46 ms·

No one wants to have kids anymore

• Victerius 4y ago
  > Don't fool yourself; we're not overpopulating ourselves to global economic and environmental meltdown; Yes we are. Yes. We. Are. Let it happen. I'll start panicking if the human population is still decreasing at 100 million. But for now, we are still growing.
  • pjkundert 4y ago
    Humans are not “fungible”. Therefore: - Immigration will alter the societal outcomes of a region, for “better” or “worse”, as the region chooses - Destruction of productive and healthy societies by prolific but unhealthy ones will cause widespread harm. - Failure to reproduce at replacement levels won’t show up as a disaster until many years after it is too late to correct it. Wouldn’t it be better to aim to reduce harm and increase productivity, than to blanket reduce the overall population?
    • dusted 4y ago
      Excel begs to differ ;)
    • dbspin 4y ago
      Human's at scale are fungible. "Destruction of productive and healthy societies by prolific but unhealthy ones". I hesitate to use the word dog whistle, but this is pretty inarguably racist. Unless you'd like to clarify which 'unhealthy' cultures you're referring to. For many value judgements, the lack of social cohesion, level of violent crime, historically high rates of imprisonment etc make the US an 'unhealthy culture'.
      • oneoff786 4y ago
        They are clearly referring to young people that can work vs old people that need care and cannot work
        • dbspin 4y ago
          That's not clear at all.
  • dmm 4y ago
    Even if you believe that the earth is overpopulated and think a shrinking population is good, you still need to consider the sustainability of that population change. Birth rates below replacement means that the proportion of elderly increases every year, forever. This means an every increasing proportion of resources has to be transferred from the working to non-working population. It will become harder and harder for young people to build wealth and support themselves and it means fewer resources to solve the other very big problems we have such as climate change.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • wildrhythms 4y ago
      I don't forsee climate change being addressed under today's economic system of 'build wealth and support themselves', so I'm not sure what kind of world you envision.
      • dmm 4y ago
        Do you think it would addressed under destroy wealth and neglect themselves? lol What are you even saying? I was just trying to say that as the proportion of retired people increases they will take more resources and that will mean fewer resources for /anything/ else.
    • StanislavPetrov 4y ago
      >Birth rates below replacement means that the proportion of elderly increases every year, forever. Not when life expectancy decreases, as it is here in the United States. >It will become harder and harder for young people to build wealth and support themselves and it means fewer resources to solve the other very big problems we have such as climate change. "Big problems" like climate change because much less "big" when other problems grow more pressing and threatening to immediate survival. People who don't have a roof over their heads or a meal to eat aren't concerned with climate change.
      • 4y ago
  • TylerLives 4y ago
    I don't think the issue is the absolute number of humans but the ratio of young to old.
  • boppo1 4y ago
    What is your response to Ezra Klein's "Your Kids Are Not Doomed"? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/opinion/climate-change-should-you-have-kids.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/opinion/climate-change-sh...
• 32gbsd 4y ago
  As well written and funny as the article is it still finds itself in a tunnel vision scenario because if the population is rising continuously and no one wants to have kids anymore then where are all these extra kids coming from?
  • derwiki 4y ago
    As Yogi Berra said, “Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.”
  • melenaboija 4y ago
    Because usually population means US and sometimes you can include Europe.
    • aew4ytasghe5 4y ago
      Arbsorlurtlrey.
  • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Population growth is both more kids being born, and people living longer. We're now in the people living longer stage. Hans Rosling did a simple demonstration of this with boxes over a decade ago. https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_growth_box_by_box?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_gro... edit: better illustration of the point, still Hans with Boxes here: https://youtu.be/2LyzBoHo5EI?t=203 https://youtu.be/2LyzBoHo5EI?t=203
    • nemo44x 4y ago
      It’s also survival rates of the babies being born. People don’t realize how many babies died back in the day.
      • antiterra 4y ago
        That can still be filed under ‘people living longer,’ no?
• bparsons 4y ago
  The unspoken subtext of these hysterical articles is that they are only speaking about wealthy white people. The rest of the planet does not exist to them.
  • dijit 4y ago
    Maybe "wealthy" people. Japan is suffering identically.
    • nomdep 4y ago
      Remember, "Americans" believe everything outside USA doesn't count
  • joenot443 4y ago
    There are plenty of countries with a sub replacement level birth rate. Were it not for immigration, this would put them in deep economic peril. Perhaps you found more meaning in the race angle for some reason (countries like Japan are left puzzled with your logic), but I found the message pretty clear. The observation “white people are lazy and rich” is a pretty outdated and lazy one, it’s surprising to see it here on HN tbh. Do you think the birth rate in Ukraine is down because of wealthy whiteness?
  • lm28469 4y ago
    > only speaking about wealthy white people Wealthy or not, white or not, you're going to feel it sooner or later in most countries. The whole system is built on a strong working class, once the balance shift to an older population it's going suck for a few generations Not many white peeps in Japan or China btw, yet they'll suffer the same thing, India will be next, albeit a bit later But yeah, "white man bad", that's good enough !
  • albertopv 4y ago
    China birth rate rings a bell?
  • Majestic121 4y ago
    Just look at the trend : https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?view=map https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?view=map Fertility rates are close to or below 2 pretty much everywhere except subsaharian africa, and dropping significantly on a world wide level. Trying to make this issue 'white vs other' is unwarranted and simply does not fit actual data.
• chiefalchemist 4y ago
  I think it cliche to believe it's strictly a financial decision. In fact, in the West (afaik) the middle and upper class have a lower birth rates than those below them. Not to get subjective and fuzzy but children are a symbol of hope and promise. Any reasonable adult who is considering children has to ask themselve how to answer when the child asks, "Why? Why did you bring me into *this* world?" Who has a good answer for that at this point?
  • fyffhfrj 4y ago
    Considering that it's the poorer people having more children it seems like the obvious answer is that most children are unplanned or the product of dim people with a figure it out later attitude.
    • acc19401 4y ago
      I believe it’s hope relative to your personal circumstance that drives hopes for the next generation. Do I think the next generation will have a better life than I had? That’s easier to answer yes to if you started with little because the baseline is low. For the squeezed middle in countries that have stopped developing? Probably not given the current trajectory
    • sirius87 4y ago
      > the product of dim people with a figure it out later attitude I wonder how many of the "figure it out later" attitude people overlap the "absolute faith in higher power" people? Poorer people possibly have more subscribers to religious faith? A decline in the religious population, that comforted themselves with wellbeing of their offspring being a matter of prayer and ritual and whatnot, has had some impact on peoples' outlook in this matter?
    • mkagenius 4y ago
      It's not really figure it out later. They have reasons like they will take care in the old age. If all of my peers can why can't I etc. Also, it's more of modern concept to actively not have children, which is not really permeated to all economic groups. Atleast in India. In other news, Lalu Prasad Yadav's daughter gave her one kidney to him yesterday. Where point 1 literally panned out.
• AviationAtom 4y ago
  Except in Africa. The world natural increase map is most interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_natural_increase https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_...
  • lm28469 4y ago
    Niger is going to be insane real soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Niger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Niger 50% of the population under 14 years old right now
• gaterin 4y ago
  Does the change over from home manufactured children to imported mirror the offshoring of North American industry? This could be an inevitable outcome of optimizing for labor costs.
  • thweoruio34234 4y ago
    You kid but in reality our children are nothing more than mere genetic copies. Memetically they are assets of the state and the media, academic and pop-culture class. No one really cares about the genetic part (it's generic) today; furthermore, there's no culture or tradition to pass on, so you're essentially paying a great amount to run the debt-economy. I'm sure people have caught onto this, esp. with the breakdown of the family system (a big cause is the memetic disconnect). It's not even like you'll be looked after later on in life - there's zero justification for having kids (other than things like 'companionship', which let's admit it, a dog would do a better job of). If you're a guy esp. in insanely misandric countries like India (where you and your family can be thrown in jail at the mere word of the bride; where the culture/languages of the land are increasingly banned by the colonial state) it's even less so.
    • dougmwne 4y ago
      I think this is a strange perspective, but it also kind of hits it perfectly. Western society has been breaking down the autonomy and independence of the family. More and more policies are aimed at treating parents as temporary caregivers of a state asset. Public education is probably the biggest one of all time, but there are a lot of little policies as well. If you let little Timmy roam free the state could very well decide to swoop in and assign new caregivers. Genetics are de-emphasized in this whole system to be made irrelevant. People are fighting back against this state interference with things like “free range parenting” and homeschooling.
• pkilgore 4y ago
  Paywall?
• nicodjimenez 4y ago
  The only solution is to ban condoms. Will solve so many problems. Btw this article neglects to mention a very important feedback loop: less babies equals less economic growth, which equals less babies because it’s too expensive, which in turn leads to less economic growth and so on. Collapsing birth rates are a serious problem! You won’t notice until the country becomes a depopulated wasteland and then it will be too late to do anything about it - at least for 30 years.
  • kneebonian 4y ago
    Great talk about that here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi_nFz1CJSI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi_nFz1CJSI
    • chrisbaker98 4y ago
      Zeihan is great.
      • nicodjimenez 4y ago
        Zeihan is not always intellectually honest and I don’t trust what he says about Ukraine but he says a lot of interesting things about demographics. He says nothing though about culture, sovereignty, or the quality of bureaucracies.
  • Retric 4y ago
    Considering that’s never actually happened it seems you have an unreasonable level of certainty about the outcomes. People who don’t have kids don’t pass down their culture, which seems like an obvious feedback loop to keep things going. On top of this population declines have generally resulted in increased individual prosperity for hopefully obvious reasons.
    • nicodjimenez 4y ago
      It is already happening very successfully in fact in some communities.
• somehnacct3757 4y ago
  Kid-having emerges. This (western biased) article is blaming the victim. An entire generation bled dry by student loans for useless degrees, unable to buy homes that their elders view as retirement funds. A thousand and one more entertaining things to do online which don't risk creating 18-year bundles of debt. And absolutely no idea how to break the cycle for your offspring. Pick one thing to fix and spend your life addressing it and maybe you'll have it solved in time for when the population reaches 9 billion.
  • jonplackett 4y ago
    Came here to say this - I live in London and see many a fellow parent struggling to even have space for the kids they already have (or soon will have). Trying hastily bolt on a loft extension - if they can afford that. Meanwhile landlords are reaping in INSANE rents from anyone who didn’t manage to buy back when that was at least a realistic dream. People are people. The urge to have kids is incredibly strong. But if you are living in a tiny flat earning no money then it’s going to at the least be strongly suppressed. Parents are getting _older_ as well as fewer so that should give an indication of what’s going on here. No-one is in a financial position to have a baby in their 20s anymore, and by the time you’re in your 30s it’s biologically already harder to have a baby.
    • pydry 4y ago
      Nail on the head. For people who have certainty of access to future resources and plenty of living space I'm pretty sure the urge to reproduce isnt repressed. London reminds me of this rat experiment: https://gizmodo.com/how-rats-turned-their-private-paradise-into-a-terrifyin-1687584457 https://gizmodo.com/how-rats-turned-their-private-paradise-i...
    • 1letterunixname 4y ago
      Housing prices in London, SF, NYC, and most major cities are insane and unsustainable for all but the very rich. The average person should move and live anywhere else where they can afford it. The US has wide open country areas for cheap. I think too often people clamor to a lifestyle they can't afford and make believe it will magically workout.
• thr0wawayf00 4y ago
  > But deep down I get it. Babies are a huge opportunity cost. Financially speaking, they are like winning the lottery but backwards. You can't even think of having one without cancelling your subscription to a good night's sleep. And if you take into account inflation, economic recession, and the rest of the news cycle's highlight reel, even a one-child family can seem to have one too many mouths to fish Lego pieces out of. Every time I visit family for the holidays, I see this in real-time and it reaffirms my decision to not have children. I have an incredibly comfortable lifestyle saving for retirement, traveling and buying real estate. The moment I become responsible for another human, that all goes away. Saving for college? Yeah right, state schools are gonna cost $100k per year by the time my kid would going off to school. Retirement? Inflation is already killing my parents' retirement so I've got to bank that I'm still probably not saving enough right now anyway. More power to people who want that in life, but I can't tell you how many coworkers or family members I've met that had kids and just seemed like shells of themselves afterwards.
  • toomuchtodo 4y ago
    It costs $310k to pay for a kid from 0-18 per Brookings. The math is straightforward to work backwards to the income you need to afford that along with your basic needs and retirement savings, and most people don’t have the means. Median US lifetime earnings are $1.7 million. https://thehill.com/policy/finance/3608647-new-estimate-projects-cost-of-raising-a-child-at-310k/ https://thehill.com/policy/finance/3608647-new-estimate-proj...
    • thr0wawayf00 4y ago
      Not to mention that this represents a very median case, whereas a lot of parents want to pay for higher status schools and real estate to get access to higher status education, it's a never-ending keeping-up-with-the-joneses pi*-ing contest. To raise kids around my peers, a child could easily cost $500k+.
      • lotsofpulp 4y ago
        Pregnancy and birth ($3k to $10k) + daycare ($18k to $30k per year) + sickness needing doctor ($300 per visit). I probably got to $130k+ per kid before hitting kindergarten, for 2 kids with no chronic healthcare needs. And I needed a flexible job that allows you to work from home or be off as necessary to take care of sick kids.
• js8 4y ago
  I have decided not to have kids, at least partly because I believe Earth is already overpopulated for the living standard that humans deserve. Occasionally, someone asks the idiotic question, what if everybody made the same decision? Well, if they truly did, I would have made a different choice. All these projections about (white) replacement are fundamentally flawed because they assume that the reasons for the decision won't change with the demographics.
  • icare_1er 4y ago
    • snapcaster 4y ago
      It is sort of funny how any anti-natalist political position will get outbred out of existence haha. Reminds me of the Shakers who kind of died off because their belief system prevented procreation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers
      • AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
        If that were true, birth rates wouldn't be declining in so many places. Any rational assessment would realize the correlation has nothing at all to do with genetics.
        • snapcaster 4y ago
          I wasn't blaming people's attitudes for the birth rate, just making observation about how any anti-natalist memes are likely fighting an uphill battle to propagate compared to memes that will get passed from parent to child
      • dang 4y ago
        Similarly, there are religions that don't proselytize - like the fascinating Oahspe religion, which has about a dozen "Faithists" left, who meet on Skype. Orphan Utopia: John Ballou Newbrough’s desert colony (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27175739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27175739 - May 2021 (2 comments)
• gahhh 4y ago
  Plenty of us still do and still are, despite the plethora of articles like this trying to plant the seeds of bad influence :)
• PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  A word of advice to anyone on the fence about having kids: There’s nothing wrong with choosing not to have kids, but do yourself and consult with actual parents for what it’s really like to have kids. Articles like this one, which are written by someone who apparently has chosen not to have children, are almost universally terrible at representing the true experience of being a parent. Yes, being a parent involves a period of reduced sleep (as this author points out). No, it does not mean your world ends and you’re never sleeping again. The low-sleep phase is temporary. It’s such a short duration relative to the rest of your life as a parent that it really doesn’t matter much in the long run. Same goes for changing diapers and dealing with baby vomit. If you’re focused on these experiences as the defining characteristics of being a parent, you’ll completely miss the big picture. This article also has a big strawman at the center: > I don't see how babies could possibly come back as the preferred lifestyle choice for couples in their 20s Most of the parents I know in my area had kids in their 30s. And it’s fine! Obviously you don’t want to be too old, but having kids in your 30s is basically the norm among working professionals. The fact that this author is focused on having kids in your 20s makes me wonder if they’re living in a childfree peer bubble or if they’re simply too young to see their friends and peers grow up, have children, and enjoy it.
  • throwayyy479087 4y ago
    Having a kid is the most fun I’ve ever had. Used to go to raves, done bunch of crazy sexual stuff, as well as most drugs under the sun. There’s nothing close to chasing a toddler in a circle for an hour.
    • bnert 4y ago
      > There’s nothing close to chasing a toddler in a circle for an hour. amen
      • WaitWaitWha 4y ago
        Chasing twin toddlers in a circle for an hour!
• mcv 4y ago
  > at this pace, the world's population is going to flatline at around 10 billion in 50 years Is that what you're panicking about? This means that for the next 50 years, we'll continue growing. Lack of offspring of current generations is clearly not the problem here. I still remember how in the 1980s, people were panicking that the world population kept growing, and sooner or later we were going to hit 10 billion. And now 10 billion is not enough? It's obvious that this population growth is not sustainable. Sure, the Earth may technically be able to feed 40 billion people if we all turn vegan, but so far, we don't exactly have a good track record of dividing our resources equally. That is a far bigger issue to worry about. Should the population grow or shrink? I don't know, but whichever we end up doing, we should do so sustainably; make sure every kid is fed, cared for, received the best possible education, and can live a happy life. And if young people don't have the time or money for any of that, not having children is the responsible choice for them. If we don't like the results, we should change our economic balance to the point that they do have the time and money to raise children.
  • camillomiller 4y ago
    10 billion is not enough, if you subscribe to the capitalist tenet of never ending growth. You need to expand those future markets!
  • mfcl 4y ago
    > Is that what you're panicking about? This means that for the next 50 years, we'll continue growing. Lack of offspring of current generations is clearly not the problem here. It think it can be and it might already be. The problem is the distribution of people in age groups. If you have a lot of old people and few young people, that creates pressure on the economy. Sustainable would not just be about the number of people, but also the number of people in each age group.
  • corford 4y ago
    >Should the population grow or shrink? I don't know There was a good paper in the Lancet covering some of the expected repercussions if population growth continues to decline throughout this century (as current trends indicate it will): https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext#%20 https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)30677-2/full... Certainly society's economic balance is going to be drastically affected: "Although good for the environment, population decline and associated shifts in age structure in many nations might have other profound and often negative consequences. In 23 countries, including Japan, Thailand, Spain, and Ukraine, populations are expected to decline by 50% or more. Another 34 countries will probably decline by 25–50%, including China, with a forecasted 48·0% decline (95% UI −6·1% to 68·4%). Population percentage declines do not immediately convey the associated profound shifts in age structure in these nations. Our findings suggest that the ratio of the population older than 80 years to the population younger than 15 years will increase in countries with more than 25% population decline, from 0·16 today to 1·50 (0·54–3·25) in 2100. These population shifts have economic and fiscal consequences that will be extremely challenging."
• danrl 4y ago
  > Are you really making an argument for why we don't need more babies to be brought into this world? That is a bit on the side of fucked up if you ask me. Great argument. About as great as the rest of the article which misses any nuance.
• osigurdson 4y ago
  It seems like a stretch to claim that our population is going to zero the instant that exponential growth stops. There is nothing stopping the population from dropping to (for example) 4B and then start climbing again.
• revskill 4y ago
  I think it depends on culture for having/not having a kid. In developing countries, the purpose as i see is mostly to have a child to take care of them when they get old, which seems wrong!
• buro9 4y ago
  In the UK I know a lot of people who can't afford decent housing, who can't afford weddings, who can't afford retirement, who struggle against a rent-keeping uber-efficient capitalist age to not live month to month. Against this back drop a choice emerges: To take what little is left and use that to eke out some semblance of life, some work/life balance... that first they delay having children from their 20s to their 30s. Then when they arrived in their 30s they're still very much behind where they had planned to be (wars, Brexit, COVID, financial crashes, inflation, etc)... and they're either delaying to their 40s or just accepting now that this was not for them. They wanted a decent life, it included children... but in reality the economic reality and pace of life has precluded it. I'm late 40s, that was my reality (further delayed start due to being homeless when younger and having an even worse starting point)... and I get it, it's hard. Having children feels like something that has become the preserve of the wealthy or the poor, and if one wishes to achieve a betterment in your own lifetime - a social mobility, then you're likely choosing against having children. I've long accepted this, but once in a rare moon I get to just write it down like this as there's definitely shame involved at making those choices (and it's way worse for women who are constantly asked when they're going to have children, whereas men are mostly left alone on the subject).
• Lastodon 4y ago
  "Are we millennials so busy coming up with pronouns that we can't find a weekend to make copies of ourselves?" Oh sod off with this. The primal prerogative of reproduction is predicated on the primal need for safe and secure territory. The wealthiest oligarchs of the boomer generation have done everything they can to ensure the consequent generations are unable to attain that one entirely reasonable primal need. Women's rights have had an affect on birth rates, yes, but I'd rather take away the oligarch's right to own all the single family homes than my girlfriend's right to decide what to do with her life.
  • icare_1er 4y ago
    "The primal prerogative of reproduction is predicated on the primal need for safe and secure territory" >> Never heard of that.
    • Lastodon 4y ago
      To translate it to a more common sentiment: "we'd like to have kids, but don't feel stable enough" or "we would have kids, but can't afford a house"
      • icare_1er 4y ago
        Seems very false to me. The rule, for hundreds of thousands of years, has always been to have kids whatever the situation, despite much higher risks and adversity in general. Even today, the people still making kids are largely those in the poorest deciles of the population, with no stable home, etc.
        • lotsofpulp 4y ago
          Women were not quite in control of becoming pregnant until very recently.
• DonHopkins 4y ago
  How is this not good news for humanity? As many people as he annoyed, RMS had a point. http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-d...
  • snapcaster 4y ago
    I like RMS being out there and having the opinions he does, but please don't act like he is some great role model for men or humans. He's a weird nerd who doesn't attract mates and alienates his allies. Woe be unto any man who tries to be like him, you'll end up unhappy and considered a loser
    • DonHopkins 4y ago
      Where did you get that I was acting like he is some great role model? If you read the entire thread, you will see that I made fun of him 29 years ago by feeding his own words into his own psychiatric diagnosis program (Emacs Doctor), which recognized his name, and criticized him for having hangups and inhibitions. My point was that in spite of his acerbic but hilarious biting sense of humor, he has a valid point about natalism, despite being annoying and confrontational on purpose to make a point, not that he's a great role model. >You people just have no sense of humor. I thought the original message was pretty funny and made a few good points (if it didn't, nobody would have been offended). I guess it's a shock for smug self-righteous breeders to learn that not everybody in the world thinks babies are cute and special. -Wayne A. Christopher >Finally, someone read the message as it was intended to be read. -RMS
      • snapcaster 4y ago
        Fair, I think I read more into your comment than was warranted
  • terminal_d 4y ago
    toejam guy! RMS has nothing good to say about children.
• dsign 4y ago
  This topic is absolutely fascinating. Here are all the ingredients for the bomb: - Demography department: a) fertility, b) pension systems, the link between economic growth, population growth, and productivity growth (how can you have a safe pension system anyway without economic growth? will people have access to safe investments, if all safe investments simply track economic growth? can we have economic growth which is based solely on productivity growth if population is contracting?) - Climate warming department: lifetime CO2 emissions per human being, and environmental impact. - The perception of all the above. If most people believe than the above problems are more severe than they are, due to amplification (schooling, social media, institutions, etc), then they will want to have even less children.
• MarkusWandel 4y ago
  A (relatively weak) inherited instinctual desire to procreate aside, people have kids because it improves their personal outcome. Without modern machinery, the work input of kids will improve the family farm's productivity by more than they consume. With high infant mortality, more kids improves the chances that enough will survive to adulthood. Without modern social safety nets, elders would simply starve or die of exposure if grown offspring didn't take care of them. And so on. Take those motivators away - and replace them with demotivators such as very high child rearing costs - and the birthrate drops. Low sperm counts? If they aren't zero, people will find a way to have kids if they really want them. It's a great self-regulating mechanism. The planet's population is getting uncomfortably high, so the birthrate drops. Great. While the city I live in hardly looks like, say, Shanghai, there has been nonstop residential construction here in all the decades I've lived here. Does this have to be normal? Do cities have to expand until they fill the planet completely? Obviously not. Of course it's going to suck when "peak infrastructure" exceeds the population but not as much as an infinitely growing population would.
  • automatic6131 4y ago
    >The planet's population is getting uncomfortably high, so the birthrate drops. Great. If the birthrate drops, neither you nor I nor the kids alive today will get a "retirement". It'll become a quaint little thing we once could afford. Not so bad if all your work is tapping into a laptop. It's bloody murder for anyone that has to stand and lift and DO for a living.
    • achenet 4y ago
      this is probably my inner uptopian leftist speaking but - robots. And the fact that a large amount of the work doesn't actually need to get done. So long we keep enough skilled tradesmen and farmers, which is not that many with increases in automation, we'll still have enough food, shelter and clothing. Being able to spread that work out amongst more people because bullshit jobs aren't a thing anymore will also probably help, as will changes in lifestyle that enable people to stay healthy longer. We really don't need a new H&M collection every two weeks, or a new sport jersey every two seconds, or to keep making more and more cars/washing machines/TVs... most manufactured goods (including clothing) can last a while, especially in a world where planned obselence is no longer the norm. If population stabilizes, need for construction drops as well. Food/agriculture is already very automated, I'm sure we can continue to find 3% of the population to keep us fed. I believe most of the work currently done on earth contributes very little to human happiness, and I hope/want to believe that as our ability to do work diminishes with an aging population, the useless stuff will be the first to go. silly example, but with GPT-3/ChatGPT, we can now fire all the influencers and have them go toil as construction workers :P
• mschuster91 4y ago
  > I mean, fertility rates have been going down for 50 years; women are having half as many children, and some are so focused on their careers they might as well repurpose their wombs into walk-in closets. Jesus. That language alone is part of why many women choose to remain child-free. Women aren't living incubators ffs. > Maybe governments will wake up to the urgency of this issue and start implementing ways to encourage young people to take a look at Ikea's crib catalogue. And that sentence hints at the problem. My parents could afford two kids on basically one income in the 90's Munich. Me today? Barely two cats on two incomes, and not that small incomes either. When wages are so low that people struggle to live paycheck to paycheck - in America, almost a third of all [1] - they obviously won't have children if they can prevent having them. We need significant wage increases, we need actual provisions for parents (i.e. paid parental leave for both parents for at least a year), we need lower rents and lower utility bills. Oh, and we need lower working hours as well. 8 hours a day is already stretching it particularly with commuting involved, you need time and mental space not just for having sex, but also to actually care for a child. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/24/more-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-as-inflation-outpaces-income.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/24/more-americans-live-paycheck...
• dustedcodes 4y ago
  I know this is going to be a hugely unpopular opinion, but life has no purpose if it was not for offspring. To me not wanting children gives me the same vibes as someone playing a sport or entering a competition and then not giving their absolute everything to win Gold.
  • raesene9 4y ago
    would it not be easier to say "life has no purpose for you"? People are varied and have varying motivations, what's important to one is not necessarily important to another.
    • johnea 4y ago
      One small spark of reality is voiced in this comment ^^ Life HAS NO MEANING Who ever started this idea that growing out of the slime mould on some obscure planet implies "meaning". WTF is "meaning' anyway? Isn't this just another way of asking "How does all of this affect me?" The incredible level of a self centered view of the universe is one of the human primate's most distinguishing features... BTW, I have one son, in his 20s. It's been both fulfilling and excruciating. I'm happy he was born, and I love him very much.
  • skinnymuch 4y ago
    Do you think this applies to others too? Some people do sports or competitions for fun. Winning is overrated.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    There's no "winning" life. We're all going to die, the sun will expand to engulf the earth, and the universe has several possible endings but it ending is something physicists are pretty confident about. There's no such thing as forever, not for you, not for your genetic lineage, not for anyone or anything. So there's no clear way that having offspring is any more purposeful than anything else. My father was a lot like you when it came to pushing the "giving everything to win" mindset. It fucked me up for life because it made it very difficult for me to relax and enjoy things for the sake of them.
• diego_moita 4y ago
  I am so surprised that, in a site visited by technical people, so many don't get that the rate of change is decreasing... Didn't any of you study Calculus? Didn't you get the idea of "negative second derivative"? Yes, population is still growing in poor 3rd world countries. But even there it does at a rate far bellow what was 40 years ago.
• jleyank 4y ago
  If the state wants babies let it act so as to make them easier to have. Medical care, parental leave, inexpensive day care even per child funding. Some have done this but it’s in disagreement with the conservative approach to governing. People get what they vote for.
  • dougmwne 4y ago
    The state does want babies. Notice the meek state opposition to recent changes in availability of a certain healthcare procedure. Don’t expect that to be changed back anytime soon.
    • jleyank 4y ago
      If you’re referring to abortion in the us, I’ve always viewed that as anti-enjoyment rather than pro-child. It’s certainly not pro-mother and it has nothing that helps children once born. Carlin did a riff on this.
      • dougmwne 4y ago
        I agree that it’s cynical, but I suspect we will see less reproductive freedoms as states see their population growth go negative. Why use the carrot when you have a perfectly good stick.
  • egman_ekki 4y ago
    Why would a/the state wanted babies? The most rational thing to want is educated proffessionals from lower cost countries (so you can lowball them more easily) who pay their taxes and stay until retirement, and then they can be sent where they came from for retirement. Minimum social and education costs, maximum tax income, lower costs of doing business for local population who would still be mostly in charge of local companies.
• shp0ngle 4y ago
  Why are random substack rants upvoted?
• cloutchaser 4y ago
  When we reach 10bn people, we will already have almost no children. This is what most people don’t get. The slowdown is already here. Birth rates are still collapsing. But people worldwide are living longer so the actual number of people is still increasing. By the time you get to 10bn in 50 years, it means you will have the majority of that pretty old. It will mean a completely unsustainable world demographic. And it will probably mean a massive collapse in population to 2-3bn within a few generations. No idea what that will bring, but it will be a very different society to now.
• meowfly 4y ago
  Elizabeth Warren's book The Two-Income Trap argued that dual income couples priced out single income families from the best locations. It makes sense that DINKs and childless single people are simply reacting to the same economic incentives and now pricing out dual income families. I think high-rents is a major driver of this decision. The USDA puts the cost of your first kid at $14.4k annually edited. That is primarily due to housing.
  • rychco 4y ago
    In what universe is a child only 14.4K? Is this the price of a diapers alone? Preschool? Food? This number seems laughably low.
    • meowfly 4y ago
      Annually, sorry if that was confusing. $250k over their lifetime.
      • rychco 4y ago
        Thanks for clarifying. Even that number seems a bit low but makes much more sense.
  • drc37 4y ago
    I’ll give you a hint, the best locations are not in the city. Check out small towns. The people are down to earth. The cost of living is much less and the people are generally awesome to be around. I love in a small farming town and your neighbors would give the shirt off their back to come help you. One of our daughters has to go to the hospital for about a week and we came home to a clean house and meals for a week. Those who think the city is good place to be, explore a little outside your urban bubble. In addition to this, we have lots of kids and there are plenty of ways to have kids affordably. You don’t have to send your kids Ivy League schools and if they do, they can get their student loans to pay for it. Lastly, yes, kids can a source of frustration and pain but they are by the one of the largest sources of joy, pride and happiness in our life. Watching them grow and develop is amazing.
• lnxg33k1 4y ago
  Because no one wants to work anymore either, so how can you afford kids if you don't want to go to work ;o
• speeder 4y ago
  I recently decided to have kids. Got my wife pregnant, concluded I needed a raise, so I started to work really hard, go above and beyond, 5 months in a row of crunching overtime, got promised a raise during this. Then just as my kid is about to be born, I get fired. Still happy my wife is pregnant, but now I know why so many people give advice of the sort "do just the minimum necessary and never treat the company as family".
  • achenet 4y ago
    you're never going to get rich working for someone else, start a business if you want to increase your income. The whole point of the day job is just to pay the bills while you build your business which will make you rich. Sorry you had to learn that lesson the hard way, hope your financial situation improves soon. :)
    • RHSeeger 4y ago
      > The whole point of the day job is just to pay the bills while you build your business which will make you rich. Not for me it's not. I have a day job because it's a relatively low risk, stable way to acquire the money I need. I don't need to be rich. I need a way to pay the bills and buy the things I want to enjoy my life. And yes, I know that every job has risks, and the only way you can't be fired is if you own the company. But, while the upsides of your own company are bigger, so too are the downsides. When I start a new job, my savings stay where they are. If I start a new company, odds are I'm investing/risking my savings. I'm not interested in doing that while I have a family I'm responsible for.
    • johnea 4y ago
      I would expect you havee 0 experience in starting a company? The overwhelming majority of small business starts fail. People who come from wealthy families, or have other sources of finance, are able to be repeat offenders until possibly they succeed. Almost everyone else fails. Starting a business is primarily the best way to blow you life savings while working 60hour weeks. Some exceptions exist...
  • ytch 4y ago
• newsclues 4y ago
  Between the economic impact, and the social/environmental pressure of climate change doomers, anti-natalist are a symptom of our broken society, and it's very disturbing.
  • Planktonne 4y ago
    'A response to' seems a fairer framing than 'a symptom of'. Further, I think climate change itself is the actual problem not (again) the response to it.
• jmyeet 4y ago
  We often quip that companies (particularly publicly listed companies) are incredibly bad at long-term planning. They optimize for the current quarter only (mostly). Dell was a great example of this. It essentially created the Taiwan PC industry that eviscerated it but further outsourcing every part of their production line. A series of short-term decisions that had long-term consequences. I hate to breka it to you but capitalism is doing the exact same thing to people. Financial security and independence is bad for capitalism because it needs people to show up to work. It needs people to need those jobs and (even better) live paycheck-to[aycheck. That's the recipe for a compliant workforce. Increasing real wages is bad because it decreases dependence and profits, which is why there has been almost no increase in overall real wages in 40+ years. Student debt, housing debt and medical debt are by design. Your labor is extracted to very few. Centuries ago, nobles were at the top of that pyramid and we called that serfdom. What we have now is basically the same thing but we've just replaced nobles with the capital-owning class. People once had children because of high infant mortality (and mortality in general) and to look after them when they got old. Now we need a certain amount of security to provide for those children. And the short-term exploitation of labor has the completely understandable effect of people waiting to have children, not having children at all and/or having less children. We produce enough such that everyone could live comfortably. We produce enough food such that everyone could be fed. We, as a society, have allowed people to starve and be homeless and instead of sharing the wealth letting it concentrate in the hands of a few hundred individuals.
• egberts1 4y ago
  Until government recognize the needs for their own educated kids, they may get short end of the stick by importing large number of uneducated immigrants as a short-term measure. Yeah, another contentious issue. It is not like United States having done immigrating foreign scientists and tradesmen during and after WWI, WWII, Korean, Iran, or Vietnam Wars thereby actually benefited from them, economically and culturally. Government are typically desperate for more taxpayers due to extended shrinkages (puns intended). It is a battle for being able to cherry-pick from the pool of global immigrants (which US usually does well through its 38 different types of visa). Like military recruiting , government will often get hamfisted by attaching strange and unreasonable stipulations based on their own morality (and not on its nation's needs). Again, government should be making it easier to have its own kids, but they have not as of lately. It is as if most government have done the math and have deemed raising kids as a loss-leader over recent immigration. My point is the longer-term cost sink is tremendously worse by a magnitude if they choose poorly.
• okokwhatever 4y ago
  For me being dad has been the best experience in my life. Being dad is a lonely road this days with so many messages talking about no kids couples but for me is ok, let people decide freely. In the worst case scenario this solo couples simply will disappear in a few decades and my kids will have to adapt to a different world. Change is the only thing they will inherit and it's ok.
• 0xbadc0de5 4y ago
  My personal experience - and I've heard many others repeat the same sentiment: When you're single, your happiness levels typically range on a scale from 0 to 10. Once you get married, that range expands to run from -100 to +100. Then when you have kids, all the limits are removed.
  • D13Fd 4y ago
    This is great, although I'd say single ranges from -10 to 10.
  • kylehotchkiss 4y ago
    Hah, agreed. Getting married has been a major highlight for me. Occasional -100 but many many +100s.
• rhn_mk1 4y ago
  Sure, the article is funny, but what's the alternative to the dreaded arrest of growth? There's one: continual growth, forever. I find the premise of infinite growth absurd: we'll hit some hard resource limits and fizzle out sooner or later. Perhaps the author thinks it's more fun that way than fizzle out out of caution/apathy? Or maybe we'll keep growing, but will have to change something about being a human. Turn into a hive mind? Become microscopic? Either way, it's going to be more difficult than preventing the economic collapse due to oldster overflow. Out of two ways to preserve population growth one is more ridiculous than the other. I get an impression that it's written by someone who wants to keep running while reality indicates to slow down.
• timnetworks 4y ago
  I didn't realize RMS was of the childless drone society. For shame. Hope he gets some work in before meeting the elephants and cosmic seaturtles.
• throwaway0asd 4y ago
  This matter is a very clear choice: 1) Have children early at risk of living life without wealth but at minimum risk of health for all parties. 2) Delay. This risks never having children for various biological reasons for the impractically increased chance of increased wealth. As somebody who had children early, went through poverty, and now lives in a large house with a nice job I can't help but look at single people in their 30s or older. I always want to ask them why they cannot afford a Lamborghini or live in a giant mansion. They had no such restrictions on their time and/or finances to dedicate increased efforts in advancing their careers or founding new businesses.
  • raesene9 4y ago
    Whilst I obviously can't speak for the single people you've met, it is possible that not all of them were optimizing for the outcome of living in giant mansions or owning lamborghinis :)
  • XorNot 4y ago
    It is odd to assume people in their 30s are single by choice. Especially when, given the strain of having children on a relationship, partner quality matters a lot.
  • the_only_law 4y ago
    > I always want to ask them why they cannot afford a Lamborghini or live in a giant mansion Do you lack any critical thinking ability whatsoever? Or do you have a need to be in peoples’ business?
  • armada651 4y ago
    Why would you need a giant mansion if you're single? That's just a whole lot of empty space nobody is gonna use.
• readingnews 4y ago
  Am I the only person that looks at these (articles/rants/raves/sometimes serious) and thinks: Wait up, the start of the article noted that we are at 8 billion people on the planet... but dangit, we need to have more people! Perhaps it is sarcasm, and I keep reading we do not have enough young people, but it sure seems ironic that the two headlines that keep cropping up are: Too many people and Not enough people.
  • frumper 4y ago
    Life is messy
• jansan 4y ago
  I cannot find it right now, but our beloved Terry Davis once said something like this: "If you make having children enough of a hassle, people will stop having kids".
• incomingpain 4y ago
  The world has a major underpopulation problem. Not overpopulation like the malthusians attempt to portray. There's high correlation, at minimum, between the 'paradox' of women unhappiness and the lack of babies. https://www.nber.org/papers/w14969 https://www.nber.org/papers/w14969 Though obviously the authors of said article incorrectly see it as a paradox. Seemingly didn't understand what's happening to cause male happiness and female unhappiness. Then you have sex ed which teaches men they are oppressive sexual deviants which cant be trusted, and sex for women is nothing but pain and misery. Funnily nobody seems to care why women have painful periods... they shouldnt... Then politicians pushed and succeeded at breaking the social contract between men and women. There's tremendous evidence showing the abusive nature of divorce court or childrens court toward men. It's practically impossible for men to have kids due to the risk involved. Quite a number of men have simply decided not to get into that societal trap. All sex shall now be anonymous on some app, can't trap someone anonymous. So it's interesting. Men seemingly are happier than ever before. Women are unhappier than ever before. Who is arguing to fix any of this? Certainly not women. Why would men want to change something which is making them happier? I guess Jordan Peterson is arguing to try to fix this but women call him a nazi for trying to help solve their problem. Crazy.
• 123pie123 4y ago
  I was given the advice of: There is never a good time to have kids. I'm over 50, I have kids (and now grandkids) - everyone of them was unplanned and at the time I could not afford them. But each time we struggled and either we made ends meet and it spurred me on to get more money (change jobs/ go contracting/ start my own business) has it been stressful - yes, have I suffered lack of sleep - yes would I do it again - absolutely yes, being a father has been one of the best things in life
• nashashmi 4y ago
  Everyone wants to have kids. Everyone. But the whole fear of the future between paying for school loans, divorce rates, rising cost of living, exciting work environments, both couples working, thoughts of day care, and finally the lack of compromise in reducing your class of living is driving people bonkers where children and family are just no longer part of the equation.
  • thehappypm 4y ago
    Absolutely not. I know many people who absolutely hate the idea of having kids in their core.
  • S_Bear 4y ago
    I never wanted kids. Hated being a child, my parents didn't want me, but were culturally pressured to do so (Dad: "Your mother got pregnant to try and trap me." Mom: "Having kids is just what you did back then."), and I got trapped as a bargaining chip in a toxic divorce situation. And I have a chronic pain issue since I was little and wouldn't want to pass that on to anyone. Got fixed in my early 20s with no regrets.
• meindnoch 4y ago
  One morning last week, I’ve noticed that my wife was walking around the house in unusual silence. I thought I might have upset her with something, but couldn’t really recall any transgression that would have made her mad. Then after a few minutes of this, she dropped a pregnancy test in front of me, with a “+” sign shown on the little display. Looks like I’m going to be a father! I knew that this could happen sooner or later, but only as an abstract thought; something that will happen sometime way ahead in the future, like your own death. At that moment it became something tangible. A few days later I’ve noticed that I’m driving much more carefully, respecting the speed limit and whatnot. A few weeks ago I was contemplating doing ketamine with a friend of mine - now it sounds absurd. It’s frightening how fast your subconscious changes your perspective practically overnight.
  • skinnymuch 4y ago
    You should still do ketamine with your friend!
    • achenet 4y ago
      I second that. Life is absurd, and ketamine is quite safe if done properly.
      • skinnymuch 4y ago
        Ah is it? Good to know. I have yet to try it and my friends are becoming parents.
  • frumper 4y ago
    Congratulations and good luck!
  • ryanwaggoner 4y ago
    Ketamine, psilocybin, and therapy have all made me a much better father, FWIW.
    • 4y ago
• terminal_d 4y ago
  I feel sorry for the author, I couldn't finish reading what he wrote because it was far too cringy. Overpopulation is not an issue. The real issue is logistics. If someone says they won't have children because they "wouldn't want to miss sleeping" or "clean up after a baby", they clearly are using an excuse. For whatever reason, they deem themselves unfit to be parents. Let them be. People on the fence don't stay there very long, and people rarely switch sides. Better one pair of good parents than five negligent pairs.
• Markoff 4y ago
  Or if you have kids and you truly wanna save the planet consider this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn3oXHSUdKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn3oXHSUdKY Personally I don't really care about world population or planet too much.
• juliendorra 4y ago
  If you are a curious person, someone generally fascinated by how the world works, raising children is an endless, powerful chance to understand what makes us as we are. (Not to mean that you should treat your children as experiments! Just that it’s one of the by definition unique benefit of raising children, you get to see their humanity unfurl)
• Brajeshwar 4y ago
  Hmmm! The article talks a lot less about kids but more about the process of making one. Anyways, here is a fun tip for parents with kids at home -- give them your ChatGPT account and let them have fun. My elder daughter pretty much spent the whole night awake creating a whole bunch of rap songs. She has already sang quite a few to us at the dinner table. Topic ranges from toes to everything the kid talk about these days. Her teachers might ban her access to it if she keeps up with making fun of discussion topics in her class. OK. Raising kids is a really bad experience 50% of the time. However, there is a slight deviation towards fulfillment and fun, say 1% -- tilting the fun and excitement part to be 51% and that 1% makes all the difference.
• koliber 4y ago
  There are many great things about having kids. There are many tough things you need to deal with when you have kids. Before I became a dad, I had a decent insight into the good and the bad. One good thing that surprised me is the immense inner joy I feel when I see them enjoying themselves. Whether it is watching them laugh uncontrollably, seeing them learn something, or watching them immersed in play. These are things I used to enjoy, but with age, I either have fewer opportunities to do myself, or they became less enjoyable. Watching my kids go through these experiences stirs up all those same emotions once again. I'd never think I would enjoy Santa's visits or the great feeling of learning to ride a bike again as an adult, but through my kids, I get to do it again. Strangely, I don't get those feelings watching other kids doing these things. The chemistry of our minds and relationships is baffling.
  • overthemoon 4y ago
    Isn't that insane? Christmas has taken on a totally new sheen for me. I've fallen in love with it again. I remember my dad saying something to that effect when I was a kid, and I asked him if he was excited about presents. He said he was more excited to see us enjoy Christmas, and I could not fathom what he was talking about. Now I'm exploding with excitement about future Christmases with this kid.
• kypro 4y ago
  It's funny because in my family everyone has kids. The reason being it's the only way to move out of your parents home because we don't have rich parents and no one's buying a home and affording a kid with a working class job. > Babies are a huge opportunity cost. Financially speaking, they are like winning the lottery but backwards. I can only assume OP is talking about people who work here? Here in the UK if you don't work you're fast-tracked a home for having a kid and if you have a few you're generally given a very nice 3 bed house so I'm not sure this applies generally. Typically you're very poor you're much better off for having a kid here. I'd personally love a kid or two or three. My girlfriend too. And it upsets me deeply that I'll probably never be able to afford to have one. It's just so hard to afford a home, taxes, bills, student loans and all the costs of a kid on top of that. I've considered just giving up and going on benefits more times than I care to admit, but I think we both agree that wouldn't be the life we want either. I don't want support, but the one thing that annoys me is how I know pensioners living in 5 bed homes who are receiving state pensions which unlike my salary goes up in line with inflation, while receiving help for energy bills and getting a host of other perks like discounted bus tickets, etc. The fact the only people I know with homes are 60+ or on benefits seems weird and deeply immoral to me. Literally all my friends who work are in their 30s and living with there parents while my sister is a single mum in her 20s and somehow has her own house and a BMW (also partly given to her by the government). If we care to solve the birth rate problem it seems to me prioritising homes and resources for working families instead of the unemployed and pensioners would be the way to go. Sorry for ranting, and I know I've brought this up before. But I feel this is the most important issue of my generation and no one is seriously discussing it. Happy to receive insults about how I don't care about the elderly and poor people now.
  • achenet 4y ago
    have you considered moving to another country? If the issue is bad housing market and government policies, you'll be happy to hear that there are probably better options elsewhere. The benefits that pay for that free housing comes from your taxes, if the system seems unfair, there is no reason for you to participate, emigrate to Canada/Australia, or even somewhere more exotic if you're feeling brave.
• jokoon 4y ago
  When I was 19, with childhood bullying issues at school and with my stepmother, low self esteem, parents separated when I was three months old, I realized I was not somebody who could have a family. I just don't have the confidence, I don't have the friend network, and I'm just unable to deal with dating women with all the mixed messages and how women have internalized misogyny and sexism, which often makes relationships difficult. I support feminism, but I don't have the emotional intelligence to handle the problems women go through. It's not that I don't want a family, it's mostly that I don't care.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• steele 4y ago
  It's not for everyone, and not everyone can (physically, financially, etc), and few that do will consistently feel 'successful' at parenting. No fidelity of a priori information will determine if it's for you. It's a leap. People shouldn't pressure others into or away from it. Governments worried about population growth should invest in social programs to aid early childcare and education; and generally improve social/medical safety nets for everyone. Under no circumstances disrupt the adoption apparatus, controls, standards therein - provide appropriate additional support around transracial adoption. The only certainty is that having a(nother) kid definitely won't repair a strained relationship.
• trey-jones 4y ago
  What a confusing read. I largely can't discern the sarcasm from impassioned outrage. Nor am I certain that "any decrease in population is catastrophic" is the message that I was meant to receive, but that is what I got out of it. I've heard this argument before and I have never been able to piece together the logic. My best guess is that it's mainly a difference in perspective, and somebody's catastrophic is to me simply worse than what we have now. Yes, there will be a time when things are worse. Rise and decline is a pattern in pretty much every facet of every trend that I can think of. Nothing goes up forever. Just because Earth's population flatlines at 10m, doesn't mean humanity is heading straight for extinction. I mean, it's possible. But far more likely is that at some point, for some reason, things turn back around and the population starts growing again. In the meantime, overpopulation and underpopulation both come with their own problems, and I'm not sure which is worse. We're only ~300 years into the industrial revolution after all. Maybe it's time for a little pullback. That is healthy for the real long-haul. Sure, none of us actually wants to be a part of the hard times. We would rather the great-great-great-grandchildren that we've never met and never will be the ones to bear that burden. But somebody's going to have to deal with it eventually, and yes, it could be you (and me). Meanwhile, having a smaller number of people on the planet (while creating some problems that we had forgotten about) will surely also make some things easier. If literally no one wanted to have kids anymore, it might be a real problem. This is just another urban perspective; I could believe that no one in a city wants to have kids anymore. At least some of us forest dwellers are still breeding like rabbits.
  • martindbp 4y ago
    > Just because Earth's population flatlines at 10m, doesn't mean humanity is heading straight for extinction By the time the population flatlines (at 10B) it will be with a pretty old population already. Many countries have a birth rate < 1.3 and many more are headed that way. That means after every 30 years or so, the number of babies born every year will decrease by 35%. Every 30 years. This is already very noticeable in e.g. South Korea, which last year had a birthrate of 0.8 I believe, where schools are now closing in droves. And the problem is, none of the mechanisms that are causing birthrates to plummet are showing any signs of slowing down or reversing. The countries with higher birthrates right now are just further back on the curve, they'll be where we are soon enough. It might be that the reasons for decreasing birthrates are things we're not willing to give up, like improved quality of life of singles, increased education and equality between the sexes. We'll see if natural selection will act quickly enough to produce people with a stronger instinct for having kids, but then the question is why hasn't this already happened, as birth rates have been declining for the past century while living standards have increased immensely. As the number of people choosing to have zero kids rather than just fewer increase, perhaps this will put the pressure on in a way it hasn't yet.
• dirkc 4y ago
  I would imagine that population growth follows something like a sigmoid growth curve. Having birth rates slow down is to be expected once humans reaches carrying capacity. I wouldn't worry about humanity fading out - I mean, reaching a stable plateau would be great! The worry is that we'll overshoot that by too big a margin and suffer a big collapse.
• etiam 4y ago
  I wish I could upvote comment by user "Meh" under the article. This is not a problem. This is a brief hiccough that will literally evolve out in a generation or two. That "trend" is measurable in decades, against millions of years of history. And it's not universal, either. We would be INCREDIBLY LUCKY if it lasted long enough to cut the human population in half, because we are likely already over long-term sustainable carrying capacity. In fact we might be over sustainable capacity at 4 billion. But we are very unlikely to get that lucky. It's very fashionable right now to hand-wring over "population collapse", but it's dumb.
• bongoman37 4y ago
  [dead]
• Yorch 4y ago
  It is sad to see that our generation is on its way to being the one to transform the world into a nursing home. I myself don't have children, but half my life taking antidepressants, trying to have a house that I couldn't have,it haven't helped me. And I feel that my circumstances are unfortunately very widespread among the population, regardless of whether or not there are people who want or not to have children as their own decision, instead of because of an impossibility due to their life circumstances.
• sanderjd 4y ago
  Finding a wonderful partner and building a family are the best things I have ever done. Highly recommended. If I could go back, I'd spend less time "working hard and playing hard" in the decade after I finished school and start working on the family much sooner. It's hard to express how much more rewarding it is than anything I was doing before. Your mileage may vary, but kids are great, truly.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• cafard 4y ago
  The people I see in my neighborhood carrying kids in those chest carriers or pushing them in carriages seem cheerful enough. I was cheerful enough back then, though there was a big effect on my time, including sleep time.
• ladyattis 4y ago
  I think there's more going on with respect to the slow decline in population growth. Sure, the wealth a nation has the less it seems people have children but the why isn't always explored, it's just assumed people become more risk adverse or the wealth gap causes people to forego the thought of having a family. I think there's multiple problems at play here. First, you got people being generally more risk adverse which is just a normal thing. Second, the wealth gap is causing more and more folks to delay having a family for their later years. Third, I think some social pressures are just absent from the picture that was once the norm. I know that sounds cruel to pressure someone to have kids (I'm child-free and happy to be that way so I'm not hoping anyone to shame me into having a wife and kids) but I wonder if that even works whether it's positive depictions of young families or the old fashioned nagging of your parents to "settle down."
• kodyo 4y ago
  I wish I’d had kids earlier, even if it would have been harder financially. I love these new people.
• tungsten555 4y ago
  "flatline" at 10 billion. I think we can make that work.
• lo_zamoyski 4y ago
  "The De-Population Bomb" [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNdnlrkx-wg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNdnlrkx-wg
• johnea 4y ago
  Man, and people give me a hard time about speaking hyperbole 8-/ I mean WTF? Really! OMG there will only be 10B people! OMG!! OMG!!! Seriously, if 98% of the human species vanished, it can't be anything but a good thing. The only people "worried" about this reduction are extractive capitalists who are afraid there aren't going to be enough idiot herd to pilfer. OMG!!!!!
• 1letterunixname 4y ago
  Spoiler alert: Idiocracy
• lamontcg 4y ago
  If anyone wants to increase the birthrate: - Back work from home - Universal child care - Universal health care - Universal college - Stop calling child support for nothing The easier you made it to be parents, the more parents you'll get. The existing "the beatings will continue until the morale improves" approaches will get you more people making rational decisions to skip having kids.
• hacknewslogin 4y ago
  On the off chance that someone reading this has a kid they can't support, My Wife and I would love to adopt. We have not been able to have kids of our own.
• 11101010001100 4y ago
  I have started to find it a bit odd that people can take such a strong position to have or not to have kids. It's a personal choice, that's it that's all.
• Blue111 4y ago
  Being a parent-at-home can be a huge mistake... I would not do it again...
• thefz 4y ago
  > I mean, fertility rates have been going down for 50 years; women are having half as many children, and some are so focused on their careers they might as well repurpose their wombs into walk-in closets. Ah, the good old reduction of women to walking wombs.
• taylodl 4y ago
  If AI and robots are going to be our progeny then what do we need kids for? </s> I raised three kids. They're now starting to think about having kids of their own. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. But I don't judge anybody who doesn't have kids, I know many couples my age who don't. Which tells you this isn't a recent trend because I'm not exactly a young man! We shouldn't be forcing people to have kids. The world needs fewer people, not more, and if people are naturally selecting themselves out of the gene pool and not being forced by government to do so then I guess so much the better. It really is a Brave New World!
• Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
  We wanted to have kids, changed country and had 2! We are very frugal compared to the average people in Canada, so we are still able to save for college and retirement. Having kids pushed to take ownership of my finances, plan ahead and so many benefits. Yeah, I lost a lot of sleep too. Overall, having a child helped me grow enormously, but I think owning a company with employees might end up with some overlap in what you learn (pure theory). So if the goal is growing, you could skip the child. The affection a child gives you "for free" is invaluable though. You don't experience that without children. If you are a physical person be aware, children are the first time when all your hug needs will be satisfied! One thing that I'm still processing is the following: my parents (one if them) fucked up their retirement even though they started life way ahead of me (millions ahead of me) and I will be faced with the question "should I help them". While the answer seems obvious, it's not now: it means that due to my parent failure, my children may need to do the same, because I would be wasting my retirement. I'm still fighting with this,hard to process.