Before I spend any time on this, can someone tell me if this is about an actual fertility crisis, in that people are unable to have children, or is this a birth rate crisis, where fewer children...
Before I spend any time on this, can someone tell me if this is about an actual fertility crisis, in that people are unable to have children, or is this a birth rate crisis, where fewer children are being born because people are choosing not to do so?
Birth rate crisis. That said, while there’s been a lot of low quality discussion on declining birth rates, it’s still an issue that deserves thoughtful consideration, as our entire system (not...
Birth rate crisis. That said, while there’s been a lot of low quality discussion on declining birth rates, it’s still an issue that deserves thoughtful consideration, as our entire system (not just capitalism) relies on a stable or increasing population. An upside-down pyramid presents a major issue to social welfare, infrastructure upkeep, retirement, among others.
I'll grant that there are certainly challenges to population shrinkage that would need to be tackled, but I think it's worth noting that those can be tackled without necessarily increasing...
I'll grant that there are certainly challenges to population shrinkage that would need to be tackled, but I think it's worth noting that those can be tackled without necessarily increasing birthrate. Our current world may rely upon ever-increasing population counts, but there's no good reason it needs to.
And as a followup to that, I suspect a fair chunk of the concern about this can be traced back to wealthy groups that rely upon exploited labor to make money, and who do not want the labor market to be a seller's market. Personally, I'm not worried, and I think most places have got bigger fish to fry.
It's pretty hard to take the fertility crisis that seriously when the main people I see talking about it (business leaders) are, simultaneously, spouting anti-immigrant and anti-welfare/healthcare...
It's pretty hard to take the fertility crisis that seriously when the main people I see talking about it (business leaders) are, simultaneously, spouting anti-immigrant and anti-welfare/healthcare rhetoric and laying off thousands of workers. Whatever they may say, their actions are consistent with a population that's too large and human beings too devalued.
Even in countries like South Korea, there are an awful lot of child-free spaces around. It's hard to believe that South Korea's leadership actually want more children as much as they say they do, while they turn a blind eye to rampant discrimination against children.
Would you mind expanding on this claim/thought? Although there obviously are many ways to define "our", "entire system" and "capitalism" I'm having a hard time understanding how you do it were...
[...] as our entire system (not just capitalism) relies on a stable or increasing population
Would you mind expanding on this claim/thought?
Although there obviously are many ways to define "our", "entire system" and "capitalism" I'm having a hard time understanding how you do it were it's possible to cut out capitalism from the current neoliberal hegemony and end up with anything meaningful.
To me it reads like you don't think it is possible for people to care for our selves and each other unless someone makes a profit and we also exploit the planet as hard as we can.
What I was trying to say is that it doesn’t matter whether you are the Gekko-capitalist U.S., social-democratic Sweden, socialism with Chinese characteristics China, or Juche North Korea;...
What I was trying to say is that it doesn’t matter whether you are the Gekko-capitalist U.S., social-democratic Sweden, socialism with Chinese characteristics China, or Juche North Korea; governments rely on stable or increasing population. They might be able to tolerate a very slight decline (~0.1% per year), but anything more poses serious risks to the stability of things mentioned in my first comment. Barring breakthroughs in robotics and AI (which might happen, but I wouldn’t count on it being guaranteed), six people can’t take care of their 100 grandparents/grandparent-equivalents, build/maintain infrastructure, and take vacation.
This podcast talks about a scenario where the world population will start to decline in ~30 years and then continue declining more and more. It talks about humankind abandoning large settled areas...
six people can’t take care of their 100 grandparents/grandparent-equivalents, build/maintain infrastructure, and take vacation.
This podcast talks about a scenario where the world population will start to decline in ~30 years and then continue declining more and more.
It talks about humankind abandoning large settled areas because there are just too few of us.
On top of that there is climate change affecting the whole planet and a shortage of fertiliser, sand (for construction) and other natural resources that we have come to rely on.
Vacation seems like a weird thing to contemplate in this context, but I'll consider what you are writing anyway as it has to do with work, time and resource management.
If there are 6 adults (~20-40 yrs old) and they have 100 grandparents (~80-100 yrs old), it should be safe to assume there is also ~25 parents (~50-70 yrs old) and ~1 child (~0-20 yrs old) so a total of 132 persons that need food, shelter, intellectual & physical stimulation, amusement, rest and health care.
Some quick maffs tell me that counting low there are 200+100+36+2 = 338 daily work hours to provide the basics for this group and contribute to some kind of society, this seems fine to me.
Obviously there won't be new iphones for everyone but that isn't the case today either. Our (and I include everyone that has access to tildes and can read, write and understand English in this "our") is based on other peoples work through centuries of exploitation.
You started by saying that 6 people had to take care of 100 grandparents. From there I concluded that there ought to be around 25 parents to the original 6 adults since 6×4 =24 and 100÷4 = 25 and...
You started by saying that 6 people had to take care of 100 grandparents. From there I concluded that there ought to be around 25 parents to the original 6 adults since 6×4 =24 and 100÷4 = 25 and finally with the declining birth rates and my unwillingness to use fractional people I decided the 6 adults had 1 child in total.
The ages I just made up, but they seemed reasonable to me.
With that said I continued thinking about how much work, in a very broad sense, each person could be expected and be willing to put in (considering the context of some kind of family bond too and a dwindling society)
I reckoned that an average 80-100 yr old can put in 2 hours of work per day, so with 100 of them that's 200 hours.
The next group (~50-70yr old) got a guesstimate of 4hours per person and there are 25 of them, so that's 100 more hours.
The original 6 people will have to do 6 hours each, which gives another 36 hours.
And finally the child does 2 hours, for a grand total of: 338hours/day of work in total for the whole group.
Obviously these numbers are completely made up to give an example and to keep the conversation going.
Woof, 80-100 year olds will have to put in 2 hours/day on average? That's a rough society you're imagining. My ~92 year old grandma is incapable of putting in any hours a day of work and probably...
Woof, 80-100 year olds will have to put in 2 hours/day on average? That's a rough society you're imagining. My ~92 year old grandma is incapable of putting in any hours a day of work and probably generates ~10 hours of work a day as she had a stroke and now requires constant supervision. Are you accounting for net negative work hours for some cohorts of people?
I understand this perspective but I think you're the one imagining a rough society. When I talk about work I mean everything we do to sustain ourselves and others. This includes, but us not...
Woof, 80-100 year olds will have to put in 2 hours/day on average? That's a rough society you're imagining
I understand this perspective but I think you're the one imagining a rough society.
When I talk about work I mean everything we do to sustain ourselves and others. This includes, but us not limited to: cooking, cleaning, laundry, feeding the animals, tending the garden, knitting socks, mending clothes, watching the kid(s), repairing the whatever's, etc, etc
All done in a comfortable tempo. In this world most people will be able to join in and contribute some work.
I knew someone's grandma would be brought up, and I did account for that as in I talked about averages, but even your grandma is probably capable to do something and I'm sure she'd love to fold some laundry or something to contribute, be useful and also feel useful. Obviously some people won't be able to contribute at all, but that's what averages are for.
And if she actually needs 10 exclusive hours of work to be taken care of (which sounds almost impossible) there is still 328 hours left in the pool.
Another thing to consider that I didn't bring up is the viewpoint I have on modern medicine and our western fear of death.
But in a collapsing society we must think about what we use our resources on.
I'm not saying your grandma should be left to die, but I'm saying that in general we tend to hold on too tightly to life and there is room to let people die rather than to be kept alive just because we can and we don't want to let go.
(I imagine I should mention that a lot of what we consider work today can just be not done and we would manage just fine as a species, so everyone working with advertising, manufacturing of trash, most banking, military, a lot of service, etc, etc will be freed up to do real meaningful work instead)
My grandma's incapable of doing any chores around the house. Even if she could fold her own laundry (she can't), you're handwaving away quite a lot by proxying work to just hours of effort spent....
My grandma's incapable of doing any chores around the house. Even if she could fold her own laundry (she can't), you're handwaving away quite a lot by proxying work to just hours of effort spent. An hour of me folding laundry brings about less economic use than an hour on a construction site. Money is an imperfect proxy, but is generally a better proxy than time. Since money is a store-of-value, it's a better way to measure economic impact than hours. Furthermore, a senior citizen spending 2 hours of their effort is not the same as a young adult spending 2 hours of effort as efficiency at a job also matters.
And if she actually needs 10 exclusive hours of work to be taken care of (which sounds almost impossible) there is still 328 hours left in the pool.
It's not a strict 10 hours of time, but the family member that's currently on rotation taking care of my grandma can't exactly spend the time in-between tasks picking up another job. The opportunity cost is 10 hours, even if the actual work itself is not.
I see, we are still talking past each other. You assume we need to stay organised roughly as we are today. I assume we can, and will have to, organise ourselves differently. The person on shift...
I see, we are still talking past each other.
You assume we need to stay organised roughly as we are today.
I assume we can, and will have to, organise ourselves differently.
The person on shift taking care of your grandma, could be in a home where there are also 20 other people coocking, cleaning, laundering, gardening, mending for themselves and another 40 people that might be away doing other neccesary work.
In this context those 10 hours will be used to do other work as well.
Most people don't want to sit idly for long periods of time. We want to do things and we want to contribute to the group.
I would also like to know why you think
Money is an imperfect proxy, but is generally a better proxy than time.
Money is just something completely made up by us, while time is a finite resource for every person.
Not the op, but social security and medicare's financial arrangement only works because there are more younger workers who are paying into those systems then there are retired people drawing...
Not the op, but social security and medicare's financial arrangement only works because there are more younger workers who are paying into those systems then there are retired people drawing benefits. Other countries have similar challenges with assorted government social schemes as well. Some of this could have been alleviated by lower government spending in years because at least in the US. Data from the last Social Security Trustees report is here: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/
For demographers, "fertility rate" refers to the average number of children born per woman, without factoring in any causes. That being said, we are arguably facing a fertility crisis (in the...
For demographers, "fertility rate" refers to the average number of children born per woman, without factoring in any causes.
That being said, we are arguably facing a fertility crisis (in the sense of couples being unable to have children) as a consequence of the birth control crisis (in the sense of couples choosing to use birth control). In advanced economies, children are a financial drain on a couple's resources, so they tend to delay having children until they're more financially stable — which means waiting until they're older. Modern medicine is really effective at helping older couples still have healthy children, but it's still far from perfect and it doesn't come cheap.
As a consequence, even couples who want to have children often end up having fewer children than they would like — often just one or two kids (below the replacement levels) when they would have preferred three or four (above replacement levels).
One of the YouTube comments said, we've socialised the benefits of having children, while the costs remain privatized. In America, we villified the welfare queen, the single parent, the teen...
One of the YouTube comments said, we've socialised the benefits of having children, while the costs remain privatized.
In America, we villified the welfare queen, the single parent, the teen parent, and the mommy track workers. We idolize people who hoard wealth, who plan early retirement, while we ask people to fully take care of themselves financially in old age. And that mentality is spreading all over the planet: society will not take care of you, and Having Children sets you back decades, and set them up to a life of poverty. It's irresponsible to yourself, and selfish to your would be children
We'd never go for basic income, but if we ever approach the topic with a test pilot group, perhaps the dropping birth rates can be reversed if we treat having children as the full time, savings and pension draining job that it is.
Whenever the topic of declining fertility comes up, it’s often framed as something that mainly affects first-world countries. In reality, the situation is much broader. In this podcast, guest...
Whenever the topic of declining fertility comes up, it’s often framed as something that mainly affects first-world countries. In reality, the situation is much broader.
In this podcast, guest professor Jesús Fernández-Villaverde explains that it is a global issue. He highlights how regions like Latin America, the Middle East, and North Africa are experiencing some of the fastest declines in birth rates, and explores the underlying factors.
I am at a vacation rental and one of the books left here that I picked up today is The Children Of Men. I’m only ~20 pages in. It is set in Britain 2021 and there is a global fertility crisis: no...
I am at a vacation rental and one of the books left here that I picked up today is The Children Of Men. I’m only ~20 pages in. It is set in Britain 2021 and there is a global fertility crisis: no new children have been born since 1995, globally.
No reason is really given (at least so far) for this calamity. But these types of reports as in the posted article are mentioned as a sort of early warning, not understood at the point they at published but only a small piece of a larger puzzle.
Anyway, not saying this is the case here, but just an interesting note.
I think about that movie maybe once a week, and not just because it's an awesome movie. I worry that we're headed for some version of that society, only instead of a fertility crisis, it's climate...
I think about that movie maybe once a week, and not just because it's an awesome movie. I worry that we're headed for some version of that society, only instead of a fertility crisis, it's climate catastrophe that will force mass migration from the global south to a hyper-capitalist and austerity-pilled (austerity maxxing?) global north, that will inevitably embrace nativist policies that would make Stephen Miller blush.
Echoing that the movie is incredible, one of the best science-fiction dramas of all time. Twenty years old this year and it not only hasn't aged a day, but has only become even more compelling...
Echoing that the movie is incredible, one of the best science-fiction dramas of all time. Twenty years old this year and it not only hasn't aged a day, but has only become even more compelling (and prescient).
Miriam's description that suddenly she finds her booking pages all blank one day still haunts me. The book contains a particularly devastating loss that the movie chose to avoid mentioning. It's...
Miriam's description that suddenly she finds her booking pages all blank one day still haunts me.
The book contains a particularly devastating loss that the movie chose to avoid mentioning. It's on its own a tremendously good read, for movie watchers who haven't read it already.
I see so much worrying and pearl clutching and hand wringing about this online. I understand that we have economic systems that necissitate the young drive the economy for the old, and that a...
I see so much worrying and pearl clutching and hand wringing about this online. I understand that we have economic systems that necissitate the young drive the economy for the old, and that a disruption of that would be very uncomfortable, but what truly is the long term concern? Are people concerned that this trend will continue forever, and our population will half, then half again, and so on until we have only a few thousand people left?
It seems to me that the problem is going to self correct after some time. I mean, when you look at most parts of the world, and just walk around, you're struck by how many fucking people there are everywhere.
That's gotta do something to your reproductive drive on a base, subconscious level. Like, if I compare how I feel when I think about living in a cramped city surrounded by millions of people versus how I feel when I think about living in a remote homestead cabin surrounded by thousands of acres of wilderness, one of them makes me want to have kids on a visceral level versus the other.
It seems to me that if you zoom out past women's rights, birth control, economic concerns, and so on, in just about every western country, we have more people around than ever before, and that may just blunt people's drive to contribute to more of it. I have a strong suspicion that once we start seeing fewer people around, that drive comes back and we eventually settle on an equilibrium.
It's much better than the alternative of endlessly breeding ourselves out of the possibility of a decent life.
Before I spend any time on this, can someone tell me if this is about an actual fertility crisis, in that people are unable to have children, or is this a birth rate crisis, where fewer children are being born because people are choosing not to do so?
Birth rate crisis. That said, while there’s been a lot of low quality discussion on declining birth rates, it’s still an issue that deserves thoughtful consideration, as our entire system (not just capitalism) relies on a stable or increasing population. An upside-down pyramid presents a major issue to social welfare, infrastructure upkeep, retirement, among others.
I'll grant that there are certainly challenges to population shrinkage that would need to be tackled, but I think it's worth noting that those can be tackled without necessarily increasing birthrate. Our current world may rely upon ever-increasing population counts, but there's no good reason it needs to.
And as a followup to that, I suspect a fair chunk of the concern about this can be traced back to wealthy groups that rely upon exploited labor to make money, and who do not want the labor market to be a seller's market. Personally, I'm not worried, and I think most places have got bigger fish to fry.
It's pretty hard to take the fertility crisis that seriously when the main people I see talking about it (business leaders) are, simultaneously, spouting anti-immigrant and anti-welfare/healthcare rhetoric and laying off thousands of workers. Whatever they may say, their actions are consistent with a population that's too large and human beings too devalued.
Even in countries like South Korea, there are an awful lot of child-free spaces around. It's hard to believe that South Korea's leadership actually want more children as much as they say they do, while they turn a blind eye to rampant discrimination against children.
How about accepting it? Infinite growth is unsustainable. Accept less, cherish more.
Would you mind expanding on this claim/thought?
Although there obviously are many ways to define "our", "entire system" and "capitalism" I'm having a hard time understanding how you do it were it's possible to cut out capitalism from the current neoliberal hegemony and end up with anything meaningful.
To me it reads like you don't think it is possible for people to care for our selves and each other unless someone makes a profit and we also exploit the planet as hard as we can.
What I was trying to say is that it doesn’t matter whether you are the Gekko-capitalist U.S., social-democratic Sweden, socialism with Chinese characteristics China, or Juche North Korea; governments rely on stable or increasing population. They might be able to tolerate a very slight decline (~0.1% per year), but anything more poses serious risks to the stability of things mentioned in my first comment. Barring breakthroughs in robotics and AI (which might happen, but I wouldn’t count on it being guaranteed), six people can’t take care of their 100 grandparents/grandparent-equivalents, build/maintain infrastructure, and take vacation.
This podcast talks about a scenario where the world population will start to decline in ~30 years and then continue declining more and more.
It talks about humankind abandoning large settled areas because there are just too few of us.
On top of that there is climate change affecting the whole planet and a shortage of fertiliser, sand (for construction) and other natural resources that we have come to rely on.
Vacation seems like a weird thing to contemplate in this context, but I'll consider what you are writing anyway as it has to do with work, time and resource management.
If there are 6 adults (~20-40 yrs old) and they have 100 grandparents (~80-100 yrs old), it should be safe to assume there is also ~25 parents (~50-70 yrs old) and ~1 child (~0-20 yrs old) so a total of 132 persons that need food, shelter, intellectual & physical stimulation, amusement, rest and health care.
Some quick maffs tell me that counting low there are 200+100+36+2 = 338 daily work hours to provide the basics for this group and contribute to some kind of society, this seems fine to me.
Obviously there won't be new iphones for everyone but that isn't the case today either. Our (and I include everyone that has access to tildes and can read, write and understand English in this "our") is based on other peoples work through centuries of exploitation.
Can you explain your math for me? I’m not seeing how it’s working out.
You started by saying that 6 people had to take care of 100 grandparents. From there I concluded that there ought to be around 25 parents to the original 6 adults since 6×4 =24 and 100÷4 = 25 and finally with the declining birth rates and my unwillingness to use fractional people I decided the 6 adults had 1 child in total.
The ages I just made up, but they seemed reasonable to me.
With that said I continued thinking about how much work, in a very broad sense, each person could be expected and be willing to put in (considering the context of some kind of family bond too and a dwindling society)
I reckoned that an average 80-100 yr old can put in 2 hours of work per day, so with 100 of them that's 200 hours.
The next group (~50-70yr old) got a guesstimate of 4hours per person and there are 25 of them, so that's 100 more hours.
The original 6 people will have to do 6 hours each, which gives another 36 hours.
And finally the child does 2 hours, for a grand total of: 338hours/day of work in total for the whole group.
Obviously these numbers are completely made up to give an example and to keep the conversation going.
Woof, 80-100 year olds will have to put in 2 hours/day on average? That's a rough society you're imagining. My ~92 year old grandma is incapable of putting in any hours a day of work and probably generates ~10 hours of work a day as she had a stroke and now requires constant supervision. Are you accounting for net negative work hours for some cohorts of people?
I understand this perspective but I think you're the one imagining a rough society.
When I talk about work I mean everything we do to sustain ourselves and others. This includes, but us not limited to: cooking, cleaning, laundry, feeding the animals, tending the garden, knitting socks, mending clothes, watching the kid(s), repairing the whatever's, etc, etc
All done in a comfortable tempo. In this world most people will be able to join in and contribute some work.
I knew someone's grandma would be brought up, and I did account for that as in I talked about averages, but even your grandma is probably capable to do something and I'm sure she'd love to fold some laundry or something to contribute, be useful and also feel useful. Obviously some people won't be able to contribute at all, but that's what averages are for.
And if she actually needs 10 exclusive hours of work to be taken care of (which sounds almost impossible) there is still 328 hours left in the pool.
Another thing to consider that I didn't bring up is the viewpoint I have on modern medicine and our western fear of death.
But in a collapsing society we must think about what we use our resources on.
I'm not saying your grandma should be left to die, but I'm saying that in general we tend to hold on too tightly to life and there is room to let people die rather than to be kept alive just because we can and we don't want to let go.
(I imagine I should mention that a lot of what we consider work today can just be not done and we would manage just fine as a species, so everyone working with advertising, manufacturing of trash, most banking, military, a lot of service, etc, etc will be freed up to do real meaningful work instead)
My grandma's incapable of doing any chores around the house. Even if she could fold her own laundry (she can't), you're handwaving away quite a lot by proxying work to just hours of effort spent. An hour of me folding laundry brings about less economic use than an hour on a construction site. Money is an imperfect proxy, but is generally a better proxy than time. Since money is a store-of-value, it's a better way to measure economic impact than hours. Furthermore, a senior citizen spending 2 hours of their effort is not the same as a young adult spending 2 hours of effort as efficiency at a job also matters.
It's not a strict 10 hours of time, but the family member that's currently on rotation taking care of my grandma can't exactly spend the time in-between tasks picking up another job. The opportunity cost is 10 hours, even if the actual work itself is not.
I see, we are still talking past each other.
You assume we need to stay organised roughly as we are today.
I assume we can, and will have to, organise ourselves differently.
The person on shift taking care of your grandma, could be in a home where there are also 20 other people coocking, cleaning, laundering, gardening, mending for themselves and another 40 people that might be away doing other neccesary work.
In this context those 10 hours will be used to do other work as well.
Most people don't want to sit idly for long periods of time. We want to do things and we want to contribute to the group.
I would also like to know why you think
Money is just something completely made up by us, while time is a finite resource for every person.
Not the op, but social security and medicare's financial arrangement only works because there are more younger workers who are paying into those systems then there are retired people drawing benefits. Other countries have similar challenges with assorted government social schemes as well. Some of this could have been alleviated by lower government spending in years because at least in the US. Data from the last Social Security Trustees report is here: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/
For demographers, "fertility rate" refers to the average number of children born per woman, without factoring in any causes.
That being said, we are arguably facing a fertility crisis (in the sense of couples being unable to have children) as a consequence of the birth control crisis (in the sense of couples choosing to use birth control). In advanced economies, children are a financial drain on a couple's resources, so they tend to delay having children until they're more financially stable — which means waiting until they're older. Modern medicine is really effective at helping older couples still have healthy children, but it's still far from perfect and it doesn't come cheap.
As a consequence, even couples who want to have children often end up having fewer children than they would like — often just one or two kids (below the replacement levels) when they would have preferred three or four (above replacement levels).
One of the YouTube comments said, we've socialised the benefits of having children, while the costs remain privatized.
In America, we villified the welfare queen, the single parent, the teen parent, and the mommy track workers. We idolize people who hoard wealth, who plan early retirement, while we ask people to fully take care of themselves financially in old age. And that mentality is spreading all over the planet: society will not take care of you, and Having Children sets you back decades, and set them up to a life of poverty. It's irresponsible to yourself, and selfish to your would be children
We'd never go for basic income, but if we ever approach the topic with a test pilot group, perhaps the dropping birth rates can be reversed if we treat having children as the full time, savings and pension draining job that it is.
Edit: typo
Whenever the topic of declining fertility comes up, it’s often framed as something that mainly affects first-world countries. In reality, the situation is much broader.
In this podcast, guest professor Jesús Fernández-Villaverde explains that it is a global issue. He highlights how regions like Latin America, the Middle East, and North Africa are experiencing some of the fastest declines in birth rates, and explores the underlying factors.
I am at a vacation rental and one of the books left here that I picked up today is The Children Of Men. I’m only ~20 pages in. It is set in Britain 2021 and there is a global fertility crisis: no new children have been born since 1995, globally.
No reason is really given (at least so far) for this calamity. But these types of reports as in the posted article are mentioned as a sort of early warning, not understood at the point they at published but only a small piece of a larger puzzle.
Anyway, not saying this is the case here, but just an interesting note.
It's a good story, but very different in a "cannot have children" vs "choosing not to have children" way.
The movie is really good IMO too
I think about that movie maybe once a week, and not just because it's an awesome movie. I worry that we're headed for some version of that society, only instead of a fertility crisis, it's climate catastrophe that will force mass migration from the global south to a hyper-capitalist and austerity-pilled (austerity maxxing?) global north, that will inevitably embrace nativist policies that would make Stephen Miller blush.
I haven't read the book, but I can say that Children of Men was also adapted into a fantastic movie.
Echoing that the movie is incredible, one of the best science-fiction dramas of all time. Twenty years old this year and it not only hasn't aged a day, but has only become even more compelling (and prescient).
Miriam's description that suddenly she finds her booking pages all blank one day still haunts me.
The book contains a particularly devastating loss that the movie chose to avoid mentioning. It's on its own a tremendously good read, for movie watchers who haven't read it already.
I see so much worrying and pearl clutching and hand wringing about this online. I understand that we have economic systems that necissitate the young drive the economy for the old, and that a disruption of that would be very uncomfortable, but what truly is the long term concern? Are people concerned that this trend will continue forever, and our population will half, then half again, and so on until we have only a few thousand people left?
It seems to me that the problem is going to self correct after some time. I mean, when you look at most parts of the world, and just walk around, you're struck by how many fucking people there are everywhere.
That's gotta do something to your reproductive drive on a base, subconscious level. Like, if I compare how I feel when I think about living in a cramped city surrounded by millions of people versus how I feel when I think about living in a remote homestead cabin surrounded by thousands of acres of wilderness, one of them makes me want to have kids on a visceral level versus the other.
It seems to me that if you zoom out past women's rights, birth control, economic concerns, and so on, in just about every western country, we have more people around than ever before, and that may just blunt people's drive to contribute to more of it. I have a strong suspicion that once we start seeing fewer people around, that drive comes back and we eventually settle on an equilibrium.
It's much better than the alternative of endlessly breeding ourselves out of the possibility of a decent life.
Coastal west Africa is a apparently an exception to this trend.