so I don't know a lot about this topic other than that some fascist freaks are concerned about "overpopulation" as an excuse to cull the people they perceive as inferior, while other fascist freaks support population growth to satisfy their breeding fetish and seed the planet with their "superior" genetics
my perception then, is that we should just be normal about population growth rates and it's probably chill either way, like stop being so weird about it
I don't believe the overpopulation myth because there's plenty of room if we build cities smarter, most scarcity is artificial and our impact on the climate has more to do with the capitalist mode of production than the number of people. underpopulation doesn't concern me either with 8 billion people on the planet, idk seems like a lot to me
but again I haven't actually researched this subject at all, are there any genuine / non-fascist concerns with regard to population growth or degrowth?
edit: guess I should add that population growth is bad in say, a settler-colonialist state and population decline is obviously bad if it's the result of genocide or oppression
[CW: racism]
People who are worried about people not having children and almost 100% doing so for racist reasons (not enough 'white' babies to outcompete the 'brown immagrants breeding like rabbits'). That, or they're the insane capitalist 'infinate growth' Musk types that are wanting more disposable workers. Usually it's both.
The "there's too many people" types are usually middle class. They see the damage that the rabid consumption has done to our planet, as well as our mental health, and have come to the incorrect conclusion that it's due to there being "too many people". Being middle class and fed a diet of neoliberal eugenic classism, the people that they think there are "too many" of tends to be uneducated lower class people who they deem as "idiots". They're usually the type to believe that idiocy and criminality is genetic and that those are the ones we should get rid of. The problem with this outlook is it assumes that our rate of consumption is largely due to our population size, which is incorrect. We consume far more than our population needs (and waste a large amount) due to capitalism's wasteful and inefficient management of resources. It also ignore the role material conditions have on people.
The real answer is that population growth is largely dependant on material conditions. Humans are social animals that are supposed to live in a community. Capitalism has destroyed this and atomised us. Now all we have are ourselves and direct family, meaning each of us is expected to have children. This is not how we do things when we live normally. In a normal human community we don't all have to have children. We help raise each other's children, we are one big family, "It takes a village" after all. Our rate of population growth becomes dependant on our environment and naturally slows when there are enough of us or increases if we are dying out.
If we were to manage our resources in an efficient, non-capitalist way, where everyone got what they needed and we built in a way that doesn't fuck our environment, and if we didn't expect everyone to have kids and instead raised children communally as one big family, we would be fine.
To answer your question: It's neither. It's only "bad" or "good" because of capitalisms wasteful nature and need to consume everything.
good points, that's totally in line with how I see it. like what you said about communally raising children, this nuclear family shit is pretty wack
Excellent effortpost.