Are more people always better?
People freak out when talking about population. Many seem unable to talk about deliberately choosing smaller populations from the litany of hating humanity, thinking humanity is like cancer or a virus, eugenics, Nazism, fascism, racism, or sexism. Did I forget any?
Steven Pinker wrote that people who talk about population control “repudiate technology and economic growth, and to revert to a simpler and more natural way of life” and are part of a “quasi-religious ideology … laced with misanthropy, including an indifference to starvation, an indulgence in ghoulish fantasies of a depopulated planet, and Nazi-like comparisons of human beings to vermin, pathogens, and cancer,” at least some of them.
Yet people and cultures have chosen population sizes since before written history. That a region can be overpopulated is obvious, as is the obvious fact that overpopulation can result in people suffering and dying. People have chosen how many children they want since before history.
Family sizes above the number to keep the population steady are rare in human existence and tend to happen when resources are abundant can easily be harnessed. Thus the expansion of unsustainable cultures into the Americas accompanied by harnessing fossil fuels led to the highest human population growth rates in the 250,000 to 300,000 years of human existence.
Are more people always better?
Let’s start with some obvious points.
Obviously more people aren’t always better. Cultures living sustainably in regions that can’t sustain more don’t want to grow and limit their population growth. Consider any culture that has survived for thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. We don’t want billions of people living on Hawaii.
You might propose that enough technology could enable more people to live in a place. Even someone like Julian Simon (who said that humans can keep growing for billions of years at a time the population was growing at 1.5 percent per year, implying we’d reach far more people than atoms in the universe) agrees growth can cause short-term problems. Even if you believe growth can solve all problems, if the time for solutions to kick in takes long enough, I’d think you could see that too-fast growth could result in people dying.
Questions for people who believe more people is always better
If more people is better:
What governments motivate faster population growth?
I’ve found the following government awards for women who have many babies:
Hitler and the Nazis awarded the Cross of Honour of the German Mother “from 1939 until 1945in three classes: bronze, silver, and gold, to Reichsdeutsche mothers … who conceived and raised at least four children in the role of a parent.”
Stalin awarded the Order of Maternal Glory: “a Soviet civilian award commemorating mothers with a substantial number of children, created on 8 July 1944 by Joseph Stalin and established with a decision of the Presidium of Supreme Soviet of the USSR.”
The USSR also awarded the Mother Heroine medal “used in the Soviet Union, awarded for bearing and raising a large family. The state’s intent was not only to honor such large families, but also to increase financial assistance for pregnant women, mothers of large families, and single mothers, and to promote an increased level of health in mother and child. The award was established in 1944 and continued to exist until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.”
“On 15 August 2022 Vladimir Putin signed a presidential decree which revived the honorary title in Russia.” Headlines announced: Russia is offering a hero’s medal and $16,000 to women who have 10 kids.
Approximately 430,000 women were awarded this title during its existence in the Soviet Union.
The Russian Federation created the Order of Parental Glory “to reward deserving parents of exceptionally large families. It can trace its origins to the Soviet Order ‘Mother Heroine’.”
Mussolini‘s Italian Fascist Mothers Medal “was established on March 3rd 1939, during the regime of Benito Mussolini and his ‘Economic Battles‘, this medal was used as a form of public recognition for mothers who bore 5 children, with a bow added to the ribbon for every child she had. Cast from aluminium and attached to a green and blue ribbon, this medal was made specifically for Mussolini’s ‘Battle for Births‘ campaign.”
In a break from imperialist fascists, authoritarians, and dictators, France created the Médaille de la Famille française, “a decoration awarded by the government of France to honour those who have successfully raised several children with dignity. The decoration was created by a decree of May 26, 1920, under the name Médaille d’honneur de la famille française, with the aim of honouring mothers of large families.”
I can’t cite a source, but I heard David Ben Gurion established a similar award in Israel, but I can’t find a source. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide if Israel is imperialist or not.
I haven’t found any other medals governments award for women having many children. Let me know if you find any. I know many governments give cash, tax breaks, health care, and other awards promoting women and parents having more children.
By contrast, it looks like all the medals governments award specifically to women besides the ones above recognize things like promoting democracy, culture, science, and technology. It looks like those who want to motivate women pumping out babies tend to be fascists and authoritarians (and French) and those who prefer them being productive citizens helping humanity include everyone else. Notably, even the fascist, authoritarian, and French nations stopped the awards as the nations returned to more democratic. Then Putin restored the fascist tradition.
Why do businesses “right size”?
If more people solve more problems, shouldn’t businesses hire as many people as possible? They don’t. McKinsey and other companies use the term right sizing to describe reducing staff to increase profitability and resilience.
How many people should live in Hawaii?
Picking one of many small islands or island chains, if more people is better, should billions or trillions of people live on the Hawaiian islands? If not, why not? Even if engineering made it possible, Hawaii would no longer be what we think of as Hawaii—a paradise on earth. We’ve already paved over much of it.
Manhattan and the New York City region before humans arrived was one of the most biodiverse regions in North America, according to the book Manhatta. Now we’ve paved it over. We can pave over the rest of Hawaii too and cover it with towers as high as engineering allows as far out into the ocean as we can, so nothing remains of trees growing from the earth, supporting birds, lizards, and so on. Does that change improve it? You might suggest we could leave some forest, but then we haven’t grown as many people as possible, so shouldn’t we pave over and build every square inch we can to support more people?
If you believe we should leave some nature, aren’t you saying more people isn’t always better?
Why do ghost towns exist?
My father took my sisters and me in a trip across America, visiting national parks and seeing the land. Along the way, we passed through some ghost towns. Why should ghost towns exist if more people is always better? If they had economic troubles, shouldn’t they have brought more people, not left fewer?
Why have cultures collapsed? Shouldn’t they have grown more people to save themselves?
Why not promote infinite immigration?
If more people is always better, shouldn’t we promote bringing as many people as possible into this country? One concern is maintaining our culture, but if more people is better, shouldn’t the new culture be better? Isn’t our culture held back from being better by having fewer people? Another concern is jobs, but shouldn’t more people create more jobs for everyone? Why go slow?
Many other questions
I can list other questions, but I hope it’s clear that putting yourself in the camp of promoting growth aligns you with some nasty people and that more people doesn’t just mean rainbows and unicorns.
Meanwhile, for most of human existence running back hundreds of thousands of years humans thrived with populations staying level. Can you imagine that our current population is using more resources than the earth can sustain in the long term but can temporarily sustain using fossil fuels and nuclear that are degrading the earth’s ability to sustain this number? Is it possible? If it were the case, what would the earth look like? Might it be covered in plastic, warming, have increasing amounts of carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, and other toxins in the food and our bloodstreams, decreasing biodiversity and biomass (besides humans and domesticated animals), and many other properties of today’s world?
Is it possible that some people talking about population love humanity, freedom, and democracy?
Is it possible we’re worth listening to?
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