Hacker News Reader

Comment by travisoneill1 | Hacker News Reader

The important part of economic growth is GDP/capita, not total GDP. And if we are to keep growing GDP/capita without destroying the environment, a population decline is absolutely necessary. Increasing population is only economically beneficial in the most short term sense.

View on HN

A population decline is certainly not necessary to continue growing GDP/capita. What kind of neo-Malthusian nonsense is that? The economy is operating nowhere near peak performance... at least 1/3 of GDP is lost annually due to private capture of economic rent.

I'm assuming you mean "population decline due to death of old age and more empowerment not to have children".

Even then, this would only work until the population has shrunk to a certain point. Then what?

Maybe a more useful way forward would be to question if we need perpetual growth at all.

That's the type the article is talking about. But it could also mean starvation, disease, war, or genocide. The mechanism doesn't change the math.

Indeed, and if it's necessary, then it's necessary, right?

I don’t think I 100% understand what you mean by population decline? Do you mean planned parenthood/contraception? In other words: what are some of the strategies you are in favor of to make this decline happen?

in the west, one strategy would be to do nothing and let the current trend run its course.

What current trends are you talking about here?

birthrates in the west are trending down. the US hit a new low recently of 1.8 births per woman, well below the replacement rate. the US currency has a slightly positive (0.5%) population growth, but this is only due to immigration. if we merely do nothing (and don't adjust immigration quotas), we will have negative population growth in the near future.

I think you have also to measure GDP ”distribution”, it will tell you something about equality and that will be/is a very important metric

Reply on news.ycombinator.com