I think if you go back 40 or 50 years, population was growing rapidly more or less everywhere, people did the math and realized that somewhere the 2000s (2020 or 2050, Which were the distant future to them) If current growth trends continued unabated we were going to have And absurd number of people on the planet, maybe 20 or 30 billion. Which obviously seemed entirely impossible.
There was also a much higher percentage of people who subscribe to the idea of Mathus, That population would always out strip food growth. This was discussed a lot when I was in school in the '80s and '90s.
Things changed. The Western world went through a number of very dramatic economic changes, cost of living exploded, and more and more people started choosing not to have kids for Largely economic but sometimes social reasons.
And our current economic system is based on some fantasy of continuous never-ending growth, which requires sort of continuous never-ending population increase to have more spending. So they see the reduction in population as an economic and social catastrophe.
Put on top of that conspiracy theories about the Great replacement theory of what not.
The narrative has indeed changed quite a lot, in part because the growth trajectories and predictions have changed. Instead of the population going out forever, we now see an asymptote and eventual reduction.
Yup. Malthus hypothesis is now 200 years old. It became popular again in the postwar boom up to the 1970s. But since then, population growth, that seemed inevitably exponential, has gone down almost every single year.
Hans Rosling studied this and contraception is a major player and the general trend is that as wealth and women's education goes up, birthrates go down. In countries with generous welfare or strong religious groups it then buoyed for a few decades, but the combination of traditional values with wealth seems especially problematic. In some ways, it can be described as the freedom to say no, but lacking the freedom to say yes (but not as traditionally correct).
However, there also seems to be a new trend the last 5-10 years hitting almost all richer societies equally.
You don't believe that there are many women/couples who are looking at the economics of having children and saying 'No'?
Economics most certainly plays a role. A significant role.
Doesn't have much to do with household economic status, that's just a very recent symptom. It's mostly about social security systems, education and standard of living.
People in poor countries usually have a lot of children. Countries with high education and social security systems tend to have the least children.
Basically, the more advanced a country with good social security the less people feel the need to reproduce
Children before urbanization were a source of free labor. By the time they were 8 they would be doing enough chores to offset most of their cost. By the time they were 11 they would be downright profitable. In a city they are an expense. Children going from a source of income to an expense is absolutely an economic factor.
Many causes! I think we're going to see a bit of a further non-trivial jump and the generation of people who are currently in their twenties, and a lot of cities at least, for reasons related to immediate economic challenges, but that might really be more of a blip than anything else. That I might be overstating that part of the problem.
Fully agreed. Stick prices.somehow.matter.mroe than real value, and our entire economy is now held hostage to this insane system which has been inflated for decades.
Sooner or later it has to collapse. You can't grow grow grow forever,.and people matter more than immense profits.
Think about it this way. If you were to start a small business would it be easier in a growing economy where new people are constantly entering the market or a shrinking one where the only place to get new customers is from larger more established businesses? The later is already a problem, and I can see it getting worse. Basically a dystopia run by a handful of ultra-mega-corps.
Shrinking population also means more old, conservative people living in the past vs fewer young people living in the present.
It’s not a sure-fire way to communist utopia at all.
That and anyone who needs their pension paid, and young people who have to take on the tax burden of supporting a top heavy population.
But overall it seems better than the alternative. You can say “oh we didn’t run out of food so Malthus was wrong” but we still live on a planet with finite resources.
Yup the earth and human societies have done very well with far fewer people for 20,000+ years.
Probably 1 billion is plenty of people. 8 billion seems a bit much.
Capitalism will have to adapt.
https://academic.oup.com/book/404/chapter-abstract/135207981?redirectedFrom=fulltext#
As someone who grew up struggling in an overpopulated country (India) I feel that the people who promote population growth are the ones who directly do not have to live like the median person in Bangladesh.
I also feel that having multiple kids is ultimate form of ego or projection of superiority by these folks.
The idea that people are having less children because they got poorer is ridiculous. There is 1:1 negative correlation between a woman’s income and number of times she becomes pregnant. What slowed down population growth was women being integrated to the workforce and being lifted out of abject poverty. Whether you look at it at the level of regions, countries, social groups or the individual, the higher a woman’s income the fewer children she has. This is utterly indisputable.
>>and more and more people started choosing not to have kids for Largely economic but sometimes social reasons.
Why does everyone keep repeating this demonstrably false bit?
There's is no scientific record of there being a correlation to having not enough money to not having kids. None.
More money always has, and always will, infer less children
I'm so tired of hearing this claim repeated on"scientific" subreddits and in the news when there's simply 0 scientific evidence in the entire historical record of humanity of it ever being true.
It's not more money, it's more educated. They made a mistake there. Our current educated make less money and are having fewer children, so it adds to the educated that make more money.
Your current educated make less money than WHO? The generation before them?
I don't know but that doesn't feel accurate (but will check)
My gut tells me that you're born into a better job market (we were 2008), with lower unemployment, higher average salaries.
I graduated into the dot com crash (2000s), then started getting better and the Great Recession hit. And cost of living was far above my Boomer parents.
My dad was able to save and pay for college with a part time job and then make 15 bucks an hour and buy a house and raise a family.
Mills and Zoomers have it worse than me. In the 2000s, I needed a roommate to rent on our entry jobs which paid 20 an hour at the time. And it's worse because there are far more applicants for any paying job.
Are you skipping inflation and cost of goods?
I make a lot now...because I have multiple jobs. Without, I'd be making less relatively than my dad's non collegiate job at the time at one.
No, because his was easier. He would.not want to.be working two and three jobs when he coasted through the day. Did you just...miss what happened from the 70s through the 90s with cost of things and why everyone from the 90s on had to be a couple with two jobs to have the same thing people.had in the 60s?
Out of curiosity, how old.are you? I'm 45.
Yes, you can very quickly google to find that the countries with the highest population growth correlate very closely with the countries with the highest levels of poverty. That's on a global level. It's slightly harder, but still doable, to show the same effect on a national level. The poorer sections of society very often have more children.
Yeah it turns out that when you have the option to do something other than be a parent (travel, have hobbies, etc) because you've got discretionary income in a nation that has stuff to do with your discretionary income, then some people are going to choose to not be parents.
I'd also point out that it's heavily correlated with "age of adulthood". If you're a man/woman at age 16 you're gonna have more kids than if you need to get a masters degree and establish your career to be an adult.
Lol right? It's always been the poorest that has the most children. I'm sure there's many graphs out there that shows the correlation. In modern times, I think this is probably due to people not willing to downgrade/change their lifestyle. They might think their lifestyle now is oh so poor, but don't forget all the immigrants that have come to this country with literally 0 in their pocket and a crew of children.
Also that's fair, but I'm not making a direct correlation exclusively between poverty and less children.
I said economic reasons. That's a bit different. See for people that are poor, they figure a way and they just do it.
People that are in the middle class, the more they get squeezed the less they want to have kids. No, I can't back that up with scientific research, I have no idea if anybody would even do such research. But people in the middle class are choosing certain quality of life metrics over having families and children. And anecdotal as it may be, the majority of younger people that I know are significantly less likely to have children. Of course most of the younger people that I know are also highly educated!
Stuff is complicated and has more than one reason.
People have done the research and there's no evidence that people having more money makes it more likely they'll have children.
None
Anywhere
Tax rebates don't work. Socialized childcare doesn't help.
It's been proven over and over and over
Well I have no desire to continue having an argument with somebody who repeats the same points and doesn't actually read anything anyone else says so, sure dude, demographic changes in the middle class, as well as the squeezing amount of financial freedom, has clearly had no impact whatsoever on family size are people's desire to have children.
So the reason people have less kids is related to how much money they have? So it’s largely “how much money” reason. Let me Google real quick the word for “money issues”
If you look at the countries with high population incline they are some of the poorest in the world. It is not simply the case that people are " too poor, overworked, scared about the future" There is clearly something else that happens to an afluent and educated population that turns people away from having kids.
Children are often an economic asset in poor/agrarian areas, but they are an economic liability in developed nations. As the cost of living rises, children become an ever greater liability. Raising children also represents an opportunity cost. The higher your earning potential, the greater the opportunity cost of raising children.
Sure, I was asking more about blue collar jobs.
I am pretty sure most "average" people where I live don't consider this, or don't put it high into calculations, because they don't have great aspirations to move and get much better jobs.
I am in rural part of among the least developed parts of EU..
I would actually say that's (not knowing vs knowing the opportunity costs) kind of the cause in a roundabout way. People used to have kids before they had lived as a adults for very long. 18-24 year olds are probably very unaware of the opportunity costs. At that age you still have all the doors open, usually a ton of optimism etc. You can go back to school, the raises and promotions will come etc... A 29 year old has probably been laid off or knows someone laid off for a reason out of their control. A 29 year old has probably seen, with a mature mind, the life changing (good AND bad) thing having a baby actually IS. Having kids is very primal and emotional, but an older person is likely interjecting more logic on their decision. They might still WANT the kids but they are thinking about the aforementioned lay offs, the housing Crisis, inflation, geopolitics. It's controversial to say but in some ways, the LOGICAL aspects of having a kid in a developed economy are low, when they aren't also your farm hands. In the current economy also, for many people I know, having just one kid is the line between poor and middle class (and being raised in the 90s middle class, for most people that's just not what they imagined adulthood would look like)
Posting from India where ***Population Growth*** has led to all kinds of social issues
- Too many people vying for limited resources.
- Too many people vying for few NEET/IIT seats
- Millions aspire even for a few thousand Agniveer role - the bottommost role in the militaries
- Housing shortage in urban India
- Traffic and pollution in urban metros
- etc etc etc
1.4 Billion+ people with an extremely high population density. I hope the narrative you are talking about doesn't come to India anytime soon!
You can have 1,4 billion people in your country and avoid these social iasues. You just have a lack of organisation, a difficult past as a colony of UK and corruption in your system.
Yes, India is quite disorganized for its size. Areas are too loosely connected to Federal state, which makes efficient management much harder. Too many cooks stirring the soup.
Still, India will make slow progress on this as more capital and production infrastructure moves in.
It won't make any progress if climate change hammers it into the dirt with droughts and famines.
Instead of utilizing resources to develop the country, leaders will squander them to merely keep the population water and fed so they avoid getting lynched.
All of these issues (except for the military) can be found almost everywhere, making overpopulation the biggest problem of all. Most other issues in economics, the environment, and society stem from overpopulation.
Imagine the housing, traffic, and resource problems with one or two billion people compared to nearly ten billion. Haha. Huge difference!
Overpopulation was hyped up in the 70s now if you look at birth rates you'll see they have been below replacement level since the 80s through out most of the western world.
Not just the Western world. Globally the birth rate is lowest in East Asia. It's more than just Japan and Korea. Comparatively poor countries like China and Thailand are below replacement rate.
Population growth is even stalling in Africa and India. It's a global phenomenon.
I like to play around with the idea that there is a meta-sociology at play here. We've reached a population bottle neck. Like a human brain, first there was an explosion in the number of neurons/people, next would be pruning/apoptosis while strengthening key neural networks necessary for growth and survival of the super-organism we are a part of
I think what we reached instead was a combo of a pyramid scheme like economic system demanding permanent growth and driven by greed and status while at the same time reducing and removing a lot of benefits from having multiple children while progressively burdening parents more and more for the children they have.
It used to be that a determinant factor of success was a large healthy family. Children would help around (often to their detriment at least in educational terms). This was replaced by status and money. Having children now mostly incurred costs and retirement options became diversified as opposed to having to rely on younger family members to care for you.
Having children went from being the goal to becoming an obstacle to financial success. Instead of sticking to small families, people opted for none at all, whether the decision was financial or not. And we went from the largest families in a period with modern medicine to no families at all instead of small families.
My generation, I believe, grew up hearing complaints about large poor families along the lines of "why have so many children you can't afford?" As an excuse to avoid providing government based social assistance.
I think so. It's clear we've got even bigger problems to contend with now. Overpopulation has been merely a problem of resource distribution for decades and it's clear that no nations have ever been invested in solving that. It's been left to charities and NGOs.
Fortunately, there is a bigger problem on the horizon than starving children.
The comfortable way of life which the first world, the western world has become accustomed to is now under the threat of climate change.
No worries though- everyone will ignore that as well, until it's far too late. Which is probably now, by the way.
Enjoy your week everyone.
The world could use a couple billion less people so I'm not worried about population going down. We've got a good long time before we are worrying about there not being enough people.
Yes, obviously it's going to create some issues for us moving forward as the aging population has challenges being taken care of. But robotics and management and better economic models will help as we move forward. But better overall that we have far fewer people in the world. Human beings are way too resource intensive.
Yes, Robots and AI will definitely come handy in elderly healthcare. It won't eliminate the need of healthcare workers but each nurse should be able to take care of at least 10-20 patients.
We will see a rise of elderly suicides to help their overwhelmed offspring. Sounds cynical, but i'm thinking of leaving the earth early enough to help my kid survive in the 2050s.
If automation takes up the slack of the declining human workforce (at an equal rate) then the work is still being done and therefore the money is still being made. Distribution of said money to pensioners will be the tricky part. Our current system is going to have to change in many ways to adapt to this. Especially currencies, as fewer people will be left to buy things but resources/products will be more abundant.
Yeah, that's what bothers me. Spending is, like, important :)
If there is fewer people and more goods and services, it does not compute.
It seems like deepest changes will have to be done, like abandoning growth economy.
"Human beings are way too resource intensive" You sound like a radical eugenicist. "better economic models" like what exactly? Socialism/Communism? Responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people? Maybe that's in line with your eugenics mindset.
US resident here. I live in a state that’s prolly gonna be unlivable here in about 10-15 years if not sooner. Food has gone up exponentially. Insurance is crushing. Child care is 1500 a month and that’s even with them closing during the summer and taking at least 2-3 days a month for bad weather days (and I have to scramble for care since wife and I both work). Salary not keeping up with expenses. These things already had us wondering whether we’d have another one. Then the Governor signed a 6 week abortion ban and we aren’t willing to risk all of the above in addition to maybe getting prosecuted after an OBGYN visit.
I feel you, sincere sympathy. I want to encourage you to try your best to have more, for yourself, not to save the great human race, but for you and for your existing kiddy. I've got 3 boys, praise Wakantanka ;), and it is such a blessing. The interactions between them and us are magic, money can't buy that kind of value.
Not American, but I think I follow what's going on. Very sad, richest country that ever was but having a nice family is not really an option for many. Who's better off in that regard, which is significant, between the US and the 3rd world where people might be poor but they still have capacity to have families.
It's absolutely changed.
Too much growth too fast was the fear in the 90s.
Now governments realize that they won't be able to maintain social programs with this decreasing population.
They will have to increase birth rates in the long term, use immigration as a bandaid, or drastically cut expenses.
The real problem IMO is distribution of wealth. There is enough to go around even with decreasing population. The rich buy the right laws and hire the right accountants and lawyers and get away with not paying their fair share.
I don't know enough about it to have a strong opinion.
I know there are certainly very many rich people who aren't paying any or enough real taxes... but it seems like many people want to tax based on total value of assets someone controls - not even net worth, just asset value.
I know it's *nowhere* near the level of wealth you're talking about, but I know a family who is technically worth ~5,000,000 because of their farm and poultry operations. They control a lot of assets, but they will never be anything approaching "wealthy" in real terms unless they sell everything. I sometimes wonder how much this applies to those who are a few times or even an order of magnitude mire wealthy. That's still not in the billionaire class that you're talking about, but it would include many farmers and small/mid size or regional businesses.
Don't get me wrong, anyone who has fucking yatch (let alone mega yatch) money needs to br but with just as heavy a tax burden as the rest of us.
Again, this is my ignorance showing here... but I often wonder if taxes could be more fairly applied if we taxed non business spending instead of income. Taxes start low or even at 0% for a Toyota Camry, but a Bently or Rolls Royce is taxed at 100%. A 3 bed 3 bath 1,500 sq foot house has 1% or less property tax... but a 10 bedroom mansion on the waterfront has 10% property tax. Your average bass fishing or pontoon boat pays low tax, but a mega yatch is high as hell.
Maybe that's just an idiots ramblings... but I think it would be a great way to equalize things and actually tax people for the real money they have access to and would bypass the whole "I don't have income I have loans against stock" bullshit.
I also know governments can and should radically cut spending without delivering fewer services. Goverment spending is insanely wasteful, and many things they spend that money on are only to enrich billionaires, like the forever war in the middle east.
Yeah, it is a bit complex, but there are more complex problems that have been solved. Rich people (and let's not forget corporations which are, crazy enough, also legally 'people') can afford very smart staff to do accounting tricks to minimize taxes. Not to mention lobbying for laws to make taxes as low as possible. This makes an honest discussion about fair taxes especially difficult.
>I know it's nowhere near the level of wealth you're talking about, but I know a family who is technically worth ~5,000,000 because of their farm and poultry operations. They control a lot of assets, but they will never be anything approaching "wealthy" in real terms unless they sell everything. I sometimes wonder how much this applies to those who are a few times or even an order of magnitude mire wealthy. That's still not in the billionaire class that you're talking about, but it would include many farmers and small/mid size or regional businesses
Agreed. I'm also just sort of spitballing, but how about setting a high lower limit? Anyone with assets of say 100 million surely are actually wealthy enough to use some of the proceeds to go towards the common good i.e. taxes? (Let's assume they are the same for the purposes of argument and there is a government that spends it wisely).
Playing devil's advocate, I think in this case, the strategy would be for the owners to not actually own the assets technically, but be the director of a non profit trust that owns it yet enjoys the benefits. Something like that. So there will be additional loopholes to block.
>I also know governments can and should radically cut spending without delivering fewer services. Goverment spending is insanely wasteful, and many things they spend that money on are only to enrich billionaires, like the forever war in the middle east.
Yeah, massive corruption to be sure. Having a good government and citizens actually getting bang for their taxes make people much happier to pay taxes and less inclined to try and dodge them. Having a massively corrupt government and knowing your taxes just go to feathering their nests make even good, generous people not think twice about dodging tax.
Good points.
I have to actively pull myself away from the "taxation is theft" mindset, mostly because I am paying over 50% of my income in one tax or another.
I know I'm in a unique situation compared to most, (self employed, high property tax, etc) and I can see the allure of thinking "make the rich pay!"... but I'm so disillusioned with the government that I genuinely believe all that will happen if we somehow manage to start taxing the donor class is prices will go up without pay going up for the average person. I think anyone who expects the government to lower taxes on the average person long term is too hopeful. We're tax cattle in their eyes.
I'd also like to point out that I rarely hear people who advocate for taxing the rich say "tax the rich instead of the poor". It's always spoken of as just "tax the rich" as if money being taken by the government is a default win for the people. I think the government views is as tax cattle, and the money they have coming in is used to pander for votes or enrich the donor class with contracts/favorable wars.
With the half of my income I am left with I am able to provide for an average life for my family... I don't see how I am getting an acceptable return for the other half.
I know we need things like the FDA, EPA, FBI, social security and a military... but even those are terribly inefficient with their funding.
50% in tax for the middle class is not necessary. It can be a lot less if the rich pay their fair share. The reason it is so high is because the middle and working classes are easy targets and the rich are difficult and lobby for favourable laws.
Let's take Rishi Sunak just because we've got a bit of data on him and we do some back-of-the-envelope. Do check my math.
[Him and his missus together are supposedly worth about 651 million](
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/rishi-sunak-net-worth-prime-minister-family-wealth-explained-1270305) (all figures in GBP). Let's say he is worth 100 mil.
[He declared income on 2.2 million](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68253857). He paid about 523k tax.
Making less than 10% in capital gains is very unlikely. So 10% of 100 mil is 10 mil thus 523k / 10 mil is only about **5%** tax. And I'm sure this is a very conservative calculation.
I'll call it a soft agree.
Taxing on net worth isn't always the best idea. I myself and many I know have a high net worth, but a low middle income... welcome to a farmers life. I realize you're not talking about a single digit millionaire (on paper only) farmer/small business owner. You're talking about truly wealthy people.
Though I'll note that I have little faith the donor class will be actually harmed by these laws. The middle class have *always* been the tax cattle.
You said anything below 10% returns is unlikely for capital gains. Don't they average at 8% in the stock market?
Sure, I understand your point. I'm not the expert, but let's get experts in the room and have a discussion. The thing is it is not being discussed because the (really) rich people own the discourse. Attempts at a conversation are vilified as class war, communist satanists who don't want to work and just leech off society, utopian dreamers, or pick one of any number of slurs.
One possible solution is pick a really high number to start off with. Start with a billion dollars. You want to tell me your assets are worth a billion dollars but you didn't see any income off that? But there are many other things that could and should also be done. Tax loopholes, tax havens, synchronization of tax laws, IRS funding.
Besides individuals, corporations probably run amok even more. How can it be fair that say an American company has intellectual property ownership in Panama or Caymans, makes all its profits in America, then pays royalties to the shell company in the offshore tax haven, and in effect makes no profit and pays no tax? It's such an obvious con. It happens everywhere, see Google in Ireland. Not only did they stiff the EU for the benefit of Ireland, which has low rates and it earned Ireland the chagrin of the rest of the EU, they then went ahead and stiffed Ireland itself. https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/google-used-double-irish-to-shift-75-4bn-in-profits-out-of-ireland-1.4540519
It's daylight robbery.
>You said anything below 10% returns is unlikely for capital gains. Don't they average at 8% in the stock market?
I promise you, ultra wealthy people just owning stuff and not even doing anything productive are worth much more than 10% year on year adjusting for inflation.
> Sure, I understand your point. I'm not the expert, but let's get experts in the room and have a discussion. The thing is it is not being discussed because the (really) rich people own the discourse.
I couldn't agree more. They do own the discourse, and that's my problem with most of the solutions I've seen, they seem like wound just be feel good solutions that continue the favors to the rich.
> You want to tell me your assets are worth a billion dollars but you didn't see any income off that?
Completely agreed. I'm an idiot, but I know there's got to be a way to close these loopholes... but I'm not sure bought politicians are willing to do this.
I'm certainly not here to defend the rich. I just get tired of seeing the rightful motivation to reform taxes of the average person being twisted.
It needs work, and you make great points.
Immigration won't work because the world seems to be lurching to the right again, slowly but surely. Seems to me social security nets will just be cut to the bone.
Population decline has a positive and a negative side. Depending on the perspective of the news source, you get a different view on it.
It's bad for the economy, as you have fewer people generating wealth by working, buying stuff and paying taxes. Companies need to function in declining markets.
But ecologically, this is good news, as you have fewer people polluting.
Yes.
When Gen X - Gen Z grew up, we were constantly fed messages of how we needed Zero Population Growth.
If we didn't attain this, we would have to enact "One child" policies like China, would be eating aspic and Dandelions for dinner cause there won't be enough food, would have to place housing in sites like Love Canal, would be backstabbing each other for limited jobs and college spots, and be in constant traffic jams and have to wait hours for busses.
So people listened.
Now suddenly we are the bad guys for not popping out babies.
I think there is no need for humans populate every corner of the earth.
It’s the best for everyone on (& especially for) the planet, that the human population declines.
Less chaos, more resources for everyone, more untouched nature, less pollution and waste.
Yes, the narrative has changed. It's part of how you know that the so-called "trending" or "scientific projection" of many of these loons is baseless alarmism.
You don't have to go back 40 or 50 years. Go back 5 to 15 years and you will hear this being discussed heavily including to the point of 'should we have "population control".' Heck there are a few more mainstream talking head types that can't run from their words on this. e.g. The Whale Wars tv show.
Here's a good tip when the alarmist start with hyperbolic projection. 1) Is this it supported by actual facts and trends, or are they hot button talking points? 2) Is the projection simple linear projection or is it a more nuance and thoughtful model.
It's pretty clear that the "scientific consensus" was actually just people looking at census numbers and population estimations and thinking that made a population model. Here's how we know: 1) In all developed nations for a myriad of reasons, birthrates plummet when a culture goes from agrarian to industrialized. 2) Birth rates since the Baby boom (aptly named) have plummeted for basically all countries involved in WW2. 3) Replacement rate is not a linear mode generation to generation, yet it was projected as such.
Most of the developed world is going to have issues,. The baby boom followed by 3 successive generations of falling birthrates or birthrates less than the replacement rate means that many industrialized nations have "inverted pyramid" labor forces. There literally will not be enough people to take care of everyone that is holding on. We're just at the tip of the iceberg here. China being a pretty strong example since they were also involved in WW2 and the subsequent baby boom, but have not only over predicted their population but are on the verge of a crisis as the effects of the 1 child policy are starting to come to fruition (oh no! the consequences of their actions!)
It's also why there's some conspiracy theory around Covid. I'm not one to attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but some have speculated that the pandemic could have been intentional. If you have "too many people" as the alarmist theorize, and they are "drains" on your economy, with their care costing more than your failing pyramid scheme social welfare system can provide. It is less costly to "thin the herd" those young and healthy we by and large able to shake off the virus much better than countries with elderly populations See country data in South American and Africa, and even among the elderly those with higher levels of care (like the wealthy and those in power) had higher survival rates as well.
Again, I'm not saying I believe it, but there are a lot of circumstantial pieces that seem plausible.
> Right or wrong, the latter is perhaps fuelled by concerns about immigration and something like 'the great replacement theory' and what not. **I don't want to debate the merits or not of those views**, I'm just making the point there are probably many causes for arguments pro or against population growth.
That's too bad, because the great replacement theory is blatantly racist. That pretty much rules out any reasonable discussion because racists, apart from being terrible humans, are also known to be dishonest liars. So any discussion with them is a waste of time because they won't engage in it in good faith.
That's not to say that some of the issues aren't real. But any discussion has to start with actively calling out those who want to use them to cause harm (like Elon, for example) so that you can engage in productive conversation with everyone else.
Yeah ok, happy to move on to that, my OP question was just to establish for myself that the narrative around population growth has indeed changed.
I hear what you're saying about where a narrative is coming from. This may be a bit of a tangent but it might be important. People have what Timothy Leary calls a *reality tunnel* and this is sort of what Locke calls 'Representational realism'. Plato's 'Cave' is relevant as well.
In simple words, we all believe our own views, even if they are bullshit according to others. Racists and everyone else can and do disingenuously lie, spin and omit facts but I think the basic thrust of our views we do actually believe. It's a kind of pattern recognition or Rorshach test on reality itself.
On the great replacement theory. I'm sure it's a continuum ranging from something like 'the Democrats want to replace all whites in the US because non-whites vote Democrat' to something much less malign.
On the worst end of the spectrum, I agree it's racist and hate filled. But if I may play devil's advocate for some of the aspects of less bad versions of it. I can understand the view that too much immigration too quickly is a problem. Cultures all value their own character and values, and generally people in any culture want to preserve it to some degree.
Elon is a complex figure. On a personal level I think he's a massive asshole, same as Steve Jobs was, for example, but as an engineer I have to give him massive kudos. In his own mind he certainly means to do well in the world, taking civilization forward. In terms of electrification of mobility I'm right behind him. On getting to Mars, yeah I can get behind that. On his concerns about population decline, I'm still considering it but I probably don't agree, though I find it reasonable that someone can come to that conclusion. I don't know if he believes that white people especially should breed more.
If the Japanese government want to encourage Japanese people to have more babies, for example, or the Italians or the Russians, it actually seems pretty reasonable to me.
"I don't agree with racists, but they have a lot of good points you know."
Behind all the flowery language that's what your posts boil down to. At which point, you gotta ask yourself, why you're referring to them in the third person?
Population growth is slowing down in some "developed" countries, but capitalism needs a continuous supply of fresh meat for the machine. I'm not against capitalism per se, but that's just the way it is. People like Elon know that.
Think of it this way: remember when one person could feed a family of 4, buy and own a house, a car and go on vacation once a year, all that with one job?
That happened when there were fewer people around and, very important, companies didn't outsource to other countries where labour is cheaper.
More people means everyone can be replaced easier and you can't do anything about it.
Overpopulation was considered a problem at one point due to food production. But we got better at squeezing FAR more out of our farms.
The problem the current crop of people are worried about boils down to issues with how economics work. And it’s a 2 part issue. Companies are driven by growth.
For the big conglomerates with 80 or 90% market ownership, growth requires more consumers to be born. Then you have governmental social programs for retirees. These are almost universally pyramid schemes which require more workers than retirees. With people living longer and having fewer kids, that nice pyramid shape goes away and it becomes a serious problem.
So if the population levels off or declines we have a decent chance of economic problems combined with social unrest.
It's not just social programs. Most economies are using credit in many forms to maintain existing systems. We are borrowing from the future and we have been doing it more and more to the point that now to stop we would need to significantly cut back on all of the luxuries we have. It would be nice to say let's all just do that and everything will be fine but reality is that if that happened there would be serious civil unrest and for sure some people would continue to live as they have and others would be destroyed.
It's just math.
If the average woman has one child, the population halves every generation. In 3 generations, the population decreases by 88%. In a few more generations, the species will become critically endangered.
If the average woman has 3 children, the population increases 50% every generation. In 3 generations the population increases by 338%. There may not be enough global resources to support this population, leading to mass famine and suffering.
Small changes in birthrate will have enormous effect on the population in a couple of generations. That's just math.
Globally birthrates have been steadily falling a little bit more than 1% per year for decades. At first that appeared to be great because it would prevent the explosion situation where there were more people than resources.
Then it kept falling.
In developed nations the birth rate is no longer enough to be sustainable. Birthrates in Korea have dipped to 0.72. Remember, a birthrate of 1.0 will result in a near 90% decrease in population in 3 generations. This is much worse than that.
This will be a catastrophe within a single generation. For Korea and Japan, the rates are so low that it's not a matter of economic burden but complete societal collapse if the birthrate isn't reversed.
It's not "narrative", it's statistics.
I suggest you read "The end of the world is just the beginning" by Peter Zeihan, where he argues that we are headed to de globalization, and some countries are actually having population collapse.
Population collapse is an issue as economies need two very important things: (1) workers to make products that (2) consumers will buy. Consumers are in their self workers. Workers also pay for retirement of the older population.
When you think of population as crops the concept can be explained easier. You can grow wheat in 6 months. To "grow" a worker/consumer, you need at least 18 years after birth. But you need the birth to have happened to begging with.
What we are seeing in "advanced" economies is a drop in birth rates below replacement levels, which means that less people are born than there is deaths. In the long run, what these societies will face is a lot of elder/retired people, and to little too few workers to support these groups.
You will find all these concepts expanded in Zeihan's book, plus a lot of other interesting information, including a hypothesis of why Russia invaded Ukraine taking the population collapse as the main argument.
I listen to Zeihan quite a bit. He's a great speaker, very entertaining, and very knowledgeable. However, I do find some of his conclusions and extrapolations a little bit out there, IMHO.
Here's what [he said in 2010](https://www.businessinsider.com/stratfor-predictions-for-the-next-decade-2010-1)
>Aside from the United States not going anywhere, I would say we expect the economic collapse of China in this coming decade.
and
>By the end of the decade, it'll be pretty obvious to everybody that the China miracle is over.
You can look at [a debate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plivyvhJ2WE) with him and Diamandis and [this guy's analysis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XupM5_zHDbM) of him if you're interested.
I'd argue that he is right. What we are seeing in China regarding the real state crisis, unemployment, major manufacturing wanting to move out from there. Maybe he missed the time line by a couple of years.
I'll give you that he did predict wrongly that the US is going nowhere. With chip manufacturing, and war in Ukraine demanding so much weapons, Natural Gas, and American oil, puts the US in a very good position. They just need to figure out their culture war happening inside that could destroy them.
Thanks for the recommendation, will check them out to broaden the angles on this subject.
So, I'm in Africa and I'm not a China fan as such. It's genocide in Tibet, Taiwan should decide for themselves if they want to be self-ruling, etc. However, I haven't even been there and I get my data from the internet, so who knows how accurate I can be.
To me it looks like China has risen spectacularly as an economic and world power and is continuing to do so. It's complex and I'm sure we can spend hours arguing about it, time will tell but essentially it looks to me like China's woes are given too much importance eg the housing bubble, and the demographics problems can be solved. The basics that they have got right is they dominate supply chains and they can actually make stuff very efficiently.
I think what Zeihan meant with 'US is going nowhere' is in the sense that the US is keeping its dominant position, so according to you he is correct :)
I don't hate the US, in this case I have actually been there and I really like American people and culture. However, US foreign policy history is actually shocking if you look at all their sponsored coups and military interventions. This is just to give you an idea of where I'm coming from so you can check for bias.
BTW basically no country's foreign policy is ever 'to be a good guy' in any way, it is always to screw other countries at the cost of one's own benefit.
My view is at the moment the US is a waning superpower. It is not going to happen overnight, she will remain a major world power, but the trajectory is down. I do hope the culture wars get sorted out and most important, the international interventionism stops. For their own people, their ruling elites are treating the public absolutely terribly, again this is pretty common the world over though.
PS interesting chan to watch that I find is down to earth, believable, relevant, and illustrates what China is doing right and what the US can do better https://www.youtube.com/@Inside_China_Business/videos
I think the narrative has changed because there’s a scientific consensus!! If you consider scholars instead of general thinkers like Elon, it’s a much much clearer picture. The world is already overpopulated by some metrics, but with moderate changes could house and feed many, many more people safely.
No, you can't. We are already ruining the planet. Mass extinction, degraded soils, climate catastrophy.
Moderate changes and feed many, many more people safely? Totally delusional.
How do you think the economy keeps expanding and putting money in rich people's pockets if there's no population growth? See the 10 20 million low wage workers/ consumers they just let flood into the country. It's not a conservative / liberal thing, it's a rich people thing
Overpopulation is objectively true. [70% of the Namibia makes <$10 a day](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-of-population-between-different-poverty-thresholds-stacke-bar?country=~NAM) adjusted for inflation and for differences in the cost of living between countries. yet even if EVERYONE ON EARTH lived in squalor like them, [we’d STILL be over consuming by nearly 37%](https://earth.org/what-is-earth-overshoot-day/). There is absolutely NO way to sustain this many people even if we all live in straw huts and eat dirt
Cool, was just wondering if I was imagining it. Next question though, do the population implosion worriers have it right? I don't think so, though I understand the view.
The solution is to revert entitlement spending to a fully funded model and that means increasing current tax rates for a few years.
That can't be terribly popular.
Yes, our understanding is always evolving.
That said there are two sides to that:
The first one is about the overall population, and that is more than expected (Dreaded even) to stagnate which will bring a few temporary (as in "a few generations") issues, in some places more than others. And no, we have plenty of space and plenty of resources, even with our current tech, we are very very wasteful. This remains true as long as we dont achieve immortality before the stars or endless free energy and a way to synthetize stuff with more impunity
BUT, that doesnt mean you can't have \*local\* overpopulation, suffering from displacement and scarcity. Whether that is temproary or not, it can definitely happen, it did, it does and it will, because the world is not lead by an hegemonic overlord that says "you go there and do that" (which is ok btw, we just need to learn to make better choices ourselves withotu giving away the choices themselves too much)
So, depending on your POV, technically both are true and worrying and neither is. Magnitude and context matters.
Fertility rates dropping massively.
Data being spread mainstream changed the narrative.
There are a lot of issues with this, namely the economic model has to change or anyone born in the 1980s and after will not get a pension.
Yes and no?
On a local level there's still huge anxiety and controversy over migration and putting too much pressure on infrastructure, housing etc. Most of the time I think it's not particularly accurate, but it is there. On a global level I think the seeping in of news around the fertility crisis and demographic time bomb has lessened some of the Malthusian fears of overpopulation as a cause of resource collapse.
That said I think there's still quite stark differences across demographics in their perspective on this based on education, political alignment etc. In left leaning and leftist circles people don't talk about overpopulation so much as unequal distribution of resources, and sometimes the overpopulation argument is seen as an almost fascist line of thinking to distract from that. However there are quite a lot of people I still hear talking about us being overpopulated and how that's the driver of climate change etc.
So I guess I would say it is shifting but that line of thinking is still quite prominent.
It is not that the narrative has changed, but that the facts that had been obvious to anyone paying attention have become obvious to enough people that grifters benefiting and profiting off of stirring up panic and fear are fading out.
The same thing applies to any and all fearmongering you read about in the newspaper: wars, pandemics, and climate change. No, we are not going to die, and no, we cannot change the nature of things by becoming obedient to fearmongers, nor will they save us. China and its "great leap forward" should be a dire warning.
Someone correct me if I'm mistaken, but I only ever see concerns of overpopulation brought up by sources not affiliated with any world government. No government wants to shrink their population because that would mean less workers, less wealth, increasingly aging generations, instability, vulnerability to outside factors etc.
China ended their 1 child policy in 2016. I wonder why. Current projections would halve their population by 2100 (1.4B > 700M) if they keep their current trajectory. China with a population of 700M would be a very different country than it is today and likely not for the better in terms of national interests.
It's a two-fold problem for the establishment that they don't want to outright say: more people are harder to control, and the entire financial system of the world depends on economic growth.
I don't think that anyone can objectively deny that there is a point at which the earth is overpopulated with humans. The question is as to whether we have reached that point already....
Reasons for believing that we have more room to grow....
Population growth has stalled and is projected to decline in wealthy countries (But we forget that this is a minority. E.g. The US has only 4.23% of the world's population
Economic system is built on increasing productivity and relies on new labor (Lot of truth to this....population decline might end up being temporarily disastrous.....but it is also possible that newer technologies (hate the word, but lets say AI) will make up for this decline
Reasons for believing that we have already reached the tipping point....
Mass extinction of species caused by humans
Global Warming
Our methods of feeding en-mass do not really align with our values (majority of humans). The mass deforestation required to grow human food or even worse what we are doing to animals to provide us with meat.
Millions of us live a rather dreary life....they are grossly unrepresented in reddit obviously
> So in theory, fewer people having to work is perfectly doable.
Rather than a shortage of workers, it is more about having insufficient workers willing to take lesser than the minimum pay.
Such employers wrongly believe that if there are more people thus supply will be greatly more than demand, they will work for peanuts.
But such will not happen since people cannot survive with lesser than minimum pay, and some may not even survive with the minimum pay since inflation is making the essentials more expensive.
Other than wanting lower paid workers, some industries such as baby diapers manufacturers obviously will go bankrupt instantly if nobody is born any more so these industries will shout as loud as possible that there are not enough people.
The beliefs by such industries are accurate though very selfish cause all those people born will suffer overpopulation.
Two opposing viewpoints:
Thomas Malthus: An essay on the principle of population vs.
Jay Leno: crunch away, we’ll make more :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0UsUsUu998
The statistical facts have just become too obvious. The biggest problem in this discussion is, that "being concerned about depopulation" has been highjacked by the Right so that now many left wing people deny the facts, so this demographic crisis we are heading into has become for the Left what climate change is for the Right - "Don't Look Up".
And of course the right uses it for its own agenda - forcing "traditional" gender roles upon the people, fear of being replaced by darker skinned people (although the decline in birthrates affects our whole species), etc.
This political divide makes it more and more difficult to solve problems...
I think that we need less population. Tried to make a post about that but it wasnt approved.
https://www.horizons-mag.ch/2023/03/02/do-we-have-to-put-a-stop-to-population-growth/
It could be argued (pretty easily imho) that we are already overpopulated from a pollution and biodiversity perspective if not resource scarcity. Would be curious to see the reading list of the people who never worried about it?
4% of global mammalian biomass (on land) is wild, 34% is human and 62% our livestock and pets. That seems problematic to me.
I think you're mistaken. And the 1970s and '80s this was a common motif. At the time population growth was exploding, and there was no sign of a slowdown.
There are several works of science fiction from that. That focus on overpopulation and its effects. Isaac asimov's classic caves of steel books are a good example.
Obviously these perspectives are changed over time.
The data actually did show in the 70s that birth rates were already declining and that population decline was on the horizon. But that story doesn’t sell as well.
The only thing in their defense is no one thought they’d continue to decline this fast.
Yeah no disagreement here. The narrative was certainly different, but that doesn't mean that the narrative was Right.
I also am not sure that the current rate of population decline and reducing birth rates is going to be a forever thing. We happen to live in a particular moment where cost of living has gone up way too fast, and for most people the choice to have children is detrimental to their lives. My kids are 10 and 14, but honestly I think if I was 28 or 30 right now and thinking about having kids, I would be a lot less inclined to do it. Cuz cost of living jumped a lot in those intervening 10 years....
I'm not sure I could Really make it work the way things are now...
> I also am not sure that the current rate of population decline and reducing birth rates is going to be a forever thing. We happen to live in a particular moment where cost of living has gone up way too fast.
It’s not a new phenomenon. The US has been below replacement level fertility rates for 52 years. Immigration is the only reason the population has grown. Half a century is more than a particular moment.
His point is that the overpopulation narrative is a farce. There will always be people who think the world is about to end.
The reality is we will find a way to live with more people. And if we run out of space we will find a way to deal with it. We do now.
We will build up, down, and out to space. We will find ways of making more food and getting more resources. We will use them more efficiently. Right now and into the foreseeable future we barely scratch the surface of the amount of resources and space available on planet earth.
Yeah I don't disagree, I think I read a little too much into the above post and kind of miss the end part.
I think there were people who seriously believe that narrative, but there's also always people out there ready to ring the alarm bells. Somebody is always sounding the Doom trumpet!
A very modern example being AI destroying the world taking over all of our jobs 3 years for now.
I find musk to be a bit alarmist on this issue.
you have to remember musk is most concerned about getting humans to space while we still have the technological know how to do so. historicially, civilization has majorly collapsed twice that I know of and I am sure there are other instances. but the ones that stick out in my mind are the bronze age collapse and then the collapse after fall of the roman empire. I suppose a third collapse could be in Muslim societies, and China has had several.
when I was in college the projections had us going to 12-15 billion i think. could be wrong.
now world population is heading to 9-10 billion but all that growth with be in africa, while population pretty much drops everywhere else. Africa is going to go from a billion to 3 billion people.
I don't know how to say this but from africa kind of does not even factor in for musk. he is looking at developed countries. he is worried about developed economies sputtering out leading to an economic decline which could lead to a loss of technical ability.
about declining birth rates. every one always talks the economics. but I feel they overlook the cultural reasons why birthrates are declining. People are not really rational consumers anymore. they are impulsive shoppers incapable of saving. increasingly there are more and more people that simply dont want kids. give them higher paying jobs and they will have even less kids.
economics and culture can change pretty fast.
Assuming economics have nothing to do with why people don't have kids is just stupid. Would you have kid while living with roommates? While struggling to make the rent on a one bedroom? If you knew paying for child care would leave you choosing between paying the bills and putting food on the table?
If you look at the price of a two bedroom apartment and child care in a major city, and compare that to median family income, it's clear why people aren't having kids. The numbers just don't add up.
Civilization has never collapsed all across the globe. The Bronze Age collapse was local and the “Dark Ages” didn’t even happen everywhere in the former Roman Empire.
i dont disagree, and perhaps "collapse" is too strong a word. A gradual decline in technological know-how could occur for any number of reasons whether its economic, war, climate, disease, etc
> about declining birth rates. ....etc
You make good points. I still think economics is a big part of it, but the other things you say are true. I don't want to assign blame to people as such though. "There is no bad student, only bad teacher." (Maybe not always true, but I'd say most of the time true). Ergo, society is mostly to blame. And in society, who exactly? I'd say rampant materialism, consumerism, capitalism. Unbridled. The profit motive. Get people hooked on ever shorter format media content. Relationships get less and less important rather than self gratification. Kids? Just more relationships that detract from the most important person, me.
*Edit
Re Musk. I admire some of his work at least, but he says some crazy ass things sometimes. That time he called people working from home immoral because not everyone can do it. WTF. So if you buy a car because you can, that's immoral because some others can't?
The projections always showed a peak and then a decline. Newspapers were more sensational.
Every country followed the same pattern:
1. High birth rate with high child mortality
2. Improved economy
3. High birth rate with low child mortality
4. Low birth rate
It was always known that during stage 3, population rises, but it's only temporary.
So projectections knew this.
Are you a billionaire who makes more based on the number of employees and consumers there are? Or, are you concerned about the environment and other living things on this planet. I think it’s perspective based.
This is dumb. Population collapse would lead to mass suffering. When social security started, there were 24 young for every 1 retired. Now we’re round 4 to one. We are approaching 1 to 1. The taxes you’d need to levy on the young to support the old are unsustainable. They will have even less kids and worsen the problem further. Conversely they could just let the elderly die in mass without support. But when most of the population is old they will have the political power, so the young will get screwed
True, if our workforce and economies continue without adapting to population growth changes. There are always big challenges like plagues, feeding everyone 70 years ago, and AI in the workforce that we have to adapt to. People are good at figuring things out.
Ah, so lets just wait, corporations will fugure it out. Are you sure ai will help you in hospital? Pay taxes for your returement, social services? No, this is more c9ncerning problrm that current hupe on climate change
Unchecked population growth is a catastrophe for our quality of life. It has already shown it's effects with all the restrictions that politicians are trying to enforce on the population with energy , water use, etc.. I say that the slowdown is very welcome news. As long as the young dont all stop reproducing we'll survive
Capitalists like a high birth rate, more consumers and workers.
Churches likes it, more believers and donors.
Military likes it, more soldiers to fight future wars.
People who believed in overpopulation have never looked at a birth rate chart in their life, and I was contrarian to the popular (stupid) belief that we were overpopulating years earlier before consensus (finally) changed. In india sure, there is a lot of population growth but in the western world there is just not evidence for it and there never was. The Population Bomb is the top 10 most misleading shit ever written and popularized. Some people think overpopulation exists due to them living in a big city. It is actually population density a lot of people think of when they claim overpopulation is an issue. Go to a rural area and tell me they are overpopulating.
I’ve not met anyone IRL that is worried about population going down. Most people I’ve spoken to think there are way too many people in the world (on a global scale) and are fine with it dropping, and I heard a few say that it’ll level out at the point that resources free up
There was a big movement called ZPG (Zero Population Growth) that started all the way back in the 1960s. It became big in the 70s and 80s. The movement had a reasonable message since the world certainly can't handle an infinite amount of people, and the population was growing exponentially. But a few things happened:
Ronald Reagan opened up US manufacturers to be able to have factories overseas, including China. China's middle class grew like crazy as a result and China implemented a 2 child policy, both of which resulted in China's population actually *shrinking* since 2022. (It is interesting that the US is beginning to regret its opening up manufacturing to China, and China now regrets its 2-child policy).
People started to realize that there was racism underneath the ZPG leadership. Their leadership was actually pushing for population control, and control always meant 'them' not 'us'. You don't hear much from ZPG anymore.
The narrative of "overpopulation" is really outdated. It was outdated shortly after it was proposed in 1798. Food production and other industrialization outran Malthusian predictions almost immediately thereafter.
The whole overpopulation worry is just another in a long list of simplistic ideas that sound right but are actually completely wrong. More humans is a good thing overall. The problems we face that are blamed on "overpopulation" (like endemic poverty, pollution, global warming, famine, etc.) are due to poor governance and bad policy (which are in turn driven by greed, tribalism, selfishness, and propaganda.)
On the other hand, it's not the end of civilization if population declines either. It's not the best, but it's really not going to break everything.
I am willing to listen and consider alternate opinions on this, but from what I've learned on this subject, these population concerns are breathlessly overblown and melodramatic.
Respectfully disagree. Population will probably peak in about 20-30 years. Number of people is obviously important, but how exactly people live is more important. If we all have 3 cars and eat a meat based diet using current farming techniques, it allows for a lot less people than living in a dense environment, using public transport, and if the food grown is for example vertical farms and precision fermentation protein or some similar tech.
If we do it right, we can have a lot of people with not too bad impact on the natural world, if we do it wrong, we can have a lot less people that still wreak havoc on the natural world.
Yes it does. Eben the antinatalist UN is reporting not ageing and population decline as problems. The tsunami is coming and we will not be able to do anything. The system will collapse in front of our eyes.
>The system will collapse in front of our eyes.
Out of chaos, order comes! But seriously, so it will cause problems. What doesn't? Why will it be unsolvable this time?
In nutshell - you can't do anything individually and even collectively as well for as personal thing as how many kids one will have.
You can only 'nudge'
But their will be someone else who will 'nudge' in opposite direction.
So some people will be nudged in one direction, rest in other direction (exactly on what proportion nobody knows)
Some will say - don't worry robots will fill up manpower gap.
Some will say - we require more consumers to run economy
So in the end, exactly what will happen and which state world will move is difficult to predict.
People often speculate about why people don’t have children, but it’s important to realize that’s not true. Even at below replacement rate levels, it remains true that the vast majority of people have at least one child, and that most people have at least two children. It’s just that we now have far fewer people who choose to have 3, 4, 5, or more children.
I don't really buy either scenario. Baby booms or busts are extremely lagged indicators of other issues that eventually are fixed by government initiatives or technology. People aren't having babies right now because we're in - and have been in - a cost-of-living crisis. Once that's fixed, people will have more faith in their ability to have children.
I also find it interesting that there lies this concern about the labor force shrinking as companies are investing heavily in AI. Like, fuckin quit it with the AI and cost-cutting via layoffs, then?
I remember reading about inevitable population decline 22 years ago in Pat Buchanan's book "Death of the West".
There was a bogus study in the 70s that somehow made it into all our sociL studies books and we bought into overpopulation completely.
there is a whole group of forecasters looking at lower overall population numbers primarily due to china demographics.
offset by the elevated birthrates of a particular group.
Overpopulation and underpopulation are popular topics to use as extreme right-wing dogwhistles.
Overpopulation is an eco-fascist line meant to indicate the "wrong" kind of people (BIPoC, non-Christian, queer) are breeding too prolifically, usually due to welfare or other entitlements the speaker believes those "wrong" people don't deserve.
Underpopulation is the inverse of this, in that the "right" kind of people (white, cisgender, heterosexual, Christian) are not breeding prolifically enough, in response to the advances in civil rights and material prosperity of the "wrong" kind of people.
I think if you go back 40 or 50 years, population was growing rapidly more or less everywhere, people did the math and realized that somewhere the 2000s (2020 or 2050, Which were the distant future to them) If current growth trends continued unabated we were going to have And absurd number of people on the planet, maybe 20 or 30 billion. Which obviously seemed entirely impossible. There was also a much higher percentage of people who subscribe to the idea of Mathus, That population would always out strip food growth. This was discussed a lot when I was in school in the '80s and '90s. Things changed. The Western world went through a number of very dramatic economic changes, cost of living exploded, and more and more people started choosing not to have kids for Largely economic but sometimes social reasons. And our current economic system is based on some fantasy of continuous never-ending growth, which requires sort of continuous never-ending population increase to have more spending. So they see the reduction in population as an economic and social catastrophe. Put on top of that conspiracy theories about the Great replacement theory of what not. The narrative has indeed changed quite a lot, in part because the growth trajectories and predictions have changed. Instead of the population going out forever, we now see an asymptote and eventual reduction.
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Yup. Malthus hypothesis is now 200 years old. It became popular again in the postwar boom up to the 1970s. But since then, population growth, that seemed inevitably exponential, has gone down almost every single year.
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Hans Rosling studied this and contraception is a major player and the general trend is that as wealth and women's education goes up, birthrates go down. In countries with generous welfare or strong religious groups it then buoyed for a few decades, but the combination of traditional values with wealth seems especially problematic. In some ways, it can be described as the freedom to say no, but lacking the freedom to say yes (but not as traditionally correct). However, there also seems to be a new trend the last 5-10 years hitting almost all richer societies equally.
You don't believe that there are many women/couples who are looking at the economics of having children and saying 'No'? Economics most certainly plays a role. A significant role.
Doesn't have much to do with household economic status, that's just a very recent symptom. It's mostly about social security systems, education and standard of living. People in poor countries usually have a lot of children. Countries with high education and social security systems tend to have the least children. Basically, the more advanced a country with good social security the less people feel the need to reproduce
Children before urbanization were a source of free labor. By the time they were 8 they would be doing enough chores to offset most of their cost. By the time they were 11 they would be downright profitable. In a city they are an expense. Children going from a source of income to an expense is absolutely an economic factor.
Yes and that labour also included the child care of the youngest siblings!
We would be remiss to not include women's rights in this equation going hand in hand with education levels, and the impact that has.
Many causes! I think we're going to see a bit of a further non-trivial jump and the generation of people who are currently in their twenties, and a lot of cities at least, for reasons related to immediate economic challenges, but that might really be more of a blip than anything else. That I might be overstating that part of the problem.
“Economic and social catastrophe” for the rich assholes skimming the labor value off the masses beneath them, maybe.
Fully agreed. Stick prices.somehow.matter.mroe than real value, and our entire economy is now held hostage to this insane system which has been inflated for decades. Sooner or later it has to collapse. You can't grow grow grow forever,.and people matter more than immense profits.
For most rich people other people dont matter. They would nuke you if it meant 5% profit increase.
Think about it this way. If you were to start a small business would it be easier in a growing economy where new people are constantly entering the market or a shrinking one where the only place to get new customers is from larger more established businesses? The later is already a problem, and I can see it getting worse. Basically a dystopia run by a handful of ultra-mega-corps.
Shrinking population also means more old, conservative people living in the past vs fewer young people living in the present. It’s not a sure-fire way to communist utopia at all.
That and anyone who needs their pension paid, and young people who have to take on the tax burden of supporting a top heavy population. But overall it seems better than the alternative. You can say “oh we didn’t run out of food so Malthus was wrong” but we still live on a planet with finite resources.
Agreed, underpopulation is preferable to over but brings its own risks
Yup the earth and human societies have done very well with far fewer people for 20,000+ years. Probably 1 billion is plenty of people. 8 billion seems a bit much. Capitalism will have to adapt. https://academic.oup.com/book/404/chapter-abstract/135207981?redirectedFrom=fulltext#
As someone who grew up struggling in an overpopulated country (India) I feel that the people who promote population growth are the ones who directly do not have to live like the median person in Bangladesh. I also feel that having multiple kids is ultimate form of ego or projection of superiority by these folks.
The idea that people are having less children because they got poorer is ridiculous. There is 1:1 negative correlation between a woman’s income and number of times she becomes pregnant. What slowed down population growth was women being integrated to the workforce and being lifted out of abject poverty. Whether you look at it at the level of regions, countries, social groups or the individual, the higher a woman’s income the fewer children she has. This is utterly indisputable.
8 billion people is too many for this planet, we're absolutely decimating all types of natural life that doesn't fall in line with human civilization.
>>and more and more people started choosing not to have kids for Largely economic but sometimes social reasons. Why does everyone keep repeating this demonstrably false bit? There's is no scientific record of there being a correlation to having not enough money to not having kids. None. More money always has, and always will, infer less children I'm so tired of hearing this claim repeated on"scientific" subreddits and in the news when there's simply 0 scientific evidence in the entire historical record of humanity of it ever being true.
It's not more money, it's more educated. They made a mistake there. Our current educated make less money and are having fewer children, so it adds to the educated that make more money.
Your current educated make less money than WHO? The generation before them? I don't know but that doesn't feel accurate (but will check) My gut tells me that you're born into a better job market (we were 2008), with lower unemployment, higher average salaries.
I graduated into the dot com crash (2000s), then started getting better and the Great Recession hit. And cost of living was far above my Boomer parents. My dad was able to save and pay for college with a part time job and then make 15 bucks an hour and buy a house and raise a family. Mills and Zoomers have it worse than me. In the 2000s, I needed a roommate to rent on our entry jobs which paid 20 an hour at the time. And it's worse because there are far more applicants for any paying job. Are you skipping inflation and cost of goods? I make a lot now...because I have multiple jobs. Without, I'd be making less relatively than my dad's non collegiate job at the time at one.
I wonder if your dad would change lives / careers with you. Have you ever asked?
No, because his was easier. He would.not want to.be working two and three jobs when he coasted through the day. Did you just...miss what happened from the 70s through the 90s with cost of things and why everyone from the 90s on had to be a couple with two jobs to have the same thing people.had in the 60s? Out of curiosity, how old.are you? I'm 45.
Did you ask?
It's pretty arrogant not to fucking ask and assume you know
You didn't answer my question, first.
Yes, you can very quickly google to find that the countries with the highest population growth correlate very closely with the countries with the highest levels of poverty. That's on a global level. It's slightly harder, but still doable, to show the same effect on a national level. The poorer sections of society very often have more children.
Yeah it turns out that when you have the option to do something other than be a parent (travel, have hobbies, etc) because you've got discretionary income in a nation that has stuff to do with your discretionary income, then some people are going to choose to not be parents. I'd also point out that it's heavily correlated with "age of adulthood". If you're a man/woman at age 16 you're gonna have more kids than if you need to get a masters degree and establish your career to be an adult.
Lol right? It's always been the poorest that has the most children. I'm sure there's many graphs out there that shows the correlation. In modern times, I think this is probably due to people not willing to downgrade/change their lifestyle. They might think their lifestyle now is oh so poor, but don't forget all the immigrants that have come to this country with literally 0 in their pocket and a crew of children.
Correct. I don't know what idiots downvote you.
Also that's fair, but I'm not making a direct correlation exclusively between poverty and less children. I said economic reasons. That's a bit different. See for people that are poor, they figure a way and they just do it. People that are in the middle class, the more they get squeezed the less they want to have kids. No, I can't back that up with scientific research, I have no idea if anybody would even do such research. But people in the middle class are choosing certain quality of life metrics over having families and children. And anecdotal as it may be, the majority of younger people that I know are significantly less likely to have children. Of course most of the younger people that I know are also highly educated! Stuff is complicated and has more than one reason.
People have done the research and there's no evidence that people having more money makes it more likely they'll have children. None Anywhere Tax rebates don't work. Socialized childcare doesn't help. It's been proven over and over and over
Well I have no desire to continue having an argument with somebody who repeats the same points and doesn't actually read anything anyone else says so, sure dude, demographic changes in the middle class, as well as the squeezing amount of financial freedom, has clearly had no impact whatsoever on family size are people's desire to have children.
Maybe it does but you need to provide evidence for it
So the reason people have less kids is related to how much money they have? So it’s largely “how much money” reason. Let me Google real quick the word for “money issues”
Average sperm counts have also fallen by 50% since the 1970s for reasons that aren’t fully understood
If you look at the countries with high population incline they are some of the poorest in the world. It is not simply the case that people are " too poor, overworked, scared about the future" There is clearly something else that happens to an afluent and educated population that turns people away from having kids.
Children are often an economic asset in poor/agrarian areas, but they are an economic liability in developed nations. As the cost of living rises, children become an ever greater liability. Raising children also represents an opportunity cost. The higher your earning potential, the greater the opportunity cost of raising children.
Is an average person really even aware of the opportunity cost?
They don't have to be aware of the terminology to understand that raising kids will interfere with their career.
Sure, I was asking more about blue collar jobs. I am pretty sure most "average" people where I live don't consider this, or don't put it high into calculations, because they don't have great aspirations to move and get much better jobs. I am in rural part of among the least developed parts of EU..
I would actually say that's (not knowing vs knowing the opportunity costs) kind of the cause in a roundabout way. People used to have kids before they had lived as a adults for very long. 18-24 year olds are probably very unaware of the opportunity costs. At that age you still have all the doors open, usually a ton of optimism etc. You can go back to school, the raises and promotions will come etc... A 29 year old has probably been laid off or knows someone laid off for a reason out of their control. A 29 year old has probably seen, with a mature mind, the life changing (good AND bad) thing having a baby actually IS. Having kids is very primal and emotional, but an older person is likely interjecting more logic on their decision. They might still WANT the kids but they are thinking about the aforementioned lay offs, the housing Crisis, inflation, geopolitics. It's controversial to say but in some ways, the LOGICAL aspects of having a kid in a developed economy are low, when they aren't also your farm hands. In the current economy also, for many people I know, having just one kid is the line between poor and middle class (and being raised in the 90s middle class, for most people that's just not what they imagined adulthood would look like)
Posting from India where ***Population Growth*** has led to all kinds of social issues - Too many people vying for limited resources. - Too many people vying for few NEET/IIT seats - Millions aspire even for a few thousand Agniveer role - the bottommost role in the militaries - Housing shortage in urban India - Traffic and pollution in urban metros - etc etc etc 1.4 Billion+ people with an extremely high population density. I hope the narrative you are talking about doesn't come to India anytime soon!
Things appear to be trending in the opposite direction now though. In 2021 the fertility rate in India hit 1.9, which is below replacement level.
You can have 1,4 billion people in your country and avoid these social iasues. You just have a lack of organisation, a difficult past as a colony of UK and corruption in your system.
Yes, India is quite disorganized for its size. Areas are too loosely connected to Federal state, which makes efficient management much harder. Too many cooks stirring the soup. Still, India will make slow progress on this as more capital and production infrastructure moves in.
It won't make any progress if climate change hammers it into the dirt with droughts and famines. Instead of utilizing resources to develop the country, leaders will squander them to merely keep the population water and fed so they avoid getting lynched.
All of these issues (except for the military) can be found almost everywhere, making overpopulation the biggest problem of all. Most other issues in economics, the environment, and society stem from overpopulation. Imagine the housing, traffic, and resource problems with one or two billion people compared to nearly ten billion. Haha. Huge difference!
Overpopulation was hyped up in the 70s now if you look at birth rates you'll see they have been below replacement level since the 80s through out most of the western world.
Not just the Western world. Globally the birth rate is lowest in East Asia. It's more than just Japan and Korea. Comparatively poor countries like China and Thailand are below replacement rate. Population growth is even stalling in Africa and India. It's a global phenomenon.
I like to play around with the idea that there is a meta-sociology at play here. We've reached a population bottle neck. Like a human brain, first there was an explosion in the number of neurons/people, next would be pruning/apoptosis while strengthening key neural networks necessary for growth and survival of the super-organism we are a part of
I think what we reached instead was a combo of a pyramid scheme like economic system demanding permanent growth and driven by greed and status while at the same time reducing and removing a lot of benefits from having multiple children while progressively burdening parents more and more for the children they have. It used to be that a determinant factor of success was a large healthy family. Children would help around (often to their detriment at least in educational terms). This was replaced by status and money. Having children now mostly incurred costs and retirement options became diversified as opposed to having to rely on younger family members to care for you. Having children went from being the goal to becoming an obstacle to financial success. Instead of sticking to small families, people opted for none at all, whether the decision was financial or not. And we went from the largest families in a period with modern medicine to no families at all instead of small families. My generation, I believe, grew up hearing complaints about large poor families along the lines of "why have so many children you can't afford?" As an excuse to avoid providing government based social assistance.
Yet the Earth still growing by 30-40 million a year or so.
It’s called population growth inertia
I think so. It's clear we've got even bigger problems to contend with now. Overpopulation has been merely a problem of resource distribution for decades and it's clear that no nations have ever been invested in solving that. It's been left to charities and NGOs. Fortunately, there is a bigger problem on the horizon than starving children. The comfortable way of life which the first world, the western world has become accustomed to is now under the threat of climate change. No worries though- everyone will ignore that as well, until it's far too late. Which is probably now, by the way. Enjoy your week everyone.
The world could use a couple billion less people so I'm not worried about population going down. We've got a good long time before we are worrying about there not being enough people. Yes, obviously it's going to create some issues for us moving forward as the aging population has challenges being taken care of. But robotics and management and better economic models will help as we move forward. But better overall that we have far fewer people in the world. Human beings are way too resource intensive.
Yes, Robots and AI will definitely come handy in elderly healthcare. It won't eliminate the need of healthcare workers but each nurse should be able to take care of at least 10-20 patients.
We will see a rise of elderly suicides to help their overwhelmed offspring. Sounds cynical, but i'm thinking of leaving the earth early enough to help my kid survive in the 2050s.
Who will pay the pensions? P.S.: a genuine question
If automation takes up the slack of the declining human workforce (at an equal rate) then the work is still being done and therefore the money is still being made. Distribution of said money to pensioners will be the tricky part. Our current system is going to have to change in many ways to adapt to this. Especially currencies, as fewer people will be left to buy things but resources/products will be more abundant.
Yeah, that's what bothers me. Spending is, like, important :) If there is fewer people and more goods and services, it does not compute. It seems like deepest changes will have to be done, like abandoning growth economy.
"Human beings are way too resource intensive" You sound like a radical eugenicist. "better economic models" like what exactly? Socialism/Communism? Responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people? Maybe that's in line with your eugenics mindset.
US resident here. I live in a state that’s prolly gonna be unlivable here in about 10-15 years if not sooner. Food has gone up exponentially. Insurance is crushing. Child care is 1500 a month and that’s even with them closing during the summer and taking at least 2-3 days a month for bad weather days (and I have to scramble for care since wife and I both work). Salary not keeping up with expenses. These things already had us wondering whether we’d have another one. Then the Governor signed a 6 week abortion ban and we aren’t willing to risk all of the above in addition to maybe getting prosecuted after an OBGYN visit.
I feel you, sincere sympathy. I want to encourage you to try your best to have more, for yourself, not to save the great human race, but for you and for your existing kiddy. I've got 3 boys, praise Wakantanka ;), and it is such a blessing. The interactions between them and us are magic, money can't buy that kind of value. Not American, but I think I follow what's going on. Very sad, richest country that ever was but having a nice family is not really an option for many. Who's better off in that regard, which is significant, between the US and the 3rd world where people might be poor but they still have capacity to have families.
\[ \] have kids \[☑\] have downvotes
It's absolutely changed. Too much growth too fast was the fear in the 90s. Now governments realize that they won't be able to maintain social programs with this decreasing population. They will have to increase birth rates in the long term, use immigration as a bandaid, or drastically cut expenses.
The real problem IMO is distribution of wealth. There is enough to go around even with decreasing population. The rich buy the right laws and hire the right accountants and lawyers and get away with not paying their fair share.
I don't know enough about it to have a strong opinion. I know there are certainly very many rich people who aren't paying any or enough real taxes... but it seems like many people want to tax based on total value of assets someone controls - not even net worth, just asset value. I know it's *nowhere* near the level of wealth you're talking about, but I know a family who is technically worth ~5,000,000 because of their farm and poultry operations. They control a lot of assets, but they will never be anything approaching "wealthy" in real terms unless they sell everything. I sometimes wonder how much this applies to those who are a few times or even an order of magnitude mire wealthy. That's still not in the billionaire class that you're talking about, but it would include many farmers and small/mid size or regional businesses. Don't get me wrong, anyone who has fucking yatch (let alone mega yatch) money needs to br but with just as heavy a tax burden as the rest of us. Again, this is my ignorance showing here... but I often wonder if taxes could be more fairly applied if we taxed non business spending instead of income. Taxes start low or even at 0% for a Toyota Camry, but a Bently or Rolls Royce is taxed at 100%. A 3 bed 3 bath 1,500 sq foot house has 1% or less property tax... but a 10 bedroom mansion on the waterfront has 10% property tax. Your average bass fishing or pontoon boat pays low tax, but a mega yatch is high as hell. Maybe that's just an idiots ramblings... but I think it would be a great way to equalize things and actually tax people for the real money they have access to and would bypass the whole "I don't have income I have loans against stock" bullshit. I also know governments can and should radically cut spending without delivering fewer services. Goverment spending is insanely wasteful, and many things they spend that money on are only to enrich billionaires, like the forever war in the middle east.
Yeah, it is a bit complex, but there are more complex problems that have been solved. Rich people (and let's not forget corporations which are, crazy enough, also legally 'people') can afford very smart staff to do accounting tricks to minimize taxes. Not to mention lobbying for laws to make taxes as low as possible. This makes an honest discussion about fair taxes especially difficult. >I know it's nowhere near the level of wealth you're talking about, but I know a family who is technically worth ~5,000,000 because of their farm and poultry operations. They control a lot of assets, but they will never be anything approaching "wealthy" in real terms unless they sell everything. I sometimes wonder how much this applies to those who are a few times or even an order of magnitude mire wealthy. That's still not in the billionaire class that you're talking about, but it would include many farmers and small/mid size or regional businesses Agreed. I'm also just sort of spitballing, but how about setting a high lower limit? Anyone with assets of say 100 million surely are actually wealthy enough to use some of the proceeds to go towards the common good i.e. taxes? (Let's assume they are the same for the purposes of argument and there is a government that spends it wisely). Playing devil's advocate, I think in this case, the strategy would be for the owners to not actually own the assets technically, but be the director of a non profit trust that owns it yet enjoys the benefits. Something like that. So there will be additional loopholes to block. >I also know governments can and should radically cut spending without delivering fewer services. Goverment spending is insanely wasteful, and many things they spend that money on are only to enrich billionaires, like the forever war in the middle east. Yeah, massive corruption to be sure. Having a good government and citizens actually getting bang for their taxes make people much happier to pay taxes and less inclined to try and dodge them. Having a massively corrupt government and knowing your taxes just go to feathering their nests make even good, generous people not think twice about dodging tax.
Good points. I have to actively pull myself away from the "taxation is theft" mindset, mostly because I am paying over 50% of my income in one tax or another. I know I'm in a unique situation compared to most, (self employed, high property tax, etc) and I can see the allure of thinking "make the rich pay!"... but I'm so disillusioned with the government that I genuinely believe all that will happen if we somehow manage to start taxing the donor class is prices will go up without pay going up for the average person. I think anyone who expects the government to lower taxes on the average person long term is too hopeful. We're tax cattle in their eyes. I'd also like to point out that I rarely hear people who advocate for taxing the rich say "tax the rich instead of the poor". It's always spoken of as just "tax the rich" as if money being taken by the government is a default win for the people. I think the government views is as tax cattle, and the money they have coming in is used to pander for votes or enrich the donor class with contracts/favorable wars. With the half of my income I am left with I am able to provide for an average life for my family... I don't see how I am getting an acceptable return for the other half. I know we need things like the FDA, EPA, FBI, social security and a military... but even those are terribly inefficient with their funding.
50% in tax for the middle class is not necessary. It can be a lot less if the rich pay their fair share. The reason it is so high is because the middle and working classes are easy targets and the rich are difficult and lobby for favourable laws. Let's take Rishi Sunak just because we've got a bit of data on him and we do some back-of-the-envelope. Do check my math. [Him and his missus together are supposedly worth about 651 million]( https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/rishi-sunak-net-worth-prime-minister-family-wealth-explained-1270305) (all figures in GBP). Let's say he is worth 100 mil. [He declared income on 2.2 million](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68253857). He paid about 523k tax. Making less than 10% in capital gains is very unlikely. So 10% of 100 mil is 10 mil thus 523k / 10 mil is only about **5%** tax. And I'm sure this is a very conservative calculation.
I'll call it a soft agree. Taxing on net worth isn't always the best idea. I myself and many I know have a high net worth, but a low middle income... welcome to a farmers life. I realize you're not talking about a single digit millionaire (on paper only) farmer/small business owner. You're talking about truly wealthy people. Though I'll note that I have little faith the donor class will be actually harmed by these laws. The middle class have *always* been the tax cattle. You said anything below 10% returns is unlikely for capital gains. Don't they average at 8% in the stock market?
Sure, I understand your point. I'm not the expert, but let's get experts in the room and have a discussion. The thing is it is not being discussed because the (really) rich people own the discourse. Attempts at a conversation are vilified as class war, communist satanists who don't want to work and just leech off society, utopian dreamers, or pick one of any number of slurs. One possible solution is pick a really high number to start off with. Start with a billion dollars. You want to tell me your assets are worth a billion dollars but you didn't see any income off that? But there are many other things that could and should also be done. Tax loopholes, tax havens, synchronization of tax laws, IRS funding. Besides individuals, corporations probably run amok even more. How can it be fair that say an American company has intellectual property ownership in Panama or Caymans, makes all its profits in America, then pays royalties to the shell company in the offshore tax haven, and in effect makes no profit and pays no tax? It's such an obvious con. It happens everywhere, see Google in Ireland. Not only did they stiff the EU for the benefit of Ireland, which has low rates and it earned Ireland the chagrin of the rest of the EU, they then went ahead and stiffed Ireland itself. https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/google-used-double-irish-to-shift-75-4bn-in-profits-out-of-ireland-1.4540519 It's daylight robbery. >You said anything below 10% returns is unlikely for capital gains. Don't they average at 8% in the stock market? I promise you, ultra wealthy people just owning stuff and not even doing anything productive are worth much more than 10% year on year adjusting for inflation.
> Sure, I understand your point. I'm not the expert, but let's get experts in the room and have a discussion. The thing is it is not being discussed because the (really) rich people own the discourse. I couldn't agree more. They do own the discourse, and that's my problem with most of the solutions I've seen, they seem like wound just be feel good solutions that continue the favors to the rich. > You want to tell me your assets are worth a billion dollars but you didn't see any income off that? Completely agreed. I'm an idiot, but I know there's got to be a way to close these loopholes... but I'm not sure bought politicians are willing to do this. I'm certainly not here to defend the rich. I just get tired of seeing the rightful motivation to reform taxes of the average person being twisted. It needs work, and you make great points.
Stop saying "I'm an idiot" so much. Modesty is good, self-flagellation not :)
Immigration won't work because the world seems to be lurching to the right again, slowly but surely. Seems to me social security nets will just be cut to the bone.
Much of the social safety nets we have so seem unsustainable without at least a stable population... let alone a shrinking one.
Population decline has a positive and a negative side. Depending on the perspective of the news source, you get a different view on it. It's bad for the economy, as you have fewer people generating wealth by working, buying stuff and paying taxes. Companies need to function in declining markets. But ecologically, this is good news, as you have fewer people polluting.
Yes. When Gen X - Gen Z grew up, we were constantly fed messages of how we needed Zero Population Growth. If we didn't attain this, we would have to enact "One child" policies like China, would be eating aspic and Dandelions for dinner cause there won't be enough food, would have to place housing in sites like Love Canal, would be backstabbing each other for limited jobs and college spots, and be in constant traffic jams and have to wait hours for busses. So people listened. Now suddenly we are the bad guys for not popping out babies.
I think there is no need for humans populate every corner of the earth. It’s the best for everyone on (& especially for) the planet, that the human population declines. Less chaos, more resources for everyone, more untouched nature, less pollution and waste.
Yes, the narrative has changed. It's part of how you know that the so-called "trending" or "scientific projection" of many of these loons is baseless alarmism. You don't have to go back 40 or 50 years. Go back 5 to 15 years and you will hear this being discussed heavily including to the point of 'should we have "population control".' Heck there are a few more mainstream talking head types that can't run from their words on this. e.g. The Whale Wars tv show. Here's a good tip when the alarmist start with hyperbolic projection. 1) Is this it supported by actual facts and trends, or are they hot button talking points? 2) Is the projection simple linear projection or is it a more nuance and thoughtful model. It's pretty clear that the "scientific consensus" was actually just people looking at census numbers and population estimations and thinking that made a population model. Here's how we know: 1) In all developed nations for a myriad of reasons, birthrates plummet when a culture goes from agrarian to industrialized. 2) Birth rates since the Baby boom (aptly named) have plummeted for basically all countries involved in WW2. 3) Replacement rate is not a linear mode generation to generation, yet it was projected as such. Most of the developed world is going to have issues,. The baby boom followed by 3 successive generations of falling birthrates or birthrates less than the replacement rate means that many industrialized nations have "inverted pyramid" labor forces. There literally will not be enough people to take care of everyone that is holding on. We're just at the tip of the iceberg here. China being a pretty strong example since they were also involved in WW2 and the subsequent baby boom, but have not only over predicted their population but are on the verge of a crisis as the effects of the 1 child policy are starting to come to fruition (oh no! the consequences of their actions!) It's also why there's some conspiracy theory around Covid. I'm not one to attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but some have speculated that the pandemic could have been intentional. If you have "too many people" as the alarmist theorize, and they are "drains" on your economy, with their care costing more than your failing pyramid scheme social welfare system can provide. It is less costly to "thin the herd" those young and healthy we by and large able to shake off the virus much better than countries with elderly populations See country data in South American and Africa, and even among the elderly those with higher levels of care (like the wealthy and those in power) had higher survival rates as well. Again, I'm not saying I believe it, but there are a lot of circumstantial pieces that seem plausible.
> Right or wrong, the latter is perhaps fuelled by concerns about immigration and something like 'the great replacement theory' and what not. **I don't want to debate the merits or not of those views**, I'm just making the point there are probably many causes for arguments pro or against population growth. That's too bad, because the great replacement theory is blatantly racist. That pretty much rules out any reasonable discussion because racists, apart from being terrible humans, are also known to be dishonest liars. So any discussion with them is a waste of time because they won't engage in it in good faith. That's not to say that some of the issues aren't real. But any discussion has to start with actively calling out those who want to use them to cause harm (like Elon, for example) so that you can engage in productive conversation with everyone else.
Yeah ok, happy to move on to that, my OP question was just to establish for myself that the narrative around population growth has indeed changed. I hear what you're saying about where a narrative is coming from. This may be a bit of a tangent but it might be important. People have what Timothy Leary calls a *reality tunnel* and this is sort of what Locke calls 'Representational realism'. Plato's 'Cave' is relevant as well. In simple words, we all believe our own views, even if they are bullshit according to others. Racists and everyone else can and do disingenuously lie, spin and omit facts but I think the basic thrust of our views we do actually believe. It's a kind of pattern recognition or Rorshach test on reality itself. On the great replacement theory. I'm sure it's a continuum ranging from something like 'the Democrats want to replace all whites in the US because non-whites vote Democrat' to something much less malign. On the worst end of the spectrum, I agree it's racist and hate filled. But if I may play devil's advocate for some of the aspects of less bad versions of it. I can understand the view that too much immigration too quickly is a problem. Cultures all value their own character and values, and generally people in any culture want to preserve it to some degree. Elon is a complex figure. On a personal level I think he's a massive asshole, same as Steve Jobs was, for example, but as an engineer I have to give him massive kudos. In his own mind he certainly means to do well in the world, taking civilization forward. In terms of electrification of mobility I'm right behind him. On getting to Mars, yeah I can get behind that. On his concerns about population decline, I'm still considering it but I probably don't agree, though I find it reasonable that someone can come to that conclusion. I don't know if he believes that white people especially should breed more. If the Japanese government want to encourage Japanese people to have more babies, for example, or the Italians or the Russians, it actually seems pretty reasonable to me.
"I don't agree with racists, but they have a lot of good points you know." Behind all the flowery language that's what your posts boil down to. At which point, you gotta ask yourself, why you're referring to them in the third person?
Population growth is slowing down in some "developed" countries, but capitalism needs a continuous supply of fresh meat for the machine. I'm not against capitalism per se, but that's just the way it is. People like Elon know that. Think of it this way: remember when one person could feed a family of 4, buy and own a house, a car and go on vacation once a year, all that with one job? That happened when there were fewer people around and, very important, companies didn't outsource to other countries where labour is cheaper. More people means everyone can be replaced easier and you can't do anything about it.
We almost never had such a situation nowhere in the world.
Overpopulation was considered a problem at one point due to food production. But we got better at squeezing FAR more out of our farms. The problem the current crop of people are worried about boils down to issues with how economics work. And it’s a 2 part issue. Companies are driven by growth. For the big conglomerates with 80 or 90% market ownership, growth requires more consumers to be born. Then you have governmental social programs for retirees. These are almost universally pyramid schemes which require more workers than retirees. With people living longer and having fewer kids, that nice pyramid shape goes away and it becomes a serious problem. So if the population levels off or declines we have a decent chance of economic problems combined with social unrest.
It's not just social programs. Most economies are using credit in many forms to maintain existing systems. We are borrowing from the future and we have been doing it more and more to the point that now to stop we would need to significantly cut back on all of the luxuries we have. It would be nice to say let's all just do that and everything will be fine but reality is that if that happened there would be serious civil unrest and for sure some people would continue to live as they have and others would be destroyed.
It's just math. If the average woman has one child, the population halves every generation. In 3 generations, the population decreases by 88%. In a few more generations, the species will become critically endangered. If the average woman has 3 children, the population increases 50% every generation. In 3 generations the population increases by 338%. There may not be enough global resources to support this population, leading to mass famine and suffering. Small changes in birthrate will have enormous effect on the population in a couple of generations. That's just math. Globally birthrates have been steadily falling a little bit more than 1% per year for decades. At first that appeared to be great because it would prevent the explosion situation where there were more people than resources. Then it kept falling. In developed nations the birth rate is no longer enough to be sustainable. Birthrates in Korea have dipped to 0.72. Remember, a birthrate of 1.0 will result in a near 90% decrease in population in 3 generations. This is much worse than that. This will be a catastrophe within a single generation. For Korea and Japan, the rates are so low that it's not a matter of economic burden but complete societal collapse if the birthrate isn't reversed.
It's not "narrative", it's statistics. I suggest you read "The end of the world is just the beginning" by Peter Zeihan, where he argues that we are headed to de globalization, and some countries are actually having population collapse. Population collapse is an issue as economies need two very important things: (1) workers to make products that (2) consumers will buy. Consumers are in their self workers. Workers also pay for retirement of the older population. When you think of population as crops the concept can be explained easier. You can grow wheat in 6 months. To "grow" a worker/consumer, you need at least 18 years after birth. But you need the birth to have happened to begging with. What we are seeing in "advanced" economies is a drop in birth rates below replacement levels, which means that less people are born than there is deaths. In the long run, what these societies will face is a lot of elder/retired people, and to little too few workers to support these groups. You will find all these concepts expanded in Zeihan's book, plus a lot of other interesting information, including a hypothesis of why Russia invaded Ukraine taking the population collapse as the main argument.
I listen to Zeihan quite a bit. He's a great speaker, very entertaining, and very knowledgeable. However, I do find some of his conclusions and extrapolations a little bit out there, IMHO. Here's what [he said in 2010](https://www.businessinsider.com/stratfor-predictions-for-the-next-decade-2010-1) >Aside from the United States not going anywhere, I would say we expect the economic collapse of China in this coming decade. and >By the end of the decade, it'll be pretty obvious to everybody that the China miracle is over. You can look at [a debate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plivyvhJ2WE) with him and Diamandis and [this guy's analysis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XupM5_zHDbM) of him if you're interested.
I'd argue that he is right. What we are seeing in China regarding the real state crisis, unemployment, major manufacturing wanting to move out from there. Maybe he missed the time line by a couple of years. I'll give you that he did predict wrongly that the US is going nowhere. With chip manufacturing, and war in Ukraine demanding so much weapons, Natural Gas, and American oil, puts the US in a very good position. They just need to figure out their culture war happening inside that could destroy them. Thanks for the recommendation, will check them out to broaden the angles on this subject.
So, I'm in Africa and I'm not a China fan as such. It's genocide in Tibet, Taiwan should decide for themselves if they want to be self-ruling, etc. However, I haven't even been there and I get my data from the internet, so who knows how accurate I can be. To me it looks like China has risen spectacularly as an economic and world power and is continuing to do so. It's complex and I'm sure we can spend hours arguing about it, time will tell but essentially it looks to me like China's woes are given too much importance eg the housing bubble, and the demographics problems can be solved. The basics that they have got right is they dominate supply chains and they can actually make stuff very efficiently. I think what Zeihan meant with 'US is going nowhere' is in the sense that the US is keeping its dominant position, so according to you he is correct :) I don't hate the US, in this case I have actually been there and I really like American people and culture. However, US foreign policy history is actually shocking if you look at all their sponsored coups and military interventions. This is just to give you an idea of where I'm coming from so you can check for bias. BTW basically no country's foreign policy is ever 'to be a good guy' in any way, it is always to screw other countries at the cost of one's own benefit. My view is at the moment the US is a waning superpower. It is not going to happen overnight, she will remain a major world power, but the trajectory is down. I do hope the culture wars get sorted out and most important, the international interventionism stops. For their own people, their ruling elites are treating the public absolutely terribly, again this is pretty common the world over though.
PS interesting chan to watch that I find is down to earth, believable, relevant, and illustrates what China is doing right and what the US can do better https://www.youtube.com/@Inside_China_Business/videos
There are some countries with 6+ children per woman. Just let them immigrate in. Problem solved.
I think the narrative has changed because there’s a scientific consensus!! If you consider scholars instead of general thinkers like Elon, it’s a much much clearer picture. The world is already overpopulated by some metrics, but with moderate changes could house and feed many, many more people safely.
No, you can't. We are already ruining the planet. Mass extinction, degraded soils, climate catastrophy. Moderate changes and feed many, many more people safely? Totally delusional.
I also think pretty severe changes will be needed. Not impossible, just very very hard.
How do you think the economy keeps expanding and putting money in rich people's pockets if there's no population growth? See the 10 20 million low wage workers/ consumers they just let flood into the country. It's not a conservative / liberal thing, it's a rich people thing
Malthusians keep taking Ls. This isn't news, honestly.
Overpopulation is objectively true. [70% of the Namibia makes <$10 a day](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-of-population-between-different-poverty-thresholds-stacke-bar?country=~NAM) adjusted for inflation and for differences in the cost of living between countries. yet even if EVERYONE ON EARTH lived in squalor like them, [we’d STILL be over consuming by nearly 37%](https://earth.org/what-is-earth-overshoot-day/). There is absolutely NO way to sustain this many people even if we all live in straw huts and eat dirt
Cool, was just wondering if I was imagining it. Next question though, do the population implosion worriers have it right? I don't think so, though I understand the view.
The solution is to revert entitlement spending to a fully funded model and that means increasing current tax rates for a few years. That can't be terribly popular.
you obviously do not understand the view.
Maybe I don't, happy to be educated if you want.
Yes, our understanding is always evolving. That said there are two sides to that: The first one is about the overall population, and that is more than expected (Dreaded even) to stagnate which will bring a few temporary (as in "a few generations") issues, in some places more than others. And no, we have plenty of space and plenty of resources, even with our current tech, we are very very wasteful. This remains true as long as we dont achieve immortality before the stars or endless free energy and a way to synthetize stuff with more impunity BUT, that doesnt mean you can't have \*local\* overpopulation, suffering from displacement and scarcity. Whether that is temproary or not, it can definitely happen, it did, it does and it will, because the world is not lead by an hegemonic overlord that says "you go there and do that" (which is ok btw, we just need to learn to make better choices ourselves withotu giving away the choices themselves too much) So, depending on your POV, technically both are true and worrying and neither is. Magnitude and context matters.
Fertility rates dropping massively. Data being spread mainstream changed the narrative. There are a lot of issues with this, namely the economic model has to change or anyone born in the 1980s and after will not get a pension.
Yes and no? On a local level there's still huge anxiety and controversy over migration and putting too much pressure on infrastructure, housing etc. Most of the time I think it's not particularly accurate, but it is there. On a global level I think the seeping in of news around the fertility crisis and demographic time bomb has lessened some of the Malthusian fears of overpopulation as a cause of resource collapse. That said I think there's still quite stark differences across demographics in their perspective on this based on education, political alignment etc. In left leaning and leftist circles people don't talk about overpopulation so much as unequal distribution of resources, and sometimes the overpopulation argument is seen as an almost fascist line of thinking to distract from that. However there are quite a lot of people I still hear talking about us being overpopulated and how that's the driver of climate change etc. So I guess I would say it is shifting but that line of thinking is still quite prominent.
It is not that the narrative has changed, but that the facts that had been obvious to anyone paying attention have become obvious to enough people that grifters benefiting and profiting off of stirring up panic and fear are fading out. The same thing applies to any and all fearmongering you read about in the newspaper: wars, pandemics, and climate change. No, we are not going to die, and no, we cannot change the nature of things by becoming obedient to fearmongers, nor will they save us. China and its "great leap forward" should be a dire warning.
Someone correct me if I'm mistaken, but I only ever see concerns of overpopulation brought up by sources not affiliated with any world government. No government wants to shrink their population because that would mean less workers, less wealth, increasingly aging generations, instability, vulnerability to outside factors etc. China ended their 1 child policy in 2016. I wonder why. Current projections would halve their population by 2100 (1.4B > 700M) if they keep their current trajectory. China with a population of 700M would be a very different country than it is today and likely not for the better in terms of national interests.
It's a two-fold problem for the establishment that they don't want to outright say: more people are harder to control, and the entire financial system of the world depends on economic growth.
I don't think that anyone can objectively deny that there is a point at which the earth is overpopulated with humans. The question is as to whether we have reached that point already.... Reasons for believing that we have more room to grow.... Population growth has stalled and is projected to decline in wealthy countries (But we forget that this is a minority. E.g. The US has only 4.23% of the world's population Economic system is built on increasing productivity and relies on new labor (Lot of truth to this....population decline might end up being temporarily disastrous.....but it is also possible that newer technologies (hate the word, but lets say AI) will make up for this decline Reasons for believing that we have already reached the tipping point.... Mass extinction of species caused by humans Global Warming Our methods of feeding en-mass do not really align with our values (majority of humans). The mass deforestation required to grow human food or even worse what we are doing to animals to provide us with meat. Millions of us live a rather dreary life....they are grossly unrepresented in reddit obviously
> So in theory, fewer people having to work is perfectly doable. Rather than a shortage of workers, it is more about having insufficient workers willing to take lesser than the minimum pay. Such employers wrongly believe that if there are more people thus supply will be greatly more than demand, they will work for peanuts. But such will not happen since people cannot survive with lesser than minimum pay, and some may not even survive with the minimum pay since inflation is making the essentials more expensive. Other than wanting lower paid workers, some industries such as baby diapers manufacturers obviously will go bankrupt instantly if nobody is born any more so these industries will shout as loud as possible that there are not enough people. The beliefs by such industries are accurate though very selfish cause all those people born will suffer overpopulation.
Two opposing viewpoints: Thomas Malthus: An essay on the principle of population vs. Jay Leno: crunch away, we’ll make more : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0UsUsUu998
The statistical facts have just become too obvious. The biggest problem in this discussion is, that "being concerned about depopulation" has been highjacked by the Right so that now many left wing people deny the facts, so this demographic crisis we are heading into has become for the Left what climate change is for the Right - "Don't Look Up". And of course the right uses it for its own agenda - forcing "traditional" gender roles upon the people, fear of being replaced by darker skinned people (although the decline in birthrates affects our whole species), etc. This political divide makes it more and more difficult to solve problems...
I think that we need less population. Tried to make a post about that but it wasnt approved. https://www.horizons-mag.ch/2023/03/02/do-we-have-to-put-a-stop-to-population-growth/
No one who did a bit of reading was ever actually worried about overpopulation. It’s always just been an intuition disguised as logic.
It could be argued (pretty easily imho) that we are already overpopulated from a pollution and biodiversity perspective if not resource scarcity. Would be curious to see the reading list of the people who never worried about it? 4% of global mammalian biomass (on land) is wild, 34% is human and 62% our livestock and pets. That seems problematic to me.
I think you're mistaken. And the 1970s and '80s this was a common motif. At the time population growth was exploding, and there was no sign of a slowdown. There are several works of science fiction from that. That focus on overpopulation and its effects. Isaac asimov's classic caves of steel books are a good example. Obviously these perspectives are changed over time.
The data actually did show in the 70s that birth rates were already declining and that population decline was on the horizon. But that story doesn’t sell as well. The only thing in their defense is no one thought they’d continue to decline this fast.
Yeah no disagreement here. The narrative was certainly different, but that doesn't mean that the narrative was Right. I also am not sure that the current rate of population decline and reducing birth rates is going to be a forever thing. We happen to live in a particular moment where cost of living has gone up way too fast, and for most people the choice to have children is detrimental to their lives. My kids are 10 and 14, but honestly I think if I was 28 or 30 right now and thinking about having kids, I would be a lot less inclined to do it. Cuz cost of living jumped a lot in those intervening 10 years.... I'm not sure I could Really make it work the way things are now...
> I also am not sure that the current rate of population decline and reducing birth rates is going to be a forever thing. We happen to live in a particular moment where cost of living has gone up way too fast. It’s not a new phenomenon. The US has been below replacement level fertility rates for 52 years. Immigration is the only reason the population has grown. Half a century is more than a particular moment.
His point is that the overpopulation narrative is a farce. There will always be people who think the world is about to end. The reality is we will find a way to live with more people. And if we run out of space we will find a way to deal with it. We do now. We will build up, down, and out to space. We will find ways of making more food and getting more resources. We will use them more efficiently. Right now and into the foreseeable future we barely scratch the surface of the amount of resources and space available on planet earth.
Yeah I don't disagree, I think I read a little too much into the above post and kind of miss the end part. I think there were people who seriously believe that narrative, but there's also always people out there ready to ring the alarm bells. Somebody is always sounding the Doom trumpet! A very modern example being AI destroying the world taking over all of our jobs 3 years for now.
I find musk to be a bit alarmist on this issue. you have to remember musk is most concerned about getting humans to space while we still have the technological know how to do so. historicially, civilization has majorly collapsed twice that I know of and I am sure there are other instances. but the ones that stick out in my mind are the bronze age collapse and then the collapse after fall of the roman empire. I suppose a third collapse could be in Muslim societies, and China has had several. when I was in college the projections had us going to 12-15 billion i think. could be wrong. now world population is heading to 9-10 billion but all that growth with be in africa, while population pretty much drops everywhere else. Africa is going to go from a billion to 3 billion people. I don't know how to say this but from africa kind of does not even factor in for musk. he is looking at developed countries. he is worried about developed economies sputtering out leading to an economic decline which could lead to a loss of technical ability. about declining birth rates. every one always talks the economics. but I feel they overlook the cultural reasons why birthrates are declining. People are not really rational consumers anymore. they are impulsive shoppers incapable of saving. increasingly there are more and more people that simply dont want kids. give them higher paying jobs and they will have even less kids. economics and culture can change pretty fast.
Assuming economics have nothing to do with why people don't have kids is just stupid. Would you have kid while living with roommates? While struggling to make the rent on a one bedroom? If you knew paying for child care would leave you choosing between paying the bills and putting food on the table? If you look at the price of a two bedroom apartment and child care in a major city, and compare that to median family income, it's clear why people aren't having kids. The numbers just don't add up.
Civilization has never collapsed all across the globe. The Bronze Age collapse was local and the “Dark Ages” didn’t even happen everywhere in the former Roman Empire.
i dont disagree, and perhaps "collapse" is too strong a word. A gradual decline in technological know-how could occur for any number of reasons whether its economic, war, climate, disease, etc
> about declining birth rates. ....etc You make good points. I still think economics is a big part of it, but the other things you say are true. I don't want to assign blame to people as such though. "There is no bad student, only bad teacher." (Maybe not always true, but I'd say most of the time true). Ergo, society is mostly to blame. And in society, who exactly? I'd say rampant materialism, consumerism, capitalism. Unbridled. The profit motive. Get people hooked on ever shorter format media content. Relationships get less and less important rather than self gratification. Kids? Just more relationships that detract from the most important person, me. *Edit Re Musk. I admire some of his work at least, but he says some crazy ass things sometimes. That time he called people working from home immoral because not everyone can do it. WTF. So if you buy a car because you can, that's immoral because some others can't?
The projections always showed a peak and then a decline. Newspapers were more sensational. Every country followed the same pattern: 1. High birth rate with high child mortality 2. Improved economy 3. High birth rate with low child mortality 4. Low birth rate It was always known that during stage 3, population rises, but it's only temporary. So projectections knew this.
Are you a billionaire who makes more based on the number of employees and consumers there are? Or, are you concerned about the environment and other living things on this planet. I think it’s perspective based.
This is dumb. Population collapse would lead to mass suffering. When social security started, there were 24 young for every 1 retired. Now we’re round 4 to one. We are approaching 1 to 1. The taxes you’d need to levy on the young to support the old are unsustainable. They will have even less kids and worsen the problem further. Conversely they could just let the elderly die in mass without support. But when most of the population is old they will have the political power, so the young will get screwed
True, if our workforce and economies continue without adapting to population growth changes. There are always big challenges like plagues, feeding everyone 70 years ago, and AI in the workforce that we have to adapt to. People are good at figuring things out.
Ah, so lets just wait, corporations will fugure it out. Are you sure ai will help you in hospital? Pay taxes for your returement, social services? No, this is more c9ncerning problrm that current hupe on climate change
Unchecked population growth is a catastrophe for our quality of life. It has already shown it's effects with all the restrictions that politicians are trying to enforce on the population with energy , water use, etc.. I say that the slowdown is very welcome news. As long as the young dont all stop reproducing we'll survive
billionaires just want more people for cheap labor
Capitalists like a high birth rate, more consumers and workers. Churches likes it, more believers and donors. Military likes it, more soldiers to fight future wars.
Older people in normal countries, someone need to pay taxrs and work at my hospital, shop, fix my building
China, country that lives or dies by its economy and which had a one child policy, struggles to find meaningful work for their young.
China is state controlled, corrupted and totally nontransparent economy. Im talking abount majority of european countries
Even less meaningful work in Europe.
what? half of Europe stopped developing, because we lack workers. Unemployment is around 3%, meaning, there are too few people to hire
People who believed in overpopulation have never looked at a birth rate chart in their life, and I was contrarian to the popular (stupid) belief that we were overpopulating years earlier before consensus (finally) changed. In india sure, there is a lot of population growth but in the western world there is just not evidence for it and there never was. The Population Bomb is the top 10 most misleading shit ever written and popularized. Some people think overpopulation exists due to them living in a big city. It is actually population density a lot of people think of when they claim overpopulation is an issue. Go to a rural area and tell me they are overpopulating.
I’ve not met anyone IRL that is worried about population going down. Most people I’ve spoken to think there are way too many people in the world (on a global scale) and are fine with it dropping, and I heard a few say that it’ll level out at the point that resources free up
These people are older thant 30 or even 25, or they still think they are immortal and old age is jslust an abstract concept?
There was a big movement called ZPG (Zero Population Growth) that started all the way back in the 1960s. It became big in the 70s and 80s. The movement had a reasonable message since the world certainly can't handle an infinite amount of people, and the population was growing exponentially. But a few things happened: Ronald Reagan opened up US manufacturers to be able to have factories overseas, including China. China's middle class grew like crazy as a result and China implemented a 2 child policy, both of which resulted in China's population actually *shrinking* since 2022. (It is interesting that the US is beginning to regret its opening up manufacturing to China, and China now regrets its 2-child policy). People started to realize that there was racism underneath the ZPG leadership. Their leadership was actually pushing for population control, and control always meant 'them' not 'us'. You don't hear much from ZPG anymore.
The narrative of "overpopulation" is really outdated. It was outdated shortly after it was proposed in 1798. Food production and other industrialization outran Malthusian predictions almost immediately thereafter. The whole overpopulation worry is just another in a long list of simplistic ideas that sound right but are actually completely wrong. More humans is a good thing overall. The problems we face that are blamed on "overpopulation" (like endemic poverty, pollution, global warming, famine, etc.) are due to poor governance and bad policy (which are in turn driven by greed, tribalism, selfishness, and propaganda.) On the other hand, it's not the end of civilization if population declines either. It's not the best, but it's really not going to break everything. I am willing to listen and consider alternate opinions on this, but from what I've learned on this subject, these population concerns are breathlessly overblown and melodramatic.
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Respectfully disagree. Population will probably peak in about 20-30 years. Number of people is obviously important, but how exactly people live is more important. If we all have 3 cars and eat a meat based diet using current farming techniques, it allows for a lot less people than living in a dense environment, using public transport, and if the food grown is for example vertical farms and precision fermentation protein or some similar tech. If we do it right, we can have a lot of people with not too bad impact on the natural world, if we do it wrong, we can have a lot less people that still wreak havoc on the natural world.
Yes it does. Eben the antinatalist UN is reporting not ageing and population decline as problems. The tsunami is coming and we will not be able to do anything. The system will collapse in front of our eyes.
>The system will collapse in front of our eyes. Out of chaos, order comes! But seriously, so it will cause problems. What doesn't? Why will it be unsolvable this time?
Becuae you cant fix demography by one simple decision or new fantastic invention, changes takes decades .and we are already past time of problems
In nutshell - you can't do anything individually and even collectively as well for as personal thing as how many kids one will have. You can only 'nudge' But their will be someone else who will 'nudge' in opposite direction. So some people will be nudged in one direction, rest in other direction (exactly on what proportion nobody knows) Some will say - don't worry robots will fill up manpower gap. Some will say - we require more consumers to run economy So in the end, exactly what will happen and which state world will move is difficult to predict.
People often speculate about why people don’t have children, but it’s important to realize that’s not true. Even at below replacement rate levels, it remains true that the vast majority of people have at least one child, and that most people have at least two children. It’s just that we now have far fewer people who choose to have 3, 4, 5, or more children.
I don't really buy either scenario. Baby booms or busts are extremely lagged indicators of other issues that eventually are fixed by government initiatives or technology. People aren't having babies right now because we're in - and have been in - a cost-of-living crisis. Once that's fixed, people will have more faith in their ability to have children. I also find it interesting that there lies this concern about the labor force shrinking as companies are investing heavily in AI. Like, fuckin quit it with the AI and cost-cutting via layoffs, then?
I remember reading about inevitable population decline 22 years ago in Pat Buchanan's book "Death of the West". There was a bogus study in the 70s that somehow made it into all our sociL studies books and we bought into overpopulation completely.
there is a whole group of forecasters looking at lower overall population numbers primarily due to china demographics. offset by the elevated birthrates of a particular group.
Overpopulation and underpopulation are popular topics to use as extreme right-wing dogwhistles. Overpopulation is an eco-fascist line meant to indicate the "wrong" kind of people (BIPoC, non-Christian, queer) are breeding too prolifically, usually due to welfare or other entitlements the speaker believes those "wrong" people don't deserve. Underpopulation is the inverse of this, in that the "right" kind of people (white, cisgender, heterosexual, Christian) are not breeding prolifically enough, in response to the advances in civil rights and material prosperity of the "wrong" kind of people.
I don’t see underpopulation being a problem. I don’t see it taking longer than a century for us to eliminate old age and disease.
Less than 7% of the United States has people on it. Stop this insane rubbish.