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Most demographers now predict that human population will plateau

• daft_pink 3y ago
  I don't think people should worry about it like it's an upcoming disaster, but we should question whether lifestyle choices that do not include or make it significantly less likely to have children are robbing us of important aspects the lifecycle and living a full life.
  • stavros 3y ago
    A much-repeated finding in surveys is that childless adults are happier than parents.
    • itsafarqueue 3y ago
      Keep telling yourself that. Kids can be not just ok, not just good, not just great, but the best thing to happen to you in your life. The studies you refer to regard subjective happiness at particularly difficult child rearing years. Anecdata from older childless people, the emptiness of childless life once you’re beyond young adulthood is sobering and incredibly sad. But yeah hold onto those studies that make you feel ok.
      • Devasta 3y ago
        "Can"
      • Arainach 3y ago
        Having children is a lot like religion: I have many friends with children and they're nice people and there is no issue, but there is a certain subset of the population that spends their entire life telling me how I'm an awful person making a huge mistake for not [having children/being religious] and they are utterly insufferable and not worth associating with.
        • bequanna 3y ago
          I hear you. But I will also tell you that until you have children of your own, it is difficult to appreciate the value they bring. They are work and require sacrifice but it can be an investment that pays huge dividends for the rest of your life. You’re not a bad person if you don’t want children. I think most people with children trying to convince you to have some are well-meaning and just don’t want childless people to miss out. My advice would be: if even a small part of you thinks you want children, just do it. You will grow to take on the new responsibility. But do it no later than age 40.
          • cryptonector 3y ago
            Having children changes you right quick. It's not just that you have to change therefore you do. No, it's that it just changes you. A 20 year old dad can be much more mature than a 40 year old bachelor, but there's no reason to think that the 20 year old dad will have less fun than the 40 year old bachelor. There are tangos (and I'm sure country western, and other songs) that are all about the protagonist having had all these ladies as a young man, but never a woman, or how they left behind the one woman who was their soul mate just to get laid with lots of others. E.g., Ansiedad, by Juan D'Arienzo[0][1]. Here's Nick Freitas talking about getting married at 19[2]. Be sure to read some of the comments. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoHGmN9GTPM [1] https://www.musixmatch.com/es/letras/Juan-D-Arienzo/Ansiedad/traduccion/ingles [2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/u_q8-UNk4TU
            • Arainach 3y ago
              .....and there are plenty of stories of people who got married way too early before they learned who they are and were miserable and got divorced. There are plenty of kids with horror stories of growing up in those loveless households.
              • bequanna 3y ago
                Right. But if you’re mature enough to debate the pros and cons of having children, you hopefully won’t be a bad parent if you do choose have kids.
      • temende 3y ago
        Given how personally you've taken that off-hand comment, I'm more inclined to believe the OP than your reply.
        • lucb1e 3y ago
          I would rather look at the data than at the tone of the comment. The person they were replying to referred to studies; the person you replied to essentially said they love their children and that childless people find emptyness towards the end. I believe both, and both can be true at the same time, especially considering that I've also heard of studies which showed that people tend to diminish past negative experiences. The parent will view the here and now, with happy children that are doing well, and see that all is good and hard work paid off. The childless person may have fewer people around them in later years, but which has a greater sum of total happiness? Being able to do for fifty years whatever your heart desires, or some happy end where someone sees you go and has a lot of pain from that? (I guess the latter might be partially my bias talking, but I truly am trying to view this objectively, like how one can explain both the study and the subjective experience from the person you replied to.)
      • zabzonk 3y ago
        well, if we are going the anecdata route i am 70 and childless and reasonably happy. i suspect i am not alone.
        • amanaplanacanal 3y ago
          I’m 66, and never had kids. Never wanted them. Thinking back now, about what my life would be had I had kids with either of my first two mates, seems like a nightmare. I frankly love my life now.
          • malauxyeux 3y ago
            > I frankly love my life now. What's it like?
      • hotpotamus 3y ago
        Seeing children today makes me feel a deep sense of despair. Watching them pushed as hard as possible into schoolwork and extracurriculars from elementary age so that they might have some shot at a decent life; it feels like watching them being fed into a meat grinder (one that I myself went through and would not wish on anyone). And I didn't have to grow up watching the trees die as my local climate changes from a humid sub-tropic coastal plain into a desert; I couldn't imagine being a child looking ahead at decades of climate change - hell, I'm not that old and so it terrifies me as well. I agree that a world without children sounds sad, but with the way things are going, a world with them seems sadder to me.
        • bad_user 3y ago
          My father was born into a world in which he had to practice subsistence farming if he didn't go to school. His was the first generation for which school was an option, and as a child he traveled 20 km by foot to the school and back, daily. My grandfather lost both parents since childhood, as back then hospitals were places where people went to die. He later fought in WW2, and lost his land to communists. During those years, he also witnessed the soviet-induced famine. We are literally living humanity’s best years. Children today basically get sad for not having enough time to play Roblox. How sad is it that they have schoolwork to do instead of subsistence farming? And we get sad over climate change while stuffing our faces with cheap and delicious food while the AC is on.
          • hotpotamus 3y ago
            I’d say the very definition of depression (and trust me, I’m quite the authority on it) is stuffing your face full of cheap carbs while you never leave your house for fear of heatstroke. Sure gives you time to ponder the meaninglessness of it all though, so if that’s your thing, then the world may indeed be headed in your favorite direction. Just ignore the ever rising levels of depression/anxiety/suicide in teens.
            • bad_user 3y ago
              People dying from the elements is at an all time low! As a teenager, my grandfather lost a set of teeth due to the winter's cold, by sleeping in a cold barn, and he described it as a near-death experience. If anything, for many regions of the world, the weather getting hotter may be a relief for the poor that don't have heating in the winter. We have zero reasons to be more depressed than prior generations. If we are depressed, don't you think the constant fear porn from mass-media has more to do with it? PS: it's not just the carbs that are cheaper and more available. It's everything, including meat. Staples of any healthy vegan diet, like green peas, or lentils, weren't even available until ~1960, after industrial agriculture caught on. Never mind the availability of fresh fruits year-round. My grandparents basically lived on a diet of polenta, potatoes, milk, and eggs, as that's what they were able to grow.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • CatWChainsaw 3y ago
        You sound suspiciously emotional about it.
    • candiddevmike 3y ago
      What age group are they comparing? I would bet later in life the parents are on average happier as the kids become adults. Who cares for the childless?
      • toomuchtodo 3y ago
        Retirement communities and nursing homes are full of parents with children who do not visit them. How selfish does one must be to have children to have a retirement plan? Society cares for the childless, and we will have to learn to manage a declining population because of a population expansion everyone thought (how silly in a finite system) would last forever. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4104138-one-quarter-of-adult-children-estranged-from-a-parent/ https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4104138-one-qua... ("One quarter of adult children estranged from a parent") https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.12898 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.12898 ("Parent–adult child estrangement in the United States by gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality") https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-23124345 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-23124345 ("New China law says children 'must visit parents'")
        • jezzamon 3y ago
          "Society cares for the childless" - across lots of different cultures, and for a lot of human history, that is/was not the case.
          • toomuchtodo 3y ago
            Sure, that's how free will works, both individually and collectively. Sometimes people go without or die alone (even if they have children or society has the means and infrastructure), and that is an unfortunate reality of the human experience. Hopefully we do better but there are no guarantees. Welcome to the shit show, enjoy the ride.
      • bequanna 3y ago
        Bingo. Also, self-reported happiness surveys are BS. I’ve been to Scandinavia. They are definitely NOT among the happiest people in the world. They simply think they should say they are happy.
    • jl6 3y ago
      “All joy, no fun” and vice versa. You can’t really win. Actually, grandparents have it good. They get the fulfilment of family without the relentless grind of parenting.
    • xedrac 3y ago
      I have six kids. During the earlier years of their upbringing, it was very difficult. I'm not surprised surveys would reflect this. But now that they are old enough to be mostly autonomous, I realize it has been the most rewarding experience I think this life has to offer. I often wondered if I had made a mistake by choosing to have kids. Now I am immensely grateful that I stuck with it. I realize it's not for everyone, but I'd like to see such surveys at more advanced ages. I'm willing to bet the findings would be flipped.
      • SirMaster 3y ago
        But why is happiness later better than happiness now? So it only matters how you feel about it at the end? IMO the journey is more important than the end. I’m just asking open ended questions here. I don’t have any answers.
        • ochoseis 3y ago
          > But why is happiness later better than happiness now? Here are a few more to ponder: - Why does the squirrel bury nuts in the warmer months instead of eating them right away? - Why save money instead of spending every paycheck? - Why not spend every day gaming, drinking and smoking?
          • satvikpendem 3y ago
            True, however there's no guarantee that children will take care of you later, many such cases where it doesn't happen. But still, I get your point about hedonism, the Greeks thought about this often.
            • kevinventullo 3y ago
              I think the long-term satisfaction of having happy, healthy adult children is a little deeper than how well they take care of you in old age.
              • 3y ago
    • bequanna 3y ago
      Does this survey ask people after age 45, 55, and so on? The winter can be much colder for those without warm memories of summer.
    • daft_pink 3y ago
      I think the modern day western world is obsessed with "maximizing happiness" as the purpose of life and that's a lifestyle choice that people have adopted as religion plays a lesser role in their lives. I'm not sure we should accept the premise that maximizing subjective happiness is a suitable replacement as if we all just didn't have children and were thus "happier", would the world really work or would there be no future for humanity? I'm not sure what the purpose of life is and obviously for every person that purpose is probably very different, but I'm skeptical of the idea that maximizing subjective happiness is a good life philosophy and it seems like everyone has adopted it everywhere.
      • DandyDev 3y ago
        But what is the alternative? You've said it yourself that religion plays a lesser role in people's lives, so people apparently don't feel they should optimize for a better hypothetical afterlife. What remains are two options: 1. Optimize for the future/betterment of humanity 2. Optimize for your own happiness Option 1 feels a bit like optimizing for something that will always be our of reach for me personally. It's almost like a reverse pyramid game where I'm doing something that only people who will live after me will benefit from. Except they won't really, as they'll be optimizing for yet farther into the future. I'm perfectly happy optimizing to keep the planet a great place to live, but as half of a consciously childless couple I don't feel particularly inclined to make sure that there are actually descendants to enjoy this planet. I'm okay if other species inherit the earth
        • daft_pink 3y ago
          I'm just a commenter on hacker news, I can't tell you what the purpose of life is. Here are some of my thoughts though. I believe that everything should be taken in moderation and that extremes generally are bad, so you should not totally optimize on any one thing, but should generally do somethings you enjoy and some that give you pleasure. You should do somethings for humanity and somethings for the community and to make others do well. You should probably take some ideas from religion and integrate them into your life, but not become a zealot. I think you should try to have children if you can, because children seem to be some aspect of the world and life that's important. I think you should try and make some money and work in a field that get good pay, but that you do enjoy and that's relatively stable. I think you should try and be there for your family and view them as a small community, but not expect anything from them or try and fight with them. I think you should avoid drugs and other things that are generally bad for you if you can. To the people who believe that happiness is the point of life. I also think there is a decent amount of scientific evidence that people's happiness levels are pretty static over time and if you find some success in your life, you will be happy for a short time, but your happiness will return to the static level of your life. I think that people, and things, and many external things cannot make you happy and happiness can only be found from within. However, I don't think that that is the point. I think that our natural dissatisfaction with the world and unhappiness about it is how we make the world a better place and that it is how progress is made by celebrating our wins and then becoming dissatisfied and trying to be better.
  • toomuchtodo 3y ago
    If people want children and can't because of socioeconomic systems (working arrangements, basic living need costs, childcare, etc), society is robbing those potential parents of joy. Conversely, if systems are preventing people who don't want to be parents from affirming those reproductive choices, society is again robbing those potential childfree people of joy (as well as the suffering of unwanted children brought into the world; roughly ~40% of annual pregnancies in the US and globally are unintended [1]). If both cohorts are supported and optimized for, and population decline continues, the population decline is not something to be solved for. Optimize for societal systems to continue to function at certain levels in the face of a declining population [2]. As usual, Japan will lead the way and show us the future. EDIT: Ripped straight from the piece in question: > People aren’t selfish for choosing smaller families. We are powerfully programmed by Darwinian evolution to want to have offspring, or at least to have sex, but women are also endowed with the instinct to limit reproduction to the number who can be raised with a high probability of success in life. When women have large numbers of children, it’s often a result of high child mortality or lack of power over their own lives. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36127247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36127247 (citations) [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37717497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37717497
    • RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
      > as well as the suffering of unwanted children brought into the world; roughly ~40% of annual pregnancies in the US and globally are unintended [1] Unintended pregnancy != unwanted child. There are a huge number of children born whose conception was unintended but have always been loved and wanted by their parents starting at birth or even during pregnancy.
      • toomuchtodo 3y ago
        Sure, but we should be driving the number of unwanted children to as close to zero as possible. Lots of work left to go in that regard based on the data. Hopefully unintended but wanted children are loved adequately.
  • foogazi 3y ago
    > but we should question whether lifestyle choices that do not include or make it significantly less likely to have children are robbing us of important aspects the lifecycle and living a full life I did question it and answered that to each their own, it’s an entirely personal choice
  • mola 3y ago
    It's not just choices, it's the economic reality. I don't want my children to grow poor..my generation knows how poor and not poor looks like, while older generations were generally poor ignorance made bringing more kids into that not such a big deal. But we are not ignorant, and we know that this economy is very good at giving us the shiny but non important stuff, while depriving us a stable home healthcare and education. At that, I'd rather have less children that are more affluent. And I'd rather economy change it's broken record of growth at all costs, cause that's definitely not sustainable.
    • bequanna 3y ago
      > At that, I'd rather have less children that are more affluent. I can tell you that the affluent upper middle class people I’ve encountered do not seem to be (on average) any happier than middle middle class people. Nicer cars, bigger houses but not happier.
      • matthewdgreen 3y ago
        I have seen what old age and infirmity looks like when you’re poor and it isn’t always that pretty. We all get old and fall apart eventually, but the ability to choose your situation (and take care of yourself so that you make it farther into old age with good health) matters a whole lot. This doesn’t make everyone implicitly happy, but it gives you a better chance.
        • bequanna 3y ago
          I didn’t include poor in my comment. Poor people (lower and lower middle) seem to have a much lower quality of life and general happiness vs middle middle and upper middle.
      • mola 3y ago
        I think middle class just doesn't exist anymore,or won't exist soon enough. Concentration of wealth killed it. Hence less children.
  • throwaway5959 3y ago
    Not having kids is great. I thought I’d regret it but the older I get the happier I am with the decision. If you want to have them, great, but they’re not for everyone.
• ftyers 3y ago
  https://archive.ph/n9dHT https://archive.ph/n9dHT
• stavros 3y ago
  What do you mean? I worry it won't happen.
  • RGamma 3y ago
    Also, how it happens. By reasonable self-regulation or by the ecosphere getting a heart attack. Now what's more likely...
  • slothtrop 3y ago
    Yeah, though it seems reliably projected that population growth will stagnate. If the trend of developing countries lifting themselves out of poverty continues, we should expect it. There are obvious policies we could reach for if we really wanted to improve the fertility rate, but it clearly doesn't matter that much. If Japan's leadership was so worried about fertility, they'd have better work-life balance by now. They do not care, because it does not matter.
• anon3949494 3y ago
  We should seek sustainable human population on this planet, rather than pursuing the conventional approach of relentless growth.
  • OrvalWintermute 3y ago
    > rather than pursuing the conventional approach of relentless growth. Disinformation. Most of the world has a negative birth rate https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-rapid-decline-of-global-birth-rates/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-rapid-decline-of...
    • dieortin 3y ago
      The world as a whole has a positive birth rate. The number of arbitrary land sections with negative or positive birth rates is quite irrelevant.
      • OrvalWintermute 3y ago
        This is incorrect. 2.2 per woman is replacement rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility#/media/File:Total_Fertility_Rate_Map_by_Country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility#/med... Most of Africa is replacing their population but they have a higher death rate than many other places. Everywhere else in the aggregate is negative with a few exceptions.
        • slaw 3y ago
          > According to World Bank data, the global fertility rate was 2.4 children per woman in 2019. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fertility-rate https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fer...
          • OrvalWintermute 3y ago
            you're mixing apples and oranges. Replacement rate in a country with a good health system where people average longer life expectancies is 2.2 births per woman. Replacement rate needs be much higher than 2.2 in a country with high infant mortality, long wars, etc, such as exists in much of Africa, where birth rates are the highest.
• alfor 3y ago
  Look at Japan, Korea, Italy to get an idea of what is to come. It’s not pretty. All of our infrastructure was build in constant growth. That mean that we cannot pay to maintain it, we wont have the people to do the job, we can’t keep our standart of care for the elderly. With the transition to clean energly, information technology, we can keep on increase the population no problem, we keep on being more efficient and cleaner each year. Yes, I think it’s a catastrophe, but we will understand a generation too late. Maybe AI and robotic will fill the gap
  • polotics 3y ago
    Do you have an actual figure in mind when you write "With the transition to clean energy"? The reality is much much more bleak, you're looking at a very small chunk of total energy consumption that's using renewable, coal has only been going up and up the past years, and how sustainable the new renewables (non hydro) will be in a world not propped-up by cheap fossil fuels remains to be tested. I was hoping Bloomberg would call a spade a spade and acknowledge a guess of the real humans-carrying capacity of spaceship earth once it stops running on fumes... My guess: one tenth of our current peak.
    • dalyons 3y ago
      There are reasons to be hopeful : https://patrickcollison.com/solar https://patrickcollison.com/solar https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/our-climate-change-debates-are-out https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/our-climate-change-debates-are... We will replace most fossil fuels with solar. Will it be in time? Maybe not, but it’s not hopeless.
      • Projectiboga 3y ago
        Our planet was 20 degrees warmer overall that last time the CO2 levels were over 420ppm. And the level of rise over the recent past is totally unprecedented. Climate zones are moving tens of miles per decade north, far faster than forests can adapt. Things are going to get very crazy and the hunan population won't just decline gradually.
      • 3y ago
• eimrine 3y ago
  > now some economists are warning of a future with too few. For example, economist Dean Spears from the University of Texas has written that an “unprecedented decline” in population will lead to a bleak future of slower economic growth and less innovation. This some economists' BS becomes more and more annoying.
  • hcks 3y ago
    Why? The real BS is from the people arguing the earth is over populated actually
• simonbarker87 3y ago
  Isn't the primary reason to worry becuase our global economy is founded on debt? Debt only works if the future is more valuable than the present by at least the interest rate on the loan writ large across the global economy. The easiest way to make sure the future is more valuable than the present is to have more people than we have now, more people working, more people generating value, more people consuming etc. If there are less people then we need to find a different way to make the future more valuable than the present to pay off that debt.
  • itsoktocry 3y ago
    >the future more valuable than the present to pay off that debt. Your comment seems to imply something negative about debt, when in fact it's exactly the answer you're looking for. Debt allows people to build things now at the expense of future earnings; it pulls forward technological advances. Surely there are better ways to organize society, but easy debt is not inherently terrible.
    • Beijinger 3y ago
      "Your comment seems to imply something negative about debt, when in fact it's exactly the answer you're looking for. Debt allows people to build things now at the expense of future earnings; it pulls forward technological advances." Yes, but wealth and energy are linked. And debt can only be paid off with more debt. This is no problem, as long as the future is getting better and richer. In a finite world, this must come to an end at one point. "Surely there are better ways to organize society, but easy debt is not inherently terrible" Nobody has been able to come up with a better way. And there is some inherent danger in this. https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-state-economy-except-at-a-very-basic-level/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-sta...
      • ForHackernews 3y ago
        Theoretically if AI, fusion power, asteroid mining etc. come to pass, many resources we think of as finite might become functionally unlimited. A post-scarcity society could optimise for human happiness, rather than optimising for workers to keep the machines turning.
• smokel 3y ago
  What is the track record of demographers predicting 75 years into the future? I guess these models assume that neither human cloning nor interstellar space travel will take off in this century. Models in 1923 probably didn't expect another world war, birth control, or the crazy levels of agriculture we see filling up our satellite pictures. How does one sanely account for such changes in these long-term models?
  • natch 3y ago
    Once the birth rate for a particular year is set, you can’t exactly go back in time and change it. So you don’t need to be a trained demographer to see that we are on a crashing trajectory. Beyond that, perhaps the models do assume that future birth rates don’t wildly depart from historical ranges. Seems a reasonable assumption to me. But sure we could somehow get artificial wombs and an interest in using them, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Seems unlikely though.
    • tuatoru 3y ago
      Despite a several decades long decline in total fertility rate, most demographic models I have seen assume that lifetime fertility will magically bounce back to replacement level. Underpants gnomes models. Bounce-back could happen, but there is no understanding in governments of why the decline is occurring, nor what it takes to reverse it,* so it is unlikely. * Exhorting people to return to traditional family values, as the new PM of Italy does, is likely to crash fertility faster.
  • xmprt 3y ago
    Full human cloning won't take off because it's too unethical - not because of lack of technological capabilities.
    • ivalm 3y ago
      Why is it unethical (if we are good enough to avoid genetic abnormalities/mistakes)?
• throwaway5959 3y ago
  Excellent. Now let’s shrink it and reduce the consumption of those left.
  • blubbity 3y ago
    Agreed! You can start by getting rid of whatever device you used to post that response and not buying any more electronics. Bet you won’t!
    • xmprt 3y ago
      I hate these unproductive and snarky replies to calls for change (although I don't agree with the parent commenter that the best solution is to reduce the population). You have no idea what that person is doing to offset their consumption. Maybe they're posting from a library computer. Maybe they bought their device second hand. Maybe (and this is actually the case for a lot of people), they received their device from their company and use it to do work as well as for personal use, thereby reducing the total number of devices in the world. It's like if southerners in the civil war called northerners hypocrites for eating food harvested by slaves while also advocating for abolishing slavery. Perhaps northerners were hypocrites but what does that make the southerners in that case?
      • throwaway5959 3y ago
        Thanks. I’m not having any kids so I think I’m doing my part.
      • blubbity 3y ago
        You’re right. Sorry.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • Racing0461 3y ago
    bill gates first.
  • 3y ago
• AussieWog93 3y ago
  Was talking about this with my wife fairly recently, and both of us see this as a temporary blip. Falling fertility rates will cause either the subsets of society that stopped valuing families and children to quite literally go extinct, or for our culture as a whole to collapse. In either case, the net long term effect on the human race is negligible. Either East Asia and the West recover in a tradfem renaissance (since a far greater proportion of the population as a whole were raised by traditionalists) or it is forced on us when cultures that didn't stop reproducing turn around and colonise us back. You can look at the demographics of Jews in Israel for an example of the "good ending".
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • satvikpendem 3y ago
    I'm not sure why it'd collapse when the UN predicts it'll stabilize around 5 billion, as when we were previously at 5 billion, our society didn't collapse.
    • ForHackernews 3y ago
      This is probably just run-of-the-mill decline of the west scaremongering. The idea is that if too many immigrants with a different skin tone arrive, then society is destroyed ("forced on us when cultures that didn't stop reproducing turn around and colonise us back.") I guess I'm an old school melting pot guy, but I firmly believe western society will maintain its historical winning streak, thanks in part to the efforts of millions of immigrants eager to contribute to their energy to its values and success. "Tolstoy Is the Tolstoy of the Zulus" and all that. Sod the xenophobes.
  • solardev 3y ago
    It's not just (and IMO, probably not primarily) a question of personal values and desires, but structural issues too. Raising kids is expensive as hell in many societies. Look at Japan, one of the most staunchly traditionalist societies that can't breed because everyone is too busy working and being depressed. The US too, most people who have kids are bringing them into a society of wage slavery and extremely limited social mobility, in an increasingly unstable world. Even if you liked kids, why would you subject them to such a poor start?
• concordDance 3y ago
  Human population will also change a lot. Subpopulations with very high fertility (like fundamentalist Christians or hassidic Jews or the population of Chad) will be a much larger proportion of the population while groups like the South Koreans decline. I expect this to have pretty large effects,though predicting what those will be seems difficult.
  • krona 3y ago
    The Past is a Future Country: The Coming Conservative Demographic Revolution explores the possible consequences in great detail. It's happened many times before, though never on this scale.
    • rayiner 3y ago
      Interestingly, global religiosity is projected to increase by 2050, because most of the atheist/secular societies (especially China) are in a state of population decline: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/12/25/460797744/a-religious-forecast-for-2050-atheism-is-down-islam-is-rising https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/12/25/4607977...
      • amanaplanacanal 3y ago
        I don’t think we can assume that children will continue in their parents religion though. The US, for instance, is much less religious than it used to be.
        • krona 3y ago
          The genetics (and heritability more generally) of religiosity are fairly well understood.
          • jfengel 3y ago
            Fairly, but Western countries started as very religious and are losing that at varying rates. Heritability is real but far from absolute. All other things being equal I'd expect it to reach an equilibrium. I don't think all other things are equal in this case, and nonbelief becomes more attractive over time (for better or worse).
• oezi 3y ago
  Hans Rosling argued this very convincingly more than 10 years ago: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI
• fasteddie31003 3y ago
  I’ve recently had the revelation that belief in evolution seems to be negatively correlated with one’s replacement rate. Let that sink in.
  • kyleyeats 3y ago
    Does this enable you to hate people more efficiently, or...?
    • s_dev 3y ago
      I think he's alluding to 'Idiocracy'.
  • Nevermark 3y ago
    I prefer to call it "understanding of evolution". Not critiquing your comment, just adding a viewpoint. "Belief" is a right to be asserted bluntly. People feel socially comfortable saying they "believe" in all kinds of non-evidence based conjectures. But ask someone whether they "understand" evolution, and they are likely to give the question more thought. An unapologetic "no" has a bit of self-inflicted Socratic burn to it.
    • bhelkey 3y ago
      One can understand something and not believe it is true. I'm sure flat earthers understand the concept of a sphere or more specifically a oblate spheroid. They just don't believe that earth is that shape.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > I'm sure flat earthers understand the concept of a sphere or more specifically a oblate spheroid This isn’t understanding the concept of a spherical planet. The radial symmetry of gravity, for instance, is critical to understanding why penguins aren’t constantly falling off Antarctica. Someone can understand the physical possibility of a sphere without grasping the fuller concept.
• standardUser 3y ago
  On the one hand, humans are absolute dogshit at predicting the future. I mean, the year 2100? Give me a fucking break. On the other hand, the demographic shift is as convincing and well-supported as any theory in all of social science. I imagine advances in fertility technology will change the landscape of procreation in ways we cannot yet predict. It's also possible that major catastrophes could change population dynamics, not necessarily by mass deaths, but by driving some populations back along the demographic transition where having many children is once again the best strategy.
  • jfengel 3y ago
    Also life extension technology. Thus far it has been largely ineffective but there's no reason to think it's insoluble. Plus of course the "singularity" which, if real, could knock all predictions straight into the bin.
  • sl-1 3y ago
    I agree, these predictions are usually just statistical inferences without any believable model. Models expect everything continuing like it is and not having any discontinuities. I personally predict that we will fuck things up and end up with huge population decline because of raising fossil fuel costs, climate change, ecosystem destabilizaion and wars. Even feedin 8 billion people is a huge ask in this declining world.
• graycat 3y ago
  (1) Going Extinct: In the US and likely in all the developed countries, on average the number of children per woman is less than 2. Soooo, in those countries we are going extinct. Or, the population is shrinking. Right, this simple fact is made more complicated by mass immigration. But, still, we have the lesson: In a developed country without lots of immigration, population is shrinking. Eventually the immigration will slow and then the population will start shrinking again. (2) Cities. The economies in developed countries are heavily about just their cities. (3) Land. The cities have a big problem: They are short on land and have no way to make more. So, house prices increase. Paying workers more will not create more land but will likely increase house prices. Currently, in large US cities, house prices, that is, owner occupied, single family shelter, are too high for doing well at family formation, e.g., wife a full-time mother. E.g., Dad got a Master's, got married, got a job teaching in high school, bought a house, and started a family. So, I guessed that I should get an education, get married, buy a house, start a family. So, I got a Ph.D. in applied math, got good at computing, got married, was never able to get the down payment or qualify for a mortgage, buy a house, or start a family. Due to the pressures, visiting at her family farm, my wife, brilliant, astoundingly hard worker, PBK, Summa Cum Laude, Ph.D., killed herself. So, she never had any children, and neither have I. I'm still hoping to be able to buy a house but so far still never have. So, in the case of my wife and I, due to the high costs of a house, we didn't have any children and contributed to population shrinking. (4) More Land. Away from the larger cities, the US has lots of land, without buildings, not very good for farming, not very expensive. This cheap land has not solved the problem of houses being too expensive for family formation because (a) the jobs are in the cities and (b) that cheap land is too far from such a job to commute from a house on the cheap land. E.g., trying to make money enough for family formation, I was working at FedEx. My wife was still in our apartment in Maryland working on her Ph.D. With some computing and applied math, twice I'd saved the company from going out of business. A crucial investor on the BoD told me "Just keep doing what you are doing until someone tells you to stop." Looking back, I was in effect reporting to the BoD and the CEO. So, in the work, I was doing very well. My official management kept trying to fire me (such is illustrated well in the movie Godzilla). And the promised stock was 18 months late. I had mostly been working in Memphis -- my office was next to the CEO's (who put up with my late night violin practice of the Bach Chaconne). As it was, I didn't see a reasonably feasible path from the FedEx job to family formation. So, maybe I needed more education and applied to graduate school. I was accepted at Princeton, Brown, Cornell, and a fourth, and decided to go to the fourth for an applied math Ph.D. I submitted my letter of resignation from FedEx. On my last day, the CEO called me to his office and said: "You know, if you stay, you are in line for $500,000 of FedEx stock?" No, I didn't "know" that. The first time I'd saved FedEx was with some software I wrote from my apartment in Maryland -- the output from the software resolved a crucial issue for the BoD -- that's why in effect partly I was reporting to the BoD. Some days before my resignation I'd outlined a project that promised to save FedEx $millions a year in operating costs, and the CEO had written a memo making that MY project (implicitly reporting only to the CEO), and I planned to do the work also from my apartment in Maryland. But there on the last day, the CEO said I'd have to work in Memphis. Since the promised stock was already 18 months late and since the $500,000 was not written down or solid, I didn't trust the promise of the $500,000. And without FedEx stock, I didn't see a reasonably feasible path to family formation working at FedEx. For more, my best computing, a consultant I wanted to use, my apartment and wife were all in Maryland. I'd proven I could do good work, save the company, working in Maryland. So, since the CEO said I'd have to work in Memphis, I left FedEx and got the Ph.D. (5) New Solution: (a) Still have a job in a big city. (b) Have a house, nice yard, maybe a small lake or a stream with a walking bridge over the stream, own water well, septic tank, and drain field, use wood for some of the winter heat. (c) Work from home and interact with the job via the Internet. (d) Occasionally drive into the office in the city but skip this on snow days! (6) Population Growth. With this solution, we can do well with family formation, and the population can grow again.
• baka367 3y ago
  The high birth rate communities also tend to lack the technological acumen. Of they take over the population, medical, agricultural outputs would decrease. Amplify that a bit and they will likely control themselves well through starvation
• stephc_int13 3y ago
  From a demographic perspective I think it is safe to say that human population is not exactly on the brink of extinction. I think there is ample buffer for future generations to correct the population trajectory if under-population happens to be a non-imaginary issue for our species. In my opinion, many ecological problems would be simpler to solve with half or a quarter of the current population. And the imbalance between old and young would only last for a few decades.
  • RetpolineDrama 3y ago
    Our entire global economic order is built on top of infinite-growth, and the young outnumbering the old. Negative slope population will lead to mass economic instability and eventually war.
    • marnett 3y ago
      Even in a post industrial economy?
    • wizofaus 3y ago
      Economic instability, yes, that seems inevitable as people adjust to new realities. But what would be the trigger for war if there are fewer and fewer of us wanting access to land/natural resources? Sure, access to manmade resources (and other services) will become an issue but it won't be much of a war if it's the older/less fit members of society fighting against the rest for their share...
      • tuatoru 3y ago
        The trigger for war is variability of the rate of decline among different countries with different ideologies and different outgroups. A USA with 70 million people would feel very threatened by an Iraq with 300 million, for example. Just as Russia feels very threatened by Europe now.
        • wizofaus 3y ago
• hnburnsy 3y ago
  Maybe this isnt fair but we had demographers hired by our school district who could not reliably predict student population 2 years out. I watched them fail for 15 years.
  • ForHackernews 3y ago
    It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.
    • coding123 3y ago
      I would imagine they were only looking at past trends of the school district population - but the reality is the most information would be USPS address changes, data that various companies like Zillow have, and new building permits.
    • eastbound 3y ago
      The whole goal of science is the ability to make predictions, however small they are, about the future. Maybe with an uncertainty range.
  • losteric 3y ago
    Failed in what sense? Completely off, or close enough (like weather forecasting)? Is it possible a school district couldn't afford the best services? Or that their goal wasn't necessarily the population number but rather an analyst of the causative forces and directional trends?
    • hnburnsy 3y ago
      Excellent points, since school funding is student count dependent it was critical for it to be close. They mostly predicted increases but year after year it was flat or when decreasing. Maybe politics were involved, and like I said my comment probably isnt fair.
      • losteric 3y ago
• Joel_Mckay 3y ago
  "The beautiful ones" is an irreversible phenomena. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U The amygdala properties in both primates and rodents, suggests tournament species often destroy themselves though local extinction events periodically. It is in our nature, and an inescapable part of our biology. Perhaps these scientists will find some secret to curb peoples worst impulse control issues. Likely wishful thinking given the level of vitriol on the web these days. lol =)
• AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  1) there already sre too many people. The fact it will plateau at a number larger than this doesn't really matter 2) actual population count isnt really important. What is really important is the total resource consumption rate of our population, and the fact it will undeniably increase as the 3-4 billion Indians and Chinese ascend to first world economy lifestyles and resource usage So it's a double whammy: still more people, and way more resources.
  • mensetmanusman 3y ago
    China halves by 2100.
    • lucb1e 3y ago
      okay so the population goes × 0.5 (per your comment) but if resource consumption per capita goes × ~4 up to rich countries' standards (see e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712) then we'd still need double the resources for that country alone, and they're not the only country that wouldn't mind living like 'us'. The person that got downvoted above you is onto something I'm afraid, inconvenient as that may be to internalize
  • InSteady 3y ago
    And emissions continue to rise, ecologies continue to be devastated in the quest for growth and rising standards of living.
• hankman86 3y ago
  There are nevertheless vast differences between demographic developments in different parts of the world. Many wealthy countries will see their population decline - unless they manage to compensate the same with drastically increased levels of immigration. It would take a complete reversal of policy to allow for this to happen in traditionally immigration-sceptic cultures like Japan or South Korea. Immigration from other cultures brings its own set of problems of course and may lead to major social and economic issues in these countries. Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce. It may take at least one generation or more to overcome this at great economic cost. But then there are also completely speculative developments that might happen as a society’s population retracts. Property ownership is poised to be more easily attainable for average-income people. As a result, there may be an increase in single-earner families, where the spouse can devote her (or his) time to looking after the children. Which in turn may increase the average number of children that families can afford to have. Again, that’s entirely hypothetical, just one scenario that could result from all this.
  • sdsd 3y ago
    The birthrate in most of the third world is also declining, fwiw, and most of these countries are becoming richer. Immigration is a good solution if you have a low-context, high-income country, that poor or chaotic neighbors want to live in, but that's not a given and won't work everywhere forever
  • f38zf5vdt 3y ago
    If that were true birth rates in places like Japan, with chronically depressed real estate values, would be skyrocketing over time. But it doesn't seem to be the case: more educated people appear to be less apt to have children.
  • ok_computer 3y ago
    I wonder if in-country population redistribution would counteract any alleviation of realestate prices. The US has many landlocked, east coast, and great lakes city outflows where you can buy property inexpensively. But people tend to not want to raise families or retire needing medical care in declining areas given the choice to leave. New York city Manhattan has 600k fewer people than 100 years ago and property price to average salary keeps climbing. I don’t know what the magic is that to expand property ownership. You see cities with thousands of blighted homes and new build suburbs developing 30-90 min away at prices that are a stretch for even well paid middle class jobs. I think affordable home building and financing could happen somehow but the trend is not going in that direction.
• stainablesteel 3y ago
  and no one wants to show a visual of these models apparently because afaik population collapse is an exponential process, and the economy undergoes shrinkages and reoptimizations on the way down that have knock on effects in the same neighborhood that controls population collapse is not a controlled process, most boom and bust cycles throughout history look rapid when viewed over the backdrop of 1000 years, based on the historical precedents i'm familiar with there's a higher chance of this being the back end of a roller coaster if people don't obsess over having kids as much as people obsess over climate change
• deleted 3y ago
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• trynumber9 3y ago
  In effect our modern economy has determined children cost a lot despite the fact that they are a benefit to the country as a whole (is that wrong?). Do you want to take some portion of your wages to perpetuate humanity? And given the condition of our society (I speak as an USian) why bother paying to have children, providing child care and instilling an education? I can't fault people for saying no thanks - or one child is enough - to that "bargain".
  • wolverine876 3y ago
    The choice to have children is usually not an economic consideration. I think there are more fundamental and higher purposes involved.
    • ftxbro 3y ago
      > The choice to have children is usually not an economic consideration. This is obviously the nicer sounding position but I wonder if it's the true one.
  • fallingfrog 3y ago
    Raising a child- especially in the early years when they’re completely helpless- takes way, way more money and time and effort than the lords of capitalism who make the rules around such things realize. They don’t know, because they they have nannies and unlimited money, so they can’t really understand why people want more time off work and cheaper childcare options. On another note, why is it impossible to find part time professional work? 40 hours is way, way too much when you’re raising kids but unless I want to work at Wendy’s I have no choice but to knuckle under and just bear the weight of basically working 100 hour weeks (if you count taking care of kids as also being work of a sort). Atlas should have been portrayed as a single mom.
  • lucb1e 3y ago
    > despite the fact that they are a benefit to the country as a whole (is that wrong?). Not in moderation. But I don't think that it would be helpful for most countries to have more people in them than they already do, let alone the earth as a whole. We could distribute better (allow people from inhospitable places to choose to live and work somewhere else if they want to) as well as slowly and carefully bring the number of people down so we don't need 5 earths to have everyone live at today's rich-country standards. I'm sure we can still have billions of people, especially with advancements we'll have made by the time that we'd get close to reducing the current number by so much as a few percent, but for the time being: more is not the solution. What made you think that?
• ummonk 3y ago
  Globally available birth control is just a new selective pressure that humans are beginning to adapt to. Assuming ASI doesn’t erase the human species, humans will be back to expanding towards Malthusian limits within a few generations, rebounding from the coming population plateau / decline.
• bohadi 3y ago
  I was interested in historical demographic predictions. What did the UN project for 2020 in 1950, 1960, 1970 etc. Unfortunately pre-1950 demographic prediction is a little harder to find. I wonder why* Anyway a reliable source is found here: https://ourworldindata.org/population-projections https://ourworldindata.org/population-projections In summary historical population projections have been pretty accurate but not in the way you expect. *One thought is that because current date may become a historical inflection point similar to the first half of the 20th century, current date demographic statistics may be too important to put much stock in. Sobering.
  • ignorethefacts 3y ago
    That's a great resource, thanks. It's what I expected, what the UN predicts follows the agenda of the day. Previous it was the fear of some enemy population and now they are trying to normalise the idea of population reduction.
    • bohadi 3y ago
      indeed the prediction and agenda go hand-in-hand it could not be otherwise else the agenda would alter the prediction until the new prediction and the new agenda match interestingly this operation is the same as an agentic ai
• Slava_Propanei 3y ago
  [dead]
• dragon_greens 3y ago
  Now? Hans Rosling was talking about this over a decade ago. https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_growth_box_by_box https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_gro...
• nojvek 3y ago
  Housing is obscenely expensive for young couples in most major metros. Most places don’t pay well enough to afford daycare. Women want careers too. Few countries have comprehensive parental leave. Can’t complain about less kids and have policies which make raising kids a risky financial and life decision. We gotta do a better job at providing for the kids we already have.
  • ekianjo 3y ago
    > Can’t complain about less kids People had nothing after ww2 yet had a lot more kids. We are way richer now in comparison so the cost of kids is really a bad argument to make.
    • nly 3y ago
      After ww2 lots more women didn't work and so could provide childcare. The problem today is a 2 full-time salaried income is required to be able to afford a decent standard of living for a family, whereas even as late as the 80s it was feasibly to raise a family on a single median income.
      • Earw0rm 3y ago
        "decent standard of living" has changed a bit since WW2 also. Granted, it'd be hard on a single median income today, but if you're making two, three times median - in your 20s - it should be doable. And that's everyone on a six figure tech salary, to start off with.
      • pmg102 3y ago
        Are you genuinely arguing that people in 2023 are poorer than they were in 1950? This would be astonishing if true wouldn't it? Hasn't GDP tripled or something since then? I think it's more likely to be expectation inflation. People in 2023 just wouldn't be satisfied to live the life people were satisfied to live in 1950. A thought experiment could be: - There are people that earn 100kpa and people that earn 50kpa - Both kinds of people think they "need two incomes to live these days" - Obviously the 100kpa people could ditch a whole income and live at the level of the two 50kpa people -- but they wouldn't choose to, they'd rather have the lifestyle of a 200kpa household
• m3kw9 3y ago
  People lose track of time having fun or career building.
• smsm42 3y ago
  Wait, weren't we supposed to worry about overpopulation, resource starvation and ultimately societal collapse and massive death toll from the planet not being able to support it? Now I learn the scientists also predict the drastic decline, and the plateau. All the scenarios are united by the conclusion that whatever happens, we are all doomed. It's nice to know something remains constant.
• squokko 3y ago
  People who didn't worry about the "population bomb" were considered hopeless denialists just ~15 years ago. People who didn't keep their kids at home for a year were considered hopeless denialists just ~2 years ago. And now people who don't think the world is going to boil itself into steam are considered hopeless denialists.
• noobermin 3y ago
  So, is this good or is this bad? I thought for years, the argument was that "peak child" is the reason we would not reach a malthusian overpopulation dystopia. I get that people and societies cannot envision a world without infinite growth, but the other end of that was coming against natural limits of resource consumption. Which is it? Was Malthus right or will we naturally reach peak child and that's also bad? Both out-comes are bad? You cannot believe both, otherwise, you need to explicitly say what that secret third thing of a perspective is.
• IceMichael 3y ago
  Noone needs a paywall article, why does this even come up here?
• ThinkBeat 3y ago
  If the population stops growing wont that crash the economy and fabric of society as well? (as long as we define an economy to be healthy as long as it grows, something that will eventually stop) States with social welfare and universal education and healthcare, require there to be X number of people working for every person that needs resources from the state, or who work for the state. Plus all the regular spending police, firefighteres, military, courts, the state itself (politicians, bureaucrats, tax collectors), garbage collection, and so on and so on. If that pyramid becomes two parallel lines that is not going to work well. If the pyramid starts inverting, we would be in deep trouble.
• 0dayz 3y ago
  It's very surprising how little we know as to why people don't get kids, since almost every single common idea is wrong to some degree. * We don't get a baby boom after a war (any country whove been to war) * not from good housing (japan and Singapore have really good housing) * not from conservative traditionalist religious society (most of eastern Europe and Russia). The exception is extreme impoverishment and religious society, both if which are not sustainable. It's why the baby boom of the 1940s should be studied like no tomorrow, since it's the exception to the rule in almost every country. For instance in Sweden the biggest reason to not get kids is that people don't feel ready or haven't experienced the world enough. At this point I just don't know what can be done beyond growing babies in labs and pay huge sums to incentive people to donate sperm/eggs.
  • hotpotamus 3y ago
    Look at it the other way, do we know why people do want kids? When I ask people here (and I think I'm considered rude for doing so), I get many different answers, none of which really satisfy me. It seems to be like religion; something I'm not capable of believing in. My grandmothers both participated in the baby boom, yet one said she never really wanted children, it was just something that everyone did back then. The other grandmother never said much at all but always seemed very unhappy until she died a fairly early death from cancer that she opted not to fight. Actually I do remember her saying that she should have stopped after one child (my aunts and uncles had very problematic lives; a trait I seem to share). It's a weird thing being descended from people who seemed indifferent at best to the whole concept of reproduction.
    • 0dayz 3y ago
      That's indirectly what I think too we ought to look for, personally I believe forming a family is and always will be a form of investment, maybe not an investment of wealth in this day and age, but a investment of a social group. In some sense I think we've lost a lot of that interest and instead tried a more individual approach to rationalizing forming a family. And also the old family structure we used to have, has not been able to adapt to the standard that the modern world and challenges demand of us.
• noelwelsh 3y ago
  Stable or declining population is not intrinsically a problem. For example, many environmental issues just go away if there are substantially fewer people. The problem is that we currently have a system built on the assumptions of growing population and growing GDP and 1) it's not clear how to adapt and 2) most people have their head in the sand. Conventional (neo-liberal) economics hasn't exactly been an outstanding success so there is no reason to continue to follow that model, but our political processes are very myopic so it's hard to get the long term planning needed to change.
• stillquoting 3y ago
  In German someone wrote (Dialog-Form): " Der demoralisierte Mensch, befinden sich westliche Industriegesellschaften in einem Abstieg ? > "Die sind doch verrückt" Zur Verwirrung mit psychischen Erkrankungen trägt die heimtückische Epidemie der Demoralisierung bei. Da sie einige Symptome mit Depressionen teilt, tendiert die Demoralisierung dazu, genauso falsch bezeichnet und behandelt zu werden, wie manch eine psychische Erkrankung. In der Vergangenheit beschränkte sich das Verständnis von Demoralisierung auf bestimmte Extremsituationen, wie z.B. lähmende Körperverletzung, unheilbare Krankheiten, Kriegsgefangenenlager oder unmoralische Militärtaktiken. Aber mit der kulturellen Vielfalt, um es mal subtil auszudrücken, entwickeln sich hinter den Kulissen des normalen Alltagslebens krankhafte kulturelle -Bedingungen-(durchgestrichen) Zustände, die demoralisierend wirken. Wenn Demoralisierung als eine existentielle Störung gilt (Kriegs-Rhetorik), die mit dem Zusammenbruch der "kognitiven Orientierung" einer Person verbunden ist, und mit dem Gefühl einer Art Desorientiertheit und dem "nicht in der Lage zu sein", Sinn, Zweck oder Quellen der Bedürfniserfüllung zu lokalisieren ist das bereits ein hausgemachter -"bereichernder" und "Migration" geschuldeter Glaubwürdigkeitsverlust, mit dem Zweifel, Unsicherheit und wie gesagt Orientierungslosigkeit auftreten müssen. Aber will man das ? > Was der politik wohl gut in den Kram passt, da in diesem Moment eine gewisser Verletzlichkeit oder sagen wir Anfälligkeit für Anleitung und Fügung... "Frustration, Wut und Bitterkeit sind übliche Begleiterscheinungen und sollen damit als eine realistische Reaktion auf die Umstände, die sich auf das Leben der Person auswirkt, gelten." Doch halt, war dem immer so ? Oder früher schon? Nein!? > Und Einfluss - der auf die in ihrer Persönlichkeitsstruktur geschwächten, und deren Bewältigungsfähigkeit einwirkend untergraben wird - legt letztendlich die Grundlage für...? Die treibenden Eigenschaften des – Individualismus, Materialismus, Wettbewerb, der Gier, dem Überkomplizieren, der Überarbeitung, der Eile und Verschuldung – das alles korreliert negativ mit der psychischen Gesundheit und/oder dem Wohlbefinden. > Das Niveau der Menschen somit sinkt drastisch. Passivität und Wahlfreiheit werden verdrängt und Belastbarkeitsmerkmale wie Geduld, Zurückhaltung oder Tapferkeit weichen. Ohne existentiellen Kompass tendiert der kommerzialisierte Verstand zu einer "Philosophie der Vergeblichkeit", wie Noam Chomsky es nennt, in der sich die Menschen jenseits ihrer konditionierten Rolle als fügsame Konsumenten, machtlos und bedeutungslos fühlen. > Fühlen können -oder fühlen sollen ? Ha! > Wie lange waren Sie nun schon nicht mehr in Urlaub ? Wann sind denn Sie das letzte mal mit Ihren Lieben Ausgegangen ? Und sich etwas gegönnt ? Wie lange ist das nun schon her ? > Gönnen Sie sich doch etwas... -bleiben Sie im Gespräch... > [rolleyes] --- feel free to translate it, i'm feeling thirsty, hungry and tired... P-:
• deleted 3y ago
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• thefurdrake 3y ago
  Good.
• deleted 3y ago
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• John23832 3y ago
  I truly believe that the availability of porn in the western (internet modern) world is what’s driving the nosedive in birth rates.
• tom-_- 3y ago
  A thought experiment for those without children approaching having one from a rational perspective. What is the value of your closest personal relationship; your mom, your spouse, your pet etc? Let's say you have a choice, for that relationship to have never existed, meaning all memories (good and bad), and everything you've gained (and lost) from that relationship would be erased unless you paid a price. How much money and time would you sacrifice for that relationship to still exist?
  • Turskarama 3y ago
    This misses the point that gaining a relationship and keeping a relationship are not at all the same. It also misses the possibility of having a bad relationship, and while a bad parent-child relationship is usually on the parent, it isn't always. It's also one of the few (possibly the only) relationship that you can't really bail out of no matter how bad it gets. Case in point, you ask what the value of peoples close relationships are, but for some people those relationships you mentioned: mom, spouse, pet, actually have negative value.
    • tom-_- 3y ago
      Close relationships can having negative value and it's apart of the question (see parenthesis). Gaining and keeping a relationship are not the same but also not particularly relevant here since the purpose is to quantify the value of close relationships when making a rational decision. Parent to child, child to parent, spouse to spouse, etc relationships have very different value but if you've never had a child, then your estimations of value can only come from your own relationships or asking other parents. Wrt to bailing on your child, many single moms and dads will tell you that's a thing, not a noble thing but it obviously happens. Also consider marriage, in the US divorce rates are around 40% and can cost more than half of your total assets, which is often far more than the cost of raising a child. In terms of expected value (depending on your income), more risky to get married than to have a child.
• michaelcampbell 3y ago
  Peter Zeihan has been a trumpet for this kind of information for some time now; worth watching if you're into this sort of thing. (Or want to poke holes in it.)
• norswap 3y ago
  The geographic, social, religious, ... distributions of demographic declines and increases will be the interesting thing to watch.