We’re not gonna make it.
At least not in the timeframe that Pronatalists hope to reach focusing solely on their cause. The real threat, bar none, is climate change. How can you make a eugenicized utopia when everyone’s dead?
…Because the only people who care about overpopulation are the ones who have a financial incentive: wealthy capital owners who expect infinite growth and will stop at nothing to attain it, even if it risks accelerating the climate apocalypse.
We are already seeing the effects of climate change on population levels.
Are you sick of COVID? Well get ready, because climate change means more pandemics like it. Are you worried about bird flu? Do something about it. Put your trust fund and/or Thiel money towards climate restoration initiatives. But I know that’s a lot to ask. Your ilk have a penchant for investing money into things that HURT people, not help. It’s almost like you don’t care!
The best “pronatalist” policy is free health care, affordable housing, and a living wage.
When people are too poor to afford to have kids, they might choose not to. The poverty rate is out of control as wealth is being concentrated at the top. Pay for basic needs, and you’ll be investing in people’s capacity to have kids.
We can’t procreate if we’re all dead
Some of the tenets of “longtermism” seem a little conversely short-sighted when you consider that many of its goals depend on a future where we’re alive. Unless, of course, you’re trying to let nature take its course while you stay in a billionaire bunker, coming out once it’s safe to repopulate the world with beautiful, smart Aryan babies. Because that’s what it looks like you’re doing.
Why aren’t there any grassroots movements surrounding maintaining a sustainable population level? It’s quite simple. Only the wealthy and economists care about population decline. But infinite growth is a myth.
Grassroots movements typically get built around real issues that affect people’s actual lives in the here-and-now – things that affect people’s ability to live happy, fulfilling lives, like having a living wage and some discretionary income to do things they enjoy. The people who care about the so-called depopulation crisis have never experienced food insecurity. They have never been evicted. They have never had to pick some bills over others because they can’t afford them all. They look down at the population of the world from a high tower, built off the labor of others, and see nothing but numbers and dollar signs. And they’re just as willing to abandon you to die when the going gets tough.
