Like, where does this come from? Even people that aren’t particularly conservative seem to think that less people = good. Maybe the problem isn’t the amount of people but how their needs are met? Yes, the world is finite, but pretending that hunger, homelessness, wars and diseases are in anyway caused by the amount of people on Earth rather than how we deal with those things is as insane as denying climate change.
i think its directly related to their metaphysical worldview, they see things as immutable and completely separated so when the though of more people arises, they imagine exactly the same world but with more people so if we had 100 apples for 300 people, now we have 100 apples for 500 people so their logical conclusion is that its a worse situation.
its the same thing with how when a neolib investor or bank buys off a company and immediately start cutting down their workforce thinking they can produce the same output and they inevitably start doing worse output.
Their philosophical framework is the same.
A lot of the time—perhaps most—these people have no such intent, despite their words. They’re not dumb, they’re strip-miners & flippers.