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Do we need to create increasingly more children for a stable economy?

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.

mr_satan ,
@mr_satan@monyet.cc avatar

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.

theneverfox ,

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”

boywar3 ,

Is your friend a Cold-War era Romanian dictator?

LoveSausage , (edited )

Not that I am a huge fan of him in general but you should watch this. Also there is no debt that’s not imaginary. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTznEIZRkLg&t=28 It is not strange that relatively rich people have fewer child than poor people. Rich people don’t need a buffer for kids dying and being providers at your old age. The answer to population growth is obvious and anyone arguin anything else is speaking in their own interest. Equality in lifestandard, money and life.

half_built_pyramids ,

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.

HurlingDurling ,
@HurlingDurling@lemmy.world avatar

This video would then be quite releveant

shadowfly ,
  1. So in the beginning there were people. And those people had problems (need for food, shelter,…).
  2. So to fix these problems more efficiently (but far from completely), people invented economies.
  3. But now these economies require infinite population growth (i doubt that’s actually true).
  4. Therefore people make more people to sustain the economy. These new people themselves have needs, which did not exist before.
  5. So these new people now also need to make even more people to sustain the economy.
  6. 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.

teawrecks ,

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.

Vaggumon ,
@Vaggumon@lemm.ee avatar

No.

Bongles ,

I’m not sure what we’re referring to when we say pay back the debts, but as far as a societal collapse due to constant population growth - is that not just the basis of nature? If resources become scarce, population will decline since you can’t provide for everyone’s needs at that point. If resources are plenty, population can grow. I don’t see how a decline in population leads to societal collapse. Some countries are facing declining populations now, for other reasons, and they’re not collapsing. It’s a potential problem that would need to be faced, but collapse seems extreme to me.

jonne ,

I guess the thinking is that in the past economic growth has been the way governments dealt with paying back debts (or making them look smaller as part of the GDP). Instead of raising taxes or issuing currency to pay back debt, you’d grow the tax base by growing the economy.

MMT is currently challenging this thinking obviously, and the answer to this (as with every other challenge we’re facing, like inequality, pollution, corruption, …) is taxing the rich, not somehow procreating more.

If managed well, a slowly shrinking population can be managed without too much issues and would allow us to live within our planetary means, which are the real contraints on the economy and our survival.

RBWells ,

No, you cannot keep the population infinitely growing just to maintain the pyramid the economy is built on. I think greed clouds our vision, it would and will be possible with automation and AI to have a rich and technologically evolving economy with fewer people, the problem is people seem to feel they need to exploit other people or it’s not a reasonable economy.

MajorHavoc ,

“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”.

Gradually_Adjusting ,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

Debt jubilees used to be a thing. I guess we kind of get a limited version of that with student loan forgiveness

Glide , (edited )

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?

shinigamiookamiryuu ,

To my current understanding (especially of whatever economy we speak of), that depends on if there’s hyperinflation (have less children?), hypershrinkflation or whatever it’s called (pump out those wee babs?), or hyperstagflation (akin to the first thing?). In a world where the ratio between people and money is equal to having less, I never understood why there is no “human standard/factor” in the “gold standard” sense, though then again these are the same people who insist on unchecked social incentive.

Zak , (edited )
@Zak@lemmy.world avatar

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.

teawrecks ,

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.

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