7 ms·

The Heresy of Decline

47 points by 2143 3y ago

somedude895 3y ago
Great article on the topic. But does anyone know why they write years in this strange 0yyyy format?
- plucas 3y ago
  https://longnow.org/ideas/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-and-10k-compliance-at-home/ https://longnow.org/ideas/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-an...
  - somedude895 3y ago
    I like it: > Our zero is for optimism. The notion that the externalized thoughts we write today may survive myriad years to a time when that fifth digit becomes significant.
- kazinator 3y ago
  [flagged]
- Karellen 3y ago
  The Long Now Foundation is dedicate to "fostering long term thinking". The date format they use is one attempt to head off the Y10K problem. See also RFC 2550 Y10K and Beyond for an alternate discussion. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2550 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2550
  - kazinator 3y ago
    The thing is that when I write 2023, I am not asserting that this is a four digit year. It's an integer whose decimal representation requires four digits. Similarly when I say "the Kingdom of England became a single state in the year 927", I am not asserting that I'm using three digit years. However, if I said that this event happened in 0927, then it does look like I'm doing four digit years. It's the leading zeros that are associated with problematic ways of writing years. Two digit years have the leading zero for the first 9 years of the century (and the last year of the previous), like 00 for 2000 and 03 for 2003. Without the leading zero, 3 refers to Year 3 of our Common Era. The leading zero in 03 turns it into a partial, context-sensitive year understood as 2003. The 0 in 02023 does the same thing; it perpetrates some Y-something problem, in this case Y100K. In the year 102023, if people are around, some of them might use 02023 to mean 102023. When they mean the 2023 A.D. they will use 2023, and when they mean 12023, 22023, 32023, ... they will use exactly those forms. The silly zero people ain't thunk this through real well.
    - Karellen 3y ago
      Check the date of publication for the RFC.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cameldrv 3y ago
Interesting article, but it's missing the true dynamics. One of the interesting things in the past few years we've seen is evolution and population dynamics on a very fast and very relevant scale with COVID. You'd see case numbers going up and down, but since mid 2021 or so, the main thing driving rates was the reproduction number of the most contagious variant in existence. At times you'd see the overall case counts going down, but one particular variant growing quickly, and you would know that very soon the number was going to go up again. The dynamics of viral and human populations are not so different. Groups that have a reproduction number less than 1 (same as TFR<2) will die out. Those that have a reproduction number greater than 1 will grow and come to take over. Right now, the populations that have R>1 are largely in Africa. That said there are little pockets in R<1 countries that are R>1. In the U.S. for example you see groups like the Amish and the Mormons. As long as there's enough food and no wars or mass oppression, groups with R>1 will eventually constitute effectively the entire population. Now, of course, humans are more complicated than viruses. Viruses don't have beliefs or values that can be transmitted to the next generation, just genes. For this to work for humans, the humans have to pass along their pro-kid value system to the next generation. Some groups will do this, and some won't, but the world is big enough that there will be groups that do manage to do this, and they will inherit the Earth.
- somedude895 3y ago
  > Groups that have a reproduction number less than 1 (same as TFR<2) will die out. But will they really? Fertility rates are hard to predict and I feel like at a certain point a society might deurbanize with people moving to the countryside and have more children again. Maybe it's at 100 million, maybe at 10 million population, but I just can't fathom a 100 million society just going to zero or even the hundreds of thousands. Maybe I don't understand the dynamics.
  - Ygg2 3y ago
    > society might deurbanize with people moving to the countryside and have more children again. That's not what is happening. Ask yourself is it more likely a young girl is going to the city or to the countryside? Once you run out of fertile females your fertility rate is 0.
Animats 3y ago
Countries with highest fertility rates [1]: Niger - 6.8 Somalia - 6.0 Congo (Dem. Rep.) - 5.8 Mali - 5.8 Chad - 5.6 Angola - 5.4 Burundi - 5.3 Nigeria - 5.3 Gambia - 5.2 Burkina Faso - 5.1 (Breakeven is around 2.1.) Almost all the countries above breakeven are in sub-Saharan Africa, near the equator. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fertility-rate https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fer...
- Ygg2 3y ago
  And all those region that will suffer most from climate change. This will go swimmingly for everyone involved.
- Qem 3y ago
  Give another generation of two and the odds are they will be all below 2 as well.
- caeril 3y ago
  These numbers are wildly improbable. A multitude of HackerNews in this very comment section assure me that having a child in the US is "financially impossible", but the US is significantly wealthier than any of these nations on a per-capita basis. If it's too expensive to have children on a software engineer's salary, it's prima facie way too expensive to do it on a Somalian subsistence farmer's salary. Since HackerNews is never wrong, I can only conclude that these fertility rates are inaccurate.
  - cudgy 3y ago
    Kids are useful to farmers; they add laborers, increasing output. Kids are less useful to software engineers; the kids are a cost center and demand time away from the software engineer’s gaming and tinkering allotment.
- RetroTechie 3y ago
  I would wager a guess that in most (if not all) of those countries, a relatively large % of children die young. That is: population growth in those countries could be much less than fertility rates suggest. Whether that situation improves, will vary per country. But where it does, you'll likely see an overshoot caused by families-with-many-children that now survive until they get older, before women start having fewer children. See eg. some of Hans Rosling's videos for a nice illustration of these dynamics.
slyall 3y ago
As the article states there are not a lot of books on the topic but one I read recently was "Tomorrow’s People: The Future of Humanity in Ten Numbers" by Paul Morland. Review here: https://archive.is/eSzmG https://archive.is/eSzmG
- Qem 3y ago
  My recommendation - Before The Collapse: A Guide To The Other Side Of Growth
wood_spirit 3y ago
Warmly recommend Hans Rosling’s TED talk on population: 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...
nickelpro 3y ago
> The overpopulation story is old, visceral and hard to refute. The overpopulation story is a joke, and has been since the many failed predictions of "The Population Bomb" made it anathema in the academic and political worlds. There's nothing here or in any of the data that suggests anything other than an overshoot of a couple billion people, followed by a gradual decline into a steady state population. The overall doomerism about "overpopulation" or sudden, drastic shifts in population numbers is just that, doomerism.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Where is this "steady state" coming from? Without feedback control, population growth is an exponential process that's inherently unstable, either growing or shrinking. What's the feedback here? Malthusianism provides the feedback with increase in death rate; what's the feedback to overcome a decline in birth rate?
- sillywalk 3y ago
  Have you looked at the news regarding record temperatures, floods, drought, wildfires, crop failures, antarctic sea ice decline, insurance being unavailable in certain areas, etc?
  - cudgy 3y ago
    Insurance not being available could also be impacted by the huge increase in replacement costs due to inflationary pressures on real estate and repair costs; it could also be a conscious move to pressure lawmakers to pass more favorable laws. It could also be due to the increased populations moving to areas like coastal Florida where hurricanes have been sweeping in for thousands of years or Colorado where wildfires are part of the lifecycle of forests. Temperatures have fluctuated throughout history as have the ice levels in the arctic regions. People are certainly a factor, but there are general trends and cycles that earth follows as well. Depopulation may not greatly impact these incidents.
- asah 3y ago
  To be fair, mass misery is very real: starvation, thirst, poverty, forced migration, etc. It's just a "local" problem and internal so "doesn't count" to the popbomb deniers. Also, it's worth nothing that modern economic growth models pretty much all depend on population growth, so steady state population is a recipe for economic stagnation. Obviously, technology disrupts this but our economic systems aren't setup for that, e.g. UBI. Finally, climate impact is tied to population: fewer people, less impact.
xg15 3y ago
Interesting that the Long Now foundation is apparently separate from the EA "Longtermism" movement (though both share the same cultish vibes IMO) https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/against-jackpot-longtermism https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/against-jackpot-longtermism
- wnkrshm 3y ago
  I think the entire longtermism thing is at the heart something that Camus discusses in the Myth of Sisyphos: We will ultimately all die and be forgotten, what good is struggling, working and living? That is the absurd condition every human being finds themselves in. Camus sees two solutions that have been suggested so far in philosophy: Suicide (which he rejects outright as too easy and lazy) and a "leap of faith". The "leap of faith" consists in finding by passion some irrational, maybe larger purpose outside of what can personally be known or experienced, a belief that negates this absurd condition. Historically, this is the domain of religion and spiritualism. Longtermism seems to me just that: an existentialist escape from nihilism by the promise of some kind of vague purpose with vague metrics and an unknown, irrational payoff you will never know (at least for those subscribing to it without motives of profit).
kkoncevicius 3y ago
Here are a few essay recommendations for anyone interested in more heretical takes on the same topic: - "The fate of empires and search for survival" - "The population cycle drives human history" - "Our fragile intellect"
anovikov 3y ago
I really can't see it as a problem. This can and of course, because there are so many nations in the world, will without doubt be fixed by a rather small and comparatively insignificant step to authoritarianism - on the historical scale of calamities of the XX century with Nazis, Commies, Mao, Pol Pot and whatnot - completely insignificant. Probably even less distressing that a relatively trivial Trump and his loyal "red hats" story. Governments will simply hire women to have children and pay them for that. There are so many poor women, especially many of those who missed their chance to get married due to perceived overabundance of men brought by Tinder - by the time they are ready to settle, it's too late and the government will be right there to offer an alternative. There is no objective issue with fertility. If there is, IVF is a well-debugged and cheap technique that easily scales. Nothing prevents these women from having 6-10 children for a living. Economy won't crumble from that either, costs are easy to calculate and completely acceptable. It can be compensated by withdrawing all other benefits, tax breaks and support to families, because that won't be necessary anymore. Surely when some country starts doing it first, it will be met with outrage. But then a question will hang in the air - what do we do next? Bomb them? An idea too awkward to even suggest. Just let them make a quantum leap in development over everyone else simply for being too uppity? Also a hard sell. Eventually everyone will have to adjust their value system and do the same. It will be a much much smaller step to the right to make than say, legalisation of gay marriage we all just witnessed, was a major step left. It doesn't even mean directly breaking anyone's rights. Not nearly as bad as say China's one-child policy.
- sillywalk 3y ago
  Is this satire?
  - anovikov 3y ago
    I quite seriously don't see a slightest problem about it. It will be cheaper than most welfare states' spending and it will create enough people to make another forms of welfare unnecessary: economic growth will provide enough to old generation through stocks appreciation, and fierce competition will force young generation to learn and develop skills. It's the numbers game after all.
bparsons 3y ago
For the unlimited population growth people, I have one question: What is the carrying capacity of earth if not 8 billion. 16 billion? 80 billion? What quality of life is available on an earth with 80 billion people? If you live in western North America, it is easy to think we have a bunch of empty space available everywhere, but this is not the case on the rest of the planet.
- ralph84 3y ago
  There’s a lot of empty space everywhere. Entire continents are mostly empty. You may have a preference to leave those continents uninhabited, but if humans need the space they’ll use it. It will be a lot easier to colonize the Australian Outback and Antarctica than Mars.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Better yet, learn to live within our means and leave these spaces as they are. To the question asked, 4 -6 billion seems a better range than > 8 billion as our current numbers and expected near future demands are straining resource and energy supplies, piling on waste and taking down non human planet cohabitors.
  - sillywalk 3y ago
    "Entire continents are mostly empty." For many reasons. Big one: water. Or lack of. Or too much. Also food.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      Food and water are not significant obstacles for a rich society. Desalination would increase the price of water from 0.2% of GDP to 2%. Greenhouses produce 1000x as many calories per acre for 10x the price per calorie. (And a 10x of ingredient prices would only double the final cost)
- Qem 3y ago
  If we manage to phase out meat consumption, and with it the need to raise farm animals, switching to a full plant-based diet, and improved public transportation to the point car use become an exception, I bet the planet could hold twice the current population without significantly raising environmental impact. We waste a lot of resources feeding and sheltering cattle and automobiles instead of people.
benterix 3y ago
There are basically two reasons. The first one: > A combination of rapid economic development, very high levels of education among young adults, very competitive labor market, long work hours, unaffordable housing, traditional gender norms and persistent gender inequalities in work and family life have created a perfect storm — conditions that make it very difficult for young people to marry and pursue their fertility plans and the second one: > The research I have been conducting with my colleagues shows that the appeal of marriage and having children has been vanishing among the young adults and many of them are likely to stay unmarried, childfree and without a partner. And this is very real. Men increasingly don't want to marry because they perceive the current system as unfair. Women increasingly don't want to marry because they don't want to settle for anything less than a certain threshold that is increasingly difficult to find. This trend is clear everywhere in the West.
- sillywalk 3y ago
  Having children is crazy expensive. Also in a world of climate chaos and ecological collapse, a lot of younger people don't want to bring kids into the world.
- keyle 3y ago
  As a father of 2, my fate is sealed. But I can totally understand the above points as being true. Being a parent is the most difficult, most expensive and longest job I've ever taken on. And I've moved around the world by myself, which is a joke in comparison. On paper, children do not make sense what-so-ever. Thankfully, in reality, I cannot imagine living one day without my kids. They give me life, strength and purpose like nothing ever has. Having kids is playing life in hard mode.
  - kbenson 3y ago
    Having kids is actually playing rather than being a bystander for the vast majority of people. How many people actually have an impact that actually means anything to the future otherwise? Vanishingly few.
    - 3y ago
eucryphia 3y ago
Hey Socialists, the voluntary euthanasia society has a solution to this, you go first, we’ll clean up the mess and join you later, OK?
chilmers 3y ago
This article doesn't seem to consider the role of natural selection on birthrate, but presumably this will act to arrest the decline eventually? Presuming individual desire to reproduce is variable and can be influenced by your genes, then individuals with a stronger desire to reproduce will be overrepresented in each new generation. Individuals for whom birth control is less effective, who stay fertile longer, etc. will presumably also be overrepresented. At some point I would expect this to lead to a return to growth.
nologic01 3y ago
The fixation with N, the size of the human system is absurd, when for all practical purposes the two attributes that really matter are i) the impact of each individual on the biosphere (human - external interactions, or h-e) and its long term biophysical stability and ii) the internal relations of individuals (human - human interactions, h-h, also known as economics, politics etc.) and its long term socioeconomic stability Alarmism regarding either over or under population usually has hidden agendas and unspoken assumptions as to what is desired state of the human system and the stability or continuation of certain past and current arrangements, the dominance of certain tribes over others etc. What complicates the discussion is the enormous unevenness in the distribution of both important factors mentioned above and the resulting wealth and quality-of-life gradients across the planet. In turn this results from the (relatively) slow timescale of technological diffusion which involves complex cultural phenomena and conflicts. A cursory discussion of the intricate web of social dynamics, dependencies and inequalities and how they affect "N". When people complain about how "expensive" it is to raise kids we need to recognize the changing meaning of "raising kids": from the pool of cheap labor that this was historically, to the growing amount of individual attention lavished on kids in the developed world today. Yet that attention requires societal resources. Between parents, various providers and (potentially) a subsidy from the commons some economic equilibrium must be found. On the other hand why would economically active parents not be able to "afford" raising kids to the available and desired standard? One factor (among many) might be that their own economic output is devalued as a result of others doing the same work while aspiring to a lower standard of living. Back to the question of optimal N. In a sustainable global economy (conditioning on meeting the h-e, h-h challenges to an adequate degree) I suspect that N is actually irrelevant within a very broad range. In a sense the attention we pay to population numbers is a measure of how primitive our societies.
einpoklum 3y ago
> many demographers still believed that the very low fertility rates then prevalent in Europe ... would eventually ... converge close to two children per woman Well, wont it? We've not seem European population (as opposed to fertility rate) drop significantly enough for us to determine whether or not there's a bounce-back. > Fertility is plummeting in places as varied as etc. etc. Well, if a country has a lot of people, living in relative concentration (cities), and in various kinds of duress - does that not make sense? In other words, and focusing just on the population size: Why would drops in fertility stop because of its own self rather than the population size/density? > it imposes unmanageable strains on a society. This is a bit like asking whether accelerating your car does not make you worried about relativistic time dilation. I mean, sure, if fertility were to drop to half-replacement for a couple of decades there would be strains; but even those would be manageable. The post is discussing a fantastical situation. Especially since a large drop in _population_ would spur an increase in fertility by the increased availability of accommodation, potential useful work etc. > The question is what happens if young Koreans get accustomed to living single and child-free lives. Ah, now we're getting to the crux of the matter. Well, the author is conflating several things: 1. bearing children or not 2. raising one's children or not 3. being a single adult or living in a couple (or larger sexual-familial arrangement) (1.) and (2.) have always been in merely partial correlation for men, nor have (1.) and (2.) - not even (2.) and (3.), although (2.) does imply not-(3.) almost always. As for women - recent decades have seen a great increase in women raising children alone, for better or for worse. Finally, in many societies, children are raised more communally beyond a certain age. But even having said that - I am willing to acknowledge the theoretical danger of societies cultivating individuals to be emotionally detached, locked in their individual homes, and reclusive sans Internet - leading also to them not having kids. But talk about that, man, don't beat around the bush! > general public is not clamoring for action... people ... are focused on immediate headaches such as inflation, housing costs or employment. That _is_ clamoring for action! And by the way, it's interesting to check whether a part of the cause for reduced fertility is how Capitalist society now squeezes so many more work hours from women. Yes, it's more egalitarian, and that's a good thing IMHO, but instead of having women working for a wage (close to) full time, the (alienated) work week should be lower for both men and women. > On the Left, it is too often dismissed as a non-issue or welcomed as a step toward degrowth – one whose environmental benefits will surely outweigh any social costs. Many, if not most, on the Left [1] is typically quite concerned about the effects of changes such as demographics on individuals and communities. So, even while welcoming population leveling off in general, it's unfair to suggest that social costs are ignored. At least this is an over-generalization. ---- [1] - I don't mean cultural identity-politics like the US democratic party. But then, the question of what constitutes "The Left" can launch a thousand threads.

47 points by 2143 3y ago

somedude895 3y ago

Great article on the topic. But does anyone know why they write years in this strange 0yyyy format?

plucas 3y ago
https://longnow.org/ideas/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-and-10k-compliance-at-home/ https://longnow.org/ideas/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-an...
- somedude895 3y ago
  I like it: > Our zero is for optimism. The notion that the externalized thoughts we write today may survive myriad years to a time when that fifth digit becomes significant.
kazinator 3y ago
[flagged]
Karellen 3y ago
The Long Now Foundation is dedicate to "fostering long term thinking". The date format they use is one attempt to head off the Y10K problem. See also RFC 2550 Y10K and Beyond for an alternate discussion. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2550 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2550
- kazinator 3y ago
  The thing is that when I write 2023, I am not asserting that this is a four digit year. It's an integer whose decimal representation requires four digits. Similarly when I say "the Kingdom of England became a single state in the year 927", I am not asserting that I'm using three digit years. However, if I said that this event happened in 0927, then it does look like I'm doing four digit years. It's the leading zeros that are associated with problematic ways of writing years. Two digit years have the leading zero for the first 9 years of the century (and the last year of the previous), like 00 for 2000 and 03 for 2003. Without the leading zero, 3 refers to Year 3 of our Common Era. The leading zero in 03 turns it into a partial, context-sensitive year understood as 2003. The 0 in 02023 does the same thing; it perpetrates some Y-something problem, in this case Y100K. In the year 102023, if people are around, some of them might use 02023 to mean 102023. When they mean the 2023 A.D. they will use 2023, and when they mean 12023, 22023, 32023, ... they will use exactly those forms. The silly zero people ain't thunk this through real well.
  - Karellen 3y ago
    Check the date of publication for the RFC.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cameldrv 3y ago

Interesting article, but it's missing the true dynamics. One of the interesting things in the past few years we've seen is evolution and population dynamics on a very fast and very relevant scale with COVID. You'd see case numbers going up and down, but since mid 2021 or so, the main thing driving rates was the reproduction number of the most contagious variant in existence. At times you'd see the overall case counts going down, but one particular variant growing quickly, and you would know that very soon the number was going to go up again. The dynamics of viral and human populations are not so different. Groups that have a reproduction number less than 1 (same as TFR<2) will die out. Those that have a reproduction number greater than 1 will grow and come to take over. Right now, the populations that have R>1 are largely in Africa. That said there are little pockets in R<1 countries that are R>1. In the U.S. for example you see groups like the Amish and the Mormons. As long as there's enough food and no wars or mass oppression, groups with R>1 will eventually constitute effectively the entire population. Now, of course, humans are more complicated than viruses. Viruses don't have beliefs or values that can be transmitted to the next generation, just genes. For this to work for humans, the humans have to pass along their pro-kid value system to the next generation. Some groups will do this, and some won't, but the world is big enough that there will be groups that do manage to do this, and they will inherit the Earth.

somedude895 3y ago
> Groups that have a reproduction number less than 1 (same as TFR<2) will die out. But will they really? Fertility rates are hard to predict and I feel like at a certain point a society might deurbanize with people moving to the countryside and have more children again. Maybe it's at 100 million, maybe at 10 million population, but I just can't fathom a 100 million society just going to zero or even the hundreds of thousands. Maybe I don't understand the dynamics.
- Ygg2 3y ago
  > society might deurbanize with people moving to the countryside and have more children again. That's not what is happening. Ask yourself is it more likely a young girl is going to the city or to the countryside? Once you run out of fertile females your fertility rate is 0.

Animats 3y ago

Countries with highest fertility rates [1]: Niger - 6.8 Somalia - 6.0 Congo (Dem. Rep.) - 5.8 Mali - 5.8 Chad - 5.6 Angola - 5.4 Burundi - 5.3 Nigeria - 5.3 Gambia - 5.2 Burkina Faso - 5.1 (Breakeven is around 2.1.) Almost all the countries above breakeven are in sub-Saharan Africa, near the equator. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fertility-rate https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fer...

Ygg2 3y ago
And all those region that will suffer most from climate change. This will go swimmingly for everyone involved.
Qem 3y ago
Give another generation of two and the odds are they will be all below 2 as well.
caeril 3y ago
These numbers are wildly improbable. A multitude of HackerNews in this very comment section assure me that having a child in the US is "financially impossible", but the US is significantly wealthier than any of these nations on a per-capita basis. If it's too expensive to have children on a software engineer's salary, it's prima facie way too expensive to do it on a Somalian subsistence farmer's salary. Since HackerNews is never wrong, I can only conclude that these fertility rates are inaccurate.
- cudgy 3y ago
  Kids are useful to farmers; they add laborers, increasing output. Kids are less useful to software engineers; the kids are a cost center and demand time away from the software engineer’s gaming and tinkering allotment.
RetroTechie 3y ago
I would wager a guess that in most (if not all) of those countries, a relatively large % of children die young. That is: population growth in those countries could be much less than fertility rates suggest. Whether that situation improves, will vary per country. But where it does, you'll likely see an overshoot caused by families-with-many-children that now survive until they get older, before women start having fewer children. See eg. some of Hans Rosling's videos for a nice illustration of these dynamics.

slyall 3y ago

As the article states there are not a lot of books on the topic but one I read recently was "Tomorrow’s People: The Future of Humanity in Ten Numbers" by Paul Morland. Review here: https://archive.is/eSzmG https://archive.is/eSzmG

Qem 3y ago
My recommendation - Before The Collapse: A Guide To The Other Side Of Growth

wood_spirit 3y ago

Warmly recommend Hans Rosling’s TED talk on population: 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...

nickelpro 3y ago

> The overpopulation story is old, visceral and hard to refute. The overpopulation story is a joke, and has been since the many failed predictions of "The Population Bomb" made it anathema in the academic and political worlds. There's nothing here or in any of the data that suggests anything other than an overshoot of a couple billion people, followed by a gradual decline into a steady state population. The overall doomerism about "overpopulation" or sudden, drastic shifts in population numbers is just that, doomerism.

pfdietz 3y ago
Where is this "steady state" coming from? Without feedback control, population growth is an exponential process that's inherently unstable, either growing or shrinking. What's the feedback here? Malthusianism provides the feedback with increase in death rate; what's the feedback to overcome a decline in birth rate?
sillywalk 3y ago
Have you looked at the news regarding record temperatures, floods, drought, wildfires, crop failures, antarctic sea ice decline, insurance being unavailable in certain areas, etc?
- cudgy 3y ago
  Insurance not being available could also be impacted by the huge increase in replacement costs due to inflationary pressures on real estate and repair costs; it could also be a conscious move to pressure lawmakers to pass more favorable laws. It could also be due to the increased populations moving to areas like coastal Florida where hurricanes have been sweeping in for thousands of years or Colorado where wildfires are part of the lifecycle of forests. Temperatures have fluctuated throughout history as have the ice levels in the arctic regions. People are certainly a factor, but there are general trends and cycles that earth follows as well. Depopulation may not greatly impact these incidents.
asah 3y ago
To be fair, mass misery is very real: starvation, thirst, poverty, forced migration, etc. It's just a "local" problem and internal so "doesn't count" to the popbomb deniers. Also, it's worth nothing that modern economic growth models pretty much all depend on population growth, so steady state population is a recipe for economic stagnation. Obviously, technology disrupts this but our economic systems aren't setup for that, e.g. UBI. Finally, climate impact is tied to population: fewer people, less impact.

xg15 3y ago

Interesting that the Long Now foundation is apparently separate from the EA "Longtermism" movement (though both share the same cultish vibes IMO) https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/against-jackpot-longtermism https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/against-jackpot-longtermism

wnkrshm 3y ago
I think the entire longtermism thing is at the heart something that Camus discusses in the Myth of Sisyphos: We will ultimately all die and be forgotten, what good is struggling, working and living? That is the absurd condition every human being finds themselves in. Camus sees two solutions that have been suggested so far in philosophy: Suicide (which he rejects outright as too easy and lazy) and a "leap of faith". The "leap of faith" consists in finding by passion some irrational, maybe larger purpose outside of what can personally be known or experienced, a belief that negates this absurd condition. Historically, this is the domain of religion and spiritualism. Longtermism seems to me just that: an existentialist escape from nihilism by the promise of some kind of vague purpose with vague metrics and an unknown, irrational payoff you will never know (at least for those subscribing to it without motives of profit).

kkoncevicius 3y ago

Here are a few essay recommendations for anyone interested in more heretical takes on the same topic: - "The fate of empires and search for survival" - "The population cycle drives human history" - "Our fragile intellect"

anovikov 3y ago

I really can't see it as a problem. This can and of course, because there are so many nations in the world, will without doubt be fixed by a rather small and comparatively insignificant step to authoritarianism - on the historical scale of calamities of the XX century with Nazis, Commies, Mao, Pol Pot and whatnot - completely insignificant. Probably even less distressing that a relatively trivial Trump and his loyal "red hats" story. Governments will simply hire women to have children and pay them for that. There are so many poor women, especially many of those who missed their chance to get married due to perceived overabundance of men brought by Tinder - by the time they are ready to settle, it's too late and the government will be right there to offer an alternative. There is no objective issue with fertility. If there is, IVF is a well-debugged and cheap technique that easily scales. Nothing prevents these women from having 6-10 children for a living. Economy won't crumble from that either, costs are easy to calculate and completely acceptable. It can be compensated by withdrawing all other benefits, tax breaks and support to families, because that won't be necessary anymore. Surely when some country starts doing it first, it will be met with outrage. But then a question will hang in the air - what do we do next? Bomb them? An idea too awkward to even suggest. Just let them make a quantum leap in development over everyone else simply for being too uppity? Also a hard sell. Eventually everyone will have to adjust their value system and do the same. It will be a much much smaller step to the right to make than say, legalisation of gay marriage we all just witnessed, was a major step left. It doesn't even mean directly breaking anyone's rights. Not nearly as bad as say China's one-child policy.

sillywalk 3y ago
Is this satire?
- anovikov 3y ago
  I quite seriously don't see a slightest problem about it. It will be cheaper than most welfare states' spending and it will create enough people to make another forms of welfare unnecessary: economic growth will provide enough to old generation through stocks appreciation, and fierce competition will force young generation to learn and develop skills. It's the numbers game after all.

bparsons 3y ago

For the unlimited population growth people, I have one question: What is the carrying capacity of earth if not 8 billion. 16 billion? 80 billion? What quality of life is available on an earth with 80 billion people? If you live in western North America, it is easy to think we have a bunch of empty space available everywhere, but this is not the case on the rest of the planet.

ralph84 3y ago
There’s a lot of empty space everywhere. Entire continents are mostly empty. You may have a preference to leave those continents uninhabited, but if humans need the space they’ll use it. It will be a lot easier to colonize the Australian Outback and Antarctica than Mars.
- defrost 3y ago
  Better yet, learn to live within our means and leave these spaces as they are. To the question asked, 4 -6 billion seems a better range than > 8 billion as our current numbers and expected near future demands are straining resource and energy supplies, piling on waste and taking down non human planet cohabitors.
- sillywalk 3y ago
  "Entire continents are mostly empty." For many reasons. Big one: water. Or lack of. Or too much. Also food.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Food and water are not significant obstacles for a rich society. Desalination would increase the price of water from 0.2% of GDP to 2%. Greenhouses produce 1000x as many calories per acre for 10x the price per calorie. (And a 10x of ingredient prices would only double the final cost)
Qem 3y ago
If we manage to phase out meat consumption, and with it the need to raise farm animals, switching to a full plant-based diet, and improved public transportation to the point car use become an exception, I bet the planet could hold twice the current population without significantly raising environmental impact. We waste a lot of resources feeding and sheltering cattle and automobiles instead of people.

benterix 3y ago

There are basically two reasons. The first one: > A combination of rapid economic development, very high levels of education among young adults, very competitive labor market, long work hours, unaffordable housing, traditional gender norms and persistent gender inequalities in work and family life have created a perfect storm — conditions that make it very difficult for young people to marry and pursue their fertility plans and the second one: > The research I have been conducting with my colleagues shows that the appeal of marriage and having children has been vanishing among the young adults and many of them are likely to stay unmarried, childfree and without a partner. And this is very real. Men increasingly don't want to marry because they perceive the current system as unfair. Women increasingly don't want to marry because they don't want to settle for anything less than a certain threshold that is increasingly difficult to find. This trend is clear everywhere in the West.

sillywalk 3y ago
Having children is crazy expensive. Also in a world of climate chaos and ecological collapse, a lot of younger people don't want to bring kids into the world.
keyle 3y ago
As a father of 2, my fate is sealed. But I can totally understand the above points as being true. Being a parent is the most difficult, most expensive and longest job I've ever taken on. And I've moved around the world by myself, which is a joke in comparison. On paper, children do not make sense what-so-ever. Thankfully, in reality, I cannot imagine living one day without my kids. They give me life, strength and purpose like nothing ever has. Having kids is playing life in hard mode.
- kbenson 3y ago
  Having kids is actually playing rather than being a bystander for the vast majority of people. How many people actually have an impact that actually means anything to the future otherwise? Vanishingly few.
  - 3y ago

eucryphia 3y ago

Hey Socialists, the voluntary euthanasia society has a solution to this, you go first, we’ll clean up the mess and join you later, OK?

chilmers 3y ago

This article doesn't seem to consider the role of natural selection on birthrate, but presumably this will act to arrest the decline eventually? Presuming individual desire to reproduce is variable and can be influenced by your genes, then individuals with a stronger desire to reproduce will be overrepresented in each new generation. Individuals for whom birth control is less effective, who stay fertile longer, etc. will presumably also be overrepresented. At some point I would expect this to lead to a return to growth.

nologic01 3y ago

The fixation with N, the size of the human system is absurd, when for all practical purposes the two attributes that really matter are i) the impact of each individual on the biosphere (human - external interactions, or h-e) and its long term biophysical stability and ii) the internal relations of individuals (human - human interactions, h-h, also known as economics, politics etc.) and its long term socioeconomic stability Alarmism regarding either over or under population usually has hidden agendas and unspoken assumptions as to what is desired state of the human system and the stability or continuation of certain past and current arrangements, the dominance of certain tribes over others etc. What complicates the discussion is the enormous unevenness in the distribution of both important factors mentioned above and the resulting wealth and quality-of-life gradients across the planet. In turn this results from the (relatively) slow timescale of technological diffusion which involves complex cultural phenomena and conflicts. A cursory discussion of the intricate web of social dynamics, dependencies and inequalities and how they affect "N". When people complain about how "expensive" it is to raise kids we need to recognize the changing meaning of "raising kids": from the pool of cheap labor that this was historically, to the growing amount of individual attention lavished on kids in the developed world today. Yet that attention requires societal resources. Between parents, various providers and (potentially) a subsidy from the commons some economic equilibrium must be found. On the other hand why would economically active parents not be able to "afford" raising kids to the available and desired standard? One factor (among many) might be that their own economic output is devalued as a result of others doing the same work while aspiring to a lower standard of living. Back to the question of optimal N. In a sustainable global economy (conditioning on meeting the h-e, h-h challenges to an adequate degree) I suspect that N is actually irrelevant within a very broad range. In a sense the attention we pay to population numbers is a measure of how primitive our societies.

einpoklum 3y ago

> many demographers still believed that the very low fertility rates then prevalent in Europe ... would eventually ... converge close to two children per woman Well, wont it? We've not seem European population (as opposed to fertility rate) drop significantly enough for us to determine whether or not there's a bounce-back. > Fertility is plummeting in places as varied as etc. etc. Well, if a country has a lot of people, living in relative concentration (cities), and in various kinds of duress - does that not make sense? In other words, and focusing just on the population size: Why would drops in fertility stop because of its own self rather than the population size/density? > it imposes unmanageable strains on a society. This is a bit like asking whether accelerating your car does not make you worried about relativistic time dilation. I mean, sure, if fertility were to drop to half-replacement for a couple of decades there would be strains; but even those would be manageable. The post is discussing a fantastical situation. Especially since a large drop in _population_ would spur an increase in fertility by the increased availability of accommodation, potential useful work etc. > The question is what happens if young Koreans get accustomed to living single and child-free lives. Ah, now we're getting to the crux of the matter. Well, the author is conflating several things: 1. bearing children or not 2. raising one's children or not 3. being a single adult or living in a couple (or larger sexual-familial arrangement) (1.) and (2.) have always been in merely partial correlation for men, nor have (1.) and (2.) - not even (2.) and (3.), although (2.) does imply not-(3.) almost always. As for women - recent decades have seen a great increase in women raising children alone, for better or for worse. Finally, in many societies, children are raised more communally beyond a certain age. But even having said that - I am willing to acknowledge the theoretical danger of societies cultivating individuals to be emotionally detached, locked in their individual homes, and reclusive sans Internet - leading also to them not having kids. But talk about that, man, don't beat around the bush! > general public is not clamoring for action... people ... are focused on immediate headaches such as inflation, housing costs or employment. That _is_ clamoring for action! And by the way, it's interesting to check whether a part of the cause for reduced fertility is how Capitalist society now squeezes so many more work hours from women. Yes, it's more egalitarian, and that's a good thing IMHO, but instead of having women working for a wage (close to) full time, the (alienated) work week should be lower for both men and women. > On the Left, it is too often dismissed as a non-issue or welcomed as a step toward degrowth – one whose environmental benefits will surely outweigh any social costs. Many, if not most, on the Left [1] is typically quite concerned about the effects of changes such as demographics on individuals and communities. So, even while welcoming population leveling off in general, it's unfair to suggest that social costs are ignored. At least this is an over-generalization. ---- [1] - I don't mean cultural identity-politics like the US democratic party. But then, the question of what constitutes "The Left" can launch a thousand threads.