limited timeframe in the first place.

I recognize that all this is not good for the economy. The economic model as is currently supports environmental collapse, so obviously any protection of the environment will run afoul of the existing economic priorities.

[smjjames]

Except that the birth rate has ALREADY declined in most 'western' and other 'first world' countries without the need for a one-child policy. If the US didn't have the influx of immigration that we get, we'd be seeing the same low birth rate as well.

The places that would really need the policy are places with high birth rate, like, well, Africa, and some places in Asia.

Probably wouldn't go over well for the west to try to get African nations to impose a one-child policy.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Except that the birth rate has ALREADY declined in most 'western' and other 'first world' countries without the need for a one-child policy. If the US didn't have the influx of immigration that we get, we'd be seeing the same low birth rate as well.

Except that, as I always mention when this is inevitably brought up:

A. We're already in the red. There's no future red to avoid, that happened in the 70s.

B. Westerners consume massively more resources per capita, therefore our justifiable population must be massively lower. It's frankly racist to pawn off environmental responsibility on immigrants and brown people Over There, which is the underside of this argument.

[smjjames]

Except that the birth rate has ALREADY declined in most 'western' and other 'first world' countries without the need for a one-child policy. If the US didn't have the influx of immigration that we get, we'd be seeing the same low birth rate as well.

Except that, as I always mention when this is inevitably brought up:

A. We're already in the red. There's no future red to avoid, that happened in the 70s.

B. Westerners consume massively more resources per capita, therefore our justifiable population must be massively lower. It's frankly racist to pawn off environmental responsibility on immigrants and brown people Over There, which is the underside of this argument.

In the red for what? If you mean the demographic transition as baby boomers die off? That's just inevitable.

[mainiac]

China did have to do it to keep their population from spiralling out of control, or something.

China had to do it because of a bizarre juxtaposition of pseudo scientific ideology and a desire to position itself geopolitically by not needing to invest in a large generation to come.

Demographic decline is also something that's manageable if it happens in some places but would be disastrous if it happened everywhere.  For that I will again offer the case of Japan.  Japan went through a demographic induced period of horrible investment conditions at the same time that the world in general was experience decent growth (roughly 1990-2005).  While this wasn't ideal Japan was able to maintain a high standard of living and keep investing because they could keep interacting with the growing global economy.  The Great Recession had different causes but created economic conditions very similar to what Japan experienced but in all but one of the major world economies.  The effects of the Great Recession were much harder to cope with because there were no rich trading partners that weren't going through the same crisis.  If Europe or the US had been spared the Great Recession, they would have pulled their counterpart out by now due to trade.

We are on a time limit and we've squandered almost all of that time.

It's not a binary thing where you pollute a certain amount and it's a crisis.  We are going to suffer the effects of environmental degradation (including global warming).  It's a question of how much.  But it's also a question of how much improvement in human welfare we can produce through economic growth.  Among the ways we can improve human welfare through economic growth is funding efforts to improve environmental outcomes.

I think there is an argument for lower growth.  The American growth rate is just above replacement for instance.  But a one child policy, applied generally would most likely be an economic disaster.  That would create a massive disincentive to invest very similar to the Japanese lost decade (except globally).  This disincentive to invest would in turn hurt the rate of technological improvement and quite possibly lead to worse environmental outcomes then a higher growth rate.  It would very likely lead to worse human welfare.

[smjjames]

B. Westerners consume massively more resources per capita, therefore our justifiable population must be massively lower. It's frankly racist to pawn off environmental responsibility on immigrants and brown people Over There, which is the underside of this argument.

That's the point I was making when I said it wouldn't go over well if we tried to impose such a thing on places like Africa. China did it because they already had a huge population that they needed to get under control.

Anyways, it has been shown that improving the quality of life for poorer peoples DOES transition the society towards the lower birth rates we see in industrialized societies, so, the best answer seems to simply be 'help them get there.'

Also, the Chinese one-child policy has backfired on them because they now have a pretty big gender imbalance with more guys than girls due to selectively aborting (or choosing) female children over males. Without it, it would have been roughly balanced.

[mainiac]

If half the people in America spontaneously disappeared, the population of developing nations would be much worse off not much better off.  Economics is not a zero sum game.

[smjjames]

If half the people in America spontaneously disappeared, the population of developing nations would be much worse off not much better off.  Economics is not a zero sum game.

Huh? I never said or implied that. By 'help them get there.', I meant help the poorer nations improve their quality of life.

[Cheeetar]

I'm glad someone's finally standing up for the military. It's embarrassing how we've let it go.

Spoiler: yep (click to show/hide)

That chart needs to show the GDP because the GDP is different by country.

That chart does show the GDP (or rather, the % of GDP that the figure of military spending is, which is essentially the same.)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

In the red for what? If you mean the demographic transition as baby boomers die off? That's just inevitable.

Population.

We'd have already reached global starvation at around 3 billion if not for the windfall of the Haber process. Wanna gamble again?

It's not a binary thing where you pollute a certain amount and it's a crisis.  We are going to suffer the effects of environmental degradation (including global warming).  It's a question of how much.

Oh, believe me, I know. Considering people won't even accept the things that are happening now, shit's gonna be so lit. Literally, I mean. Lots of fire.

But it's also a question of how much improvement in human welfare we can produce through economic growth.  Among the ways we can improve human welfare through economic growth is funding efforts to improve environmental outcomes.

Except we don't do that. It isn't valued. How can it be? For as long as the externalities can be written off, they will be.

Look at what happened when cap & trade was passed for sulfates in coal exhaust. No more acid rain, in a staggeringly short period. But the political axis has solidified at bringing down the fist of the law like this on anything else. It's too inconvenient, or at least is said to be, for it to ever pass muster. The secret veto of Exxon-Mobil and Goldman Sachs is sure to win out every time until we overturn the whole fucking deal.

Maybe we could do without population reduction if externalities were literally always paid for from the economy instead of the environment. But the sheer whining force of the butthurt that would emanate from that would shake the planet apart, killing us all anyway.

I think there is an argument for lower growth.  The American growth rate is just above replacement for instance.  But a one child policy, applied generally would most likely be an economic disaster.  That would create a massive disincentive to invest very similar to the Japanese lost decade (except globally).  This disincentive to invest would in turn hurt the rate of technological improvement and quite possibly lead to worse environmental outcomes then a higher growth rate.  It would very likely lead to worse human welfare.

I can't say I really buy into this. Our technological investment does not have a lot of "torque" to it because the social acceptance of tech changes is very specific and low. We could have been weening off oil and coal for a long time now, but due to political and social power structures that turned into "we need to use our natural resources to beat China".

And it's times like that in which I smile at what is to come.

[smjjames]

Actually, I read somewhere that agriculturally, we can actually support a heck of a lot more people (though not a huge lot more), the problem is that it doesn't reach everybody equally, be it infrastructure, governance issues, and other things. But yeah, we're already straining Earths resources as it is currently, and the population is still slated to grow even further.

[mainiac]

If half the people in America spontaneously disappeared, the population of developing nations would be much worse off not much better off.  Economics is not a zero sum game.

Huh? I never said or implied that. By 'help them get there.', I meant help the poorer nations improve their quality of life.

Sorry, not directed at you.  It was meant to be a thought experiment to show that you cant just say "rich nations are to blame for the problem" and leave it at that.  The best outcome for the developing world is not us electing Jill Stein and crashing our own economies.  While we certainly should be doing a lot more environmentally (O'Malley 2024!), we should keep growing.

For as long as the externalities can be written off, they will be.

The net externalities of rich nations on poor nations is massively, massively positive.  It took 200 years for England to develop from pre-industrial to a standard of living similar to what China was at around the year 2000.  It took China 40 years.  Contact with a more advanced economy is an enormous massive boost.  The Bush years weren't great for America and were mediocre from Europe and Japan but they were an unprecedented era of prosperity for Africa and Latin America.

Development experts are hopeful that by 2050 widespread poverty as we know it will be gone.  Take a moment to realize how utterly wonderful that is.  For all of human history poverty of many people was a fact of life.  In our lifetimes it will be a rapidly disappearing aberration brought about by local circumstances and soon to be fixed permanently.

[Rolepgeek]

Consider that the US also spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, as a percentage of GDP.

More =/= better. Something can be horribly overbloated and inefficient and be rather poor compared to what it could be while still being quite expensive and fairly effective compared to everyone else.

Population crises from inability to feed everyone solve themselves, MSH. In a rather horrible manner, perhaps, but they do. And rich countries are unlikely to be the first ones starving.

Also, I'd prefer carbon tax to cap & trade but mebbe that's just me. And mainiac has a definite point; population reduction is an extremely effective way to slow or stop an economy. But it's short term versus long-term losses here, essentially. U.S. is under replacement rate already, however, and it seems really odd to say that the US needs to enact population control when our only real source of growth is immigration, and people are all for that. It literally ends up looking like 'replace the people who are here now with people who could be here later'. Which is...disturbing.

I figure that a natural decline in population will occur after a while and then we'll hit be stable. Similar scale to climate change, too; literally decades and centuries for it to happen.

@mainiac those development experts could be right, but 'widespread poverty will be gone' means something along the lines of 'no longer will entire countries be below the poverty line', it doesn't mean 'no one will ever be poor again!' Post-scarcity society is in the very long works, but it's gonna take a while, and the structures to make sure it works in a fashion we like (nobody starves), rather than one we dislike (almost everyone is irrelevant and ignored, because the few with the skills to be useful don't feel like letting have shit), aren't going to be all that easy.

[smjjames]

It'll be a few centuries before we reach a post-sarcity society. We'd have to get our butts off of Earth first and colonize the Moon/colonize Mars/mine the asteroid belt before that can happen.

Also, the climate change thing may take a few millenia to stabilize, not decades or centuries.

And yeah, the population growth is going to reach a point of equilibrium eventually, though technological advances could allow the population to grow even further. Case in point, the population on Earth was pretty much stable (or at least reached an equilibrium, if a slowly moving one) until industrialization, then BOOM.