The population isn't even shrinking, let alone shrinking rapidly.

Only because of immigration. But eventually you run out of people to import...

We live in a global society.

Maybe you do. Most of us live as humans do: in tribes, protective of our own space.

Well, it sounds you like you do have a problem, then.

The population is rapidly shrinking because our “elites” only sow the seeds of despair. They only act in their own best interests. The commons are gone and all we have left is the memory of it. Stability is not on the horizon.

Isn't that the main promise of AI and automation and whatnot?

No AI strips skills from people for easy and endless access for the rich.

We are promised flying cars since the 50s as well.

Smartphones and the Internet are at least as sci-fi as flying cars.

You can't make this statement in a vacuum.

You need to know what the current population is, what the carrying capacity is, etc etc.

Generic statements sound and feel good, but are completely useless.

Sure you can. A rapidly declining population is rapidly changing. Ergo it's not stable.

We can’t have billionaires with their own private space programs and 5 families with more wealth than 50% of America, and have a stable society.

This is just the natural and obvious outcome of what we’re already dealing with. The fertility crisis is just our refusal to deal appropriately with the ultra rich and the collapse of our institutions.

I continue to need someone to ELI5 precisely why we shouldn’t kill those 5 families and redistribute their shit.

Who's we? If we had a consensus that they shouldn't be allowed to have that stuff it would be easy enough to vote it away from them without killing anyone. Seeing as we don't have a consensus, "we" are going to face a lot of opposition to the killing, let alone the redistribution.

Wealth isn’t zero sum, someone could write some code that increases the global wealth by $1 trillion from nothing.

It is not zero sum but the number seems really low

Hench from HF?

Don't know what that means, sorry

Ahh sorry, someone with your same username used to post on Hockey's Future message board

Then we haven't had a stable population in several centuries, because it was rapidly growing.

Yet we have made (hopefully this is not contentious) great strides in technology, human rights, and general quality of life.

Certainly there were some stable societies in that timeframe?

"great strides in technology, human rights, and general quality of life." is growth, not stability.

Congratulations, you have taken the argument so far from the original point as to make it useless.