All together now …
Ev’ry sperm is sacred
Ev’ry sperm divine
Ideal from the perspective of the body of the community as a whole. I think.
Of course any breakthrough occurs (if ever) when it occurs, and its availability and affordability to whom would undoubtably be another opportunity for societal inequities.
But imagining it occurring in such a way that it was affordable and accessible to all for this discussion. Fewer are needed to replace if fewer are leaving for at least several additional decades, but the ratio of working to retired is best maintained.
Any novel treatment for anything is expensive & exclusive… at first.
Longevity enhancement has been covered here before. In anything resembling a democracy the demand to democratize such a revolutionary product will quickly result in its being available to all but the bottom of the underclass. There will, inevitably be a phase-in, but it’ll be shirt in any coutry resembling a true modern democracy.
Present company excepted of course. The USA’s main exceptionalism is backwards-facing.
Separate to the above. …
There will naturally be a sort of phase-in of longevity treatment for reasons of supply, demand, cost, and age at first use. Such that the full effect may well take 50-75 years to manifest.
I’m in agreement with you. The planet itself would be in far better shape with either fewer people or complete extinction. We have certainly done our world fewer and fewer favors as time goes on.
The issue relevant to this thread is how such a development would impact fertility and what impact fertility rates would have in the context.
I can’t think of any favors humans have done the planet. Not one. You have any in mind?
Name a favor done by any other species.
We are wreckers; they are indifferent. What standard should both be held to?
Not necessarily the same standard either: to each according to need; from each according to ability.
“Humanity should go extinct” is a non-starter argument that does nothing but convince people environmentalists are dangerously irrational. Also, it’s literally genocidal.
There are few who believe that the planet is a sentient entities that cares. It was here without life on it and wasn’t lonely. It needs no favors from us.
Caring for the planet is informed self interest. Our poor stewardship can fairly easily destroy modern human civilization. It has much less likelihood of being a human extinction event, even if the carrying capacity for humans is much less and in a subsistence lifestyle after (I’d expect the raccoons to rise next). Destroying all like on earth? Nah. A bottleneck event that takes a few hundreds of thousands of years to diversify from? Even if that the earth and life on it is still here, just humans and advanced technology an evolutionary dead end.
Earth don’t care. And I don’t care on its behalf.
A diverse healthy ecology is more likely to be a planet our descendants can enjoy. I care about that.
Stranger
Yeah; we aren’t “destroying the world”, we couldn’t do so if we tried. We’re doing damage to the ecology yes, and likely dooming our civilization to collapse; but that’s not destroying the world. Humanity simply doesn’t have the power to destroy the biosphere, or probably even itself. We are at most a blip in its history, one of many.
As for the question "what favors have we done the planet’; well, what could we do for the planet? Outside of diverting an asteroid which we probably couldn’t quite pull off, I can’t think of anything.
Mercy, mercy me who cares about ecology?
I was/am a fan of a lot of Carlin’s stuff yet do not recall this skit of his. If I’d just read the words I’d think Dennis Miller.
The third planet (and maybe the fourth) will be here in at least five billion years, till the Sun becomes a bloated Red Giant and astro-whatevers are not sure if it will encompass the third planet yet Venus is toast (if it wasn’t already).
I once liked Sam Kinison. This argument/skit once made good sense to me:
But I’m not trying to make fun of world hunger as a matter of fact, I think I have the answer because I spend lot of time working it out. If you want to stop world hunger? Stop sending them food.
Don’t send these people another bite folks.
You want to send them something, you want to help, send them U-Hauls. Send them U-Hauls, some luggage and send them a guy out there he goes, ‘hey, you know, we’ve been driving out here every day with your food like the last 34 years. And we were driving on here a day across the desert, and it occurred to us they wouldn’t be world hunger if you people would live where the food is! You live in a desert, understand that?! You live in a fucking desert!! Nothing grows out of here! Nothing’s going to grow out of here!
There are too many people starving on this planet and I am not concerned with growing the USA’s or world population. Que sera, sera.
Earth will do just fine without people.
I’m not a mod or anything, and there’s lots of arguments to be had on ideal human population (or lack thereof), but it does get in the way of the OP’s explicit request for the thread. Maybe @Ulfreida could spin off one on her ideal human population and change to environmental impact? As well as the comparative ethics of it?
The planet is, and will remain, an oblate spheroid, no matter how many humans live upon its surface. There is very little that we can do to modify the planet’s shape.
Precisely.
I’ve often thought we’d all be better off of a few people who really live parenting had 6-8 kids, and most adults had none.
No shit? Canada has been intentionally making it easy for young adults to immigrate for as long as I’ve been paying attention. Getting young adult immigrants is a great deal for a country.
Definitely true. Getting a kid that some other country invested in all throughout childhood to come here and work, produce, consume, and pay taxes to America is a fantastic deal.
It’s also why sending foreign college students home once they have their degree is beyond stupid. We just invented all this effort in educating you! The hardest, most expensive years of your education! Why the fuck would we want some other country to reap the reward?
We should give them a green card, if not citizenship, along with their diploma.
Agree with this sentiment in any sane country.
But in the USA that student (or their government) probably paid more in tuition than it cost to deliver their education. Only in the USA is college a for-profit program.
Leave the Earth a better place than when you were born. A fortune cookie pseudo-sampling of Siddhartha (Buddha). I doubt s/he would say, “Live where the food is” or reckon a gigantic whirlpool of plastic garbage in the oceans was not going to harm the planet.
Marvin Gaye was appealing to a slightly different god:
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows from the North and South and East
What about this overcrowded land? (Have mercy, Father, oh, have mercy, Father)
How much more abuse from man can she stand?
According to the teachings of latter-day Carlin, “Lots more!”