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I was so interested to read about a somewhat similar situation with the Shaker Church in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers https://en.wikipedia.or

I was so interested to read about a somewhat similar situation with the Shaker Church in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers The members took a vow of celibacy, and the church depended on new members joining. As of today, there are just two offical Shakers left, both quite old.

danieltillett 9y ago
They did make some rather nice furniture.
Retric 9y ago
Without immigration US is in the same boat as Japan with a falling population. Long term I suspect cultures with positive population growth to beat the competition, but that may take a long time.
- ido 9y ago
  Fertility rates fall as countries get richer - it’s not a coincedense that poor countries have higher birth rates. The biggest drop in global population growth rate in the last 20 years came from massive drops in developing countries like India.
- zanethomas 9y ago
  Immigration is not required, what is required is for Americans to have more children. I did my part, I had three, now the rest of y'all need to quit paying for toys for yourselves and start paying for the future.
  - pedrocr 9y ago
    We actually need the exact opposite. Developed countries should keep having less children as each person in a developed country consumes much more of the planet's limited resources. Our best bet at having a livable planet in a hundred years is probably controlling population. Everything else gets driven by consumption demand.
    - zanethomas 9y ago
      Sounds like you would be comfortable with China's Once Child Policy.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - vetinari 9y ago
      By your argument we should also stop immigration to developed countries, because once the immigrants arrive, they will consume the same amount of resources as the natives. You are claiming, that we cannot have that.
      - pedrocr 9y ago
        It will depend on what the remaining population of developing countries does. Developed countries have less children so if the immigrants send back money to develop their home country and also have less children like their host countries do it would be a large gain. Don't know if this has been studied but there should already be plenty of data points to choose from.
  - rainbowmverse 9y ago
    I can't breed with most of the people I'm attracted to until science figures a few things out.
    - jschwartzi 9y ago
      Same. And even if I wanted to have a kid with them it's not going to be for some ludicrous reason like maintaining the population of whites in the US.
  - freeflight 9y ago
    Down the line, overpopulation is gonna affect all of us, as in "humanity as a whole". It's not like US American children are in any way less wasteful than other children, quite the opposite actually. Our problem isn't a lack of people, we actually have too many of them, the problem being how they are distributed. Fixing that problem by further overpopulating certain regions seems like a rather odd fix and mostly motivated by some kind of "genetic egoism" along the lines of "My genes are so great, can't have future humanity live without them!".
    - zanethomas 9y ago
      My genes are so great you won't have a future humanity without them. You're welcome to save the future by not passing yours on.
      - jameskegel 9y ago
        Can you stop responding with asinine remarks to everything?
        zanethomas 9y ago
        by following your example?
        dang 9y ago
        We ban accounts that post like this. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - freeflight 9y ago
        > You're welcome to save the future by not passing yours on. It is weird how you make it sound so bad and insulting. Do you want to suggest that we humans live for no other reason than to procreate? Don't you think we, as a species, should be able to think a bit further ahead, instead of basing all our behavior and goals on procreating, like we are some kind of mindless virus? Rabbits might not be sentient or "smart" enough to realize when they are overpopulating a region and having a negative impact on the environment. But we humans most certainly are "smart" enough to realize it, yet we still act like rabbits to it.
  - phkahler 9y ago
    >> what is required is for Americans to have more children. Wow, just wow. But I'll assume you're talking about the bigger picture of - if the country is to survive long term we'll need to have a higher birth rate, what could be done to encourage that. I'd say the first thing we have to do is get people off the economic treadmill. Stop encouraging people to pile on debt. When everyone is too busy trying to pay the rent there's a disincentive to have children.
    - zanethomas 9y ago
      you assume correctly
  - lotsofpulp 9y ago
    The future of who? With a widening wealth and income gap, and inability to provide for quality education/healthcare/life for one's children, what incentive do people who are struggling have?
- RyanZAG 9y ago
  Not American and my culture is all about massive childbirth, but this sentiment seems strange to me. How does that solve the problem? If your panda bears are failing to breed, surely the solution is not to just import grizzly bears and pretend the panda bears never existed there? I guess it's a type of solution to the problem of "lack of bears", but is it really a good thing?
  - sanderjd 9y ago
    Because we're all people, not different kinds of bears.
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      Yet different groups have different cultures, religions, customs, languages, etc. It's idealistic to act like everyone is the same, when in reality, different groups are quite different, and often don't interact well together.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - to_bpr 9y ago
        That you're being censored for simply pointing out a very simple truth goes to show how utterly toxic our industry has become.
        sanderjd 9y ago
        I think it's stupid to downvote your parent comment (and I upvoted it in hopes of de-graying it), but 1. downvotes are not "censorship", and 2. the behavior of a few individual voters here has nothing to do with "our industry".
        to_bpr 9y ago
        1. You're right and I originally had "downvoted", but after returning to the main thread and only being able to see who posted and not what they posted (in this sub-thread) from there I changed it to censored. 2. With regards to here, yes you're correct. If anything I should be calling the people in question out for using HN like Reddit (i.e. I downvote that which I disagree with).
- ryandrake 9y ago
  Fortunately, USA still has robust immigration (despite political efforts), so we have nothing to worry about, compared to Japan. American population and culture is in no danger of dying off.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    I agree that the American population is safe, but I would argue that American culture is under attack. There are massive numbers of people saying that immigrants shouldn't integrate. Lots of other people fighting against our basic cultural expectations like gender norms, common language, etc. Our workers don't have common holidays anymore, particularly among the lower class who has to work during them. Job centralization and women in the workforce are splitting families apart and lowering the marriage rate among parents. There is a widespread belief that there is no right or way to live your life, which makes sense on a global scale, but erodes our sense of community on a local level. Each one of those chip away at American culture. It _is_ in danger IMO. edit: To clarify, I'm not saying whether or not this is a good or bad thing. All I'm saying is that our culture is changing massively, the fundamental norms of our culture are shifting, and an argument can be made that common American culture is "under attack" by forces changing it into a completely different direction.
    - pedrocr 9y ago
      That's a very narrow view of culture. You're basically saying that culture is immutable and thus any changes are threats to it. It hasn't been like that for the last 250 years, why should it be like that now?
      - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
        Other cultural changes in our past have been gradual and minor. Simultaneously saying that language norms are wrong, gender norms are wrong, a basic family structure doesn't matter, and there is no right or wrong way to live your life all at the same time is a _massive_ shock to the culture, and is unlike any other cultural change seen before in our country.

danieltillett 9y ago

They did make some rather nice furniture.

Retric 9y ago

Without immigration US is in the same boat as Japan with a falling population. Long term I suspect cultures with positive population growth to beat the competition, but that may take a long time.

ido 9y ago
Fertility rates fall as countries get richer - it’s not a coincedense that poor countries have higher birth rates. The biggest drop in global population growth rate in the last 20 years came from massive drops in developing countries like India.
zanethomas 9y ago
Immigration is not required, what is required is for Americans to have more children. I did my part, I had three, now the rest of y'all need to quit paying for toys for yourselves and start paying for the future.
- pedrocr 9y ago
  We actually need the exact opposite. Developed countries should keep having less children as each person in a developed country consumes much more of the planet's limited resources. Our best bet at having a livable planet in a hundred years is probably controlling population. Everything else gets driven by consumption demand.
  - zanethomas 9y ago
    Sounds like you would be comfortable with China's Once Child Policy.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - vetinari 9y ago
    By your argument we should also stop immigration to developed countries, because once the immigrants arrive, they will consume the same amount of resources as the natives. You are claiming, that we cannot have that.
    - pedrocr 9y ago
      It will depend on what the remaining population of developing countries does. Developed countries have less children so if the immigrants send back money to develop their home country and also have less children like their host countries do it would be a large gain. Don't know if this has been studied but there should already be plenty of data points to choose from.
- rainbowmverse 9y ago
  I can't breed with most of the people I'm attracted to until science figures a few things out.
  - jschwartzi 9y ago
    Same. And even if I wanted to have a kid with them it's not going to be for some ludicrous reason like maintaining the population of whites in the US.
- freeflight 9y ago
  Down the line, overpopulation is gonna affect all of us, as in "humanity as a whole". It's not like US American children are in any way less wasteful than other children, quite the opposite actually. Our problem isn't a lack of people, we actually have too many of them, the problem being how they are distributed. Fixing that problem by further overpopulating certain regions seems like a rather odd fix and mostly motivated by some kind of "genetic egoism" along the lines of "My genes are so great, can't have future humanity live without them!".
  - zanethomas 9y ago
    My genes are so great you won't have a future humanity without them. You're welcome to save the future by not passing yours on.
    - jameskegel 9y ago
      Can you stop responding with asinine remarks to everything?
      - zanethomas 9y ago
        by following your example?
        dang 9y ago
        We ban accounts that post like this. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - freeflight 9y ago
      > You're welcome to save the future by not passing yours on. It is weird how you make it sound so bad and insulting. Do you want to suggest that we humans live for no other reason than to procreate? Don't you think we, as a species, should be able to think a bit further ahead, instead of basing all our behavior and goals on procreating, like we are some kind of mindless virus? Rabbits might not be sentient or "smart" enough to realize when they are overpopulating a region and having a negative impact on the environment. But we humans most certainly are "smart" enough to realize it, yet we still act like rabbits to it.
- phkahler 9y ago
  >> what is required is for Americans to have more children. Wow, just wow. But I'll assume you're talking about the bigger picture of - if the country is to survive long term we'll need to have a higher birth rate, what could be done to encourage that. I'd say the first thing we have to do is get people off the economic treadmill. Stop encouraging people to pile on debt. When everyone is too busy trying to pay the rent there's a disincentive to have children.
  - zanethomas 9y ago
    you assume correctly
- lotsofpulp 9y ago
  The future of who? With a widening wealth and income gap, and inability to provide for quality education/healthcare/life for one's children, what incentive do people who are struggling have?
RyanZAG 9y ago
Not American and my culture is all about massive childbirth, but this sentiment seems strange to me. How does that solve the problem? If your panda bears are failing to breed, surely the solution is not to just import grizzly bears and pretend the panda bears never existed there? I guess it's a type of solution to the problem of "lack of bears", but is it really a good thing?
- sanderjd 9y ago
  Because we're all people, not different kinds of bears.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    Yet different groups have different cultures, religions, customs, languages, etc. It's idealistic to act like everyone is the same, when in reality, different groups are quite different, and often don't interact well together.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - to_bpr 9y ago
      That you're being censored for simply pointing out a very simple truth goes to show how utterly toxic our industry has become.
      - sanderjd 9y ago
        I think it's stupid to downvote your parent comment (and I upvoted it in hopes of de-graying it), but 1. downvotes are not "censorship", and 2. the behavior of a few individual voters here has nothing to do with "our industry".
        to_bpr 9y ago
        1. You're right and I originally had "downvoted", but after returning to the main thread and only being able to see who posted and not what they posted (in this sub-thread) from there I changed it to censored. 2. With regards to here, yes you're correct. If anything I should be calling the people in question out for using HN like Reddit (i.e. I downvote that which I disagree with).
ryandrake 9y ago
Fortunately, USA still has robust immigration (despite political efforts), so we have nothing to worry about, compared to Japan. American population and culture is in no danger of dying off.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  I agree that the American population is safe, but I would argue that American culture is under attack. There are massive numbers of people saying that immigrants shouldn't integrate. Lots of other people fighting against our basic cultural expectations like gender norms, common language, etc. Our workers don't have common holidays anymore, particularly among the lower class who has to work during them. Job centralization and women in the workforce are splitting families apart and lowering the marriage rate among parents. There is a widespread belief that there is no right or way to live your life, which makes sense on a global scale, but erodes our sense of community on a local level. Each one of those chip away at American culture. It _is_ in danger IMO. edit: To clarify, I'm not saying whether or not this is a good or bad thing. All I'm saying is that our culture is changing massively, the fundamental norms of our culture are shifting, and an argument can be made that common American culture is "under attack" by forces changing it into a completely different direction.
  - pedrocr 9y ago
    That's a very narrow view of culture. You're basically saying that culture is immutable and thus any changes are threats to it. It hasn't been like that for the last 250 years, why should it be like that now?
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      Other cultural changes in our past have been gradual and minor. Simultaneously saying that language norms are wrong, gender norms are wrong, a basic family structure doesn't matter, and there is no right or wrong way to live your life all at the same time is a _massive_ shock to the culture, and is unlike any other cultural change seen before in our country.