Capitalism requires scarcity as its engine.
When scarcity is threatened, it is called the capitalist dirty word "commodity".
It means there is no more profit in that.

Even if that wasn't true, do you know how much energy it takes to turn energy into mass (unless I don't understand the tech and it works like a 3D printer or something). If a society has this much (free or at least affordable) energy, even without a replicator there is so much abundance.

Transportation of goods is mostly a capitalist issue. You don't need to cover a cucumber with plastic and ship it half way across the world, while selling the local ones to richer countries. The same goes for the vast majority of "goods". Remove all of that greedy, superfluous shit, and you're left with minimal shipping needs.

And bunch of other sacrifices. One of the points was also about everyone living in a city close by. The study is not applicable to real life, it's utopia scenario. One of the biggest problems isn't even resources, but co2 production.

Good riddance, those animals would only get in the way of any future, cyberpunk dystopia or venus cloud city dnb compilation thumbnail luxury space communism.

I won't live it, my kids will. Good luck kids!

One of the many reasons I didn't have kids.

I don't think really that a majority of the population is going to die. I do think significant numbers of deaths will happen around the equator at some point in the near future and spark a functionally unstoppable wave of immigration towards the earth's poles. This will result in its own strife but again will only cause a small percentage of more of the population to die.

Thing's will eventually stabilize as human civilization adapts and green energy and carbon capture take off. Most of the population will survive but almost everyone's QoL will be NOTABLY worse by various conventional metrics. Though likely better in specific ways due to certain medical and automation advancements.

Expect birthrates to continue to drop globally however and the earth's eco system will drastically change and become much less healthy. Most of existing humanity will cling to life though.

And what makes you think society is suddenly going to change (any moment now?) and your kids would have a better life, would just everyone keep having kids?🤔

I'm sure they define that in the study if you read it

The study does, in fact. Or actually, bare minimum living standards:

Quoting from the article:

"It is important to understand that the DLS represents a minimum floor for decent living. It does not represent a an aspirational standard and certainly does not represent a ceiling. However, it is also a level of welfare not currently achieved by the vast majority of people. A new paper by Hoffman et al finds that 96.5 percent of people in low- and middle-income countries are deprived of at least one DLS dimension."

I think Maslow's pyramid of needs would be a good starter. But let's be more concrete.

• House (60 m2, +20 m2 per extra person in household), with electrification, and which can withstand severe weather events (heatwaves, blizzards, heavy rain and wind, etc.).

• Clean air and environment without fine dust, microplastics, PFAS, asbestos, etc.

• Clean, potable and heatable water available anytime

• Healthy and clean food free from animal suffering made available for all

• Everyday and affordable clothes available for all

• Bodily integrity: only the person themselves can decide over their own body, with the exception of vaccination (because everyone ought to be vaccinated!)

• Labour rights, such as automatic unionisation, workplace democracy and self-governance, no vertical hierarchy (so no CEO, overreaching holdings, trusts, etc). And ideally, a wageless gift economy system based on needs. If not that, then this: any company lacking one of the above/being too big, may never get bailed out.

• Protection of personal property, with private property becoming communal property instead.

• Encouragement of meeting people at sport, hobbies, reading (helps finding friendship)

• Bicycle and public transit infrastructure being widely available.

• Free and high-quality public education available for all

• Same with healthcare. No artificial limit mandating that there be max x amount of doctors or teachers.

There is a source where the text was taken from at the bottom.

Someone else posted what it means. It means 10m² living space per person, 4 people share 20m² for bathroom and kitchen, you don't eat meat, you wash tops every ~3 days and bottoms every ~14 days(laundry is shared with ~20 people). Something like 4 people are expected to share a laptop with specs that were cutting edge 15 years ago(a "gaming pc" would only be able to be used for ~150 hours per year).

It is a MAJOR downgrade from how most people live, even those in poverty, and is just not appealing to all but the most minimalist of people. It's more akin to living in an RV or "van life"(except you're not supposed to have a car in this situation either - public transportation only).

Not when a fraction of it "needs" everything. But that's another problem ofc.

Yeah population growth really follows a sigmoid curve:

Did you know 90% of Earth’s topsoil is at risk of depletion by 2050? It might throw a wrench into this perfect utopia being planned here.

Why can’t we just have fewer people too?

Won't somebody think of the ECONOMY?

A lot of countries around the world are living a so called "underpopulation crisis" even though the population is still growing frighteningly fast. Population going down is only a problem for capitalism, and it's going to doom us all

Most of the world is far from replacement levels of population and the global trend is a decrease in fertility. Overall, we are at 2.4 kids per woman, the replacement level being estimated between 2.1 and 2.3 (depending how likely you think it is to die from wars). This data has been (mostly) decreasing since the 60s.

wouldn’t it be better to do it on our own terms rather than in a global catastrophe?

The catastrophy is inevitable, it's just a question of whether any humans will survive.

For example CO2 has a delayed effect of ~40years (if I remember correctly). The effects of global warming are very much obvious now, but the yearly output hasn't at any point dropped to those levels since.

The best way to control population growth is to actually give them a high standard of living and education. One of the most consistent trends in a developing nation is it's birth rate slowing down as people become more prosperous

Why can’t we just have fewer people too? Instead of finding ways to support 50 billion people

line must go up (/s)

I was going to say "No one is saying that", but there are many going down that road.

The preferable approach is degrowth. A lower birthrate leading to a smaller population with no deaths required, just vastly fewer births and lower consumption until human civilization can not only fit with our planetary boundaries, but restore a lot of wildlife and wildlands, then stabilize at a population and consumption that is healthy and comfortable.

The number of people basically advocating for this in the comments is honestly depressing

It's a minimum to bring the impoverished up to. The paper makes no suggestion that the rest are to be brought down to that standard except by changing production practices.

How do you need more than 90m² when living alone?? I live in a 60m² apartment and literally only use like 30-40m² and idk what I'd use the rest for.

Gonna quote the study again:

"It is important to understand that the DLS represents a minimum floor for decent living. It does not represent a an aspirational standard and certainly does not represent a ceiling. However, it is also a level of welfare not currently achieved by the vast majority of people. A new paper by Hoffman et al finds that 96.5 percent of people in low- and middle-income countries are deprived of at least one DLS dimension."

Firstly- Are you so selfish that you refuse to change anything about your lifestyle in order to provide people with an absolute minimum standard of life - a standard that you have identified as abhorently poor by your standards?

Secondly- Change on your part may not even be required. Tax on production (i.e. corporations) would cover the majority of it, and the rerouting of production from useless things like casinos and yachts would cover the rest.

Finally- additional taxes and such would not even be required for many changes, just spending more efficiently. As an example- Very rural places all over the world have train and bus service. It's a matter of choice that the US doesn't, not a matter of practicality. We spend all of our money on highways instead, which are far more expensive per person per mile. Investing in rail, like Europe and China have done, provides far more use for far more people.

could you link us the dls standards and the study itself?

You mad?

Yes, to support everyone on what our economy outputs today will involve the quality of life decreasing for a lot of people. And the economy will have to change, to build the things that people need but are currently unable to pay for. This is unsurprising.

Probably the living space is more to show this is feasible over it being the expected/desired solution. It would be very counterproductive to tear down good houses, but small apartments work well for "house single unhoused people".

Rural transport is a rounding error compared to the number of private cars that could be converted with minimal fuss in cities.

Why would an export economy be a bad model? They literally have a surplus; all you need to do to fix it is.... Make less?

numbers must go up

Those 8.5 billion are producing all of that 100%. If you had 4 billion, it would be 45%.

If we had less people companies would dump twice the amount of plastics in the ocean