[ExI] OP-ED: The billionaire space race reflects a colonial mindset that fails to imagine a different world

[William Flynn Wallace]

adrian wrote:
 The current trend would eventually see human population begin to shrink,
which I fear would have negative consequences for humanity.

Yeah? Just what?  I see a boon for the slowing and reversing of the loss of
habitat for those animals who share the planet with us.   Do we want
animals to exist only in zoos?  And the regrowth of forests and the Amazon
Basin, etc.  Not going to make it easy on supporting retired folks, I
reckon.  bill w

On Thu, Aug 26, 2021 at 10:13 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 26, 2021 at 7:53 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> It is worth thinking about: many hold to a model which (reasonably)
>> suggests that growth on this planet really isn’t forever.  At some point
>> population growth must slow and stop.  We currently quarrel over how that
>> happens and how many people will be here when it does, but even ExI people
>> need to think about it.
>>
>>
>>
>> I picture a kind of Jetsons world where there is enough of everything and
>> population growth is somehow solved.  Hope so.
>>
>
> It's been widely observed that population growth is naturally slowing as
> more people become part of industrialized society, and some places are well
> below the replacement rate already.  The current trend would eventually see
> human population begin to shrink, which I fear would have negative
> consequences for humanity.
>
> This is why some of the science fiction I have written envisions a day
> when human population growth is artificially maintained "for the good of
> society" (read:  for the benefit of those who already exist) such as via
> mass cloning and, more importantly, state-sponsored/natural-parent-less
> child raising (with an option for natural childbirth and traditional child
> raising for those who want to do so - just, it's something that only a
> small minority of people choose to do).  What happens when most people
> never had a mother or a father, other than whatever government paid for
> their creation?  This might be a self-reinforcing trend: once the first
> clones are old enough to vote, they would seem likely to vote for more
> cloning, and perhaps investment in improving the raising process.
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