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> When you considering the very low fertility rates of Europe, I would consider this whole system to be unsustainable. Low fertility rates are a feature and no

> When you considering the very low fertility rates of Europe, I would consider this whole system to be unsustainable. Low fertility rates are a feature and not a bug, and in these times they are actually a very desired feature [0]. The only way one could consider that "unsustainable" is to assume there's literally zero immigration, with a globally stagnating or shrinking population. But all of these are objectively false. On a global scale, humanity is a far cry from dying out due to infertility, quite the opposite. So let's not pretend that low fertility rates are a bad thing, okay? Btw: By HDI the US ranks 13, down from 12. Want to take an educated guess where most of the countries above it on the ranking are located? [1] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> The only way one could consider that "unsustainable" is to assume there's literally zero immigration, with a globally stagnating or shrinking population. The world-wide net immigration is inherently zero. If what we're looking for is approximately the population replacement rate globally, what sense does it make to have something different nationally? Doing so creates all sorts of problems for the population source countries in terms of brain drain and so on (they pay to educate someone for decades and then anyone above the 90th percentile moves out), and for the destination country in terms of preserving the local culture and history as long-term net immigration results in the culture of the donor population subsuming the existing one.
- freeflight 8y ago
  > The world-wide net immigration is inherently zero. Good thing I didn't talk about "world-wide net immigration" but rather about "worldwide net population growth". The two are related, but not the same. Low birthrates are very much a localized "problem", fixed by global migration due to the fact that globally we do not have a fertility problem, globally we have the exact opposite of that problem.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > Low birthrates are very much a localized "problem" The fertility rate has been declining world wide, from ~5 per woman in 1950 to ~2.5 now. The cause appears to be something like industrialization and urbanization, so it happens to some countries sooner, but it is decidedly a world phenomenon and there is not a lot more decline required before 2.5 becomes <2.
    - freeflight 8y ago
      > The fertility rate has been declining world wide, from ~5 per woman in 1950 to ~2.5 now. But why should that be considered bad? A major factor to this development is decreasing child mortality rates in less developed countries, having to birth fewer children is a natural outcome of that and that's good. The other version of that would be them still just getting as many children as before, but with all of them surviving into adulthood, and as such contributing to the global population issue, which also happens. > but it is decidedly a world phenomenon and there is not a lot more decline required before 2.5 becomes <2. Sorry but I heavily disagree. There's a lot more to decline before 2.5 becomes <2 and even if we get there: Why should that be bad? Perpetual population growth is a completely insane and unsustainable concept, why are we insisting on making it a thing? A reduced global population would be one of the most efficient ways to fight climate change and the environmental impact humanity is having on the planet as a whole. Going around and killing people, to reduce the population, is not compatible with our moral framework, so we need to look at other, less drastic, ways of reducing the population or at least keeping its growth in check. That's exactly where easy access to contraception and the right to abortion come in. These are not just "social issues", in the long term they will become very real economic and environmental issues. Particularly once automation will fully take off, we'll be sitting on a crowded planet with more people than we know what to do with, with conservative politicians still demanding "full employment".
      - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        > But why should that be considered bad? A major factor to this development is decreasing child mortality rates in less developed countries, having to birth fewer children is a natural outcome of that and that's good. The lower fertility rate is not caused by the lower mortality rate, it's just a happy coincidence which is saving us from rapid decline. In particular there is no guarantee that they exactly balance -- and there is no level of infant mortality reduction that can prevent a population decline at a fertility rate below 2, which is where industrialized countries already are and developing countries are headed. It's already below 2 in Brazil and China. > There's a lot more to decline before 2.5 becomes <2 No, there isn't, especially when Africa is significantly bringing up that average but they also still have a high infant mortality rate. Every other continent is either already below 2 or is only slightly above it and declining over time. The biggest contributor to population growth isn't fertility rate, it's people living longer. > and even if we get there: Why should that be bad? Perpetual population growth is a completely insane and unsustainable concept, why are we insisting on making it a thing? Population growth isn't necessary. What we need is population stability, because population decline is a catastrophe. Somebody has to pay for the people who retire at 65 and live to 100, collecting social security the whole time. The fewer people there are the more burden there is on each one, and that cost comes out of everything else -- education and research, quality of life, everything. > A reduced global population would be one of the most efficient ways to fight climate change and the environmental impact humanity is having on the planet as a whole. The most efficient way to fight climate change is to stop burning carbon. That means solar panels and wind turbines and nuclear power and electric cars. The per-capita cost of doing that is slightly negatively correlated with population due to economies of scale. Moreover, the timescale of needing to fight climate change is right now, whereas the effect of birthrates is multiple decades down the road. We need to stamp out fossil fuels ASAP, not 30-50 years from now. And once we do that there is not any significant relationship between population and climate change. > Particularly once automation will fully take off, we'll be sitting on a crowded planet with more people than we know what to do with, with conservative politicians still demanding "full employment". Automation destroying jobs on net has never happened. Every time a job is automated, it lowers cost of living, which increases the number of remaining jobs that a person can take and still make ends meat. There will never be a lack of jobs. What may actually happen eventually is that it becomes possible to make ends meat by working four hours a week and some people choose to do that, or work for ten years and then retire, but how is that a problem?
- empath75 8y ago
  I think if you’re a destination country you’re better off with brains than culture.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > I think if you’re a destination country you’re better off with brains than culture. But the brains still exist. If a doctor in Mexico cures cancer, it's still cured. The difference is that the money doesn't go to a company in the US rather than one in Mexico, which contributes to wealth inequality. It other words, it hurts people in Mexico more than it helps people in the US -- who, again, still get the cure, they just have to pay the country that raised the person who created it. It's not even clear that this is a net loss for the US, because other countries will be more inclined to invest in education and research when they expect to internalize more of the financial benefits -- which increases the positive externalities (like the existence of a cure).
rak00n 8y ago
How's that a feature when you're replacing your relatively highly educated set of people who assimilate culturally with people from poorer countries with lesser education and who don't culturally assimilate? Of course it's a feature for these poor people who now can get a chance to live a better life. But is that ideal for a developed host country?
- freeflight 8y ago
  Nobody is being "replaced", you make it sound like they are taking highly educated German people, dispose of them in some secret way, and then fill their free positions with random Syrian refugees. As a native German, I can assure you that no native German people are being "displaced". This is just a semi-ancient right-wing trope about "Them foreigners stealing our jobs", with the occasional "and women" attached to it. In the 90's these same people were railing against eastern Europeans, and how their culture and values are supposedly not "compatible with Western Values". Now, over a decade after the EU eastward expansion, rarely anybody seems to remember that part of history and the formerly marginalized are now so "assimilated" that they are part of the very same mobs which used to marginalize them. Nothing about this whole topic is new, even the surrounding social unrests ain't new and are comparably civil compared to what went on not too long ago [0]. The only thing that's changed is the color of the people that are being scapegoated as the source of all problems and controversy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostock-Lichtenhagen_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostock-Lichtenhagen_riots
  - rak00n 8y ago
    If a country's birthrate is low and it needs immigrants to fill in the gap in workforce that low birthrate is creating, it's essentially replacing those people over time. Since your German I'd urge you to read the book Strange Death of Europe. Assimilation isn't an easy process and mass migration in this scale is indeed a new thing.
    - freeflight 8y ago
      > Assimilation isn't an easy process and mass migration in this scale is indeed a new thing. It isn't really and most certainly not for central Europe or Germany. People too often ignore that the 20th century has seen constant and massive population movements [0]. In Germany particularly with Turkish guest workers [1], fall of the Iron Curtain triggering mass migration from eastern Europe, later refugees from the Yugoslav wars mixed in. More migration after the 2004 enlargement of the EU eastwards. Now you could argue "All these people have the same culture, they are not weird Muslims", which is a moot point because these same "their culture is too different" claims were made about eastern Europeans for many many years before they became part of the club themselves. It should also be noted that nobody ever talks about the reasons why these refugee streams exist in the first place: US foreign policy. Even back in 2002 Afghani people made their way to Germany, followed by Iraqis and people from many other MENA countries, fully escalating with Syria. This isn't some sudden new thing, one could literally watch this happening over a timespan of nearly 2 decades, yet nothing was done. It's so painfully obvious that some people consider this as part of US strategy [2]. [0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/refugees_01.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/refugees_01.sht... [1] https://www.dw.com/en/turkish-guest-workers-transformed-german-society/a-15489210 https://www.dw.com/en/turkish-guest-workers-transformed-germ... [2] http://www.voltairenet.org/article187588.html http://www.voltairenet.org/article187588.html

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> The only way one could consider that "unsustainable" is to assume there's literally zero immigration, with a globally stagnating or shrinking population. The world-wide net immigration is inherently zero. If what we're looking for is approximately the population replacement rate globally, what sense does it make to have something different nationally? Doing so creates all sorts of problems for the population source countries in terms of brain drain and so on (they pay to educate someone for decades and then anyone above the 90th percentile moves out), and for the destination country in terms of preserving the local culture and history as long-term net immigration results in the culture of the donor population subsuming the existing one.

freeflight 8y ago
> The world-wide net immigration is inherently zero. Good thing I didn't talk about "world-wide net immigration" but rather about "worldwide net population growth". The two are related, but not the same. Low birthrates are very much a localized "problem", fixed by global migration due to the fact that globally we do not have a fertility problem, globally we have the exact opposite of that problem.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > Low birthrates are very much a localized "problem" The fertility rate has been declining world wide, from ~5 per woman in 1950 to ~2.5 now. The cause appears to be something like industrialization and urbanization, so it happens to some countries sooner, but it is decidedly a world phenomenon and there is not a lot more decline required before 2.5 becomes <2.
  - freeflight 8y ago
    > The fertility rate has been declining world wide, from ~5 per woman in 1950 to ~2.5 now. But why should that be considered bad? A major factor to this development is decreasing child mortality rates in less developed countries, having to birth fewer children is a natural outcome of that and that's good. The other version of that would be them still just getting as many children as before, but with all of them surviving into adulthood, and as such contributing to the global population issue, which also happens. > but it is decidedly a world phenomenon and there is not a lot more decline required before 2.5 becomes <2. Sorry but I heavily disagree. There's a lot more to decline before 2.5 becomes <2 and even if we get there: Why should that be bad? Perpetual population growth is a completely insane and unsustainable concept, why are we insisting on making it a thing? A reduced global population would be one of the most efficient ways to fight climate change and the environmental impact humanity is having on the planet as a whole. Going around and killing people, to reduce the population, is not compatible with our moral framework, so we need to look at other, less drastic, ways of reducing the population or at least keeping its growth in check. That's exactly where easy access to contraception and the right to abortion come in. These are not just "social issues", in the long term they will become very real economic and environmental issues. Particularly once automation will fully take off, we'll be sitting on a crowded planet with more people than we know what to do with, with conservative politicians still demanding "full employment".
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      > But why should that be considered bad? A major factor to this development is decreasing child mortality rates in less developed countries, having to birth fewer children is a natural outcome of that and that's good. The lower fertility rate is not caused by the lower mortality rate, it's just a happy coincidence which is saving us from rapid decline. In particular there is no guarantee that they exactly balance -- and there is no level of infant mortality reduction that can prevent a population decline at a fertility rate below 2, which is where industrialized countries already are and developing countries are headed. It's already below 2 in Brazil and China. > There's a lot more to decline before 2.5 becomes <2 No, there isn't, especially when Africa is significantly bringing up that average but they also still have a high infant mortality rate. Every other continent is either already below 2 or is only slightly above it and declining over time. The biggest contributor to population growth isn't fertility rate, it's people living longer. > and even if we get there: Why should that be bad? Perpetual population growth is a completely insane and unsustainable concept, why are we insisting on making it a thing? Population growth isn't necessary. What we need is population stability, because population decline is a catastrophe. Somebody has to pay for the people who retire at 65 and live to 100, collecting social security the whole time. The fewer people there are the more burden there is on each one, and that cost comes out of everything else -- education and research, quality of life, everything. > A reduced global population would be one of the most efficient ways to fight climate change and the environmental impact humanity is having on the planet as a whole. The most efficient way to fight climate change is to stop burning carbon. That means solar panels and wind turbines and nuclear power and electric cars. The per-capita cost of doing that is slightly negatively correlated with population due to economies of scale. Moreover, the timescale of needing to fight climate change is right now, whereas the effect of birthrates is multiple decades down the road. We need to stamp out fossil fuels ASAP, not 30-50 years from now. And once we do that there is not any significant relationship between population and climate change. > Particularly once automation will fully take off, we'll be sitting on a crowded planet with more people than we know what to do with, with conservative politicians still demanding "full employment". Automation destroying jobs on net has never happened. Every time a job is automated, it lowers cost of living, which increases the number of remaining jobs that a person can take and still make ends meat. There will never be a lack of jobs. What may actually happen eventually is that it becomes possible to make ends meat by working four hours a week and some people choose to do that, or work for ten years and then retire, but how is that a problem?
empath75 8y ago
I think if you’re a destination country you’re better off with brains than culture.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > I think if you’re a destination country you’re better off with brains than culture. But the brains still exist. If a doctor in Mexico cures cancer, it's still cured. The difference is that the money doesn't go to a company in the US rather than one in Mexico, which contributes to wealth inequality. It other words, it hurts people in Mexico more than it helps people in the US -- who, again, still get the cure, they just have to pay the country that raised the person who created it. It's not even clear that this is a net loss for the US, because other countries will be more inclined to invest in education and research when they expect to internalize more of the financial benefits -- which increases the positive externalities (like the existence of a cure).

rak00n 8y ago

How's that a feature when you're replacing your relatively highly educated set of people who assimilate culturally with people from poorer countries with lesser education and who don't culturally assimilate? Of course it's a feature for these poor people who now can get a chance to live a better life. But is that ideal for a developed host country?

freeflight 8y ago
Nobody is being "replaced", you make it sound like they are taking highly educated German people, dispose of them in some secret way, and then fill their free positions with random Syrian refugees. As a native German, I can assure you that no native German people are being "displaced". This is just a semi-ancient right-wing trope about "Them foreigners stealing our jobs", with the occasional "and women" attached to it. In the 90's these same people were railing against eastern Europeans, and how their culture and values are supposedly not "compatible with Western Values". Now, over a decade after the EU eastward expansion, rarely anybody seems to remember that part of history and the formerly marginalized are now so "assimilated" that they are part of the very same mobs which used to marginalize them. Nothing about this whole topic is new, even the surrounding social unrests ain't new and are comparably civil compared to what went on not too long ago [0]. The only thing that's changed is the color of the people that are being scapegoated as the source of all problems and controversy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostock-Lichtenhagen_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostock-Lichtenhagen_riots
- rak00n 8y ago
  If a country's birthrate is low and it needs immigrants to fill in the gap in workforce that low birthrate is creating, it's essentially replacing those people over time. Since your German I'd urge you to read the book Strange Death of Europe. Assimilation isn't an easy process and mass migration in this scale is indeed a new thing.
  - freeflight 8y ago
    > Assimilation isn't an easy process and mass migration in this scale is indeed a new thing. It isn't really and most certainly not for central Europe or Germany. People too often ignore that the 20th century has seen constant and massive population movements [0]. In Germany particularly with Turkish guest workers [1], fall of the Iron Curtain triggering mass migration from eastern Europe, later refugees from the Yugoslav wars mixed in. More migration after the 2004 enlargement of the EU eastwards. Now you could argue "All these people have the same culture, they are not weird Muslims", which is a moot point because these same "their culture is too different" claims were made about eastern Europeans for many many years before they became part of the club themselves. It should also be noted that nobody ever talks about the reasons why these refugee streams exist in the first place: US foreign policy. Even back in 2002 Afghani people made their way to Germany, followed by Iraqis and people from many other MENA countries, fully escalating with Syria. This isn't some sudden new thing, one could literally watch this happening over a timespan of nearly 2 decades, yet nothing was done. It's so painfully obvious that some people consider this as part of US strategy [2]. [0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/refugees_01.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/refugees_01.sht... [1] https://www.dw.com/en/turkish-guest-workers-transformed-german-society/a-15489210 https://www.dw.com/en/turkish-guest-workers-transformed-germ... [2] http://www.voltairenet.org/article187588.html http://www.voltairenet.org/article187588.html