6 ms·

Governments around the world are asleep while young people are struggling everywhere on every major developed country in the world to do simple things like find

Governments around the world are asleep while young people are struggling everywhere on every major developed country in the world to do simple things like find a place to live and have children. I wonder what type of BS the G7 talk about instead of this. What could be more pressing?

mytailorisrich 4y ago
The problem is that governments keep pushing for population growth when this is the root cause of most of our environmental problems... Low fertility rates at the moment are only an issue in that we need to adapt to them.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  Adapting to them is one way of putting it. The main problem is that our socialist programs such as social security and Medicare can’t survive when the population isn’t growing the right way ie working adults must drastically outnumber retired seniors
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    An aging population is unavoidable just by the simple fact that population growth has to stop at some point. The huge population growth we've seen is unique in history and we'll go back to a more stable population (it's already starting) BUT with low birth rate/high life expectancy instead of high birth rate/low life expectancy as before. Socialised (not necessarily socialist) systems are the best bet to cope but there must be an epiphany that this requires drastic changes, one of them being to go all in to maximise productivity.
    - chaostheory 4y ago
      > Socialised (not necessarily socialist) systems are the best bet to cope but there must be an epiphany that this requires drastic changes The drastic change required is simple yet hard: end socialized retirement programs. Everyone needs to work.
      - midoridensha 4y ago
        Not everyone can work, or at least, not regular "full-time" work. However, more flexibility could get more productivity out of the aging populace: ending fixed retirement ages, for instance (some people are decrepit by 70, others are still quite vigorous and active), and also more part-time work, remote work, etc. could get more older people to be contributors to the economy again.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    What matters more ... that our social pyramid schemes will fail (actually they won't because automation drop demand for human labor) or that we destroy our environment? 95% of all biomass is humans and their farm animals 5% is the rest of mammals... biodiversity is pretty much done on the planet insects are plummeting, and they're pollinators and food for birds etc. overfishing in many coastal areas by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean, and still people think that humanity can't make things on such a large scale... all the fish biomass will be outnumbered by our plastic kelp forests, bleached corals ... ocean acidification... rainforests are 90% gone one third of arable land is now unable to grow much at all and this is all in a few generations .. ANTHROPOCENE the climate change is not the most pressing issue at all us talking about "we can't afford to fix this" is like people playing a videogame and racking up points IN A HOUSE THAT'S ON FIRE -- saying sorry, I can't pause the game to put out the fire... yet the house is the only one we all have. Put it in perspective ... the number of people on the planet is the input to all these functions. If we went back to having a billion people, and robots doing a lot of the work, we'd have everyone receiving a UBI and be richer and happier. What is this obsession with endless population growth? Humanity was doing just fine with under a billion people, no? We were able to fix child mortality, but now we have to learn about the exponential function...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - lezojeda 4y ago
      [dead]
    - chaostheory 4y ago
      > What is this obsession with endless population growth? Because both socialism and capitalism require growth to function. We need a new economic system.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      >us talking about "we can't afford to fix this" is like people playing a videogame and racking up points IN A HOUSE THAT'S ON FIRE -- saying sorry, I can't pause the game to put out the fire... yet the house is the only one we all have. The problem is that we really can't put the fire out. To extend your analogy, it's like people playing a videogame in a burning house, but the players are competing against each other. And this isn't a normal videogame: the players have implants, wirelessly connected to the machine, which will inject the loser with poison. Whoever loses, dies. So if anyone takes a break from the game to put out the fire, they die (and the fire rages on anyway). The only way to put out the fire is to get everyone to stop the game simultaneously and work together to put out the fire. But that's impossible for these people, because they're greedy and selfish and hate each other and any attempt at working together will be sabotaged somehow by at least one of them. What can be done in a situation like this? Nothing; just let the fire burn and enjoy the game while it lasts. Hopefully, whoever inherits this planet after humans are gone will be a better species than we were.
  - thefz 4y ago
    Yeah, these can survive. Just tax the ultra wealthy.
chaostheory 4y ago
If the population trends are correct, the housing problem will fix itself. The data in Japan supports that view.
- amelius 4y ago
  The housing problem may be fixed but what about the care for the elderly?
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    Japan said a couple of decades ago "robots". I guess it has to work out, one century or other?
- shuckles 4y ago
  The housing problem in Japan's big cities did not fix itself with a shrinking population (they're growing) but instead with nationalization of land use laws.
  - andrekandre 4y ago
    > nationalization of land use laws. interesting, any good links about that?
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    The population is not “growing”. They are simply emptying out towns for the large metros.
    - shuckles 4y ago
      It doesn’t matter where the urban population increase is coming from in this conversation.
      - shuckles 4y ago
        I am unable to reply to a different comment, but this is a good reference to zoning law in Japan: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hzbhGNMp-P7lnp2-VXRjJVjDOAmNQqiO/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hzbhGNMp-P7lnp2-VXRjJVjDOAm....
shadowtree 4y ago
It's a sign of wealth and abundance if fertility rates are falling. See Africa and it's still very high rates and every single historic trend line as evidence. Strongest causation factors are urbanization and female education/employment. East Asia urbanized faster then the US, also has little to no immigration ... hence populations will shrink quite drastically. China will halve in what, the next 5 decades?
- xupybd 4y ago
  The one child policy played a big role as well
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Between countries, fertility is associated with poverty. But within countries, it’s the opposite. Higher fertility comes along with wealth and well-being. So if the rich, educated people in your advanced society are not reproducing, that’s a bad indication.
  - unmole 4y ago
    > But within countries, it’s the opposite. Higher fertility comes along with wealth and well-being [citation needed]
  - Tozen 4y ago
    Lot's of people get that backwards. Because people have money and could afford a lot of children, doesn't meant they want a lot of children. Once they have become used to a certain lifestyle, the money can be freedom, in terms of having less responsibilities and living carefree. Having children can negate the free time or lifestyle they want to live.
- trefoiled 4y ago
  If it's a sign of wealth and abundance that fertility rates are falling, how do you explain that fertility rates are falling in the poorest areas of Africa, too?[1] [1]. https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/dramatic-drop-fertility-across-africa https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/dramatic-drop-fertility-acr...
mostlysimilar 4y ago
At least as far as the US is concerned the government is beholden to the ultra wealthy, who need no change because they are thriving. The government will make small adjustments along the edges but won't truly threaten the status quo.
- swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
  Wages are set by a baseline of the cost of living. Young single workers might tolerate having essentially no savings for a few years but eventually they will find a better job or a cheaper cost of living area. This has a direct impact on what kinds of businesses can operate in high cost of living areas. Businesses need high enough volume or margin to pay the rent and wages of their workers. So far outsourcing has localized the negative impacts of failing low-margin businesses in wealthy nations. But that's also coming into question with national security concerns.
nine_zeros 4y ago
> I wonder what type of BS the G7 talk about instead of this. What could be more pressing? They talk about GDP and growth - which can only come from squeezing each worker more and more. In America, I don't see any legislation for paid maternity and paternity leave. People are expected to lose their jobs, drop their careers and pay more for insurance when they are dropped from their jobs. Without security of income but with constantly rising expenses, people are spending their entire lives precariously, just to increase some bullshit GDP number. How the fuck is a woman supposed to carry another human, safely, in her body for 9 months and raise it for another 2 months at least?
- christophilus 4y ago
  Not to be snarky, but how did humans ever do this in the past without all of those things? I think paternity leave and maternity leave are great ideas, but they’re a bandaid. The real problem is that society has changed to be hostile to healthy human existence. You need a car to live in most of the USA. Extended families and support are spread out across the nation. Rather than cooking together in your kitchen and playing together on a whim, everything has to be planned around commutes and— often— long distance travel. Societal expectations are that families are small. Nothing is built for large families. The list goes on and on, but over all, I think it’s a long list of things— with economics being one— that underpins this.
  - nine_zeros 4y ago
    There are many things society and government can do to improve this situation. We aren't getting rid of cars easily. We aren't getting rid of distant suburbia easily. We aren't getting rid of employers who WANT to see people in office. Maternity and paternity are the easiest of them all. If there was ever to be an UBI, it would be for maternity and paternity. For 2 years, the government (or employer) covers you. Go get pregnant.
  - sufehmi 4y ago
    Families are already struggling when only the father is working. Work is hard for the father, and raising kids is even harder for the mother. Now both father and mother must have a job - and that's just to barely survive. And the government expect us to have kids? Fucking idiotic pricks. Unless the government start doing something to ensure that all of those shiny GDPs are trickling down, instead of ever continuously pooled up, the situation will only get worse.
ralph84 4y ago
The elites have decided they don’t need a middle class anymore.
- amerkhalid 4y ago
  This makes me wonder about science fiction stories. As automation in labor force increases, there is less demand for labor. Governments will also be able survive with fewer tax payers. Eventually, reproducing without license and training will be illegal. Then completely banned. And then there will be more machines and fewer humans. And primitive societies will continue to reproduce but eventually be conquered. And then machines will slowly gain enough intelligence and self awareness that they will overthrow human masters. And eventually it will be just machines debating meaning of life.
  - mchaver 4y ago
    > And eventually it will be just machines debating meaning of life. That's the plot of Yoko Taro's Nier Automata. Here is a summary if anyone is interested and doesn't want to play the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63PzQIbTrM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63PzQIbTrM8 > And primitive societies will continue to reproduce but eventually be conquered. > And then machines will slowly gain enough intelligence and self awareness that they will overthrow human masters. Hopefully they will develop a sense of morality and free the conquered humans.
- NovaDudely 4y ago
  As much as we can blame elites for a lot of these issues - Sheer physical depletion of energy and resource per-capita is one of the big driving forces behind a lot of these things nowadays. Don't get me wrong, the elites are definitely making things a LOT worse but it is not entirely on them. If everyone in this world lived like the middle classes, we would strip the planet bare in no time. The middle class is probably going to be remembered as just a weird moment in time thanks to the great blow off of the petroleum age. The best thing those in power can do is try to organise for a society that doesn't require as much consumption.
cjensen 4y ago
Why would they talk about this? The solution is obvious, and the US has practiced the solution for a very long time now: immigration at a sufficient rate to make up for the decline in population. This is really mostly a problem for Japan and Korea where they don't play sufficiently well with immigrants.
- coldtea 4y ago
  That's only a solution if you view populations as replaceable, that culture and shared history doesn't matter, and that nations are just arbitrary grouppings of people that can be changed at will. Which works for the US, because it's a country of immigrants from all over the place anyway, colonized quite recently in historical terms (there are nations and cultures with 10x and 20x the longevity and far more continuity). If you start with a country with shared history and a cohesive culture, people are not seen as equally replaceable.
  - nwienert 4y ago
    Immigration is a fundamentally incomplete answer that is designed to placate people who don't want to think to deeply about the actual issues. What happens to the countries they are emigrating from? Especially if we do as politicians say and "only accept the best", what does that imply happens to the emigrating nation? Are those countries stable then? And are they also now or in the future experiencing population decline? If population growth is due to being poor, is the strategy to keep them poor?
  - coeneedell 4y ago
    This argument seems to have an unsavory consequence. There’s nothing wrong with excluding and persecuting minority groups because they’re not part of the nation. With a country like China, where the now-majority Han culture colonized the minority Wu, Canton, Hokkien, and various small western cultures in the last 100(ish, it was going on before the PRC as well) years, and a narrative of national unity and shared history was fabricated by the government, can we defend anti-immigration policies on the same grounds?

mytailorisrich 4y ago

The problem is that governments keep pushing for population growth when this is the root cause of most of our environmental problems... Low fertility rates at the moment are only an issue in that we need to adapt to them.

chaostheory 4y ago
Adapting to them is one way of putting it. The main problem is that our socialist programs such as social security and Medicare can’t survive when the population isn’t growing the right way ie working adults must drastically outnumber retired seniors
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  An aging population is unavoidable just by the simple fact that population growth has to stop at some point. The huge population growth we've seen is unique in history and we'll go back to a more stable population (it's already starting) BUT with low birth rate/high life expectancy instead of high birth rate/low life expectancy as before. Socialised (not necessarily socialist) systems are the best bet to cope but there must be an epiphany that this requires drastic changes, one of them being to go all in to maximise productivity.
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    > Socialised (not necessarily socialist) systems are the best bet to cope but there must be an epiphany that this requires drastic changes The drastic change required is simple yet hard: end socialized retirement programs. Everyone needs to work.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      Not everyone can work, or at least, not regular "full-time" work. However, more flexibility could get more productivity out of the aging populace: ending fixed retirement ages, for instance (some people are decrepit by 70, others are still quite vigorous and active), and also more part-time work, remote work, etc. could get more older people to be contributors to the economy again.
- EGreg 4y ago
  What matters more ... that our social pyramid schemes will fail (actually they won't because automation drop demand for human labor) or that we destroy our environment? 95% of all biomass is humans and their farm animals 5% is the rest of mammals... biodiversity is pretty much done on the planet insects are plummeting, and they're pollinators and food for birds etc. overfishing in many coastal areas by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean, and still people think that humanity can't make things on such a large scale... all the fish biomass will be outnumbered by our plastic kelp forests, bleached corals ... ocean acidification... rainforests are 90% gone one third of arable land is now unable to grow much at all and this is all in a few generations .. ANTHROPOCENE the climate change is not the most pressing issue at all us talking about "we can't afford to fix this" is like people playing a videogame and racking up points IN A HOUSE THAT'S ON FIRE -- saying sorry, I can't pause the game to put out the fire... yet the house is the only one we all have. Put it in perspective ... the number of people on the planet is the input to all these functions. If we went back to having a billion people, and robots doing a lot of the work, we'd have everyone receiving a UBI and be richer and happier. What is this obsession with endless population growth? Humanity was doing just fine with under a billion people, no? We were able to fix child mortality, but now we have to learn about the exponential function...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - lezojeda 4y ago
    [dead]
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    > What is this obsession with endless population growth? Because both socialism and capitalism require growth to function. We need a new economic system.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >us talking about "we can't afford to fix this" is like people playing a videogame and racking up points IN A HOUSE THAT'S ON FIRE -- saying sorry, I can't pause the game to put out the fire... yet the house is the only one we all have. The problem is that we really can't put the fire out. To extend your analogy, it's like people playing a videogame in a burning house, but the players are competing against each other. And this isn't a normal videogame: the players have implants, wirelessly connected to the machine, which will inject the loser with poison. Whoever loses, dies. So if anyone takes a break from the game to put out the fire, they die (and the fire rages on anyway). The only way to put out the fire is to get everyone to stop the game simultaneously and work together to put out the fire. But that's impossible for these people, because they're greedy and selfish and hate each other and any attempt at working together will be sabotaged somehow by at least one of them. What can be done in a situation like this? Nothing; just let the fire burn and enjoy the game while it lasts. Hopefully, whoever inherits this planet after humans are gone will be a better species than we were.
- thefz 4y ago
  Yeah, these can survive. Just tax the ultra wealthy.

chaostheory 4y ago

If the population trends are correct, the housing problem will fix itself. The data in Japan supports that view.

amelius 4y ago
The housing problem may be fixed but what about the care for the elderly?
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  Japan said a couple of decades ago "robots". I guess it has to work out, one century or other?
shuckles 4y ago
The housing problem in Japan's big cities did not fix itself with a shrinking population (they're growing) but instead with nationalization of land use laws.
- andrekandre 4y ago
  > nationalization of land use laws. interesting, any good links about that?
- chaostheory 4y ago
  The population is not “growing”. They are simply emptying out towns for the large metros.
  - shuckles 4y ago
    It doesn’t matter where the urban population increase is coming from in this conversation.
    - shuckles 4y ago
      I am unable to reply to a different comment, but this is a good reference to zoning law in Japan: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hzbhGNMp-P7lnp2-VXRjJVjDOAmNQqiO/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hzbhGNMp-P7lnp2-VXRjJVjDOAm....

shadowtree 4y ago

It's a sign of wealth and abundance if fertility rates are falling. See Africa and it's still very high rates and every single historic trend line as evidence. Strongest causation factors are urbanization and female education/employment. East Asia urbanized faster then the US, also has little to no immigration ... hence populations will shrink quite drastically. China will halve in what, the next 5 decades?

xupybd 4y ago
The one child policy played a big role as well
jeffbee 4y ago
Between countries, fertility is associated with poverty. But within countries, it’s the opposite. Higher fertility comes along with wealth and well-being. So if the rich, educated people in your advanced society are not reproducing, that’s a bad indication.
- unmole 4y ago
  > But within countries, it’s the opposite. Higher fertility comes along with wealth and well-being [citation needed]
- Tozen 4y ago
  Lot's of people get that backwards. Because people have money and could afford a lot of children, doesn't meant they want a lot of children. Once they have become used to a certain lifestyle, the money can be freedom, in terms of having less responsibilities and living carefree. Having children can negate the free time or lifestyle they want to live.
trefoiled 4y ago
If it's a sign of wealth and abundance that fertility rates are falling, how do you explain that fertility rates are falling in the poorest areas of Africa, too?[1] [1]. https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/dramatic-drop-fertility-across-africa https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/dramatic-drop-fertility-acr...

mostlysimilar 4y ago

At least as far as the US is concerned the government is beholden to the ultra wealthy, who need no change because they are thriving. The government will make small adjustments along the edges but won't truly threaten the status quo.

swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
Wages are set by a baseline of the cost of living. Young single workers might tolerate having essentially no savings for a few years but eventually they will find a better job or a cheaper cost of living area. This has a direct impact on what kinds of businesses can operate in high cost of living areas. Businesses need high enough volume or margin to pay the rent and wages of their workers. So far outsourcing has localized the negative impacts of failing low-margin businesses in wealthy nations. But that's also coming into question with national security concerns.

nine_zeros 4y ago

> I wonder what type of BS the G7 talk about instead of this. What could be more pressing? They talk about GDP and growth - which can only come from squeezing each worker more and more. In America, I don't see any legislation for paid maternity and paternity leave. People are expected to lose their jobs, drop their careers and pay more for insurance when they are dropped from their jobs. Without security of income but with constantly rising expenses, people are spending their entire lives precariously, just to increase some bullshit GDP number. How the fuck is a woman supposed to carry another human, safely, in her body for 9 months and raise it for another 2 months at least?

christophilus 4y ago
Not to be snarky, but how did humans ever do this in the past without all of those things? I think paternity leave and maternity leave are great ideas, but they’re a bandaid. The real problem is that society has changed to be hostile to healthy human existence. You need a car to live in most of the USA. Extended families and support are spread out across the nation. Rather than cooking together in your kitchen and playing together on a whim, everything has to be planned around commutes and— often— long distance travel. Societal expectations are that families are small. Nothing is built for large families. The list goes on and on, but over all, I think it’s a long list of things— with economics being one— that underpins this.
- nine_zeros 4y ago
  There are many things society and government can do to improve this situation. We aren't getting rid of cars easily. We aren't getting rid of distant suburbia easily. We aren't getting rid of employers who WANT to see people in office. Maternity and paternity are the easiest of them all. If there was ever to be an UBI, it would be for maternity and paternity. For 2 years, the government (or employer) covers you. Go get pregnant.
- sufehmi 4y ago
  Families are already struggling when only the father is working. Work is hard for the father, and raising kids is even harder for the mother. Now both father and mother must have a job - and that's just to barely survive. And the government expect us to have kids? Fucking idiotic pricks. Unless the government start doing something to ensure that all of those shiny GDPs are trickling down, instead of ever continuously pooled up, the situation will only get worse.

ralph84 4y ago

The elites have decided they don’t need a middle class anymore.

amerkhalid 4y ago
This makes me wonder about science fiction stories. As automation in labor force increases, there is less demand for labor. Governments will also be able survive with fewer tax payers. Eventually, reproducing without license and training will be illegal. Then completely banned. And then there will be more machines and fewer humans. And primitive societies will continue to reproduce but eventually be conquered. And then machines will slowly gain enough intelligence and self awareness that they will overthrow human masters. And eventually it will be just machines debating meaning of life.
- mchaver 4y ago
  > And eventually it will be just machines debating meaning of life. That's the plot of Yoko Taro's Nier Automata. Here is a summary if anyone is interested and doesn't want to play the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63PzQIbTrM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63PzQIbTrM8 > And primitive societies will continue to reproduce but eventually be conquered. > And then machines will slowly gain enough intelligence and self awareness that they will overthrow human masters. Hopefully they will develop a sense of morality and free the conquered humans.
NovaDudely 4y ago
As much as we can blame elites for a lot of these issues - Sheer physical depletion of energy and resource per-capita is one of the big driving forces behind a lot of these things nowadays. Don't get me wrong, the elites are definitely making things a LOT worse but it is not entirely on them. If everyone in this world lived like the middle classes, we would strip the planet bare in no time. The middle class is probably going to be remembered as just a weird moment in time thanks to the great blow off of the petroleum age. The best thing those in power can do is try to organise for a society that doesn't require as much consumption.

cjensen 4y ago

Why would they talk about this? The solution is obvious, and the US has practiced the solution for a very long time now: immigration at a sufficient rate to make up for the decline in population. This is really mostly a problem for Japan and Korea where they don't play sufficiently well with immigrants.

coldtea 4y ago
That's only a solution if you view populations as replaceable, that culture and shared history doesn't matter, and that nations are just arbitrary grouppings of people that can be changed at will. Which works for the US, because it's a country of immigrants from all over the place anyway, colonized quite recently in historical terms (there are nations and cultures with 10x and 20x the longevity and far more continuity). If you start with a country with shared history and a cohesive culture, people are not seen as equally replaceable.
- nwienert 4y ago
  Immigration is a fundamentally incomplete answer that is designed to placate people who don't want to think to deeply about the actual issues. What happens to the countries they are emigrating from? Especially if we do as politicians say and "only accept the best", what does that imply happens to the emigrating nation? Are those countries stable then? And are they also now or in the future experiencing population decline? If population growth is due to being poor, is the strategy to keep them poor?
- coeneedell 4y ago
  This argument seems to have an unsavory consequence. There’s nothing wrong with excluding and persecuting minority groups because they’re not part of the nation. With a country like China, where the now-majority Han culture colonized the minority Wu, Canton, Hokkien, and various small western cultures in the last 100(ish, it was going on before the PRC as well) years, and a narrative of national unity and shared history was fabricated by the government, can we defend anti-immigration policies on the same grounds?