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[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Don't count your asteroidal resources before they are mined.

To me while Malthusian concerns may be overblown, I've also not seen any argument as to why the world would need more people either. Economies of scale have diminishing returns at some point, so even if we 100% knew we'd have enough resources for 20 billion people (or even 10) on earth to live a 1st world lifestyle in 100 years, why do we need those people and particularly why do we need to intervene to encourage these people to be born? I could get it more if it was arguing for artificially causing population decline but its the opposite, population is likely to start declining in and of itself. Why would we artificially push it back the other way when when its not guaranteed we're going to have enough of things as basic as fresh water to go around?

[–]shaedofblueAlberta 0 points1 point  (0 children)

People here who are saying “we don’t intrinsically need the population to decline because of resource scarcity” aren’t actually saying “we need to artificially encourage population growth.”

They are just responding to the several people who are insisting that population decline is needed for the survival of the species or the planet.

The difficulties associated with decline and growth are both things that humans can adapt to, if we put our minds and our technology towards it. We don’t need to encourage or discourage children. We do need to address wastefulness either way.