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This makes me super happy and super scared. Happy because we have plenty of people on Earth and in the US. We don't need more people. Scared because so many

This makes me super happy and super scared. Happy because we have plenty of people on Earth and in the US. We don't need more people. Scared because so many of our economic structures assume infinite population growth.

lisper 8y ago
We can change our economic structures. We can't change the fact that exponential growth is unsustainable. So this way at least there is hope.
- mhneu 8y ago
  Replacement level fertility is by definition non-exponential (or if you prefer, has an exponent of 1.) A reasonable number of macroeconomists would be ok with replacement-level fertility. The economics get really bad when the birth rate falls below replacement though - you get fewer workers supporting more retirees, which has the bad consequences you can see now in Japan.
  - vkou 8y ago
    > you get fewer workers supporting more retirees, which has the bad consequences you can see now in Japan. With the productivity gains of the last few decades this shouldn't be a problem. That is, if those productivity gains actually went into something useful, instead of appreciating my 401K.
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    What are the bad consequences in Japan besides flat growth?
    - ddebernardy 8y ago
      Didn't flat growth in Japan happen much earlier than this problem? My memory might not serve me well, but my own understanding is their flat growth is a hangover related to their debt bubble popping in the late 1980s - with the bad debt still getting purged out of the system nowadays.
  - iandanforth 8y ago
    Do you know of any studies that look for opportunities in declining populations? There seems to be a tendency for people to label declining populations as 'bad' and proceed from there as opposed to asking 'what are the benefits as well as the harms of this trend?'
- always_good 8y ago
  I read the article title and I think "good." I would love for governments all over the world to finally reach a scarcity mindset. Unfortunately, the earliest governments to try that were pwned by imperialists. But these days power dynamics aren't so linear anymore due to WMDs.
chr1 8y ago
There is no good reason to be happy about having less people. Most of the earth is empty now due to desert belts, and we almost have the technology for terraforming them but do not have enough people to need that. Losing people instead is really scary because that will mean we won't have large enough economy to afford large geoengineering projects, and will be caught in runaway effects of permafrost melting without possibility to do anything. There are two things that give me hope that number of people on earth will keep increasing: first is technologies for increasing lifespan, and reproductive age, second is that subcultures that encourage not having children, will die off naturally.

lisper 8y ago

We can change our economic structures. We can't change the fact that exponential growth is unsustainable. So this way at least there is hope.

mhneu 8y ago
Replacement level fertility is by definition non-exponential (or if you prefer, has an exponent of 1.) A reasonable number of macroeconomists would be ok with replacement-level fertility. The economics get really bad when the birth rate falls below replacement though - you get fewer workers supporting more retirees, which has the bad consequences you can see now in Japan.
- vkou 8y ago
  > you get fewer workers supporting more retirees, which has the bad consequences you can see now in Japan. With the productivity gains of the last few decades this shouldn't be a problem. That is, if those productivity gains actually went into something useful, instead of appreciating my 401K.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  What are the bad consequences in Japan besides flat growth?
  - ddebernardy 8y ago
    Didn't flat growth in Japan happen much earlier than this problem? My memory might not serve me well, but my own understanding is their flat growth is a hangover related to their debt bubble popping in the late 1980s - with the bad debt still getting purged out of the system nowadays.
- iandanforth 8y ago
  Do you know of any studies that look for opportunities in declining populations? There seems to be a tendency for people to label declining populations as 'bad' and proceed from there as opposed to asking 'what are the benefits as well as the harms of this trend?'
always_good 8y ago
I read the article title and I think "good." I would love for governments all over the world to finally reach a scarcity mindset. Unfortunately, the earliest governments to try that were pwned by imperialists. But these days power dynamics aren't so linear anymore due to WMDs.

chr1 8y ago

There is no good reason to be happy about having less people. Most of the earth is empty now due to desert belts, and we almost have the technology for terraforming them but do not have enough people to need that. Losing people instead is really scary because that will mean we won't have large enough economy to afford large geoengineering projects, and will be caught in runaway effects of permafrost melting without possibility to do anything. There are two things that give me hope that number of people on earth will keep increasing: first is technologies for increasing lifespan, and reproductive age, second is that subcultures that encourage not having children, will die off naturally.