Not necessarily these specific people, but in the country as a whole. That's the ONLY reason any government implements coercive population control measures. If the population is growing fast while being self-sufficient and productive, it's beneficial to a totalitarian government to keep it growing -- more economic power, more bodies to staff the military and police. In Soviet-era Romania, when people stopped reproducing because they were so miserable, the communist government implemented coercive population *increase* measures -- people were thrown out of their homes and lost their jobs if they didn't produce babies. Women were forced to undergo gynecological exams to see if there was some reason they weren't getting pregnant -- if they were discovered to have been using contraceptives, the home and job were history. If they were found to have blocked tubes or some such treatable fertility problem, they were forced to undergo treatment for it whether they wanted to or not.
My point was that it's important to promote a culture in which people don't think it's okay to just keep popping out babies, regardless of ability to support them, because this inevitably leads to political support for coercive government population control programs. Those programs are then administered by the government on its own terms, and even people who are able to support more children end up being subjected to the population control measures.
Your premise is flatly wrong. Among other things, governments implement coercive population control measures to cut down on populations they consider "undesirable," precisely as Ruth Bader Ginsburg admitted and Margaret Sanger promoted.
It's a sanitized, publicly acceptable form of genocide.
Not so. First of all, each family is in the best position to decide whether it has enough food for enough children. If each family has the freedom and the means to make that determination, then all of them will have the means to choose their family size, and the means to support their kids.
Secondly, governments have other reasons for coercively limiting childbearing: the usual reason is not hunger, but the numerical limitation of a socially or politically disfavored subgroup.
If the population is growing fast while being self-sufficient and productive, it's beneficial to a totalitarian government to keep it growing -- more economic power, more bodies to staff the military and police. In Soviet-era Romania, when people stopped reproducing because they were so miserable, the communist government implemented coercive population *increase* measures...
Thanks, you just made another good point for my argument: government do not have to coerce miserable, starving people into limiting their childbearing.
" -- people were thrown out of their homes and lost their jobs if they didn't produce babies. Women were forced to undergo gynecological exams to see if there was some reason they weren't getting pregnant -- if they were discovered to have been using contraceptives, the home and job were history. If they were found to have blocked tubes or some such treatable fertility problem, they were forced to undergo treatment for it whether they wanted to or not. "
More evils of coercive government family planning. No argument from me there.
"My point was that it's important to promote a culture in which people don't think it's okay to just keep popping out babies, regardless of ability to support them."
This is a rather stupid sereotype. If people have the liberty to self-manage both their productive and their reproductive activities, self-interest will strongly incline them to have the number of children they desire and can care for.
This is a strong point in favor of liberty, not government coercion, whether pro-natalist or anti-natalist.