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We've wrung our hands for more than half a century over an exploding population, hoping the curve would peak before we overrun our own instinctual bad behavior.

We've wrung our hands for more than half a century over an exploding population, hoping the curve would peak before we overrun our own instinctual bad behavior. Now it's happening, we can fear this, too. Yeah, it means a lot of old people. The math has always been the same. "Oh no. If I draw this trend out in a straight line, it crashes against limits!"

dane-pgp 6y ago
The hand-wringing is because people realise that humanity is not in control of a crucial variable which will affect our long-term future, namely the global fertility rate. Just because that number is set to transition from above replacement level to below replacement level doesn't mean we're now able to set it to whatever we want.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  I think people are in control of a crucial variable which will affect our long-term future, but they're women which makes some people upset.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    Individual people have at best partial control over the decisions they make, and I don't think that any particular set of women, or even all women collectively, have complete control over the global fertility rate. To give just one example, some women may be infertile, despite their wishes. There is a coordination problem here, and even if all women could agree on the correct average global fertility level, and perfectly implement a fair quota system among themselves, I think there are other stakeholders who should be considered in that process: not just the men that might be involved in the raising of some of those children, but also the future generations of humanity that will only exist (or will exist in a very different environment) if the global fertility level goes outside a band of sustainability.
jfengel 6y ago
The hand-wringing has been mostly among the general public. For demographers, a half-century ago is when the population boom worries ended. They noticed that as countries got richer, fertility decreased. That touched off a population worry by connecting (a) rich country births were down, and (b) poor country births were still going up. The demographers were already worried about inverted pyramids in the 70s, and already knew the solution (immigration). But it was way easier for people to be scared. The math has always been the same and the actual scientists have understood it for at least a half century. What to do with it is pretty complex.

dane-pgp 6y ago

The hand-wringing is because people realise that humanity is not in control of a crucial variable which will affect our long-term future, namely the global fertility rate. Just because that number is set to transition from above replacement level to below replacement level doesn't mean we're now able to set it to whatever we want.

Gibbon1 6y ago
I think people are in control of a crucial variable which will affect our long-term future, but they're women which makes some people upset.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Individual people have at best partial control over the decisions they make, and I don't think that any particular set of women, or even all women collectively, have complete control over the global fertility rate. To give just one example, some women may be infertile, despite their wishes. There is a coordination problem here, and even if all women could agree on the correct average global fertility level, and perfectly implement a fair quota system among themselves, I think there are other stakeholders who should be considered in that process: not just the men that might be involved in the raising of some of those children, but also the future generations of humanity that will only exist (or will exist in a very different environment) if the global fertility level goes outside a band of sustainability.

jfengel 6y ago

The hand-wringing has been mostly among the general public. For demographers, a half-century ago is when the population boom worries ended. They noticed that as countries got richer, fertility decreased. That touched off a population worry by connecting (a) rich country births were down, and (b) poor country births were still going up. The demographers were already worried about inverted pyramids in the 70s, and already knew the solution (immigration). But it was way easier for people to be scared. The math has always been the same and the actual scientists have understood it for at least a half century. What to do with it is pretty complex.