4 ms·

Things can be good on net but still have severe downsides you can't just ignore, and I think that's the case here. You're brushing a whole lot under the carpet

Things can be good on net but still have severe downsides you can't just ignore, and I think that's the case here. You're brushing a whole lot under the carpet with "will cause problems": falling populations mean that everything which relies on a demographic pyramid-- pensions, socialized health care, saving for retirement via the stock market, spending on municipal infrastructure-- falls apart. You can't just brush that off.

hermitcrab 6y ago
I think that is quite manageable, if the decline is gradual. Especially if there people in other, less demographically challenged countries, that are willing to emigrate.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Yes, and technology will be able to do a lot more good in the world once we have the labor shortages to justify further automation. Increasingly over the last 40 years in the developed world, in a general labor and supply glut, the only reason to automate is to fuck over your precarious workforce more than your competitor. That sucks for the regular workers and automaters alike, and I can't wait for it to change.
  - hermitcrab 6y ago
    When the black death killed swathes of Europe's peasants, the survivors were able to demand much better working conditions from their overlords. But I guess that is only going to happen with a declining population if there are enough jobs that robots and AI can't do.
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      Well the key is fighting underconsumption. Automation is a somewhat negative feedback loop in that excess labor reduces the demand for further automation. This is why anything shirt of general A.I.—which economically is automation that spills over from jobs one tries to automate to a significant portion of others—is not revolutionary. So a declining working age population could shrink the economy, and this would be the orthodox economist position which doesn't recognize a structural underconsumption problem. And with underconsumption I think it's a not of a toss-up, but if the underconsumption is prevented, I don't the the demographics will get in the way. tl;dr lock in your UBI before the population peaks.
- pharke 6y ago
  Less demographically challenged countries are not a renewable resource. The chickens will come home to roost at some point. Sure you can bet on someone else doing the work to mitigate that problem but a lot of people are doing just that and leaving these problems untended and unsolved. Progress and easy living are not inevitable, everyone has to put the work in for things to continue improving.
  - hermitcrab 6y ago
    >Less demographically challenged countries are not a renewable resource. At the moment, poor people who are prepared to migrate to richer countries to get a chance at a better life are very much a renewable resource. They just keep coming. Hopefully we will move to a fairer world where this isn't the case, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
    - pharke 6y ago
      I meant that the largest (by population) countries with high birthrates are quickly entering the same demographic situation as mentioned in the article. They are being closely followed by another host of countries as rapid industrialization/modernization moves on down the line. The pool of people willing to migrate for economic reasons is shrinking. Meanwhile, we are not much closer to solving the problems that cheap overseas labour and cheap imported labour were keeping at bay. That curse even seems to be passing on to the countries where we used to draw our labour from meaning that we are now competing with them for immigrants, migrant workers, and outsourced labour. It's a fiendish game of musical chairs.

hermitcrab 6y ago

I think that is quite manageable, if the decline is gradual. Especially if there people in other, less demographically challenged countries, that are willing to emigrate.

Ericson2314 6y ago
Yes, and technology will be able to do a lot more good in the world once we have the labor shortages to justify further automation. Increasingly over the last 40 years in the developed world, in a general labor and supply glut, the only reason to automate is to fuck over your precarious workforce more than your competitor. That sucks for the regular workers and automaters alike, and I can't wait for it to change.
- hermitcrab 6y ago
  When the black death killed swathes of Europe's peasants, the survivors were able to demand much better working conditions from their overlords. But I guess that is only going to happen with a declining population if there are enough jobs that robots and AI can't do.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    Well the key is fighting underconsumption. Automation is a somewhat negative feedback loop in that excess labor reduces the demand for further automation. This is why anything shirt of general A.I.—which economically is automation that spills over from jobs one tries to automate to a significant portion of others—is not revolutionary. So a declining working age population could shrink the economy, and this would be the orthodox economist position which doesn't recognize a structural underconsumption problem. And with underconsumption I think it's a not of a toss-up, but if the underconsumption is prevented, I don't the the demographics will get in the way. tl;dr lock in your UBI before the population peaks.
pharke 6y ago
Less demographically challenged countries are not a renewable resource. The chickens will come home to roost at some point. Sure you can bet on someone else doing the work to mitigate that problem but a lot of people are doing just that and leaving these problems untended and unsolved. Progress and easy living are not inevitable, everyone has to put the work in for things to continue improving.
- hermitcrab 6y ago
  >Less demographically challenged countries are not a renewable resource. At the moment, poor people who are prepared to migrate to richer countries to get a chance at a better life are very much a renewable resource. They just keep coming. Hopefully we will move to a fairer world where this isn't the case, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
  - pharke 6y ago
    I meant that the largest (by population) countries with high birthrates are quickly entering the same demographic situation as mentioned in the article. They are being closely followed by another host of countries as rapid industrialization/modernization moves on down the line. The pool of people willing to migrate for economic reasons is shrinking. Meanwhile, we are not much closer to solving the problems that cheap overseas labour and cheap imported labour were keeping at bay. That curse even seems to be passing on to the countries where we used to draw our labour from meaning that we are now competing with them for immigrants, migrant workers, and outsourced labour. It's a fiendish game of musical chairs.