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With the rapid destruction of soon-to-be-depleted resources and worsening climate change I argue that "Baby Recovery" is a very misleading titling of birth rate

With the rapid destruction of soon-to-be-depleted resources and worsening climate change I argue that "Baby Recovery" is a very misleading titling of birth rate decline; the next generation will likely have a better quality of life if there are _fewer_ of them, not more.

robotrout 8y ago
There won't be fewer of them, because they will be supplemented by immigrants. Many western countries are actively encouraging 3rd world immigrants in an effort to bolster their faltering entitlements ponzi scheme with more warm bodies.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Bucephalus355 8y ago
I very much see what you’re saying and think a lot of current data backs up your view. I do want to point out that Thomas Malthus in the 1700’s had a very similar argument though and “overpopulation” was to then as “global warming” is today in some (only some) regards. At the very least, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “families are the platoons of society”. I never wanted kids, but as I got into my 30’s, you can feel something missing from life without kids, in the same way you can feel something missing without a long-term partner. I don’t want to make the mistake of forcing my American middle-class ideals of “family” onto others, but often progress in the world is achieved by the desire to make it better for our children, and not our future selves or some theoretical “other humans”.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  And Malthusian theory is a joke of economics from beginning to end.
- rz2k 8y ago
  Malthus had an interesting idea about some resources growing geometrically and others growing arithmetically. There wasn't real world data to back up the supposition. His conclusions seem to have been based on naive mathematical understandings, and misinterpreting processes that approximate logistic functions being at different stages of transitions. With changing marginal growth rates, even similar processes could appear to be fundamentally different from each other if they are in different stages. Climate science in this century is based on mathematically sophisticated models, and beyond the comparative theoretical rigor, they have been shown to have good predictive power.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Robotbeat 8y ago
That is ridiculous. Wages have never been higher, and there have never been more people. There are incredibly strong network effects from having more people (in cities, etc), and the benefit of international trade relies on more people to enable better specialization. All kinds of incredibly important markets, like semiconductors (including computer chips, solar power) and even mining rely on having a lot of people to sell to to pay for the upfront and continuous high costs of setting up these operations. The economies of scale are incredibly important. Additionally, a shrinking population means that the working-age population shrinks relative to those who are too old to work. That means less care and less quality of care (and at greater cost) for the elderly. It also means the elderly will be forced to work longer. Does this sound like improved quality of life? This zero-sum Malthusian thinking is not only untrue, but following it collectively will make us much, MUCH poorer and worse off. It's a common way of thinking on both the left and the right, and it is fundamentally anti-human and contradicted by reality.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  It's not untrue, but it is nuanced. Basically, Malthus was right for some people. More people tends to benefit capital and harm labor, because it increases both the potential labor pool and potential market size for capitalists & entrepreneurs but increases competition for laborers. It tends to benefit specialists and harm generalists, because specialists can more easily find buyers for their skills while generalists have to try harder to stand out from everyone else. It tends to benefit landowners (who already own part of the fixed supply of property) at the expense of renters (who must compete with more people for housing). While I'd agree that more population is overall good for humanity (if only because there's more of it), what's good for humanity is not necessarily good for individual humans. However, since the groups that it is good for tend to be the groups that set the prevailing narrative, these distinctions usually get papered over. There's a credible theory that Black Death lead to the Renaissance, because the depopulation of Europe allowed laborers to bargain for higher wages and kickstarted the growth of a permanent middle class. There's a bunch of resources on this if you google [black death lead to renaissance], but the Wikipedia page has a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Death#Social,_environmental,_and_economic_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Deat...
rz2k 8y ago
What are the limiting factors contributing to quality of life? Raw natural resources or post-processing and value added by people to those resources? The idea back in the twentieth century that overpopulation underlaid all problems seemed to be based on a subconscious idea that capital stock maintains itself and stuff produces itself. It takes far fewer acres, gallons of water and farmer-hours to feed a person in 2018, because the economy is more developed. Same goes for almost everything people need in their day to day lives, because a larger population supports more specialized occupations. On an entrepreneurial site with people who like to build things there is going to be some bias towards appreciating individual self-sufficiency, like a household version of autarky, but it isn't the path to producing the good and services that are important to supporting a high quality of life for people.
toasterlovin 8y ago
On the other hand, life is a Malthusian struggle. Better to belong to a growing tribe than a shrinking one.

robotrout 8y ago

There won't be fewer of them, because they will be supplemented by immigrants. Many western countries are actively encouraging 3rd world immigrants in an effort to bolster their faltering entitlements ponzi scheme with more warm bodies.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

Bucephalus355 8y ago

I very much see what you’re saying and think a lot of current data backs up your view. I do want to point out that Thomas Malthus in the 1700’s had a very similar argument though and “overpopulation” was to then as “global warming” is today in some (only some) regards. At the very least, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “families are the platoons of society”. I never wanted kids, but as I got into my 30’s, you can feel something missing from life without kids, in the same way you can feel something missing without a long-term partner. I don’t want to make the mistake of forcing my American middle-class ideals of “family” onto others, but often progress in the world is achieved by the desire to make it better for our children, and not our future selves or some theoretical “other humans”.

conanbatt 8y ago
And Malthusian theory is a joke of economics from beginning to end.
rz2k 8y ago
Malthus had an interesting idea about some resources growing geometrically and others growing arithmetically. There wasn't real world data to back up the supposition. His conclusions seem to have been based on naive mathematical understandings, and misinterpreting processes that approximate logistic functions being at different stages of transitions. With changing marginal growth rates, even similar processes could appear to be fundamentally different from each other if they are in different stages. Climate science in this century is based on mathematically sophisticated models, and beyond the comparative theoretical rigor, they have been shown to have good predictive power.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Robotbeat 8y ago

That is ridiculous. Wages have never been higher, and there have never been more people. There are incredibly strong network effects from having more people (in cities, etc), and the benefit of international trade relies on more people to enable better specialization. All kinds of incredibly important markets, like semiconductors (including computer chips, solar power) and even mining rely on having a lot of people to sell to to pay for the upfront and continuous high costs of setting up these operations. The economies of scale are incredibly important. Additionally, a shrinking population means that the working-age population shrinks relative to those who are too old to work. That means less care and less quality of care (and at greater cost) for the elderly. It also means the elderly will be forced to work longer. Does this sound like improved quality of life? This zero-sum Malthusian thinking is not only untrue, but following it collectively will make us much, MUCH poorer and worse off. It's a common way of thinking on both the left and the right, and it is fundamentally anti-human and contradicted by reality.

nostrademons 8y ago
It's not untrue, but it is nuanced. Basically, Malthus was right for some people. More people tends to benefit capital and harm labor, because it increases both the potential labor pool and potential market size for capitalists & entrepreneurs but increases competition for laborers. It tends to benefit specialists and harm generalists, because specialists can more easily find buyers for their skills while generalists have to try harder to stand out from everyone else. It tends to benefit landowners (who already own part of the fixed supply of property) at the expense of renters (who must compete with more people for housing). While I'd agree that more population is overall good for humanity (if only because there's more of it), what's good for humanity is not necessarily good for individual humans. However, since the groups that it is good for tend to be the groups that set the prevailing narrative, these distinctions usually get papered over. There's a credible theory that Black Death lead to the Renaissance, because the depopulation of Europe allowed laborers to bargain for higher wages and kickstarted the growth of a permanent middle class. There's a bunch of resources on this if you google [black death lead to renaissance], but the Wikipedia page has a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Death#Social,_environmental,_and_economic_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Deat...

rz2k 8y ago

What are the limiting factors contributing to quality of life? Raw natural resources or post-processing and value added by people to those resources? The idea back in the twentieth century that overpopulation underlaid all problems seemed to be based on a subconscious idea that capital stock maintains itself and stuff produces itself. It takes far fewer acres, gallons of water and farmer-hours to feed a person in 2018, because the economy is more developed. Same goes for almost everything people need in their day to day lives, because a larger population supports more specialized occupations. On an entrepreneurial site with people who like to build things there is going to be some bias towards appreciating individual self-sufficiency, like a household version of autarky, but it isn't the path to producing the good and services that are important to supporting a high quality of life for people.

toasterlovin 8y ago

On the other hand, life is a Malthusian struggle. Better to belong to a growing tribe than a shrinking one.