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> Interesting how the most developed nations have the lowest birthrates. Hard to say this isn't merely an unstable temporary intermediate state. Low birthrate

> Interesting how the most developed nations have the lowest birthrates. Hard to say this isn't merely an unstable temporary intermediate state. Low birthrate populations (by definition) are replaced by high birthrate populations, per evolution. Various and growing migrant crises worldwide seem to bear this out. The usual "solution" offered is that eventually 100% of nations will become "developed." This is probably fantasy anyway, but it's not even clear if this is a biophysical possibility. Thus far, the only way "developed" countries have been able to support their existence is by systemic organized theft of resources from the "developing" countries (this is another thing people really really don't like when you point it out :-D).

pdonis 3y ago
> the only way "developed" countries have been able to support their existence is by systemic organized theft of resources from the "developing" countries No, this is not correct. The way developed countries support a high standard of living is by creating enormous amounts of wealth. That wealth wasn't taken from anywhere; it did not exist before the developed countries created it.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Again, this may or may not be a transient condition... Currently we create a lot of wealth, but that wealth is highly pinned on farming lots of actual labor of to places with high population/cheap labor and keeping the expensive labor here. If we are unable to convert those jobs to automated tasks before the standards of living increase in those high population/poor countries then we are going to have a big problem, because there will not be anyone to farm that work off to cheaply (as we see with China starting to purchase cheaper labor from African countries). There will be a massive bout of stagflation at some point.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    It's quite true that wealth creation is not guaranteed, and that there are many ways of messing it up. That does not change the fact that wealth is created; there is not a fixed pool of wealth on the planet that will never change. There is nothing impossible about creating enough wealth to give everyone on the planet a first world standard of living. That doesn't mean it is guaranteed to happen; but it does mean it can happen.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      I mean, I can click a button on a computer, and boom, you're a billionaire. But if I do it for everyone, without the corresponding increase in production of things that are wanted then inflation explodes. Some things like software don't have to follow these inflationary paradigms, but things like land definitely do. This is what I'm warning about that we're running on borrowed time with cheap labor unless we replace it with automation. All your 'wealth' will quickly disappear in inflation.
      - pdonis 3y ago
        > I can click a button on a computer, and boom, you're a billionaire. So you work for the Federal Reserve? They're the ones who are allowed to print money. (Which, as you note, will cause inflation if we don't increase the production of goods and services. But even if we do, it is still a transfer of buying power from those who don't get the newly printed money to those who do. Which means from everyone who isn't a financial institution, to financial institutions. Which is why the financial institutions lobbied to get the Federal Reserve created in the first place.) > things like land definitely do I'm not sure what you mean by "inflationary paradigm". Land is one of the few things of economic interest that (a) actually does have a finite, limited supply, and (b) can't be replaced by other substitutes for important uses. But that has nothing to do with inflation. It would be the same if the money supply were fixed forever. > we're running on borrowed time with cheap labor unless we replace it with automation Which will happen (in fact it has already been happening for decades now) due to natural economic incentives as labor becomes more expensive (which I agree will happen over time as more people gain access to a higher standard of living). The biggest obstacle to it continuing to happen is, as I said, misgovernment.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Shmaybe, but if you look into it, it sure looks like the "wealth creation" in the West falls primarily into one of the following categories: - Accounting tricks - e.g. most software-created wealth is here, and it's increasingly apparent that it doesn't improve productivity, but rather diffuse the work so it's hard to track, resulting only in "mysterious", "unexplained" drop of productivity overall; - Use of natural resource - that one has always been a source of wealth, because it's an actual input to the economy; - Population growth - i.e. the other fundamental input to the economy; - Outsourcing approximately all manufacturing to countries with cheap labor and low safety and environmental standards. I'm sure there's plenty of honest-to-$deity pie growing, but can't think of a single example right now. Agricultural efficiency improvement maybe?
- keithwhor 3y ago
  How do you define wealth? From first principles, wealth is just the accumulation of resources used for production: oil, gas, water, lumber, minerals. The next abstraction would be the accumulation of productive labor from these resources: buildings, vehicles, electronics, materials. How many of these things are the wealthiest nations net exporters of — or at least breakeven on, eg they produce enough for self-sustenance?
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > How do you define wealth? The basic economic definition is that wealth is possibilities: the wealthier you are, the more things it is possible for you to choose to do. Resources and productive capacity are kinds of wealth, since they make it possible to do things, but not the only kinds. > How many of these things are the wealthiest nations net exporters of The wealthiest nations export all kinds of wealth. Wealth is not limited to the narrow view you are taking.
    - Kbelicius 3y ago
      > The basic economic definition is that wealth is possibilities: the wealthier you are, the more things it is possible for you to choose to do. Never heard of that definition, most definitely not as a basic economic definition. Where did you hear it? Anyways, if we use your definition of wealth then we must definitely define what "possibilities" in this context mean. To me it seems that there is far less wealth today than in the past. The only possibility for me right now is to sell my time to someone else so that I could ensure my survival. I can't grow my own food since I don't have the money for it. Can't move since I don't have money for it... you get the picture. It seems, by your definition, I'm poor as any man has ever been. If by "possibilities" you meant how many different beers they have on offer in my local pub then I'm one of the wealthiest people in the world.
      - pdonis 3y ago
        > Where did you hear it? I've given it in an unusual phrasing, but what I've said is equivalent to what you will find in, say, David Friedman's Price Theory. > we must definitely define what "possibilities" in this context mean. To me it seems that there is far less wealth today than in the past. Nonsense. To give just one example: say you get a bacterial infection. A century ago your only option was to drink fluids, rest, and hope your immune system could fight it off--which in lots of cases it couldn't. Today you can get antibiotics. As a result of advances like this (and others like vaccinations for common diseases), the death rate from disease is vastly lower today than in the past, because of all the possibilities for fighting disease that exist today that didn't exist then. That is a huge amount of wealth creation. To give another example: say your family lives across the country and you want to visit them. A century ago you could take a train that would take about a week to get there. Today you can get in an airplane and be there in a few hours. As a result, there are many more possibilities for events, from business meetings to family gatherings, that simply could not have taken place at all in the past. That is wealth creation. For one more quick example, the discussion we are having now could not have taken place a few decades ago, nor could billions like it. That is wealth creation. We tend to forget such things because we take our current level of wealth for granted and don't stop to think about the vast number of possibilities open to us that were not open to our ancestors. But they're there, and they represent wealth. > by your definition, I'm poor as any man has ever been No, you (and I) are far richer than the vast majority of humans who have ever lived. See above.
ls612 3y ago
Birthrate in the modern world is a choice not a heritable trait for the most part. It’s a consequence of effective birth control.

pdonis 3y ago

> the only way "developed" countries have been able to support their existence is by systemic organized theft of resources from the "developing" countries No, this is not correct. The way developed countries support a high standard of living is by creating enormous amounts of wealth. That wealth wasn't taken from anywhere; it did not exist before the developed countries created it.

pixl97 3y ago
Again, this may or may not be a transient condition... Currently we create a lot of wealth, but that wealth is highly pinned on farming lots of actual labor of to places with high population/cheap labor and keeping the expensive labor here. If we are unable to convert those jobs to automated tasks before the standards of living increase in those high population/poor countries then we are going to have a big problem, because there will not be anyone to farm that work off to cheaply (as we see with China starting to purchase cheaper labor from African countries). There will be a massive bout of stagflation at some point.
- pdonis 3y ago
  It's quite true that wealth creation is not guaranteed, and that there are many ways of messing it up. That does not change the fact that wealth is created; there is not a fixed pool of wealth on the planet that will never change. There is nothing impossible about creating enough wealth to give everyone on the planet a first world standard of living. That doesn't mean it is guaranteed to happen; but it does mean it can happen.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    I mean, I can click a button on a computer, and boom, you're a billionaire. But if I do it for everyone, without the corresponding increase in production of things that are wanted then inflation explodes. Some things like software don't have to follow these inflationary paradigms, but things like land definitely do. This is what I'm warning about that we're running on borrowed time with cheap labor unless we replace it with automation. All your 'wealth' will quickly disappear in inflation.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      > I can click a button on a computer, and boom, you're a billionaire. So you work for the Federal Reserve? They're the ones who are allowed to print money. (Which, as you note, will cause inflation if we don't increase the production of goods and services. But even if we do, it is still a transfer of buying power from those who don't get the newly printed money to those who do. Which means from everyone who isn't a financial institution, to financial institutions. Which is why the financial institutions lobbied to get the Federal Reserve created in the first place.) > things like land definitely do I'm not sure what you mean by "inflationary paradigm". Land is one of the few things of economic interest that (a) actually does have a finite, limited supply, and (b) can't be replaced by other substitutes for important uses. But that has nothing to do with inflation. It would be the same if the money supply were fixed forever. > we're running on borrowed time with cheap labor unless we replace it with automation Which will happen (in fact it has already been happening for decades now) due to natural economic incentives as labor becomes more expensive (which I agree will happen over time as more people gain access to a higher standard of living). The biggest obstacle to it continuing to happen is, as I said, misgovernment.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Shmaybe, but if you look into it, it sure looks like the "wealth creation" in the West falls primarily into one of the following categories: - Accounting tricks - e.g. most software-created wealth is here, and it's increasingly apparent that it doesn't improve productivity, but rather diffuse the work so it's hard to track, resulting only in "mysterious", "unexplained" drop of productivity overall; - Use of natural resource - that one has always been a source of wealth, because it's an actual input to the economy; - Population growth - i.e. the other fundamental input to the economy; - Outsourcing approximately all manufacturing to countries with cheap labor and low safety and environmental standards. I'm sure there's plenty of honest-to-$deity pie growing, but can't think of a single example right now. Agricultural efficiency improvement maybe?
keithwhor 3y ago
How do you define wealth? From first principles, wealth is just the accumulation of resources used for production: oil, gas, water, lumber, minerals. The next abstraction would be the accumulation of productive labor from these resources: buildings, vehicles, electronics, materials. How many of these things are the wealthiest nations net exporters of — or at least breakeven on, eg they produce enough for self-sustenance?
- pdonis 3y ago
  > How do you define wealth? The basic economic definition is that wealth is possibilities: the wealthier you are, the more things it is possible for you to choose to do. Resources and productive capacity are kinds of wealth, since they make it possible to do things, but not the only kinds. > How many of these things are the wealthiest nations net exporters of The wealthiest nations export all kinds of wealth. Wealth is not limited to the narrow view you are taking.
  - Kbelicius 3y ago
    > The basic economic definition is that wealth is possibilities: the wealthier you are, the more things it is possible for you to choose to do. Never heard of that definition, most definitely not as a basic economic definition. Where did you hear it? Anyways, if we use your definition of wealth then we must definitely define what "possibilities" in this context mean. To me it seems that there is far less wealth today than in the past. The only possibility for me right now is to sell my time to someone else so that I could ensure my survival. I can't grow my own food since I don't have the money for it. Can't move since I don't have money for it... you get the picture. It seems, by your definition, I'm poor as any man has ever been. If by "possibilities" you meant how many different beers they have on offer in my local pub then I'm one of the wealthiest people in the world.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      > Where did you hear it? I've given it in an unusual phrasing, but what I've said is equivalent to what you will find in, say, David Friedman's Price Theory. > we must definitely define what "possibilities" in this context mean. To me it seems that there is far less wealth today than in the past. Nonsense. To give just one example: say you get a bacterial infection. A century ago your only option was to drink fluids, rest, and hope your immune system could fight it off--which in lots of cases it couldn't. Today you can get antibiotics. As a result of advances like this (and others like vaccinations for common diseases), the death rate from disease is vastly lower today than in the past, because of all the possibilities for fighting disease that exist today that didn't exist then. That is a huge amount of wealth creation. To give another example: say your family lives across the country and you want to visit them. A century ago you could take a train that would take about a week to get there. Today you can get in an airplane and be there in a few hours. As a result, there are many more possibilities for events, from business meetings to family gatherings, that simply could not have taken place at all in the past. That is wealth creation. For one more quick example, the discussion we are having now could not have taken place a few decades ago, nor could billions like it. That is wealth creation. We tend to forget such things because we take our current level of wealth for granted and don't stop to think about the vast number of possibilities open to us that were not open to our ancestors. But they're there, and they represent wealth. > by your definition, I'm poor as any man has ever been No, you (and I) are far richer than the vast majority of humans who have ever lived. See above.

ls612 3y ago

Birthrate in the modern world is a choice not a heritable trait for the most part. It’s a consequence of effective birth control.