8 ms·

The De-Population Bomb

25 points by Eumenes 4y ago

Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
I don't think it's surprising. People do things for ROI and specifically quality of life ROI. Once the retirement system is socialized or provided by insurance the role of kids for future retirement support immediately goes out of the window and so is the ROI. You privately spend 1 million dollars each to raise them, but society gets to reap the rewards collectively. It's a losing proposition and only a non-smart person would commit to such agreement. If countries want to raise their birthrates they should immediately liquidate all their pension funds and insurance funds (both public and private) and transfer the stock/bonds owned by such entities to the holders of such rights. Also countries should stop policing how people raise their kids. Many parents might want a slightly more ignorant kid in the realm of philosophy/English/math... but prioritizing values of family and most importantly the only value that matters to them: taking care of parents as they enter old age , when I say taking care I mean both financially and socially.
- Jensson 4y ago
  > You privately spend 1 million dollars each to raise them Average kid costs $227k, not a million. Just wanted to clarify since that number was very off. The cost of raising a child is growing extremely quickly though, much faster than inflation. https://money.cnn.com/2011/09/21/pf/cost_raising_child/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2011/09/21/pf/cost_raising_child/index... Edit: That was 10 years ago, probably higher today, but pretty sure it still isn't close to a million.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    That $250k or so number has been bandied about since the 90s. It’s an average and isn’t entirely useful (as education costs can be a huge portion of it depending on how you calculate it). Kids are expensive but they can be as expensive as you want them to be, as evidenced by poor people having them.
  - sarchertech 4y ago
    The average cost per kid also goes down with the number of kids you have. Economies of scale, hand-me-downs, kids sharing rooms, older kids providing free childcare etc…
  - falcolas 4y ago
    $300,000 now, not including college or any major emergencies. Having a child with a birth defect or major disorder; it’s easy to see how the costs could easily reach the millions.
- goethes_kind 4y ago
  Complete nonsense. People naturally do want to have kids. It is just very expensive to have them both in terms of time and energy. I do not know a single person my age (30) who thinks of kids as retirement insurance. Frankly speaking, if I never get to have kids, I couldn't care less what happens to me when I'm an old fart, ideally I would never reach that age at all.
  - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
    > I do not know a single person my age (30) who thinks of kids as retirement insurance. Well of course, because they don't need it due to the fact that it's already there in the form of socialized retirement. Remove socialized retirement , pension funds etc. and people will start having more kids as they'd start seeing them as a retirement insurance yet again. As they were seen for the whole history of mankind (and still are in high fertility countries). It's time we face the fact that people don't make kids out of love but out of need. If you remove the need and you'd remove the kids, which is what is happening.
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      There is still need for kids for socialized retirement. They are required to fund it. But now it's a social need instead of an individual need. Not having kids is the entire society's problem. Let's see what people have to say about you not having kids. Are they OK with it? Do they think you should be having kids? How many?
      - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
        > Not having kids is the entire society's problem So is tax evasion, CO2 emissions etc. What are the odds of being audited by the IRS ? What are the odds of being punished for illegally burning weeds? What are the odds of being punished for modifying your semi diesel engine so that you can do the "rolling coal" thing? When you move from the level of the individual up to the level of society at large, solving problems (or in this case situations that certain people deem as problems) becomes harder not easier. Good luck trying to force people to have kids and police people's penises and vaginas. Besides it's not even necessary...Nigeria and sub-saharan Africa will take care of that "problem" much like China takes care of the iPhone production problem now. That's why categories exist. The first world can't do the job of the third world and vice versa, each should do their own job.
- hsn915 4y ago
  People will not like this, but the reason populations are shrinking is because women don't want to have many kids. Ask any modern woman, the majority view child rearing as a huge burden, and most would think three kids is way too much. For perspective, my grand grand mother had 16 kids. All her grand grand children who are my generation that I know of have either two or three, with no apparent plans to have any more.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    Well this is obviously true. You can argue that its OK, or even good, but there is no questioning that women (and men even) are less inclined to want kids than before.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Did your great grandmother want to have 16 kids, or is that just what happened?
    - hsn915 4y ago
      Does she sound to you like a modern woman?
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        Consider the possibility that women a hundred years ago didn’t necessarily want that many kids either. How many would have opted for birth control were it more readily available and effective?
        hsn915 4y ago
        I consider your question/objection offensive. Consider that your projections don't apply to people from a 100 years ago.
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        [note: OP changed their comment while this was typed up.] Again, not the question. If you went back in a time machine, and said “here’s some medicine, take it if you wanna stop at three kids” and changed nothing else societally, would everyone who had 16 kids still opt to have 16? I think it’s unlikely every single woman would make the same choice given an alternative. Modern or otherwise.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Socializing the retirement system would make us MORE dependent on the birthrate. Social security draws from the working force to pay for currently retired. Its already breaking at the seams. If the working force increases and the retirees increase we are in trouble. It would be better if people saved up for their own retirement over time and did not depend on the government forcing the working force to give up their income.
  - phlipski 4y ago
    "It would be better if people saved up for their own retirement over time and did not depend on the government forcing the working force to give up their income." The US had that exact system up until about 1935 - when Social Security was founded. It turns out that if we let people save for their own retirement, the vast majority will choose not to.
  - slavik81 4y ago
    The money is an abstraction. If you look at the actual production and consumption, it's clear that the issue persists regardless of whether the retirement system is government-provided or funded through private savings. You can't actually save up the things that retirees need. They will mostly require services. No matter how much cash has been set aside up to pay for it, the supply of services is largely dependent on the labour force available. The production and consumption of services needs to balance instantaneously.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > If countries want to raise their birthrates they should immediately liquidate all their pension funds and insurance funds (both public and private) and transfer the stock/bonds owned by such entities to the holders of such rights. “Sweet, I’m putting all of it in Terra $LUNA!” Welcome to a golden age of scams.
  - prottog 4y ago
    We're in the golden age of the wise elites in government protecting people from themselves, so pick your poison, I guess.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      We’ve tried both poisons. I’ll take safe medications over snake oil, and seatbelt laws over road deaths. The charts at https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4818a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4818a1.htm are pretty striking.
      - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
        Who is we? Personal responsibility doesn't mean you'd have to take snake oil or travel at 200mph without seatbelt. It simply means that you get to keep your own money and get to decide each on your own if you want to test your pills before popping them or if you want install safety systems in your car before hitting the road. I think it's very peculiar that the US became so socialized given that every kid in the country dreams of hitting the walk-off Home run in the 9th inning of Game 7 of the World Series
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        > Who is we? The developed world. > It simply means that you get to keep your own money and get to decide each on your own if you want to test your pills before popping them or if you want install safety systems in your car before hitting the road. Again, we tried that. We have concrete evidence of how that works. "Test your own pills" is silly enough I don't think I need to address it. Car manufacturers got pushed, kicking and screaming, into seatbelts, airbags, and a variety of other safety measures. Market pressure didn't do it, but thousands of people a year stay alive because of that regulation. > I think it's very peculiar that the US became so socialized given that every kid in the country dreams of hitting the walk-off Home run in the 9th inning of Game 7 of the World Series These are two very odd things to attempt to tie together.
- Juliate 4y ago
  > People do things for ROI and specifically quality of life ROI. Right. The famous, old, debunked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus. Of course.
- sveme 4y ago
  Most people don't do things for ROI. My kids were definitely not "done" with ROI considered. They are costly and time-consuming, but I love them. Western countries with their lack of intergenerational support and lack of affordable child care while we have stagnating wages are probably the major reason.
  - IMTDb 4y ago
    > They are costly and time-consuming, but I love them. That's your ROI; you spend time and energy raising them, caring for them, cleaning for them, providing for them. In return, they give you affection, love, you enjoy playing with them, or having conversation with them. If you are someone who does not enjoy spending time with children, or do not think you will enjoy seeing them grow, you usually... avoid having children since you do not see the return. At some point, you made the decision to have children because you think you would be happier with some.
    - sveme 4y ago
      Seriously, this whole ROI thing does not work with kids, at least not in my case. In most cases they return vomit, poo, curses, anger, anxiety. Yet I would miss them dearly if they were gone. Can this really be rationally explained? The first one was actually an accident. As is so often the case. Life cannot always be explained using an Homo oeconomicus.
      - agent008t 4y ago
        My point is that of course once they are here you care for them, would miss them if they are gone, etc. etc. They are living beings, so of course ROI calculations no longer apply - you just want to do what's in your power for them to be happy, reduce their suffering etc. However, before you are in that situation, ROI calculations absolutely do apply. To give you an example - most people on HN that have children probably have 1-3 of them - and that's about as many as they wanted to have. But if you somehow happened to already have 10 children, would you then be selling 7-9 of them (or indeed any) to the circus? Of course not. You would love them, care for them and do the best you can, and you would miss each of them dearly if they were gone. And yet, given any degree of control over the situation, you would probably try not to have so many. Why not? Because of some calculation - let's call it the ROI calculation. It is precisely the same calculation that keeps you from having 10 children that keeps others from having any children at all.
bediger4000 4y ago
This is just more scare mongering. First it was Temperance, then Communism, the The Population Bomb, then Silent Spring, then the drug war, fear of nuclear winter, Earth Day, Left Behind, the War on Terror, these things are endless.
- kardianos 4y ago
  [flagged]
- SanjayMehta 4y ago
  Ozone layer, global warming, climate change, climate justice ... After some time people just tune out.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    And then death comes. Tuning out real problems doesn't fix them.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    It’s a pity folks tune out the ozone layer. It’s one of our best examples of international cooperation to effectively fix a global problem.
    - bediger4000 4y ago
      As an older programmer, I'd put Y2k remediation in that category. There was a problem, people worked at fixing it, coordinating all over the place. Come to think of it, there was a 1999 GPS week-rollover problem where people fixed it in advance, too
aliqot 4y ago
I'd like to hear arguments on why more people is a good thing. Everything indicates less people was better. edit: Extra points for not using ponzinomics to justify it.
- clircle 4y ago
  Better divisions of labor
- atemerev 4y ago
  Consumption. "Economic growth" relies on always increasing consumption. I am not saying that we should stop economic growth, but we might want to learn do it without bringing new consumers into the world, at least not making this obligatory.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    Are you asserting more people is a good thing or a bad thing? I'm looking for those who assert it is a good thing. You said "we might want to learn do it without bringing new consumers into the world" which to me suggests it is not a good thing.
    - atemerev 4y ago
      Population growth is outside moral judgement. If there are more people, it's fine, we should engineer the way to accomodating them without damaging the environment too much. If there are less people being born, this is also fine, as human population is sort of self-regulating in this regard. Perhaps there is also some engineering needed to adjust for this scenario as well. But neither growth nor decline are to be regulated in any way.
  - agent008t 4y ago
    > "Economic growth" relies on always increasing consumption That cannot possibly be true. A single person can consume a huge amount of resources - far more than any of us currently does. For example, by setting a building on fire, you have consumed that building. We already have a near-infinite capacity for consumption. Or did you mean something different? If so, could you please explain it better? How can economic growth rely on increasing consumption? Because I would love to consume a yacht - where do I sign up to help economic growth by consuming one?
atemerev 4y ago
De-population is fine. Better reliance on automated manufacturing, better deal for the environment, less competition. I don't think we should do anything about it if it happens naturally, as the world is reaching its carrying capacity for humans.
dsign 4y ago
This problem is not so hard to fix, neither so easy. First, raising children shouldn't be an onerous business for two or just one; the current monogamous family is a construct from a few religions with outsize cultural influence (Paradoxically, in the absence of contraceptives monogamous families are good for population growth: you use the bare minimum of adults to raise more than a dozen kids. Ideal stuff if your goal is to go to war with the tribe on the other side of the Nile). Second... well, second we should forsake heaven, and remain here. Let's keep working on life-extension and rejuvenation, and abolish death.
- tetris11 4y ago
  A return to co-parenting should absolutely happen. Back in the villages, kids were raised by a number of adults by proxy of kids staying overnight at each others houses, and this exists still in many societies. The atomisation of the western world has forced parents to singlehandedly raise their kids and enact on them their specific faults and biases, whilst crippling everyone mentally and emotionally
danuker 4y ago
Populations can adjust. When there are too many people, and food is expensive or hard to get, people make fewer kids, or invest in making it cheaper (agriculture innovations - nearly 50% of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from the Haber–Bosch process [1]). When there are too few people, and a lot of states rely on taxing youth to fund pensions and healthcare for elders, anyone able and willing to work will be paid better, attracting migrants or older workers. [1] - Last paragraph here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_environmental_aspects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_env...
osigurdson 4y ago
Take a current trend, extrapolate it out until the end of time, write a book about it. "Look at what happens with k^N when N is large and k is not 1" along with anecdotes and filler.
nopinsight 4y ago
Prof. Gary Becker (Nobel in economics) has linked the economics of fertility to economic growth since decades ago. His papers describe low fertility rates in many developed countries in the present pretty well. Here's a review article of his work: https://docs.iza.org/dp8610.pdf https://docs.iza.org/dp8610.pdf From the article: "Becker, Murphy, and Tamura show that the economy exhibits two steady states, one in which income per capita stagnates and fertility is high, and one in which there is sustained growth in income per capita and fertility is low. Thus, the model provides a joint explanation for the demographic and economic differences between pre-industrial, Malthusian economies (characterized by stagnation, a low return to human capital, and high birth rates), and growing, industrial economies with low population growth."
fasteddie31003 4y ago
I think part of the instability in Russia right now is due to their population starting to decrease. Their leadership sees the writing on the wall that their demographic future looks bleak. The Ukraine war is their last chance to use their strength to get more resources. You can also see that they are moving Ukrainians to low population areas to increase their population. The Ukraine War is literally a Russian de-population bomb. I wonder if we will see this trend in the future when China's population start to decline in the coming years.
sudden_dystopia 4y ago
I totally see the depopulation argument. But I also see the overpopulation argument, at least as it relates to our current standards of living/lifestyles, farming practices, and energy scarcity. We need innovation to keep pace with population increases, or else overpopulation is a real risk in my mind.
mdorazio 4y ago
I'm guessing a lot of commenters didn't actually read/listen to the entirety of this. Here's a summary: - Globally, there's a drop in fertility rates - The reasons for this are complicated, but the interview seems to conclude it's due to mindset among young people - There's no reason this has to be disastrous - However, in the US we're doing really poorly on most things that would make a shrinking native population workable (sensible immigration policy, stable social safety net, world-class education, etc.) - Israel is an outlier in that it seems to be avoiding the fertility rate drop of industrialized nations - The interviewers think American exceptionalism can win the day and either return us to higher fertility rates or figure out a way around it Unfortunately, nowhere did I see them actually make a strong case that a significantly smaller population is a bad thing. The interview is two boomers. Would they argue that America in the 1970s/1980s when they were having the time of their lives had too few people? They also gloss over any positive impacts of lower population, like housing and the environment. And finally, they seem kind of out of touch with the experience of young people - there's some reference to a few metrics at the end (they seem to think young people are "afraid" or over-value autonomy), but I get the feeling these two people don't really understand why Millennials in particular are choosing fewer children.

25 points by Eumenes 4y ago

I don't think it's surprising. People do things for ROI and specifically quality of life ROI. Once the retirement system is socialized or provided by insurance the role of kids for future retirement support immediately goes out of the window and so is the ROI. You privately spend 1 million dollars each to raise them, but society gets to reap the rewards collectively. It's a losing proposition and only a non-smart person would commit to such agreement. If countries want to raise their birthrates they should immediately liquidate all their pension funds and insurance funds (both public and private) and transfer the stock/bonds owned by such entities to the holders of such rights. Also countries should stop policing how people raise their kids. Many parents might want a slightly more ignorant kid in the realm of philosophy/English/math... but prioritizing values of family and most importantly the only value that matters to them: taking care of parents as they enter old age , when I say taking care I mean both financially and socially.

Jensson 4y ago
> You privately spend 1 million dollars each to raise them Average kid costs $227k, not a million. Just wanted to clarify since that number was very off. The cost of raising a child is growing extremely quickly though, much faster than inflation. https://money.cnn.com/2011/09/21/pf/cost_raising_child/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2011/09/21/pf/cost_raising_child/index... Edit: That was 10 years ago, probably higher today, but pretty sure it still isn't close to a million.
- bombcar 4y ago
  That $250k or so number has been bandied about since the 90s. It’s an average and isn’t entirely useful (as education costs can be a huge portion of it depending on how you calculate it). Kids are expensive but they can be as expensive as you want them to be, as evidenced by poor people having them.
- sarchertech 4y ago
  The average cost per kid also goes down with the number of kids you have. Economies of scale, hand-me-downs, kids sharing rooms, older kids providing free childcare etc…
- falcolas 4y ago
  $300,000 now, not including college or any major emergencies. Having a child with a birth defect or major disorder; it’s easy to see how the costs could easily reach the millions.
goethes_kind 4y ago
Complete nonsense. People naturally do want to have kids. It is just very expensive to have them both in terms of time and energy. I do not know a single person my age (30) who thinks of kids as retirement insurance. Frankly speaking, if I never get to have kids, I couldn't care less what happens to me when I'm an old fart, ideally I would never reach that age at all.
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  > I do not know a single person my age (30) who thinks of kids as retirement insurance. Well of course, because they don't need it due to the fact that it's already there in the form of socialized retirement. Remove socialized retirement , pension funds etc. and people will start having more kids as they'd start seeing them as a retirement insurance yet again. As they were seen for the whole history of mankind (and still are in high fertility countries). It's time we face the fact that people don't make kids out of love but out of need. If you remove the need and you'd remove the kids, which is what is happening.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    There is still need for kids for socialized retirement. They are required to fund it. But now it's a social need instead of an individual need. Not having kids is the entire society's problem. Let's see what people have to say about you not having kids. Are they OK with it? Do they think you should be having kids? How many?
    - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
      > Not having kids is the entire society's problem So is tax evasion, CO2 emissions etc. What are the odds of being audited by the IRS ? What are the odds of being punished for illegally burning weeds? What are the odds of being punished for modifying your semi diesel engine so that you can do the "rolling coal" thing? When you move from the level of the individual up to the level of society at large, solving problems (or in this case situations that certain people deem as problems) becomes harder not easier. Good luck trying to force people to have kids and police people's penises and vaginas. Besides it's not even necessary...Nigeria and sub-saharan Africa will take care of that "problem" much like China takes care of the iPhone production problem now. That's why categories exist. The first world can't do the job of the third world and vice versa, each should do their own job.
hsn915 4y ago
People will not like this, but the reason populations are shrinking is because women don't want to have many kids. Ask any modern woman, the majority view child rearing as a huge burden, and most would think three kids is way too much. For perspective, my grand grand mother had 16 kids. All her grand grand children who are my generation that I know of have either two or three, with no apparent plans to have any more.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Well this is obviously true. You can argue that its OK, or even good, but there is no questioning that women (and men even) are less inclined to want kids than before.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Did your great grandmother want to have 16 kids, or is that just what happened?
  - hsn915 4y ago
    Does she sound to you like a modern woman?
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Consider the possibility that women a hundred years ago didn’t necessarily want that many kids either. How many would have opted for birth control were it more readily available and effective?
      - hsn915 4y ago
        I consider your question/objection offensive. Consider that your projections don't apply to people from a 100 years ago.
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        [note: OP changed their comment while this was typed up.] Again, not the question. If you went back in a time machine, and said “here’s some medicine, take it if you wanna stop at three kids” and changed nothing else societally, would everyone who had 16 kids still opt to have 16? I think it’s unlikely every single woman would make the same choice given an alternative. Modern or otherwise.
nonethewiser 4y ago
Socializing the retirement system would make us MORE dependent on the birthrate. Social security draws from the working force to pay for currently retired. Its already breaking at the seams. If the working force increases and the retirees increase we are in trouble. It would be better if people saved up for their own retirement over time and did not depend on the government forcing the working force to give up their income.
- phlipski 4y ago
  "It would be better if people saved up for their own retirement over time and did not depend on the government forcing the working force to give up their income." The US had that exact system up until about 1935 - when Social Security was founded. It turns out that if we let people save for their own retirement, the vast majority will choose not to.
- slavik81 4y ago
  The money is an abstraction. If you look at the actual production and consumption, it's clear that the issue persists regardless of whether the retirement system is government-provided or funded through private savings. You can't actually save up the things that retirees need. They will mostly require services. No matter how much cash has been set aside up to pay for it, the supply of services is largely dependent on the labour force available. The production and consumption of services needs to balance instantaneously.
ceejayoz 4y ago
> If countries want to raise their birthrates they should immediately liquidate all their pension funds and insurance funds (both public and private) and transfer the stock/bonds owned by such entities to the holders of such rights. “Sweet, I’m putting all of it in Terra $LUNA!” Welcome to a golden age of scams.
- prottog 4y ago
  We're in the golden age of the wise elites in government protecting people from themselves, so pick your poison, I guess.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    We’ve tried both poisons. I’ll take safe medications over snake oil, and seatbelt laws over road deaths. The charts at https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4818a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4818a1.htm are pretty striking.
    - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
      Who is we? Personal responsibility doesn't mean you'd have to take snake oil or travel at 200mph without seatbelt. It simply means that you get to keep your own money and get to decide each on your own if you want to test your pills before popping them or if you want install safety systems in your car before hitting the road. I think it's very peculiar that the US became so socialized given that every kid in the country dreams of hitting the walk-off Home run in the 9th inning of Game 7 of the World Series
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        > Who is we? The developed world. > It simply means that you get to keep your own money and get to decide each on your own if you want to test your pills before popping them or if you want install safety systems in your car before hitting the road. Again, we tried that. We have concrete evidence of how that works. "Test your own pills" is silly enough I don't think I need to address it. Car manufacturers got pushed, kicking and screaming, into seatbelts, airbags, and a variety of other safety measures. Market pressure didn't do it, but thousands of people a year stay alive because of that regulation. > I think it's very peculiar that the US became so socialized given that every kid in the country dreams of hitting the walk-off Home run in the 9th inning of Game 7 of the World Series These are two very odd things to attempt to tie together.
Juliate 4y ago
> People do things for ROI and specifically quality of life ROI. Right. The famous, old, debunked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus. Of course.
sveme 4y ago
Most people don't do things for ROI. My kids were definitely not "done" with ROI considered. They are costly and time-consuming, but I love them. Western countries with their lack of intergenerational support and lack of affordable child care while we have stagnating wages are probably the major reason.
- IMTDb 4y ago
  > They are costly and time-consuming, but I love them. That's your ROI; you spend time and energy raising them, caring for them, cleaning for them, providing for them. In return, they give you affection, love, you enjoy playing with them, or having conversation with them. If you are someone who does not enjoy spending time with children, or do not think you will enjoy seeing them grow, you usually... avoid having children since you do not see the return. At some point, you made the decision to have children because you think you would be happier with some.
  - sveme 4y ago
    Seriously, this whole ROI thing does not work with kids, at least not in my case. In most cases they return vomit, poo, curses, anger, anxiety. Yet I would miss them dearly if they were gone. Can this really be rationally explained? The first one was actually an accident. As is so often the case. Life cannot always be explained using an Homo oeconomicus.
    - agent008t 4y ago
      My point is that of course once they are here you care for them, would miss them if they are gone, etc. etc. They are living beings, so of course ROI calculations no longer apply - you just want to do what's in your power for them to be happy, reduce their suffering etc. However, before you are in that situation, ROI calculations absolutely do apply. To give you an example - most people on HN that have children probably have 1-3 of them - and that's about as many as they wanted to have. But if you somehow happened to already have 10 children, would you then be selling 7-9 of them (or indeed any) to the circus? Of course not. You would love them, care for them and do the best you can, and you would miss each of them dearly if they were gone. And yet, given any degree of control over the situation, you would probably try not to have so many. Why not? Because of some calculation - let's call it the ROI calculation. It is precisely the same calculation that keeps you from having 10 children that keeps others from having any children at all.

bediger4000 4y ago

This is just more scare mongering. First it was Temperance, then Communism, the The Population Bomb, then Silent Spring, then the drug war, fear of nuclear winter, Earth Day, Left Behind, the War on Terror, these things are endless.

kardianos 4y ago
[flagged]
SanjayMehta 4y ago
Ozone layer, global warming, climate change, climate justice ... After some time people just tune out.
- pixl97 4y ago
  And then death comes. Tuning out real problems doesn't fix them.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  It’s a pity folks tune out the ozone layer. It’s one of our best examples of international cooperation to effectively fix a global problem.
  - bediger4000 4y ago
    As an older programmer, I'd put Y2k remediation in that category. There was a problem, people worked at fixing it, coordinating all over the place. Come to think of it, there was a 1999 GPS week-rollover problem where people fixed it in advance, too

aliqot 4y ago

I'd like to hear arguments on why more people is a good thing. Everything indicates less people was better. edit: Extra points for not using ponzinomics to justify it.

clircle 4y ago
Better divisions of labor
atemerev 4y ago
Consumption. "Economic growth" relies on always increasing consumption. I am not saying that we should stop economic growth, but we might want to learn do it without bringing new consumers into the world, at least not making this obligatory.
- aliqot 4y ago
  Are you asserting more people is a good thing or a bad thing? I'm looking for those who assert it is a good thing. You said "we might want to learn do it without bringing new consumers into the world" which to me suggests it is not a good thing.
  - atemerev 4y ago
    Population growth is outside moral judgement. If there are more people, it's fine, we should engineer the way to accomodating them without damaging the environment too much. If there are less people being born, this is also fine, as human population is sort of self-regulating in this regard. Perhaps there is also some engineering needed to adjust for this scenario as well. But neither growth nor decline are to be regulated in any way.
- agent008t 4y ago
  > "Economic growth" relies on always increasing consumption That cannot possibly be true. A single person can consume a huge amount of resources - far more than any of us currently does. For example, by setting a building on fire, you have consumed that building. We already have a near-infinite capacity for consumption. Or did you mean something different? If so, could you please explain it better? How can economic growth rely on increasing consumption? Because I would love to consume a yacht - where do I sign up to help economic growth by consuming one?

atemerev 4y ago

De-population is fine. Better reliance on automated manufacturing, better deal for the environment, less competition. I don't think we should do anything about it if it happens naturally, as the world is reaching its carrying capacity for humans.

dsign 4y ago

This problem is not so hard to fix, neither so easy. First, raising children shouldn't be an onerous business for two or just one; the current monogamous family is a construct from a few religions with outsize cultural influence (Paradoxically, in the absence of contraceptives monogamous families are good for population growth: you use the bare minimum of adults to raise more than a dozen kids. Ideal stuff if your goal is to go to war with the tribe on the other side of the Nile). Second... well, second we should forsake heaven, and remain here. Let's keep working on life-extension and rejuvenation, and abolish death.

tetris11 4y ago
A return to co-parenting should absolutely happen. Back in the villages, kids were raised by a number of adults by proxy of kids staying overnight at each others houses, and this exists still in many societies. The atomisation of the western world has forced parents to singlehandedly raise their kids and enact on them their specific faults and biases, whilst crippling everyone mentally and emotionally

danuker 4y ago

Populations can adjust. When there are too many people, and food is expensive or hard to get, people make fewer kids, or invest in making it cheaper (agriculture innovations - nearly 50% of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from the Haber–Bosch process [1]). When there are too few people, and a lot of states rely on taxing youth to fund pensions and healthcare for elders, anyone able and willing to work will be paid better, attracting migrants or older workers. [1] - Last paragraph here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_environmental_aspects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_env...

osigurdson 4y ago

Take a current trend, extrapolate it out until the end of time, write a book about it. "Look at what happens with k^N when N is large and k is not 1" along with anecdotes and filler.

nopinsight 4y ago

Prof. Gary Becker (Nobel in economics) has linked the economics of fertility to economic growth since decades ago. His papers describe low fertility rates in many developed countries in the present pretty well. Here's a review article of his work: https://docs.iza.org/dp8610.pdf https://docs.iza.org/dp8610.pdf From the article: "Becker, Murphy, and Tamura show that the economy exhibits two steady states, one in which income per capita stagnates and fertility is high, and one in which there is sustained growth in income per capita and fertility is low. Thus, the model provides a joint explanation for the demographic and economic differences between pre-industrial, Malthusian economies (characterized by stagnation, a low return to human capital, and high birth rates), and growing, industrial economies with low population growth."

fasteddie31003 4y ago

I think part of the instability in Russia right now is due to their population starting to decrease. Their leadership sees the writing on the wall that their demographic future looks bleak. The Ukraine war is their last chance to use their strength to get more resources. You can also see that they are moving Ukrainians to low population areas to increase their population. The Ukraine War is literally a Russian de-population bomb. I wonder if we will see this trend in the future when China's population start to decline in the coming years.

sudden_dystopia 4y ago

I totally see the depopulation argument. But I also see the overpopulation argument, at least as it relates to our current standards of living/lifestyles, farming practices, and energy scarcity. We need innovation to keep pace with population increases, or else overpopulation is a real risk in my mind.

mdorazio 4y ago

I'm guessing a lot of commenters didn't actually read/listen to the entirety of this. Here's a summary: - Globally, there's a drop in fertility rates - The reasons for this are complicated, but the interview seems to conclude it's due to mindset among young people - There's no reason this has to be disastrous - However, in the US we're doing really poorly on most things that would make a shrinking native population workable (sensible immigration policy, stable social safety net, world-class education, etc.) - Israel is an outlier in that it seems to be avoiding the fertility rate drop of industrialized nations - The interviewers think American exceptionalism can win the day and either return us to higher fertility rates or figure out a way around it Unfortunately, nowhere did I see them actually make a strong case that a significantly smaller population is a bad thing. The interview is two boomers. Would they argue that America in the 1970s/1980s when they were having the time of their lives had too few people? They also gloss over any positive impacts of lower population, like housing and the environment. And finally, they seem kind of out of touch with the experience of young people - there's some reference to a few metrics at the end (they seem to think young people are "afraid" or over-value autonomy), but I get the feeling these two people don't really understand why Millennials in particular are choosing fewer children.