General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How Low Can America's Birth Rate Go Before It's A Problem? [View all]gratuitous
(82,849 posts)In a perfect world, we could sustain 10 billion humans or more on the planet. But this isn't a perfect world. We've fucked things up badly, and while I don't think we've gotten to an extinction level with our poor choices, we've consigned several hundred million, if not a couple billion, people to a very tough life and early death. Humans all over the world have learned to mistrust each other when it comes to voluntary limits on our population. That leaves less friendly options - war, famine, disease - an open invitation to cut our numbers. We'd do the planet and ourselves an enormous favor by cutting our global population down to 4.5 or 5 billion, and learning more sustainable living practices.
But somewhere along the way, we all decided (or it was decided for us) that a certain small percentage of the population needed to be richer than the rest of the world put together, and in service of that tiny minority the rest of us can live lives that are unnecessarily nasty, brutish, and short.