Elon Musk believes the collapsing birth rate is humanity's biggest danger. But antinatalists argue having kids is little more than a procreational Ponzi scheme, and the risks are real.
I disagree that it is immoral inherently to have kids. I think that people who have kids should be people who actually want to have kids. At this point lots of people who have kids do so for bad reasons. Someone got pregnant accidentally, family or peer pressure said to have kids, or they just think that is what life is supposed to be.
If you make a child they cannot consent to it. They are forced to live and can’t make choices until they become adults, meaning that their entire life it without consent, it is foisted on them. If it were basically anything else happening that would be immoral, but being alive enables all other choices, so you are also giving them all of the other options for choice they will ever have. They are also gaining the ability to end their own lives, so they really are free to opt out at some point.
I understand the antinatalist position, just as I understand the pronatalist position. I think both suck because they lack nuance and neither really avoids the cloud of eugenics and nationalism that surrounds the birth/population conversation.
I also think that the individualistic view that characterises the boomer culture is the context for people in my generation. We are made to be independent to a toxic degree and all social supports, formal and informal, have been removed. This makes parenting much harder and less likely.
If you start from reducing the demand for people to have kids and make a society which has a strong culture of making the world better for the next generations to come you will find that people who currently are dissuaded by economic issues will be more likely to have kids, raising the birth rate. After a few occilations around some specific population size we will balance out and end up fairly stable. Whether that number is above or below 9 billion is irrelevant, our planet can supply a population of 10 billion sustainably if we manage our farming and environmental practices well. Right now we have a top heavy population in many countries and as that rebalances there will be more space for people to have kids at which point they will. In my opinion.
I disagree that it is immoral inherently to have kids. I think that people who have kids should be people who actually want to have kids. At this point lots of people who have kids do so for bad reasons. Someone got pregnant accidentally, family or peer pressure said to have kids, or they just think that is what life is supposed to be.
If you make a child they cannot consent to it. They are forced to live and can’t make choices until they become adults, meaning that their entire life it without consent, it is foisted on them. If it were basically anything else happening that would be immoral, but being alive enables all other choices, so you are also giving them all of the other options for choice they will ever have. They are also gaining the ability to end their own lives, so they really are free to opt out at some point.
I understand the antinatalist position, just as I understand the pronatalist position. I think both suck because they lack nuance and neither really avoids the cloud of eugenics and nationalism that surrounds the birth/population conversation.
I also think that the individualistic view that characterises the boomer culture is the context for people in my generation. We are made to be independent to a toxic degree and all social supports, formal and informal, have been removed. This makes parenting much harder and less likely.
If you start from reducing the demand for people to have kids and make a society which has a strong culture of making the world better for the next generations to come you will find that people who currently are dissuaded by economic issues will be more likely to have kids, raising the birth rate. After a few occilations around some specific population size we will balance out and end up fairly stable. Whether that number is above or below 9 billion is irrelevant, our planet can supply a population of 10 billion sustainably if we manage our farming and environmental practices well. Right now we have a top heavy population in many countries and as that rebalances there will be more space for people to have kids at which point they will. In my opinion.