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I know some people here are concerned with national demographic shifts, but there's a larger and more esoteric question. Epistemic status: Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey.
If we assume that our current state of understanding the physical laws of the universe are mostly correct (especially with the feasibility of FTL space travel), it seems to me that in the medium to long term, Malthusian limits are a foregone conclusion.
At some point the lines of human population, possible food/power/water resources and our technological advancement will intersect. Could be ten billion, could be a hundred billion, could be much more, but without FTL travel, we get there someday. The obvious answer is to have less people, and there's any number of horrific ways to achieve that, and one painless one. Given our assumption, and further assuming that we want to do this the most moral way possible, zero population growth is the way to go. We don't have to kill anyone or stop fighting disease and starvation, we just have to limit everyone to two kids at a global scale. Failing FTL travel, there is a maximum number of humans that are physically, practically, and politically possible to keep alive, and we don't know what those numbers are until we hit them.
Now we're stacking assumptions, which is always a bad idea. If we accept these two basic propositions: No FTL leading to someone someday having to stop people from breeding too much. This brings us to the issue that the demographics of the world change over time, so when this event takes place will have a huge impact on what sort of humans are represented in this hypothetically fixed future population. There will be a lot more africans in ten years than there are now, and fewer europeans, but in a hundred years, or a thousand? Who knows? If the decision is outside the next few decades, it's very hard to say what the population trend lines will be. People tend to slow production as they develop economically, so the whole thing may be solved organically.
This brings us to the questions, if it happens and isn't solved organically: How long do we "hold the door" for more people at the cost of the resources available to each? Does the shifting demographic composition play any role in your decision? Should we aim for maximum diversity? Maximum resources per person? Maximum people?
Bonus question: Do you feel strongly enough about the moral correctness of your current socio-political unit to want the decision? Every day the resources get less and the people more. Someone will make the call at some point. If we defer, someone else makes it. We have our own concerns, but the Chinese have different ones, and the Russians still different ones to that. Or some future superpower nation (or group of nations) not yet in existence. Do we put the decision off as long as possible because people are getting better over time? Or do we act as soon as is possible because we think we're the best possible people to do the moral calculus? And can we trust anyone who thinks that?
The global total fertility rate was 2.4 in 2019, and has been falling since. The global replacement rate (ie. the number of babies needed to maintain the population as is - if the fertility rate is above that the population is destined to grow, if it's below it's destined to fall) was estimated as 2.3 at the same time, slightly higher than the usual 2.1 rate mentioned in these discussions since it accounts for increased baby mortality in Third World countries. As such, it's very possible that the global TFR is below replacement rate already - which would mean that we are destined to have a global population peak in the coming decades, unless the fertility rates reverse themselves.
It's fairly plausible that we'll solve aging in the next century. Statistically people will still eventually die of other causes, but if you assume an average lifespan 20x what it currently is (ballpark based on accidental death rate, probably conservative since this will likely decline), then holding TFR constant the population will nonetheless be 20x as large.
And probably lifetime TFR will be substantially higher if people have centuries in which to have children. Have a 30 year career, then spend 20 family-focused years raising two kids, then 'retire' for 20 years… then do it all over again! That's a TFR of ~22 if you repeat this over a 1600 year lifespan. And that assumes people don't decide to have larger families given artificial wombs, robot childcare, and lots more material wealth.
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