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Alternatively, populations fall until the pressures causing suppressed reproduction ease - and people start having more children. Wouldn’t it be better for a c

Alternatively, populations fall until the pressures causing suppressed reproduction ease - and people start having more children. Wouldn’t it be better for a country like the UK to have a population of about 30 million? More space for everyone, self sufficient in food and renewable energy, less pollution and resource depletion, … Why not order society to maximise average quality of life instead of GDP?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> populations fall until the pressures causing suppressed reproduction ease The problem is a falling population exacerbates those stresses. The economy crunches, anti-immigrant and right-wing forces gain power; the older population won’t vote to nix their benefits in favour of younger people, so either the system veers towards collapse or someone takes away their votes.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Why would anti-immigrant voices gain power with a falling population?
  - kivle 4y ago
    When the economy is crashing and more and more of society destabilizes, a huge amount of people will always look for politicians that will sell them "an easy way out". Being the politician that talks about inconvenient truths, the need for more immigrants, the need to keep high taxes as people are getting poorer and has a message of "hang in there" generally does not win people over. Right wing anti-immigration parties sell an enemy (immigrants) as cause of all problems (they are stealing all our jobs!). In addition they sell tax breaks which also sound very appealing to people that struggle to get by on their current income. Of course all history shows that these "solutions" are lies, but history tend to repeat itself. The problem in a democracy is that the solutions that political parties present does not always have to be grounded in reality to be popular. Especially in these modern times with disinformation and conspiratorial thinking running rampant online (it's all Soros fault!).
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Why would anti-immigrant voices gain power with a falling population? I don’t think it’s a general rule. But the countries in a demographic bind are in one because they’re not getting immigrants. So as the vice tightens, we see those preëxisting tendencies amplified. This is more observational than prescriptive, mine you.
twelve40 4y ago
it's not that simple because after a period of massive decline there are fewer people around to even restart the process, even if they magically so desired.
thunderbird120 4y ago
Rapidly shrinking populations as a result of low birth rates do the exact opposite of increasing average quality of life. You end up with an entire country full of old people who can't work and an increasingly small number of young people who need to support them, unless you're willing to just throw grandma out on the streets. This concept is known as the dependency ratio, the ratio of dependents to working individuals. Economic output is a result of work done. In a country with a high dependency ratio, the relatively smaller number of workers need to end up doing much more work to to support the large number of non-working dependents. Essentially, you can either tax your workers to death or let grandma subsist off of cat food. Neither option is really great and the whole situation tends to be stressful and depressing on a societal level.
- aylmao 4y ago
  Is this "rapidly shrinking" though, if it's happening at the timescale of human lives? It does seem like something we should be able to plan for, doesn't it?
- huijzer 4y ago
  > Economic output is a result of work done. As a counterexample, an skilled American white collar worker who earns about 200k per year could buy about ten thousand avocado's per month. But does the skilled, say, programmer do more "work" than multiple Avocado farmers? So, economic output is not a result of work done, it's a matter of value created (US industry creates lots of value) and how much of that is captured. So on the one hand, a shrinking population might reduce purchasing power by producing less work. On the other hand, as long as the value of the produced work increases, the implosion might not be so bad.
  - twelve40 4y ago
    today, there are 64 million social security beneficiaries and 164 million working people in the US. Who is going to pay for social security, when these numbers are reversed? how can a country such as South Korea, when it gets to over 50% retirement-age people, produce "high value", let alone "increasing value"? who will be taking care of their health and doing physical labor? > long as the value of the produced work increases Assuming that this is only a problem for "high-value" societies is incorrect - Indonesia, for example, while still not as bad, is almost below replacement rate, so who is going to take care of 273 million non-high-value people there once they get old?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> populations fall until the pressures causing suppressed reproduction ease The problem is a falling population exacerbates those stresses. The economy crunches, anti-immigrant and right-wing forces gain power; the older population won’t vote to nix their benefits in favour of younger people, so either the system veers towards collapse or someone takes away their votes.

wizofaus 4y ago
Why would anti-immigrant voices gain power with a falling population?
- kivle 4y ago
  When the economy is crashing and more and more of society destabilizes, a huge amount of people will always look for politicians that will sell them "an easy way out". Being the politician that talks about inconvenient truths, the need for more immigrants, the need to keep high taxes as people are getting poorer and has a message of "hang in there" generally does not win people over. Right wing anti-immigration parties sell an enemy (immigrants) as cause of all problems (they are stealing all our jobs!). In addition they sell tax breaks which also sound very appealing to people that struggle to get by on their current income. Of course all history shows that these "solutions" are lies, but history tend to repeat itself. The problem in a democracy is that the solutions that political parties present does not always have to be grounded in reality to be popular. Especially in these modern times with disinformation and conspiratorial thinking running rampant online (it's all Soros fault!).
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Why would anti-immigrant voices gain power with a falling population? I don’t think it’s a general rule. But the countries in a demographic bind are in one because they’re not getting immigrants. So as the vice tightens, we see those preëxisting tendencies amplified. This is more observational than prescriptive, mine you.

twelve40 4y ago

it's not that simple because after a period of massive decline there are fewer people around to even restart the process, even if they magically so desired.

thunderbird120 4y ago

Rapidly shrinking populations as a result of low birth rates do the exact opposite of increasing average quality of life. You end up with an entire country full of old people who can't work and an increasingly small number of young people who need to support them, unless you're willing to just throw grandma out on the streets. This concept is known as the dependency ratio, the ratio of dependents to working individuals. Economic output is a result of work done. In a country with a high dependency ratio, the relatively smaller number of workers need to end up doing much more work to to support the large number of non-working dependents. Essentially, you can either tax your workers to death or let grandma subsist off of cat food. Neither option is really great and the whole situation tends to be stressful and depressing on a societal level.

aylmao 4y ago
Is this "rapidly shrinking" though, if it's happening at the timescale of human lives? It does seem like something we should be able to plan for, doesn't it?
huijzer 4y ago
> Economic output is a result of work done. As a counterexample, an skilled American white collar worker who earns about 200k per year could buy about ten thousand avocado's per month. But does the skilled, say, programmer do more "work" than multiple Avocado farmers? So, economic output is not a result of work done, it's a matter of value created (US industry creates lots of value) and how much of that is captured. So on the one hand, a shrinking population might reduce purchasing power by producing less work. On the other hand, as long as the value of the produced work increases, the implosion might not be so bad.
- twelve40 4y ago
  today, there are 64 million social security beneficiaries and 164 million working people in the US. Who is going to pay for social security, when these numbers are reversed? how can a country such as South Korea, when it gets to over 50% retirement-age people, produce "high value", let alone "increasing value"? who will be taking care of their health and doing physical labor? > long as the value of the produced work increases Assuming that this is only a problem for "high-value" societies is incorrect - Indonesia, for example, while still not as bad, is almost below replacement rate, so who is going to take care of 273 million non-high-value people there once they get old?