Re: The Poor Masses

Robin Hanson (hanson@hss.caltech.edu)
Sun, 29 Sep 96 12:31:09 PDT

Hara Ra writes:
>Back to basics, folks. Every country which has a good standard of
>living, where survival in one's old age is not dependent on the number
>of one's offspring, has had a slowing of population growth. In the
>USA, we would see a population decrease if there were no immigration.
>If the Extropian vision is a positive one, the goal will be increased
>quality of life for one's children, which will always be costly, and
>increasingly so.

This recent trend is nice, and gives us more breathing space, but I
don't think we should pin too many hopes on it. There are
subpopulations of rich countries with large birth rates, and over the
long term they should come to dominate. You might pin more hopes on
the idea the soon our economic growth rate may exceed any feasible
population growth rate, given the familiar technology of having
babies. But with uploads, this limit should go away.

Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/