Negative population growth is essential to save humanity.
But we need to fix capitalism if this has a chance of happening. Let me explain:
Corporations have stockholders who are owners, but do not materially participate in the company and they expect the corporation to make more money each quarter. They invested in that company wanting their money to grow and grow and grow and grow. That means they have to sell more and more and more and more widgets (whatever they sell). Perpetual growth is the point.
If the stock 'doesn't perform' and grow and grow and grow the stockholders will sell their stocks and leave the corporation under-capitalized and on it's way to going belly-up.
A small business with no stockholders like the two I own don't need to make more and more and more money. Oh it's nice if we do, but all we really need is to make enough to pay the employees and owners and keep up with inflation.
A corporation that does that will die. They need to sell more and more widgets and achieve perpetual growth.
One sure way to sell more widgets is to have more potential customers, and that means perpetual population growth. If the store sold widgets in the 1960s with 3B people they can sell a lot more today with almost 8B people. Since they sponsor the media they use the media as a manipulation tool.
Example:
Back in the 1960s there was a big Zero Population Growth movement. Back then there were fewer than 3.5 billion people on the planet. I had two children and got sterilized. ZPG found the doctor and did all the arrangements.
Corporations freaked out. What? People are not having more and more babies? We need more customers to sell more widgets.
So in the 1960s TV the comedies, dramas, advertisements, guests on talk shows and even movies had scores of women in the media telling their husbands and boyfriends "My biological clock is ticking" meaning we better have a baby or another baby before I hit menopause.
I was there, you literally heard this exact phrase 5 or quite a few more times per day. Then you heard women in the general population repeating it. So the salesman in your living room and movie theaters were encouraging women to have more babies and they responded in spades.
Now I think Capitalism is better than communism, history proved this, but I think it's major flaw is that it needs perpetual growth to keep the stockholders happy. I don't know how to fix that.
But I have an idea.
When a couple has children, do not give them a tax deduction. Let them have the first one with no tax increase. Then after the first one increase their taxes. With each additional increase double the tax per child.
I know this benefits the rich, but it's the best I can come up with. IMO it's better than forced sterilization after the first child.
This is just one idea, and I suppose it'll never be passed globally which is what is necessary. If you have a better one, let's have it.
Most, if not all of our environmental problems are due to the fact that there are just too many humans on the planet.
The other is corporate greed which gave us the disposable product model. Why only buy the product when you can buy the container too! When I was a kid we returned soda and other bottles that got sterilized and used again. Now we buy the soda, buy the plastic bottle and throw it away.
We bought ink pens that we filled with ink and kept the pen. Now we throw the pen away.
And so on.
If we can't figure out how to control the perpetual growth model of corporations, we don't have a chance in saving the earth.
Actually, we aren't saving the earth, it'll be here when we're gone, we're saving our own asses.
Bob
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