16 ms·

The Global Fertility Crash

168 points by montalbano 7y ago

chewz 7y ago
How is it a bad thing? The only way to deal with climate crisis is to lower the population of the planet down to one billion. Possibly without wars and famines.
- throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
  Because shrinking populations causes tough economic conditions, which creates wars and famines
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  > How is it a bad thing? Because it conflicts with the internal human desire to reproduce. You effectively are saying "Hey raise your hand if you want your group of people to die out." I'm not shocked that people aren't wild about that.
  - chewz 7y ago
    > it conflicts with the internal human desire to reproduce 1) From the article seems like people are loosing their desire to reproduce anyway. 2) I am no expert in anthropology but the need for having children is very complex and is regulated by the multiple factors (economical, social, political, environmental). As one Bali taxi driver put it to me - "Nowadays you don't need 14 children to tend to a ricefield".
  - gumby 7y ago
    > the internal human desire to reproduce. It's pretty clear throughout recorded history that this is not a universal desire. Huge numbers of people have not only chosen not to have kids, many of whom have consciously traded off the opportunity to reproduce in exchange for other opportunities.
    - notadoc 7y ago
      It's a biological urge for many, which makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Sure some don't have it, and some control it, but that's clearly not the majority of our species otherwise we wouldn't be so ubiquitous.
      - bryanlarsen 7y ago
        The biological urge for sex rather than the urge for procreation may explain our ubiquity.
        t34543 7y ago
        Especially considering birth control wasn’t available until recently.
      - gumby 7y ago
        > It's a biological urge for many I can't say strongly that you're wrong, but I can say your thesis is most definitely unproven, and there is good counterveiling evidence. Clearly there has and remains enough historical reproduction that humans are pretty much ubiquitous and have affected pretty much the entire surface of the planet. No question. But the why is unknown. Yes there are of course people who feel a need to duplicate their genes (though to my knowledge I've literally only met one person in my 50+ years who said that this was their desire). However different people have many different reasons to intentionally reproduce and demonstrably, when given the ability, a dominant number opt to limit it (this fact is the launching point of the original article). The clearest example is economic: birth rate and income are pretty highly negatively correlated (the US is an outlier but when you double click and look at the income data at higher resolution than national, you see the same thing). I could go into examples of why this might be the case but that could lead to an unnecessary flame war.
  - finnh 7y ago
    But people are wild about it. Low birth rates in wealthy countries are arrived at by choice. As a US citizen with two kids, I actively chose not to have more. This is my preference (and, in aggregate, the preference of the rest of the US as well). If one or both of them were likely to die before reaching maturity, and my retirement plans assumed they would pay for my dotage... then maybe I'd have more? But that's not the case; as it is I'm happy with my choice to just have two.
  - rinchik 7y ago
    > Because it conflicts with the internal human desire to reproduce You didn't answer the question. If you can't control your basic instinct it doesn't mean that general population reduction will be a "bad" thing. Population control doesn't mean anything "inhumane" at all. As one above said, countries with higher levels of education have better control over population growth naturally. That's one of the solutions to explosive overpopulation: EDUCATION! Overpopulation is a real problem. For the environment, for the climate, and for the future.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  1 billion people using private jets daily would emit a lot more carbon than our current population, let alone our current population in carbon balance. Population control is both a completely infeasible and an ineffective solution to the climate crisis.
  - makerofspoons 7y ago
    Family planning and educating women are two of the most effective solutions for fighting the climate crisis: https://www.drawdown.org/ https://www.drawdown.org/ Both are population control.
- ta0987 7y ago
  The rate at which that happens is the problem. The faster the population declines, the more old people there are relative to young people, the smaller your labor pool is relative to your population, the harder your economy will crash. And yes, the economy crashing does matter, because the poorest and oldest, i.e. the some of the most vulnerable, will be hit the hardest.
  - chewz 7y ago
    That is political problem. We have designed our world for constant economic growth and governments are reliant on growing tax base. It doesn't need to be that way.
    - ta0987 7y ago
      I'm not sure what you're arguing for. The faster the population falls, the harder the problem is to solve. Whether it's political or not.
    - throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
      I mean, a violent purge of non contributing old people would solve this. But barring that, a world without economic growth is grim. Tons of people virtuously declare that it’s ok if society doesn’t get richer but they don’t really understand what that means and how awful that makes societies function.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - hinkley 7y ago
    We have been artificially inflating demand in the West since the end of WWII. Labor for manufacturing has been in decline since the 70’s. You could easily reduce the resource intensity in the West with some cultural shifts. And the next generation may insist. Without disposable income you want things that last.
- notadoc 7y ago
  >The only way to deal with climate crisis is to lower the population of the planet down to one billion. Possibly without wars and famines. Who decides who gets depopulated? And how? What if those chosen to be depopulated don't want their population lower? Historically, not many peoples willingly sign up for their own genocide, there is usually significant war.
  - watwut 7y ago
    Quite apparently, education and especially general education of women combined with accessible birth control is what can make people have less kids. No genocide necessary.
- w3mmpp 7y ago
  Oh yes, like it will ever happens... Remember, it's mainly developed countries who are childless while poor, uneducated countries, and often war-ridden, continue to explode demographically.
montalbano 7y ago
This article is interesting, which is why I submitted it. However, I do think it ignores the elephant in the room which is that Earth only has finite resources. As discussed for example in the oft posted 'exponential economist vs finite physicist' post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20045380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20045380
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  The correlation between GDP and energy usage has been decreasing.
  - gumby 7y ago
    For people who want to look this up the term is "intensity", specifically in this case "energy intensity" and indeed it's dropped dramatically over the years. (Its the kJ/$GDP, with all the errors that implies, but IMHO the trends are pretty clear)
  - roenxi 7y ago
    Which could imply that: 1) Energy does not matter. 2) The link is being masked by import/export shenanigans. or 3) GDP is no longer a useful measure.
- hinkley 7y ago
  I figure as long as we have 100 million people of child bearing age we’ll be just fine. And it seems like we will have at least 5 times that many for a long long time But I think we will go a little Upton Sinclair. As I understand it, early development is dictated by the diameter of the birth canal. Artificial wombs would allow a far longer gestation period. Even a couple more months would rapidly advance brain development. All of this would be easier on the parents, which may mean more kids.
  - novok 7y ago
    I don't think it's the pregnancy process that prevents having children, but others.
ohazi 7y ago
> At least two children per woman—that’s what’s needed to ensure a stable population from generation to generation. In the 1960s, the fertility rate was five live births per woman. By 2017 it had fallen to 2.43, close to that critical threshold. (emphasis mine) > Population growth is vital for the world economy. Fuck the world economy, then. We're not going back to '60s.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >Fuck the world economy, then. You like your pension? Because pensions need an ever-growing population.
  - bpodgursky 7y ago
    Or healthcare, unless you have a really quick and cheap plan for home-care nursebots.
    - wahern 7y ago
      Japan is already on top of it! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/06/japan-robots-will-care-for-80-of-elderly-by-2020 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/06/japan-robots-w... Also, prison as elderly care: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47033704 https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47033704
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - makerofspoons 7y ago
    The pension ponzi scheme has to end sometime. Whether the music stops when it's my turn, yours, or today's children it simply isn't possible to grow the number of people paying in forever.
    - zip1234 7y ago
      Same with unending growth of suburbs. Paving the world and less people to pay for the pavement maintenance.
burfog 7y ago
It's a very temporary matter for evolution. Our environment now includes birth control. Most people in the current population do not feature traits to overcome birth control. There is a subset of the population which does have the needed traits. This well-adapted subpopulation will grow rapidly because birth control is a very strong selection factor. From an evolutionary perspective, the correct use of birth control is equivalent to the death of offspring. Remember that evolution is not inherently slow. It is usually slow because the existing population is typically well-adapted. A simple thought experiment demonstrates that evolution can be fast: we would all have blue eyes if the others were executed. Given the severe selection caused by loss of offspring, evolution will rapidly overcome birth control. Just a few generations might mostly do the job. Within 500 years, birth control will simply not be a factor in human population.
- finnh 7y ago
  So your claim is that evolution will make _any form_ of birth control impossible?
  - burfog 7y ago
    Birth control would go unused. People who crave huge families are going to win out over those who would rather not have huge families. There probably will be some reproductive organ changes to sometimes defeat some forms of birth control, but mostly this will be brain changes. If people actually want birth control they can invent things faster than we can evolve past them, but if people just want kids then it doesn't matter how effective birth control might be. Non-voluntary measures are possible, but again the evolutionary winners will be the ones who evade that. If the desire for kids is strong enough, people will bribe their way out of mandatory birth control.
    - pavel_lishin 7y ago
      I'm not sure that "craving huge families" is a genetic trait.
      - 7y ago
gumby 7y ago
I have mixed feelings about this: Julian Simon did a pretty good job of supporting the anti-malthusian thesis, and that more people implies more opportunities for creativity. On the other hand he didn't disprove such a theory either -- we might have been just moving up a curve towards a critical point, where hysteresis then screws us. But in general I'm pretty neutral: if people want more kids, great; if they don't, that's great too. So this sentence right at the front of the article really disturbs me: > Population growth is vital for the world economy. Most people seem to agree with this statement, which is the very definition of a pyramid scheme (see my point about hysteresis above). We've defined the goalposts such that this statement is in some sense tautologically true, but it leaves me with a profound sense of "so what?" If fewer people are born, ultimately fewer houses will be needed, but why should that presume that less house construction will happen (perhaps there will be lots of renovations, or removal and new construction, or house builders will simply move to new fields as horsecart makers did). We already know our growth metrics are crude and wrong, though we don't know really how much and in what ways. But there are plenty of potential scenarios where economic growth and human wellbeing does not require massive, or perhaps any population increase.
- api 7y ago
  As with many things the optimum is not at the edges. Too much or too little fertility are bad, though they lead to different problem sets. In the short term I think slightly below replacement level is ideal. Once we get past fossil fuel dependence at or slightly above replacement might be best. As long as we run on fossil fuel we are basically putting our children on a credit card with an unknown interest rate.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    We already know how to get off of fossil fuels. We know how to make solar panels, nuclear reactors, electric cars, electric heat pumps, etc. The technology exists. It will likely continue to improve, but we could do it entirely with what already exists. If we deploy it by the time today's unborn children become a significant fraction of the global carbon footprint, it isn't going to matter how many of them there are. And if we don't deploy it by the time today's unborn children become a significant fraction of the global carbon footprint, it isn't going to matter how many of them there are.
lucb1e 7y ago
> Population growth is vital for the world economy [...] Governments will have to think creatively about ways to manage population, whether through state-sponsored benefits [...] I actually have the impression that we're with quite a few too many people, and while we can't really help that (you can hardly murder, like, everyone in both Americas to get population down by ~15%), I expect that a decreased growth would be super beneficial for everything from available resources to waste management. Sure, fewer working people on an aging population reduces growth in the short term, but I can't see anything but benefits in the long term if we would have a few generations with an average number of children just below 2. (For those who are on the fence, like me, this reason can be a part of the decision not to have kids.) The article doesn't mention a single country below 1, so while being close to 1 is on the edge, every regional average you can make seems high enough. In fact, the global average of 2.4 is still too high (but it will come down, as per UN predictions, until it's only just above the replacement rate around the year 2100).
- journalctl 7y ago
  I agree. It’s vital if you’ve bought into the doctrine of infinite growth at all costs forever, but there is a limit. And if we were perhaps better at living sustainably, I’d be more supportive of having children. But either way, this Ponzi scheme has an end date, and I fear it’s a lot closer than we’d like.
notadoc 7y ago
The "fertility crash" is only impacting the developed world. As the article directly states, global population projections are set to grow by another 3 billion. I would call that a fertility explosion, not a crash, but most of that population growth will be happening in the undeveloped and developing world rather than the developed world.
- jxramos 7y ago
  think calculus for this one, growth continuing in the positive will mislead when that growth is losing steam. Watch the animation near x=1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_derivative#Relation_to_the_graph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_derivative#Relation_to_.... The slope must decrease and reach flatline before it goes negative. It's all a matter of rates not absolute figures. Like a ball thrown up in the air, it goes up, and eventually reaches its peak, then begins its descent. We're nearing the peak population wise which is what a lot of these articles are getting at.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
spodek 7y ago
Lower birthrates are our best hope for lowering our population from above what the Earth can sustain without suffering and early deaths due to famine, war, disease, and so on. There are large uncertainties over the planet's carrying capacity, but the numbers I find most believable say we're over it, which can work until we exhaust non-renewables and perhaps destroy some renewables. I find the most compelling understanding still comes from the book Limits to Growth and this 2014 research showing us tracking their business-as-usual model pretty well, 40 years later https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/2763500/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/00.... Steady state economics has worked. "Population growth is vital for the world economy" is a statement about a system approaching collapse. Reading the book Affluence Without Abundance I found of human societies enduring hundreds of thousands of years without growth. I've since learned of more. We don't know their level of happiness, but recent versions showed happiness and health greater than ours. In any case, they didn't collapse the entire planet's systems in a few hundreds years, so our systems don't stack very well -- a few generations of wealthy few and destitute many followed by collapse. Thailand lowered its birth rate voluntarily and successfully https://www.context.org/iclib/ic31/frazer https://www.context.org/iclib/ic31/frazer. Lower birth rate is our best hope.
- rmah 7y ago
  We don't know their level of happiness, but recent versions showed happiness and health greater than ours. In any case, they didn't collapse the entire planet's systems in a few hundreds years, so our systems don't stack very well Prehistoric man may well have been happier than people today... while things were good. When food was plentiful, the weather nice and the living' was easy, it was all roses. Until your mate busted a leg ... and died. Until your kid gets a toothache ... and then dies. Until the rains don't fall, the herds go away... and your entire clan dies. They probably weren't so happy then. This rose colored glasses view of the deep past ignores the extreme misery people endured to get to the good times. It is, IMO, just absurd. Finally, the idea that prehistoric folk lived in harmony with nature is just silly. They routinely set huge wildfires to drive prey, they would chase entire herds off cliffs and then harvest a handful of animals. Yes they laughed, loved and wept tears of joy. But they also murdered, raped and wept tears of sorrow. And experienced the latter far more often than anyone today. (For example, almost everyone who survived to adulthood wee half or more of their children die. And I would be very very surprised if each child's death was not felt as keenly as people do today).
hindsightbias 7y ago
All the anti-population growth popularity here would seem at odds with the HN population of outer space-expansionists. Elon isn’t going to have enough settlers. Perhaps another Great Filter candidate.
- toast0 7y ago
  In my circles, people my age are having less children than their parents and at a later age than their parents, but for the most part, they're still reproducing. If colonists are needed, they're available, it's just a mater of incentives.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  We are unlikely to be sending billions in to space to set up colonies. There will be ample prospective migrants, if it ever becomes a real possibility, whether there are 100m or 10bn earthlings.
- aaomidi 7y ago
  By the time we're expanding into space, we don't need humans to make babies anymore :)
- drak0n1c 7y ago
  True, population levels are no where near what is required to support cyberpunk living density, let alone multi-planet colonization. Perhaps if reproduction levels really fall off and there is a real lack of families there will eventually be some kind of public, private, or religious industry centered around creating new babies in vivo or in vitro, along with a paid surrogate and child-raising infrastructure.
- buboard 7y ago
  considering the timescales of interstellar travel, it will probably involve traveling with robots and frozen human embryos
dqpb 7y ago
> Population growth is vital for the world economy Is the world economy just a pyramid scheme?
blondie9x 7y ago
I think less people sooner will help us lower greenhouse gas emissions. We need to support efforts to educate people and help with family planning. We should also encourage people to have less kids in an effort to stabilize our ecosystem. Less population could lead to a lower GDP or it might not. If worker productivity and automation rise as population falls the GDP decline could be offset. This is something we need to consider especially when considering the initial statements of this article.
NeoBasilisk 7y ago
I dunno man. I think 7 billion people might be enough.
VladimirIvanov 7y ago
If you intend to send your child to college then the cost per child is very high. If you don't then the marginal cost per child is very low. Another consideration is whether the mother works and if it's possible for her to keep taking time from work every few years to have additional children. One thing I notice about large families is that they usually do not pay for their children's college education. TLDR - marginal cost per child increases in developed countries.
- golemiprague 7y ago
  College is much less expensive in most European countries and still the birth rate there is smaller than the US, so it is nothing to do with the cost of college per se, it is just that middle class women are now serving their corporate masters and can't raise kids. Unemployed lower class women tend to bring much more kids to the world even though they got much less money to support them. The feminist push to get women into the workforce didn't improve family life or wealth, it just made everything more expensive and much harder, on top of that countries have to bring labourers immigrants to do all those valuable jobs women used to do at home, cooking, cleaning, laundry, caring for the old, baby sitting etc. So that strains the system even more.
lowiqprogrammer 7y ago
Immigration is definitely not the answer. What's the point of bringing in immigrants that will replace the previous population? Should Japan bring in millions of Europeans, which will change the culture and demographics, just to keep the arbitrary GDP number up? Why does it matter if the population decreases if we can keep the quality of life the same or higher?
- linuxftw 7y ago
  As long as there are immigrants, there's an easily exploited working class.
  - faissaloo 7y ago
    Smells like Nazbol down here
  - einpoklum 7y ago
    I'll flip that one: As long as the working class is dis-organized, and its members do not exhibit solidarity across ethnic and national lines, immigrants are bound to have poorer working conditions than locals, and capitalists are bound to try to artificially bring in more immigrants than would otherwise arrive. Also, as long as there is not enough concerted effort to uplift the peoples of the more oppressed countries, to create stable, prosperous and self-sustaining economies in them rather than objects of mass exploitation - you will always feel threatened by the poor masses coming to take your job.
    - linuxftw 7y ago
      As long as economically prosperous countries and taking the best and brightest from overseas, those countries will never get better. We're simply functioning as a social-relief valve. > As long as the working class is dis-organized I think we'll see a resurgence of organization sometime soon.
- tmh79 7y ago
  strong disagree, at least for the US. The whole fabric/culture of the country is predicated on immigration and has been literally since its founding.
NTDF9 7y ago
What a load of nonsense! The planet needs lesser people. If economics is the problem, fix the damn econs, not the planet. I'm not naive. I understand that the young will have to produce more per capita to support the masses of elderly. But the solution to this is not producing more kids. The solution is somewhere along the line of better economic distribution
aldoushuxley001 7y ago
It’s frankly shocking and disturbing how many people are celebrating the collapse in fertility worldwide. This should be a sign that something we’re doing is very very wrong. Plus population is expected to plateau around 9 billion so we’re not actually being threatened by overpopulation anytime soon. I can’t help but be reminded of the movie Children of Men.
- Geimfari 7y ago
  It's only a sign that we're doing something wrong if you assign a positive value to procreation. Many of us don't, either for ethical reasons (life includes suffering, and you have no right to inflict suffering on someone who didn't ask for it) or environmental reasons. And as the logical conclusion of that ethical value system, I do sincerely hope we get a Children of Men scenario where we put an end to procreation entirely. (I'm aware that that viewpoint is fringe)
  - ghemsley 7y ago
    Having heard very few people espouse that opinion (which I share), I appreciate that you shared it. Somehow it seems very rare that parents consider their children's capacity for suffering before insisting that they exist without the chance to be asked if they actually want such an existence. Everyone just rolls the dice without truly knowing what they're getting into and assumes that "of course my kids will enjoy life, they're mine." It needs to change, in my opinion.
buboard 7y ago
Population is sensitive to discuss politically. You don't see a lot of ideas that would help either. Here's a talk by Melinda Gates talking about how family planning can help Africa avoid deterioration due to overpopulation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BOTS9GAjc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BOTS9GAjc4
quotemstr 7y ago
It's blindingly obvious that modernity is applying strong natural selection to humanity and that, over time, the world will come to be dominated by the kind of people who have children. In order for that not to be the case, you have to imagine a world without inheritance of characteristics. It's not even necessary to imagine genetic inheritance: even cultural transmission of fecundity from generation to generation would suffice for shifting the distribution of personality traits in the world's population away from whatever depresses birthrate below replacement and towards whatever promotes high birthrates. If you want to know what the world will look like in a few generations, look at who's having kids now. The "lol seven billion is enough" comments completely miss the point. Fertility will recover once inherited fecundity spreads through the population. One way or another, we're going to hit the Earth's (or solar system's) carrying capacity soon, probably in a few centuries at the longest. Do you want that future era to be full of people like you? If so, you need to figure out why people like you aren't reproducing now. To imagine that fertility isn't heritable is to deny all of evolution. The drive to reproduce is the oldest and strongest urge of all. It's ubiquitous in the tree of life. It's really bizarre to me that people don't see this dynamic. Of course evolution applies to people: have you ever met a parent and a child?
- iaabtpbtpnn 7y ago
  Why would I care whether the future is full of people like me or not? Is there something inherently better about people like me, such that we should be reproducing instead of the people who currently are?
  - sundbry 7y ago
    Evolution depends on the competitive aspect of genetic groups as a means of specification. You can say resisting specification is somehow a morally superior position, but really, it is just a sentimental one. Specification will happen regardless and merging will also happen. When there is enough competition for resources, usually only one species wins out. Being apathetic about becoming a dead branch in the tree of evolution is probably going to have that exact outcome.
- buboard 7y ago
einpoklum 7y ago
> Population growth is vital for the world economy. At most you could argue that population growth is useful for some of the world's economy. But taking a larger view - ending population growth is vital for the world economy. Probably for human civilization. Now, I'm not saying that the Earth's carrying capacity is 7.7 Billion people (or less). But in many respects we (= humans) are scratching the edges of that capacity with wasteful use of natural resources, pollution, and skewed distribution of products and services (e.g. of food - hundreds of Millions are hungry but the food produced could feed everyone several times over). So, we should work on that, and in the mean time, keep the population in check. When we've "fixed" human society enough, growth may or may not become relevant again. > desperation is creeping into the search for ways to reverse the current trends It is the desperation of large capitalists who want to avoid the necessary transition into from permanent/exponential growth economies into other, sustainable economic models. It's like they want to extend a pier further out into the ocean because they're not willing to stop driving their car out onto it and consider going someplace else. And of course - a political class which lives on these people's donations. One final point: It seems to me like the actual problem spots are countries with massive growth (e.g. Nigeria in the story) which may need to bring it down sooner than they would have, had they had it in the 19th century; and countries with significant sub-replacement numbers. In the rest of the world needs to adjust while the age pyramid changes.
mikelyons 7y ago
Population growth is vital for colonization of Mars. Earth will have to produce a lot of people to send to Mars in order to have the genetic diversity for self-sustaining populations on Mars. The people on Mars will then have to produce a lot of people to live and work there to generate growth and produce generations of humans who maintain The Light of Consciousness on Mars past any sort of otherwise human-extinction cataclysm back on Earth. This is also the only hope of eventually repopulating the Earth in this scenario.
- mikelyons 7y ago
  Is this not true? or is there some flaw with this point? Why do people disagree?
leoh 7y ago
Has anyone else noticed that there are simultaneously articles that talk about the dangers of not enough people to produce goods and also articles about the risk of AI/robotics being too efficient?
- buboard 7y ago
  the world constructed by the media doesn't need to be self-consistent
- jxramos 7y ago
  Why not both, geriatric robots are coming right around the corner just as we approach a frail old age with no strength of youth to change our bedpans and sheets. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-ageing-robots-widerimage-idUSKBN1H33AB https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-ageing-robots-wider...
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    Instead of the silly robots, why not exosuits. We're this close. Obvious conclusion of Internet of things combined with wearables. Cyborg grandparent is already a thing sometimes. Insulin pump? Why not. Other drug delivery systems? Easy. Mobility, again better than piggybacking a robot, think wheelchair on steroids. (Panasonic has the right idea but has not taken it far enough yet. HAL is smart. Both are way too expensive yet. Even good wheelchairs are quite expensive and we have trouble accommodating them - real deal exosuit walker would be easier.) You can get old timers to care for themselves the most they can, you win in efficiency. The big one is mental decline. We can do little about it for now. Yes, the exosuit can talk to you and override if you do something dangerous. Maybe call for help. Yes, I know people prefer to interact with people. Which is probably not easy to fake without a robot. Finally, just remember that getting old people socialized would still likely be a job. -- By the way, the image of old people looking like astronauts is beyond funny.
    - jxramos 7y ago
      Wow that is a really intriguing thought, pretty awesome idea to use those to extend agency with old folks in robot suits. Powerful, and funny too for sure.
stared 7y ago
Global birth rates going below replacement level (as in Europe, but not in many other places in the world) would be the best news ever. > While the world is expected to add more than 3 billion people by 2100, according to the United Nations, that’ll likely be the high point. Falling fertility rates and aging populations will mean serious challenges that will be felt more acutely in some places than others. Right now, it is well beyond any sustainable level (CO2, habitat, pollution). More people, and more living at higher standards (and it would be inhumane). Sure, we can eat vegan, and have solar panels, but it is not enough (there is a huge baseline consumption and waste generation). How? Higher education for women and easy (free, educated, socially approved) access to education, especially in poor countries. Often I hear "oh, but in 1970s people were afraid that the current population would be too much, and you see - they were wrong!". Sadly, in the last 50 years, we wiped most animals. And brought the plastic mayhem. Vide: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity-wiped-out-animals-since-1970-major-report-finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity...
jxramos 7y ago
One of the points about demographics that's been really haunting me lately is the nonsubstitutableness of births. In other words births of human beings is not a commodity that you can "catch up on" in any generational sense. Generational cohorts are made in fixed time, and when made late will lag with an offset that can never be backfilled later on. We can only produce infants, never the 8 year old who was never born to fill the gap of missing 8 year olds from folks who couldn't be bothered or weren't ready to have children 8 years ago. Likewise for the absent 20 year olds and so on and so forth. We cannot correct after the fact to rebalance our population pyramids from being so top heavy. There is a huge commitment either way, and that commitment/choice is irreversible. One commits to new life or for voids of life, both are not without consequence. One other interesting thing to this is to watch the shifting median ages of populations. > China's median age was 22 in 1980. By 2018, it was 40. That will rise to 46 in 2030 and 56 in 2050. In the US, the median age was 30 in 1980 and 38 in 2018. In 2030, it will be 40, and 44 in 2050. India, by comparison, had a median age of 20 in 1980 and 28 in 2018. https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/asia/article/2180421/worse-japan-how-chinas-looming-demographic-crisis-will https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/asia/article/21... That's always been fascinating to me to think of an entire graying population and of all those civilizations of past eras who are no more. You can get a distinct taste of that gravity by thinking of an entire genetic pool shrinking in our lifetimes.
jelliclesfarm 7y ago
1. We should go back to between 1-2 billion which is carrying capacity. 2. Beckoning E.O.Wilson’s Half Earth, we should rehab most of the planet that we have destroyed. 3. Hopefully many of us will live longer and better 4. Capitalism as we know it will have to be redefined. 5. Automation will usher this. 6. We would need to make breakthroughs to preserve and store genetic material 6. And cloning. 7. I would like to see ‘artificial’ carbon neutral beings. Human beings = expensive to planet. But more consciousness is good.it doesn’t have to be biological beings. 7. I would like to see artificial beings and AI that are aggregates and amalgamations and combinations of multiple consciousness ..like our non dna children, perhaps. 10. I hope to live long enough to live in a true to the sci fiction world of my imagination. If none of this happens, I hope that at least I can have access to some really good drugs that will allow me to hallucinate. I live with hope. (Only being mildly facetious) P.S: the men of hacker news begin their downvoting assault when someone with an actual uterus predicts that women are not crazy about having been told to keep pushing a football sized mini human out to propagate the species and keep the junk Y chromosome useful. This comment aka ‘Hacker News made me a feminist’. Here is one more. 11. Only half a surviving child per human being is acceptable. This quota is non transferable. 2.2 children per woman is ridiculous. Madness.
- PixyMisa 7y ago
  Re point 4: Capitalism is descriptive, not prescriptive. It is what it is. Redefining it is like redefining water - you can do it all you like but you'll still end up wet.
  - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
    That’s a valid point. I understand what you are saying even though it is possible for me to nitpick on the semantics. But I get your point and will concede.
Gatsky 7y ago
The other transition is the bulge in the elderly population. This seems to me to be the major economic issue in developed nations. In Australia at least, government spending on the aged is the number one expenditure at $70 billion, not including healthcare spending. That’s about $18k per person over 65. The proportion of elderly will increase then plateau at about 1 in 4 over the next 50 years. I’m not sure the numbers add up... it probably only works with ongoing population growth which will have to come from immigration.
nitwit005 7y ago
It's not stated anywhere, but this treats GDP as the only metric anyone should bother to examine. I wish the world was so simple that we could boil down economic progress to a single metric, but people have been pointing out problems with that since the first attempts to measure national economies. Sure, more people typically means global GDP will go up, but no one cares. What we ultimately want is for per-capita measures, like income or poverty rates, to improve.
4gt66y6 7y ago
Here is a curious, but really debatable view on our population, that I've read somewhere. There are 60 billions people total, floating around and waiting for their turn to "manifest" and live. Such a life is very tiring, so humans need a lot of time to recharge: usually, 700-1200 years. Humans aren't created out of thin air or of proteins: bodies can be replicated quickly, but "creating" an actual human takes longer than the lifespan of an average solar system. With an average lifetime of 70 years, we can't have more than 10 billion "participants" living at the same time. We also can't just fix aging because even with a perfect body, life is very tiring.
boyadjian 7y ago
This article from bloomberg.com is perfectly absurd : High birth rates during the last fifty years have lead to overpopulation, politic instability, general poverty, global warming. And now, they complain that the birthrates are too low ? Seven billion and a half for world population and it is not enough ? Each day, 240 000 inhabitants more, is it too few ? The writer of this article should be admitted in a psychiatric hospital.
wotongKwan 7y ago
No, you fucking moron. What you need to understand is fewer people are getting laid, families are disintegrating, instincts of procreation are stifled and effaced, and it results in rootless, suicidal (or worse) individuals (of all stripes and genders) who are very unhappy. This is nothing to sniff at. Is overpopulation also a problem? Yes. I present to you a surprising reality, you might not have considered: You can have more than one deadly problem at the same time.
tim333 7y ago
>Population growth is vital for the world economy. This is silly. As long as income per capita is good and people are happy does it matter if there are few less?
VladimirIvanov 7y ago
The marginal cost per child has increased dramatically. In developing economies an additional child can sometimes be an asset as they are free labor for a family farm or business. In a developed economy(specifically the USA) the cost per child is primarily driven by educational expenses. College education and also private high school and elementary education. Despite what people say it much more difficult to be successful without a college education. The options for obtaining a college education without your parents money and without student loans are slim. There are two possibilities; military academy/ ROTC program or athletic/academic scholarships. The ROTC military is the most likely one but not everyone is accepted. There are many medical disqualifying conditions such as ADHD ect. So if you are a college graduate and you want your children to have the same life opportunities that you did, then there is a limit to how many children you can have based on your income and net worth.
asah 7y ago
I just don't get it, there are so many examples where millions of more humans doesn't materially improve growth and a handful of people do. Consider: when Cartwright invented the power loom, he undoubtedly created economic growth (more output) without the need for more humans. Ditto for millions of inventions happening every day from software automation to robotics. Even more: another million uneducated humans doesn't provide anywhere near as much growth as 1000 highly educated humans. As simple proof, you need education to operate and maintain machines, let alone invent and improve them. If anything, a fertility crash seems like a good thing because there's always resources that are limited and fewer people helps allocate them - from fresh water to brand new medicines/devices/techniques that haven't been commoditized yet.

168 points by montalbano 7y ago

How is it a bad thing? The only way to deal with climate crisis is to lower the population of the planet down to one billion. Possibly without wars and famines.

throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
Because shrinking populations causes tough economic conditions, which creates wars and famines
GhettoMaestro 7y ago
> How is it a bad thing? Because it conflicts with the internal human desire to reproduce. You effectively are saying "Hey raise your hand if you want your group of people to die out." I'm not shocked that people aren't wild about that.
- chewz 7y ago
  > it conflicts with the internal human desire to reproduce 1) From the article seems like people are loosing their desire to reproduce anyway. 2) I am no expert in anthropology but the need for having children is very complex and is regulated by the multiple factors (economical, social, political, environmental). As one Bali taxi driver put it to me - "Nowadays you don't need 14 children to tend to a ricefield".
- gumby 7y ago
  > the internal human desire to reproduce. It's pretty clear throughout recorded history that this is not a universal desire. Huge numbers of people have not only chosen not to have kids, many of whom have consciously traded off the opportunity to reproduce in exchange for other opportunities.
  - notadoc 7y ago
    It's a biological urge for many, which makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Sure some don't have it, and some control it, but that's clearly not the majority of our species otherwise we wouldn't be so ubiquitous.
    - bryanlarsen 7y ago
      The biological urge for sex rather than the urge for procreation may explain our ubiquity.
      - t34543 7y ago
        Especially considering birth control wasn’t available until recently.
    - gumby 7y ago
      > It's a biological urge for many I can't say strongly that you're wrong, but I can say your thesis is most definitely unproven, and there is good counterveiling evidence. Clearly there has and remains enough historical reproduction that humans are pretty much ubiquitous and have affected pretty much the entire surface of the planet. No question. But the why is unknown. Yes there are of course people who feel a need to duplicate their genes (though to my knowledge I've literally only met one person in my 50+ years who said that this was their desire). However different people have many different reasons to intentionally reproduce and demonstrably, when given the ability, a dominant number opt to limit it (this fact is the launching point of the original article). The clearest example is economic: birth rate and income are pretty highly negatively correlated (the US is an outlier but when you double click and look at the income data at higher resolution than national, you see the same thing). I could go into examples of why this might be the case but that could lead to an unnecessary flame war.
- finnh 7y ago
  But people are wild about it. Low birth rates in wealthy countries are arrived at by choice. As a US citizen with two kids, I actively chose not to have more. This is my preference (and, in aggregate, the preference of the rest of the US as well). If one or both of them were likely to die before reaching maturity, and my retirement plans assumed they would pay for my dotage... then maybe I'd have more? But that's not the case; as it is I'm happy with my choice to just have two.
- rinchik 7y ago
  > Because it conflicts with the internal human desire to reproduce You didn't answer the question. If you can't control your basic instinct it doesn't mean that general population reduction will be a "bad" thing. Population control doesn't mean anything "inhumane" at all. As one above said, countries with higher levels of education have better control over population growth naturally. That's one of the solutions to explosive overpopulation: EDUCATION! Overpopulation is a real problem. For the environment, for the climate, and for the future.
bryanlarsen 7y ago
1 billion people using private jets daily would emit a lot more carbon than our current population, let alone our current population in carbon balance. Population control is both a completely infeasible and an ineffective solution to the climate crisis.
- makerofspoons 7y ago
  Family planning and educating women are two of the most effective solutions for fighting the climate crisis: https://www.drawdown.org/ https://www.drawdown.org/ Both are population control.
ta0987 7y ago
The rate at which that happens is the problem. The faster the population declines, the more old people there are relative to young people, the smaller your labor pool is relative to your population, the harder your economy will crash. And yes, the economy crashing does matter, because the poorest and oldest, i.e. the some of the most vulnerable, will be hit the hardest.
- chewz 7y ago
  That is political problem. We have designed our world for constant economic growth and governments are reliant on growing tax base. It doesn't need to be that way.
  - ta0987 7y ago
    I'm not sure what you're arguing for. The faster the population falls, the harder the problem is to solve. Whether it's political or not.
  - throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
    I mean, a violent purge of non contributing old people would solve this. But barring that, a world without economic growth is grim. Tons of people virtuously declare that it’s ok if society doesn’t get richer but they don’t really understand what that means and how awful that makes societies function.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- hinkley 7y ago
  We have been artificially inflating demand in the West since the end of WWII. Labor for manufacturing has been in decline since the 70’s. You could easily reduce the resource intensity in the West with some cultural shifts. And the next generation may insist. Without disposable income you want things that last.
notadoc 7y ago
>The only way to deal with climate crisis is to lower the population of the planet down to one billion. Possibly without wars and famines. Who decides who gets depopulated? And how? What if those chosen to be depopulated don't want their population lower? Historically, not many peoples willingly sign up for their own genocide, there is usually significant war.
- watwut 7y ago
  Quite apparently, education and especially general education of women combined with accessible birth control is what can make people have less kids. No genocide necessary.
w3mmpp 7y ago
Oh yes, like it will ever happens... Remember, it's mainly developed countries who are childless while poor, uneducated countries, and often war-ridden, continue to explode demographically.

montalbano 7y ago

This article is interesting, which is why I submitted it. However, I do think it ignores the elephant in the room which is that Earth only has finite resources. As discussed for example in the oft posted 'exponential economist vs finite physicist' post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20045380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20045380

bryanlarsen 7y ago
The correlation between GDP and energy usage has been decreasing.
- gumby 7y ago
  For people who want to look this up the term is "intensity", specifically in this case "energy intensity" and indeed it's dropped dramatically over the years. (Its the kJ/$GDP, with all the errors that implies, but IMHO the trends are pretty clear)
- roenxi 7y ago
  Which could imply that: 1) Energy does not matter. 2) The link is being masked by import/export shenanigans. or 3) GDP is no longer a useful measure.
hinkley 7y ago
I figure as long as we have 100 million people of child bearing age we’ll be just fine. And it seems like we will have at least 5 times that many for a long long time But I think we will go a little Upton Sinclair. As I understand it, early development is dictated by the diameter of the birth canal. Artificial wombs would allow a far longer gestation period. Even a couple more months would rapidly advance brain development. All of this would be easier on the parents, which may mean more kids.
- novok 7y ago
  I don't think it's the pregnancy process that prevents having children, but others.

ohazi 7y ago

> At least two children per woman—that’s what’s needed to ensure a stable population from generation to generation. In the 1960s, the fertility rate was five live births per woman. By 2017 it had fallen to 2.43, close to that critical threshold. (emphasis mine) > Population growth is vital for the world economy. Fuck the world economy, then. We're not going back to '60s.

macspoofing 7y ago
>Fuck the world economy, then. You like your pension? Because pensions need an ever-growing population.
- bpodgursky 7y ago
  Or healthcare, unless you have a really quick and cheap plan for home-care nursebots.
  - wahern 7y ago
    Japan is already on top of it! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/06/japan-robots-will-care-for-80-of-elderly-by-2020 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/06/japan-robots-w... Also, prison as elderly care: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47033704 https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47033704
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- makerofspoons 7y ago
  The pension ponzi scheme has to end sometime. Whether the music stops when it's my turn, yours, or today's children it simply isn't possible to grow the number of people paying in forever.
  - zip1234 7y ago
    Same with unending growth of suburbs. Paving the world and less people to pay for the pavement maintenance.

burfog 7y ago

It's a very temporary matter for evolution. Our environment now includes birth control. Most people in the current population do not feature traits to overcome birth control. There is a subset of the population which does have the needed traits. This well-adapted subpopulation will grow rapidly because birth control is a very strong selection factor. From an evolutionary perspective, the correct use of birth control is equivalent to the death of offspring. Remember that evolution is not inherently slow. It is usually slow because the existing population is typically well-adapted. A simple thought experiment demonstrates that evolution can be fast: we would all have blue eyes if the others were executed. Given the severe selection caused by loss of offspring, evolution will rapidly overcome birth control. Just a few generations might mostly do the job. Within 500 years, birth control will simply not be a factor in human population.

finnh 7y ago
So your claim is that evolution will make _any form_ of birth control impossible?
- burfog 7y ago
  Birth control would go unused. People who crave huge families are going to win out over those who would rather not have huge families. There probably will be some reproductive organ changes to sometimes defeat some forms of birth control, but mostly this will be brain changes. If people actually want birth control they can invent things faster than we can evolve past them, but if people just want kids then it doesn't matter how effective birth control might be. Non-voluntary measures are possible, but again the evolutionary winners will be the ones who evade that. If the desire for kids is strong enough, people will bribe their way out of mandatory birth control.
  - pavel_lishin 7y ago
    I'm not sure that "craving huge families" is a genetic trait.
    - 7y ago

gumby 7y ago

I have mixed feelings about this: Julian Simon did a pretty good job of supporting the anti-malthusian thesis, and that more people implies more opportunities for creativity. On the other hand he didn't disprove such a theory either -- we might have been just moving up a curve towards a critical point, where hysteresis then screws us. But in general I'm pretty neutral: if people want more kids, great; if they don't, that's great too. So this sentence right at the front of the article really disturbs me: > Population growth is vital for the world economy. Most people seem to agree with this statement, which is the very definition of a pyramid scheme (see my point about hysteresis above). We've defined the goalposts such that this statement is in some sense tautologically true, but it leaves me with a profound sense of "so what?" If fewer people are born, ultimately fewer houses will be needed, but why should that presume that less house construction will happen (perhaps there will be lots of renovations, or removal and new construction, or house builders will simply move to new fields as horsecart makers did). We already know our growth metrics are crude and wrong, though we don't know really how much and in what ways. But there are plenty of potential scenarios where economic growth and human wellbeing does not require massive, or perhaps any population increase.

api 7y ago
As with many things the optimum is not at the edges. Too much or too little fertility are bad, though they lead to different problem sets. In the short term I think slightly below replacement level is ideal. Once we get past fossil fuel dependence at or slightly above replacement might be best. As long as we run on fossil fuel we are basically putting our children on a credit card with an unknown interest rate.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  We already know how to get off of fossil fuels. We know how to make solar panels, nuclear reactors, electric cars, electric heat pumps, etc. The technology exists. It will likely continue to improve, but we could do it entirely with what already exists. If we deploy it by the time today's unborn children become a significant fraction of the global carbon footprint, it isn't going to matter how many of them there are. And if we don't deploy it by the time today's unborn children become a significant fraction of the global carbon footprint, it isn't going to matter how many of them there are.

lucb1e 7y ago

> Population growth is vital for the world economy [...] Governments will have to think creatively about ways to manage population, whether through state-sponsored benefits [...] I actually have the impression that we're with quite a few too many people, and while we can't really help that (you can hardly murder, like, everyone in both Americas to get population down by ~15%), I expect that a decreased growth would be super beneficial for everything from available resources to waste management. Sure, fewer working people on an aging population reduces growth in the short term, but I can't see anything but benefits in the long term if we would have a few generations with an average number of children just below 2. (For those who are on the fence, like me, this reason can be a part of the decision not to have kids.) The article doesn't mention a single country below 1, so while being close to 1 is on the edge, every regional average you can make seems high enough. In fact, the global average of 2.4 is still too high (but it will come down, as per UN predictions, until it's only just above the replacement rate around the year 2100).

journalctl 7y ago
I agree. It’s vital if you’ve bought into the doctrine of infinite growth at all costs forever, but there is a limit. And if we were perhaps better at living sustainably, I’d be more supportive of having children. But either way, this Ponzi scheme has an end date, and I fear it’s a lot closer than we’d like.

notadoc 7y ago

The "fertility crash" is only impacting the developed world. As the article directly states, global population projections are set to grow by another 3 billion. I would call that a fertility explosion, not a crash, but most of that population growth will be happening in the undeveloped and developing world rather than the developed world.

jxramos 7y ago
think calculus for this one, growth continuing in the positive will mislead when that growth is losing steam. Watch the animation near x=1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_derivative#Relation_to_the_graph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_derivative#Relation_to_.... The slope must decrease and reach flatline before it goes negative. It's all a matter of rates not absolute figures. Like a ball thrown up in the air, it goes up, and eventually reaches its peak, then begins its descent. We're nearing the peak population wise which is what a lot of these articles are getting at.

deleted 7y ago

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spodek 7y ago

Lower birthrates are our best hope for lowering our population from above what the Earth can sustain without suffering and early deaths due to famine, war, disease, and so on. There are large uncertainties over the planet's carrying capacity, but the numbers I find most believable say we're over it, which can work until we exhaust non-renewables and perhaps destroy some renewables. I find the most compelling understanding still comes from the book Limits to Growth and this 2014 research showing us tracking their business-as-usual model pretty well, 40 years later https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/2763500/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/00.... Steady state economics has worked. "Population growth is vital for the world economy" is a statement about a system approaching collapse. Reading the book Affluence Without Abundance I found of human societies enduring hundreds of thousands of years without growth. I've since learned of more. We don't know their level of happiness, but recent versions showed happiness and health greater than ours. In any case, they didn't collapse the entire planet's systems in a few hundreds years, so our systems don't stack very well -- a few generations of wealthy few and destitute many followed by collapse. Thailand lowered its birth rate voluntarily and successfully https://www.context.org/iclib/ic31/frazer https://www.context.org/iclib/ic31/frazer. Lower birth rate is our best hope.

rmah 7y ago
We don't know their level of happiness, but recent versions showed happiness and health greater than ours. In any case, they didn't collapse the entire planet's systems in a few hundreds years, so our systems don't stack very well Prehistoric man may well have been happier than people today... while things were good. When food was plentiful, the weather nice and the living' was easy, it was all roses. Until your mate busted a leg ... and died. Until your kid gets a toothache ... and then dies. Until the rains don't fall, the herds go away... and your entire clan dies. They probably weren't so happy then. This rose colored glasses view of the deep past ignores the extreme misery people endured to get to the good times. It is, IMO, just absurd. Finally, the idea that prehistoric folk lived in harmony with nature is just silly. They routinely set huge wildfires to drive prey, they would chase entire herds off cliffs and then harvest a handful of animals. Yes they laughed, loved and wept tears of joy. But they also murdered, raped and wept tears of sorrow. And experienced the latter far more often than anyone today. (For example, almost everyone who survived to adulthood wee half or more of their children die. And I would be very very surprised if each child's death was not felt as keenly as people do today).

hindsightbias 7y ago

All the anti-population growth popularity here would seem at odds with the HN population of outer space-expansionists. Elon isn’t going to have enough settlers. Perhaps another Great Filter candidate.

toast0 7y ago
In my circles, people my age are having less children than their parents and at a later age than their parents, but for the most part, they're still reproducing. If colonists are needed, they're available, it's just a mater of incentives.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
We are unlikely to be sending billions in to space to set up colonies. There will be ample prospective migrants, if it ever becomes a real possibility, whether there are 100m or 10bn earthlings.
aaomidi 7y ago
By the time we're expanding into space, we don't need humans to make babies anymore :)
drak0n1c 7y ago
True, population levels are no where near what is required to support cyberpunk living density, let alone multi-planet colonization. Perhaps if reproduction levels really fall off and there is a real lack of families there will eventually be some kind of public, private, or religious industry centered around creating new babies in vivo or in vitro, along with a paid surrogate and child-raising infrastructure.
buboard 7y ago
considering the timescales of interstellar travel, it will probably involve traveling with robots and frozen human embryos

dqpb 7y ago

> Population growth is vital for the world economy Is the world economy just a pyramid scheme?

blondie9x 7y ago

I think less people sooner will help us lower greenhouse gas emissions. We need to support efforts to educate people and help with family planning. We should also encourage people to have less kids in an effort to stabilize our ecosystem. Less population could lead to a lower GDP or it might not. If worker productivity and automation rise as population falls the GDP decline could be offset. This is something we need to consider especially when considering the initial statements of this article.

NeoBasilisk 7y ago

I dunno man. I think 7 billion people might be enough.

VladimirIvanov 7y ago

If you intend to send your child to college then the cost per child is very high. If you don't then the marginal cost per child is very low. Another consideration is whether the mother works and if it's possible for her to keep taking time from work every few years to have additional children. One thing I notice about large families is that they usually do not pay for their children's college education. TLDR - marginal cost per child increases in developed countries.

golemiprague 7y ago
College is much less expensive in most European countries and still the birth rate there is smaller than the US, so it is nothing to do with the cost of college per se, it is just that middle class women are now serving their corporate masters and can't raise kids. Unemployed lower class women tend to bring much more kids to the world even though they got much less money to support them. The feminist push to get women into the workforce didn't improve family life or wealth, it just made everything more expensive and much harder, on top of that countries have to bring labourers immigrants to do all those valuable jobs women used to do at home, cooking, cleaning, laundry, caring for the old, baby sitting etc. So that strains the system even more.

lowiqprogrammer 7y ago

Immigration is definitely not the answer. What's the point of bringing in immigrants that will replace the previous population? Should Japan bring in millions of Europeans, which will change the culture and demographics, just to keep the arbitrary GDP number up? Why does it matter if the population decreases if we can keep the quality of life the same or higher?

linuxftw 7y ago
As long as there are immigrants, there's an easily exploited working class.
- faissaloo 7y ago
  Smells like Nazbol down here
- einpoklum 7y ago
  I'll flip that one: As long as the working class is dis-organized, and its members do not exhibit solidarity across ethnic and national lines, immigrants are bound to have poorer working conditions than locals, and capitalists are bound to try to artificially bring in more immigrants than would otherwise arrive. Also, as long as there is not enough concerted effort to uplift the peoples of the more oppressed countries, to create stable, prosperous and self-sustaining economies in them rather than objects of mass exploitation - you will always feel threatened by the poor masses coming to take your job.
  - linuxftw 7y ago
    As long as economically prosperous countries and taking the best and brightest from overseas, those countries will never get better. We're simply functioning as a social-relief valve. > As long as the working class is dis-organized I think we'll see a resurgence of organization sometime soon.
tmh79 7y ago
strong disagree, at least for the US. The whole fabric/culture of the country is predicated on immigration and has been literally since its founding.

NTDF9 7y ago

What a load of nonsense! The planet needs lesser people. If economics is the problem, fix the damn econs, not the planet. I'm not naive. I understand that the young will have to produce more per capita to support the masses of elderly. But the solution to this is not producing more kids. The solution is somewhere along the line of better economic distribution

aldoushuxley001 7y ago

It’s frankly shocking and disturbing how many people are celebrating the collapse in fertility worldwide. This should be a sign that something we’re doing is very very wrong. Plus population is expected to plateau around 9 billion so we’re not actually being threatened by overpopulation anytime soon. I can’t help but be reminded of the movie Children of Men.

Geimfari 7y ago
It's only a sign that we're doing something wrong if you assign a positive value to procreation. Many of us don't, either for ethical reasons (life includes suffering, and you have no right to inflict suffering on someone who didn't ask for it) or environmental reasons. And as the logical conclusion of that ethical value system, I do sincerely hope we get a Children of Men scenario where we put an end to procreation entirely. (I'm aware that that viewpoint is fringe)
- ghemsley 7y ago
  Having heard very few people espouse that opinion (which I share), I appreciate that you shared it. Somehow it seems very rare that parents consider their children's capacity for suffering before insisting that they exist without the chance to be asked if they actually want such an existence. Everyone just rolls the dice without truly knowing what they're getting into and assumes that "of course my kids will enjoy life, they're mine." It needs to change, in my opinion.

buboard 7y ago

Population is sensitive to discuss politically. You don't see a lot of ideas that would help either. Here's a talk by Melinda Gates talking about how family planning can help Africa avoid deterioration due to overpopulation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BOTS9GAjc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BOTS9GAjc4

quotemstr 7y ago

It's blindingly obvious that modernity is applying strong natural selection to humanity and that, over time, the world will come to be dominated by the kind of people who have children. In order for that not to be the case, you have to imagine a world without inheritance of characteristics. It's not even necessary to imagine genetic inheritance: even cultural transmission of fecundity from generation to generation would suffice for shifting the distribution of personality traits in the world's population away from whatever depresses birthrate below replacement and towards whatever promotes high birthrates. If you want to know what the world will look like in a few generations, look at who's having kids now. The "lol seven billion is enough" comments completely miss the point. Fertility will recover once inherited fecundity spreads through the population. One way or another, we're going to hit the Earth's (or solar system's) carrying capacity soon, probably in a few centuries at the longest. Do you want that future era to be full of people like you? If so, you need to figure out why people like you aren't reproducing now. To imagine that fertility isn't heritable is to deny all of evolution. The drive to reproduce is the oldest and strongest urge of all. It's ubiquitous in the tree of life. It's really bizarre to me that people don't see this dynamic. Of course evolution applies to people: have you ever met a parent and a child?

iaabtpbtpnn 7y ago
Why would I care whether the future is full of people like me or not? Is there something inherently better about people like me, such that we should be reproducing instead of the people who currently are?
- sundbry 7y ago
  Evolution depends on the competitive aspect of genetic groups as a means of specification. You can say resisting specification is somehow a morally superior position, but really, it is just a sentimental one. Specification will happen regardless and merging will also happen. When there is enough competition for resources, usually only one species wins out. Being apathetic about becoming a dead branch in the tree of evolution is probably going to have that exact outcome.
buboard 7y ago

einpoklum 7y ago

> Population growth is vital for the world economy. At most you could argue that population growth is useful for some of the world's economy. But taking a larger view - ending population growth is vital for the world economy. Probably for human civilization. Now, I'm not saying that the Earth's carrying capacity is 7.7 Billion people (or less). But in many respects we (= humans) are scratching the edges of that capacity with wasteful use of natural resources, pollution, and skewed distribution of products and services (e.g. of food - hundreds of Millions are hungry but the food produced could feed everyone several times over). So, we should work on that, and in the mean time, keep the population in check. When we've "fixed" human society enough, growth may or may not become relevant again. > desperation is creeping into the search for ways to reverse the current trends It is the desperation of large capitalists who want to avoid the necessary transition into from permanent/exponential growth economies into other, sustainable economic models. It's like they want to extend a pier further out into the ocean because they're not willing to stop driving their car out onto it and consider going someplace else. And of course - a political class which lives on these people's donations. One final point: It seems to me like the actual problem spots are countries with massive growth (e.g. Nigeria in the story) which may need to bring it down sooner than they would have, had they had it in the 19th century; and countries with significant sub-replacement numbers. In the rest of the world needs to adjust while the age pyramid changes.

mikelyons 7y ago

Population growth is vital for colonization of Mars. Earth will have to produce a lot of people to send to Mars in order to have the genetic diversity for self-sustaining populations on Mars. The people on Mars will then have to produce a lot of people to live and work there to generate growth and produce generations of humans who maintain The Light of Consciousness on Mars past any sort of otherwise human-extinction cataclysm back on Earth. This is also the only hope of eventually repopulating the Earth in this scenario.

mikelyons 7y ago
Is this not true? or is there some flaw with this point? Why do people disagree?

leoh 7y ago

Has anyone else noticed that there are simultaneously articles that talk about the dangers of not enough people to produce goods and also articles about the risk of AI/robotics being too efficient?

buboard 7y ago
the world constructed by the media doesn't need to be self-consistent
jxramos 7y ago
Why not both, geriatric robots are coming right around the corner just as we approach a frail old age with no strength of youth to change our bedpans and sheets. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-ageing-robots-widerimage-idUSKBN1H33AB https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-ageing-robots-wider...
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Instead of the silly robots, why not exosuits. We're this close. Obvious conclusion of Internet of things combined with wearables. Cyborg grandparent is already a thing sometimes. Insulin pump? Why not. Other drug delivery systems? Easy. Mobility, again better than piggybacking a robot, think wheelchair on steroids. (Panasonic has the right idea but has not taken it far enough yet. HAL is smart. Both are way too expensive yet. Even good wheelchairs are quite expensive and we have trouble accommodating them - real deal exosuit walker would be easier.) You can get old timers to care for themselves the most they can, you win in efficiency. The big one is mental decline. We can do little about it for now. Yes, the exosuit can talk to you and override if you do something dangerous. Maybe call for help. Yes, I know people prefer to interact with people. Which is probably not easy to fake without a robot. Finally, just remember that getting old people socialized would still likely be a job. -- By the way, the image of old people looking like astronauts is beyond funny.
  - jxramos 7y ago
    Wow that is a really intriguing thought, pretty awesome idea to use those to extend agency with old folks in robot suits. Powerful, and funny too for sure.

stared 7y ago

Global birth rates going below replacement level (as in Europe, but not in many other places in the world) would be the best news ever. > While the world is expected to add more than 3 billion people by 2100, according to the United Nations, that’ll likely be the high point. Falling fertility rates and aging populations will mean serious challenges that will be felt more acutely in some places than others. Right now, it is well beyond any sustainable level (CO2, habitat, pollution). More people, and more living at higher standards (and it would be inhumane). Sure, we can eat vegan, and have solar panels, but it is not enough (there is a huge baseline consumption and waste generation). How? Higher education for women and easy (free, educated, socially approved) access to education, especially in poor countries. Often I hear "oh, but in 1970s people were afraid that the current population would be too much, and you see - they were wrong!". Sadly, in the last 50 years, we wiped most animals. And brought the plastic mayhem. Vide: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity-wiped-out-animals-since-1970-major-report-finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity...

jxramos 7y ago

One of the points about demographics that's been really haunting me lately is the nonsubstitutableness of births. In other words births of human beings is not a commodity that you can "catch up on" in any generational sense. Generational cohorts are made in fixed time, and when made late will lag with an offset that can never be backfilled later on. We can only produce infants, never the 8 year old who was never born to fill the gap of missing 8 year olds from folks who couldn't be bothered or weren't ready to have children 8 years ago. Likewise for the absent 20 year olds and so on and so forth. We cannot correct after the fact to rebalance our population pyramids from being so top heavy. There is a huge commitment either way, and that commitment/choice is irreversible. One commits to new life or for voids of life, both are not without consequence. One other interesting thing to this is to watch the shifting median ages of populations. > China's median age was 22 in 1980. By 2018, it was 40. That will rise to 46 in 2030 and 56 in 2050. In the US, the median age was 30 in 1980 and 38 in 2018. In 2030, it will be 40, and 44 in 2050. India, by comparison, had a median age of 20 in 1980 and 28 in 2018. https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/asia/article/2180421/worse-japan-how-chinas-looming-demographic-crisis-will https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/asia/article/21... That's always been fascinating to me to think of an entire graying population and of all those civilizations of past eras who are no more. You can get a distinct taste of that gravity by thinking of an entire genetic pool shrinking in our lifetimes.

jelliclesfarm 7y ago

1. We should go back to between 1-2 billion which is carrying capacity. 2. Beckoning E.O.Wilson’s Half Earth, we should rehab most of the planet that we have destroyed. 3. Hopefully many of us will live longer and better 4. Capitalism as we know it will have to be redefined. 5. Automation will usher this. 6. We would need to make breakthroughs to preserve and store genetic material 6. And cloning. 7. I would like to see ‘artificial’ carbon neutral beings. Human beings = expensive to planet. But more consciousness is good.it doesn’t have to be biological beings. 7. I would like to see artificial beings and AI that are aggregates and amalgamations and combinations of multiple consciousness ..like our non dna children, perhaps. 10. I hope to live long enough to live in a true to the sci fiction world of my imagination. If none of this happens, I hope that at least I can have access to some really good drugs that will allow me to hallucinate. I live with hope. (Only being mildly facetious) P.S: the men of hacker news begin their downvoting assault when someone with an actual uterus predicts that women are not crazy about having been told to keep pushing a football sized mini human out to propagate the species and keep the junk Y chromosome useful. This comment aka ‘Hacker News made me a feminist’. Here is one more. 11. Only half a surviving child per human being is acceptable. This quota is non transferable. 2.2 children per woman is ridiculous. Madness.

PixyMisa 7y ago
Re point 4: Capitalism is descriptive, not prescriptive. It is what it is. Redefining it is like redefining water - you can do it all you like but you'll still end up wet.
- jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  That’s a valid point. I understand what you are saying even though it is possible for me to nitpick on the semantics. But I get your point and will concede.

Gatsky 7y ago

The other transition is the bulge in the elderly population. This seems to me to be the major economic issue in developed nations. In Australia at least, government spending on the aged is the number one expenditure at $70 billion, not including healthcare spending. That’s about $18k per person over 65. The proportion of elderly will increase then plateau at about 1 in 4 over the next 50 years. I’m not sure the numbers add up... it probably only works with ongoing population growth which will have to come from immigration.

nitwit005 7y ago

It's not stated anywhere, but this treats GDP as the only metric anyone should bother to examine. I wish the world was so simple that we could boil down economic progress to a single metric, but people have been pointing out problems with that since the first attempts to measure national economies. Sure, more people typically means global GDP will go up, but no one cares. What we ultimately want is for per-capita measures, like income or poverty rates, to improve.

4gt66y6 7y ago

Here is a curious, but really debatable view on our population, that I've read somewhere. There are 60 billions people total, floating around and waiting for their turn to "manifest" and live. Such a life is very tiring, so humans need a lot of time to recharge: usually, 700-1200 years. Humans aren't created out of thin air or of proteins: bodies can be replicated quickly, but "creating" an actual human takes longer than the lifespan of an average solar system. With an average lifetime of 70 years, we can't have more than 10 billion "participants" living at the same time. We also can't just fix aging because even with a perfect body, life is very tiring.

boyadjian 7y ago

This article from bloomberg.com is perfectly absurd : High birth rates during the last fifty years have lead to overpopulation, politic instability, general poverty, global warming. And now, they complain that the birthrates are too low ? Seven billion and a half for world population and it is not enough ? Each day, 240 000 inhabitants more, is it too few ? The writer of this article should be admitted in a psychiatric hospital.

wotongKwan 7y ago

No, you fucking moron. What you need to understand is fewer people are getting laid, families are disintegrating, instincts of procreation are stifled and effaced, and it results in rootless, suicidal (or worse) individuals (of all stripes and genders) who are very unhappy. This is nothing to sniff at. Is overpopulation also a problem? Yes. I present to you a surprising reality, you might not have considered: You can have more than one deadly problem at the same time.

tim333 7y ago

>Population growth is vital for the world economy. This is silly. As long as income per capita is good and people are happy does it matter if there are few less?

VladimirIvanov 7y ago

The marginal cost per child has increased dramatically. In developing economies an additional child can sometimes be an asset as they are free labor for a family farm or business. In a developed economy(specifically the USA) the cost per child is primarily driven by educational expenses. College education and also private high school and elementary education. Despite what people say it much more difficult to be successful without a college education. The options for obtaining a college education without your parents money and without student loans are slim. There are two possibilities; military academy/ ROTC program or athletic/academic scholarships. The ROTC military is the most likely one but not everyone is accepted. There are many medical disqualifying conditions such as ADHD ect. So if you are a college graduate and you want your children to have the same life opportunities that you did, then there is a limit to how many children you can have based on your income and net worth.

asah 7y ago

I just don't get it, there are so many examples where millions of more humans doesn't materially improve growth and a handful of people do. Consider: when Cartwright invented the power loom, he undoubtedly created economic growth (more output) without the need for more humans. Ditto for millions of inventions happening every day from software automation to robotics. Even more: another million uneducated humans doesn't provide anywhere near as much growth as 1000 highly educated humans. As simple proof, you need education to operate and maintain machines, let alone invent and improve them. If anything, a fertility crash seems like a good thing because there's always resources that are limited and fewer people helps allocate them - from fresh water to brand new medicines/devices/techniques that haven't been commoditized yet.