china had the one child policy for many years, it prevented starvation. who honestly thinks the earth can support 30 billion people without a serious decline in quality of life?

    • pedik [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      well how much consumption should an ideal human life have? assuming all resources are equally distributed among all 30 billion people there wouldn't be a lot to go around. i agree with you that humanity as it is now is overconsuming, but how much square feet should a single person have private to themselves? what kind of personal property should someone be allowed to own if there's 30 billion people compared to 8 billion. how much would the environment be harmed in the best case scenario feeding 30 billion people compared to 8 billion. i want to own a cell phone, i want to drink alcohol, i want to be able to take a shit on my own toilet. living in communal bunks is not something i can support.

        • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          it’s pretty privileged to be against population growth because too many people = not enough iphone

          I agree with the sentiment but it's not really offering an answer to the OP's concerns. Telling imperial core people who have lived their whole lives with cell phones that they have to give them up because it's privileged to keep them is not a convincing line. Expecting that they'll actually willingly accept their loss is idealistic.

          I think it would be better to explain to @pedik that most modern smartphones are built to be easy to break and hard to independently repair, because then people having to keep buying new ones. It's possible to build much hardier, more easliy-repaired-and-upgraded phones, which would expand access and lessen material demand, but that would eat too much into corporate profits.