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.
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.
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.