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Windchaseryesterday at 3:27 PM2 repliesview on HN

It makes sense to me. When women have more choices, they tend to put off having kids or they raise their standards - for their economic situation before kids, for partners, etc.

I think this is good; insofar as women have children, it should be because they want to, not because they're pushed into it.

I'll say - it also wouldn't kill us to have slightly fewer people on the planet. We're already taxing much of our systems/ecosystems past their breaking points. Smarter people than me, entire groups of scientists, are saying that what we're doing now is badly unsustainable and we're heading for trouble.


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clatesyesterday at 9:51 PM

> I'll say - it also wouldn't kill us to have slightly fewer people on the planet. We're already taxing much of our systems/ecosystems past their breaking points. Smarter people than me, entire groups of scientists, are saying that what we're doing now is badly unsustainable and we're heading for trouble.

If you believed this, would you be against sterilizing third world populations to limit the overall population growth ( given those are the populations which continue to grow in this environment ) ? If not sterilizing - what about propagandizing their younger population to not reproduce? Would that be a net-good?

If not, why not?

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bryanlarsenyesterday at 3:51 PM

Slightly fewer is good. A rate of around 1.8 kids per woman seems slow but it's an exponential so it's still quite significant.

Parts of the world have reached 1.0 kids per woman, which is a halving of the population per generation, which will put a massive strain on our resources

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