[polarix]

I see the number of children a couple has as a vote on how many people should exist on earth. If you have 0 or 1 child as a couple, you are voting that there should be fewer people. If you have 2 children, you're voting that there should be about the same number of people. If you have more than 2 children as a couple, you're voting that there should be more people on earth.

With that context, I can clearly see why nobody in a city would want to have more than 2 children.

[pesfandiar]

You're grossly overestimating how much an average person cares about anything outside of their family. The decision to have one or more children depends on many other factors (parents' character, their economic status, social safety, ...) before it even gets to any idealistic activism.

[HumanDrivenDev]

So much this. Altruistic, considerate people who hem and haw over how their decisions effect others grossly over estimate other human beings. Take a walk along the side of a high speed road and look at all the garbage thrown there. People don't give a shit.

[greglindahl]

As someone with 0 children, I disagree with you. I'm voting that I personally don't want to raise children, and think that people who don't want to have children should not have them. My brother and sister like raising children, and have 3 each. Doesn't that affinity play a large role in people's choices?

[codingdave]

Are you under the impression that all families exactly hit their target number of children? Some people cannot have any children, but desperately want them. Some have one or two, but want more. Some people... well, not everything is planned. I know a woman who wanted one more child, and had triplets. And that isn't even getting into people who foster and adopt children.

In short, while I can see the logic in your stance... it has little bearing on the reality of creating a family.

[learc83]

Beyond that fact that the Earth's future population isn't the number one factor in the decision for most couples, 2 children is still below the replacement rate.

[robocat]

Strangely enough 2 is not the replacement rate. One birth per death is the replacement rate.

The world population can be increased by everyone having children earlier, or dieing later.

Puzzle: Every couple in Binary Town has twins (boy and girl) at age 32. Then half the population stops reproducing, but the other half change to reproducing at age 16. What happens to the population?

[crooked-v]

You're completely overlooking people who would want more children but don't feel they could afford them.

[Robotbeat]

...yup. This is probably most of my generation in their early to mid 20s, which is biologically the best time. Even if they can have one or two, they’re often busy with a degree or trying to eatablish themselves professionally. To get healthcare coverage (which is the responsible thing to do with children), you kind of have to be poor (to qualify for support) or be very successful.

[kaycebasques]

That seems implicitly related to reducing population. E.g. I’ve heard that hunter-gatherers adjusted their populations depending on whether there was lean or bountiful food. What you’re mentioning seems to be the modern equivalent of that.

[fjsolwmv]

The number of people who are poor enough to choose to have fewwer kids, yet rich enough to maintain effective birth control, is a narrow sliver.

[Robotbeat]

Disagree. There’s so many people who cannot have biological children (for many reasons), so practically speaking a large percentage of those who can should have at least 3 or the population will decline.

[squarefoot]

Many of us, including the planet under our feet, don't see it as a problem.

https://www.populationmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03...

I don't think there was anyone in the 1960s screaming "oh crap... there's only 3 billions of us around here!". We're so used to think the now and here as normal conditions that we lose focus on the global trend which is absolutely disastrous.

[danieltillett]

No it is natural selection in action. Those that have children are of the future, those that don't are of the past.

There is a huge shortage of smart people on the planet to solve the many problems that exist. The best way we know to create more smart people is to encourage smart people to have more children. Unfortunately we seem especially good as a society at identifying smart people and discouraging them from having children.

[smt88]

Children per couple goes down as quality of life goes up. All developed countries see birthrates decrease. No one is actively discouraging smart people from reproducing -- they're just better off and don't need children as a safety net for retirement, and they can access good birth control.

The idea that smart people are only produced by other smart people is nonsense. Genes regress to the mean, so most smart people won't have mostly smart children. And intelligence is significantly affected by nurture, not just nature.

And beyond all that, smart people aren't the end-all, be-all of humanity. They make useful things, but are of course capable of great evil (or mental illness or any other issue that limits their contribution to society).

[dabbledash]

I’m not sure that is the best way we know.

There are already many smart people who aren’t helping to solve those problems because they haven’t received the necessary education. I’d go so far as to say we’re probably missing out on the potential contributions of most smart people now.

What we need to do is figure out a way to radically increase access to education worldwide.

[wool_gather]

It's not very clear what the connection is between your two paragraphs. In fact, they seem contradictory; why does natural selection lead to fewer smart people having children?

[greglindahl]

You should check out the history of eugenics, it sounds like you'd be interested in those concepts. Do keep in mind that almost everyone is offended by them, however.

[handbanana]

Can you explain/expand on why you think it’s natural selection?

[Fnoord]

How about we educate those who are not smart to become smarter?

[Apocryphon]

You could also adopt one or more children. How does that affect this calculus?

[notadoc]

Interesting way to look at it, I have never met anyone with that particular way of thinking about children.

Most people I know made decisions about having children in terms of resources. Mainly, about available time and/or money.

[kaycebasques]

I don’t see these two ideas as at odds with each other. Maybe people aren’t explicitly calculating that they should reduce the population, but deciding not to have children because of lack of resources seems like a subconscious vote to reduce the population, in my view.

[kaycebasques]

A lot of responses disagreeing with this idea. I’ll lend some balance and mention that I’ve had the exact same reasoning in my own plans for the future. I won’t pretend to argue that I’m normal or abnormal, though. Haven’t done any research on the topic.

[greglindahl]

I can totally see that you are voting on that issue with your choice, however, does that mean that everyone else is doing the same?

[dsnuh]

How many votes have you cast?