Not me, but I think that the fundamental argument is quality / quantity.

The quantity side aligns with capitalism and growth for the sake of growth. More consumers. More labor. Supporting the top-heavy aging populace (admittedly a problem) by whatever means necessary. Quantity is an argument favoring people not yet born, or favoring a pyramid scheme by which there needs to be an ever-expanding base of young, productive people to support the old. Nonexistent people’s “wants” should not be considered in any way. If they are not born, they can not suffer. We should not consider what hypothetical people might have wanted. The elderly need to be supported, but by some other means. We cannot continue growth forever simply to support all those who came before us.

The quality side is benefit for the existing populace. As a person who exists, it’s basically the only thing I care about. I prefer my quality of life over sacrifice for the potential existence of not-yet-existent lives. I think any sane person would want there to be more quality of life for themselves and other people living. Quantity of life directly impedes this goal.

The previous poster may not have stated the case as such, but I believe that it is self-evident.

everyone on the planet can fit in Manhattan if they just squeeze tightly

But god damned ask yourself what kind of world you want to live in, not min maxxing the number of people alive for some absolutely incomprehensible reason.

Totally with you on these points. Having lived in NYC it is my conception of ultra-urban hell. Sure, there are worse places. Cairo comes to mind. But this idea that we just have to warehouse people to keep them from having massive sprawling impact on the planet is absolutely the most wrong way to think about it, IMO. I hate when people argue that if we just tighten our belts and accept a lower standard of living, everyone can be accommodated with low environmental impact. I go the other way: if there were few enough people (and hoarding/profiteering was curtailed), beachfront and slopeside real estate would be cheap.

I’m not arguing against concentration of wealth and hoarding by the ultra-rich, which is obviously a problem, but I have said recently: everyone could live like a modern-day billionaire if there were fewer people.

Too often the argument pivots the other way and turns into: if we all eat plants, live in ultradense cities with dystopian warehousing of people, and nobody has a car, we could be in ecological harmony with 8B+ people. I don’t like that angle.

If “Westerners”, or “the global North”, or “developed countries” are consuming more than “our fair share” of resources while some significant fraction of the 8B+ humans are in poverty, that’s not ideal. On the other hand I want my standard of living to increase, not decrease, and I find making concessions a hard sell.

We could easily support our current population and quite a bit more if we actually respected and shared our resources responsibly.

I think this is a monumentally bad argument. Statistically, you are typing this from a computer or smartphone, with internet access, and are probably part of the segment of humanity that consumes the most resources (as am I). You are saying that if we want to have 15, 20, 30 billion people, we can all just live like the most impoverished people in the world and it will be fine.

It’s a quality vs. quantity problem. Maximizing human numbers means we must have very low per-person consumption to minimize impact. Maximizing quality of life means we can all eat/travel/live/consume how we want and the environmental impact will still be low (but with fewer people). I think that’s far more desirable.

EDIT: to distill down the argument further - you support voluntarily decreasing your standard of living, so that we can grow the population more, for the benefit of… ? Creating lives that have not yet been born and can’t care?

Whatever you want, I personally do not want a decrease in my standard of living, and especially not to feed the capitalist machine that requires growth at all costs. I presume, if faced with a real and present choice of the same kind, most people would choose to uphold their standard of living instead of sacrificing, only so that more billions of people can be born. When is it enough? Do we really NEED 8B+ people? I wouldn’t mind living in a world of <1B people where everyone has luxury and plenty without destroying the planet in the process. We can’t get there, but the principle still holds. Put resources into solving the problem of elder care, and just let the population decline naturally.

Yes, but what about Bubb Rubb?

This is the insanity of people who advocate for densified housing, IMO. I loathe apartments and attached dwellings. It’s like a dystopian future where you can’t own anything or have private space. If I never have to share a wall or floor with someone again, it will be too soon.