Lowering the number of humans in a natural way is a good thing

I don't think that's strictly true, as emissions per capita have little correlation with raw population size.

Also, when the Eugenics Axe falls, it inevitably falls on the weakest and most vulnerable. Shrinking the population will reduce the number of homeless folks, not the number of super yacht owners.

we depend on a system that relies on constant grow

We target growth of GDP, limits on inflation, and a low single digit unemployment rate. All of that can be achieved regardless of gross population size.

Consequently, we've built an economy that focuses on gaming these three numbers without regard to life expectancy, mortality rate, education rate, per capita hours worked, or real economic value produced.

We're just as happy to AI generate movie hours as grow corn or build homes. We're just as happy to bomb a hospital as build an MRI machine.

That's the rub in our economic calculus. If we were just trying to maximize the growth rate of - say - watts of power to each household? Or vacation days allocated to each worker? Or healthy life years? We have a large frontier in front of us to grow into.

But we're not doing any of that.