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>Finland is a good place to move to fix most of these, if you're willing to live with the tradeoffs. And yet, it seems like the slowdown is hitting us as hard a

>Finland is a good place to move to fix most of these, if you're willing to live with the tradeoffs. And yet, it seems like the slowdown is hitting us as hard as anyone... so I don't think it's actually that. I think you hit the nail on its head so to speak. Here in Poland the parenting/childcare situation is probably worse than Finland from what I hear, but much better than it used to be. The change in benefits for example eliminated child poverty, but had zero effect on population growth(which was one of its selling points). I think unless we manage to invent "artificial womb" in long term (as humanity) we are going to have huge problems. Not because there will be less of us. No, but because the huge majority will be very old. This will blow up our heathcare, economy etc. Who will care for all these old people? Robots? This is a very serious problem that will hit us in next ~30 years. Imagine if a single person at work supports 5 pensioners? Someone can say, what do you mean, these pensioners are living off investment income on the decades of their contributions. But this is not exactly right. For them to consume someone has to produce. If there is shortage of workforce there will be shortage of goods, the prices will skyrocket, the workers wages will adjust, but pensioners will be left with nothing or will be helped by the state. Also imagine what impact on national security this will have? Religious sects that promote having large families will thrive, imagine what that will do to our societies. I propose in medium term this is a far bigger problem than climate change. What is the solution then? Immigration. (the legal kind). We (the West) have to establish systems that promote migrant integration. For this we absolutely have to give up the insanity of "cultural relativism". No, cultures that cherish freedom of the individual and ones that treat women as property are not equivalent. Without the strong backbone of acceptance our culture is superior and certain things are non-negotiable (like individual liberties, freedom of religion, expression, identity) this will not work. But if we can manage to implement this without sliding into extremes people from other places will want to come, live here, work and raise their children. This will solve our (the West) population growth problem in the short to medium term. In the long term? Only robots and artifical wombs.

DecoySalamander 3y ago
> Religious sects that promote having large families will thrive, imagine what that will do to our societies. > What is the solution then? Immigration. I can understand holding either of those views, but not both at the same time. Why do you expect immigrants from a culture that produces a surplus of people (and pressure to immigrate) to have a lesser/better effect on your culture than the offspring of native religious "sects"?
- Roark66 3y ago
  If you cut out the next sentence, yes it looks contradictory. Consider I wrote the below immediately after: >(the legal kind). We (the West) have to establish systems that promote migrant integration. Immigration is not a single problem to be for or against. It's a complex problem that can help us resolve our population growth problems or it can destroy our societies(there are examples of both). The key differences between the "good" immigration and the "bad" immigration are: the good is usually, but not always legal and the bad is usually but not always illegal. Other things that matter a lot are the purpose why people immigrate(escaping an actual war going to closest safe place, trying to better one's economic situation by gaining a skill that allows one to work in a more developed economy or going with an intent of gaming the benefit system and living off that), the desire to integrate once the immigrants gets there and the actions the host state does to encourage that (example of bad: put immigrants all in social housing together creating no incentive to learn the host country's language etc, example of good: distribute migrants evenly across the entire country requesting each local gov to provide few units of social housing that are not right next to each other),and finally one of the major ones :the ease of gaming the benefit system. I personally have met people that had their children registered for benefits in 3 countries and the entire family living off that (Germany, Denmark and Netherlands I believe.). I heard in Germany an unemployed immigrant gets more in benefits that he (because it is a he 99% of time) could hope to earn in any unskilled job. This doesn't promote integration and asimilation. It promotes people who go to work being called suckers by their peers. So yes, there is good immigration (all the people that immigrate legally, or are fleeing a genuine war next door) and there is the bad (all the desperate people that were sold a dream of a life without having to work by living off benefits, then they pay people's smugglers and if they manage to survive the trip they realise this life is not going to be as good as they thought). So yes, I propose we increase legal, skill based immigration, we encourage integration and assimilation a lot more, and we have expulsion as a penalty for crime. Furthermore, we actually protect our borders, and we enforce the border enforcement by the countries on route, so the illegal immigration goes down to a manageable level. And where people in source countries are really suffering we help these countries over there. I only glanced over the problem. The ne would have to write a book on the subject to properly cover it. However, seeing first hand examples of good and bad immigration in many countries such as the UK, Germany, France and Poland I believe calling all immigration bad is equally silly as calling it all good.
CraigJPerry 3y ago
>> If there is shortage of workforce there will be shortage of goods Are we sure about this because a shortage of workforce leading to a shortage of services makes sense but the same doesn’t hold for goods I don’t think? E.g. I don’t really see myself going to a robot physiotherapist for example. I can’t see how productivity improvements (capital investment in automation for example) can universally improve service production - there are some cases for sure but plenty of gaps. On the goods side, i don’t care if my TV was made by a robot rather than a craftsperson. As i understand it, the energy and labour required to produce comparable goods today is less than yesterday. As i understand it, services have gotten relatively more expensive over time as goods have done the opposite. These costs I’m led to believe can be seen as a proxy for labour costs since labour is often the most expensive part and as production volume increases the cost to produce a good tends towards the cost of its material inputs.

DecoySalamander 3y ago

> Religious sects that promote having large families will thrive, imagine what that will do to our societies. > What is the solution then? Immigration. I can understand holding either of those views, but not both at the same time. Why do you expect immigrants from a culture that produces a surplus of people (and pressure to immigrate) to have a lesser/better effect on your culture than the offspring of native religious "sects"?

Roark66 3y ago
If you cut out the next sentence, yes it looks contradictory. Consider I wrote the below immediately after: >(the legal kind). We (the West) have to establish systems that promote migrant integration. Immigration is not a single problem to be for or against. It's a complex problem that can help us resolve our population growth problems or it can destroy our societies(there are examples of both). The key differences between the "good" immigration and the "bad" immigration are: the good is usually, but not always legal and the bad is usually but not always illegal. Other things that matter a lot are the purpose why people immigrate(escaping an actual war going to closest safe place, trying to better one's economic situation by gaining a skill that allows one to work in a more developed economy or going with an intent of gaming the benefit system and living off that), the desire to integrate once the immigrants gets there and the actions the host state does to encourage that (example of bad: put immigrants all in social housing together creating no incentive to learn the host country's language etc, example of good: distribute migrants evenly across the entire country requesting each local gov to provide few units of social housing that are not right next to each other),and finally one of the major ones :the ease of gaming the benefit system. I personally have met people that had their children registered for benefits in 3 countries and the entire family living off that (Germany, Denmark and Netherlands I believe.). I heard in Germany an unemployed immigrant gets more in benefits that he (because it is a he 99% of time) could hope to earn in any unskilled job. This doesn't promote integration and asimilation. It promotes people who go to work being called suckers by their peers. So yes, there is good immigration (all the people that immigrate legally, or are fleeing a genuine war next door) and there is the bad (all the desperate people that were sold a dream of a life without having to work by living off benefits, then they pay people's smugglers and if they manage to survive the trip they realise this life is not going to be as good as they thought). So yes, I propose we increase legal, skill based immigration, we encourage integration and assimilation a lot more, and we have expulsion as a penalty for crime. Furthermore, we actually protect our borders, and we enforce the border enforcement by the countries on route, so the illegal immigration goes down to a manageable level. And where people in source countries are really suffering we help these countries over there. I only glanced over the problem. The ne would have to write a book on the subject to properly cover it. However, seeing first hand examples of good and bad immigration in many countries such as the UK, Germany, France and Poland I believe calling all immigration bad is equally silly as calling it all good.

CraigJPerry 3y ago

>> If there is shortage of workforce there will be shortage of goods Are we sure about this because a shortage of workforce leading to a shortage of services makes sense but the same doesn’t hold for goods I don’t think? E.g. I don’t really see myself going to a robot physiotherapist for example. I can’t see how productivity improvements (capital investment in automation for example) can universally improve service production - there are some cases for sure but plenty of gaps. On the goods side, i don’t care if my TV was made by a robot rather than a craftsperson. As i understand it, the energy and labour required to produce comparable goods today is less than yesterday. As i understand it, services have gotten relatively more expensive over time as goods have done the opposite. These costs I’m led to believe can be seen as a proxy for labour costs since labour is often the most expensive part and as production volume increases the cost to produce a good tends towards the cost of its material inputs.