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This is slightly aside, but the concerns over fertility rates in the first world really seem REALLY misplaced to me. Population growth concerns are easily mitig

This is slightly aside, but the concerns over fertility rates in the first world really seem REALLY misplaced to me. Population growth concerns are easily mitigated with immigration which will stay in demand until the rest of the worlds fertility rates catch up(40+ years), and the population growth concerns themselves are a reflection of an outdated (or soon to be outdated) economic model that we should probably focus on replacing or phasing out? Im not sure why THAT isnt the next step, and instead we have so many whackos in government trying to force pregnancies and other wild policies. Yeah, its a hard, big, complex problem and will probably require a decade of modeling/testing like what is happening with UBI testing in small cities. Maybe its just a reflection of the times when the people we elect reach for the most insane heavy handed solutions for every problem, and proceed to publicly fill their pants at the very concept of change.

Unearned5161 3y ago
I'm curious to hear what sort of economic models you have in mind that works with a non-growing or declining population
- cies 3y ago
  We can look at "prosperous" (let's find some happiness index) countries that have seen declining population for a while. Japan comes to mind. It's not like Japan deteriorated into some extreme poverty because of it, right? So maybe it's not that bad, "to be in decline" (in population number, or related GDP), as we are meant to believe?
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    > Japan comes to mind. I think it's a little too early to draw conclusions. Japan reached their peak population in about 2010, and the decline since has been mild.
  - luckydata 3y ago
    give it time, they will have issues taking care of their aging population without a sufficient number of people of age that can provide economic output and care. It's a problem that eventually fixes itself but until we work through the "backlog" it will be pretty painful.
    - cies 3y ago
      Do we have examples of this? I know these arguments, but I wonder if that will really happen. Maybe public care will shrink, but still many of the aging boom generation will afford private care, or not need much of it. > ...pretty painful. How will the subjected population notice that you reckon? Prices change, sure, but many of us on earth also live in a lot more luxury than 200 years ago: so we have some fat on our bones.
analognoise 3y ago
“We made it terrible for our own people to make families, but don’t worry! We can keep the party going by importing loads of people due to economic forces!” Sounds so incredibly shitty. If an economic system works so poorly for people they have to be imported (I.e. locals who want to form families can’t) it should be dismantled. I care about “global capital” far less than I care about my compatriots ability to form strong families. We should absolutely be worried by terrible birth rates.
- cies 3y ago
  > If an economic system works so poorly for people they have to be imported Interesting thought. The notion that GDPpopulation has to grow comes comes from that economic system. The problem is that the economic system dictates policy to such a large extend that democracy is a farce. > I care about “global capital” far less than I care about my compatriots ability to form strong families. +1 > We should absolutely be worried by terrible birth rates. Why? What's the daily life/ human problem with becoming less humans? (I know the economic GDPpopulation reason, and I know why militarily that IS very important)
  - cies 3y ago
    i meant "GDP x population"; messed with the formatting.
- caskstrength 3y ago
  > If an economic system works so poorly for people they have to be imported (I.e. locals who want to form families can’t) it should be dismantled. Most of developed countries have bad fertility rate, some developing and/or poor countries have good fertility rate. People in rich countries don't have children not because they can't afford to, but because they don't want to.
  - analognoise 3y ago
    You’re right, it’s not that a standard wage can’t even get you an apartment, medical care is astronomical, and the capitalists are ruining everything. It’s that people stopped wanting kids. How silly of me. We undid all the evolutionary programming of our species to play XBox and rent. …or it’s that the system is broken and we should cease importing people because the only people that “win” in that situation are those connected to global capital.
cies 3y ago
> population growth concerns themselves are a reflection of an outdated (or soon to be outdated) economic model that we should probably focus on replacing or phasing out? I have the same sentiment. Though I take that "reflection" means that it was the economic model we live in/under is what gave rise to the "population growth concerns". That's part of why it's so hard to think of alternatives from within this model.
genman 3y ago
[flagged]
Joeri 3y ago
I agree that immigration is a quick fix for a low fertility rate. But the people worrying about fertility rates fear cultural displacement by immigrants. They want less immigration, not more, and instead see a return to family values as the answer to the fertility rate problem. Anyway, the problem is not the current decline in population, it is a fertility rate that remains far below a replacement rate. That means there is no bottom to the population decline. The immigration solution would need to be applied again and again.
- mkaic 3y ago
  I want more immigration AND more fertility, personally.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  People worrying about cultural displacement in europe need to crack open a history book and understand the movement of people is just how the world works. Its like the movement of air from different pressure areas. Most spanish people are actually a mix of moors and visigoths, other mediterranean people through history, and even celtic or germanic peoples who by and large displaced some earlier occupant of the iberian pennisula, who displaced some even earlier people, and so on and so forth until we get to whoever displaced the neanderthals. And all of this displacement involved assimilation too. Acting like migration should stop now would be like asking the wind to stop blowing or the tides to stop. Its like a natural law that people will go where theres better opportunities for them.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    You're talking about the moors and visigoths in Spain, but did you forget those people integrated with the locals by invading? They weren't exactly welcomed with open arms, they just forced their way in and then took over. That's how the history of most of Europe looks, with all those examples of people displaced by newcomers. Why would any sane person want this? Just because it happened commonly in the past doesn't mean it's a good thing. In the modern world, we've mostly agreed that invading other places just because you want to live there, and want to marginalize or kill the people already living there, is no longer acceptable. Are you honestly saying you want to go back to those days?
kubb 3y ago
It’s ideology. People living in religious communities often worship fertility, and try to make breeding as widespread as possible. Blood based nationalism is obsessed with the “race” (unscientific term) not dying out. For both, having children and raising them in the same ideology is crucial for preserving their existence. For the global liberal capitalism, the only way it can maintain its egalitarian promise is for it to rely on infinite growth. You can promise to the exploited that they will have even more people to exploit in the future if they keep their head down and stick with the status quo for long enough. It’s starting to hit external limits given by the environment, and available space only recently. Meanwhile, some societies are aging and doing fine. The economy can be fine tuned to prioritize basic needs, and sustainably supply the people regardless of their age. For example automation in agriculture means that we’ll need less and less people to produce food. UBI is just one tool that could be useful here.
- harperlee 3y ago
  Not positioning myself here but ideology is one of those partisan despective words that have another-side-of-the-coin words (“culture” in this case, but see religion vs. cult, indoctrination vs. education, etc.). Several spanish regions are very keen on maintaining their particular culture.
  - kubb 3y ago
    Ideology is just a system of ideas. Of course I don’t like religious fundamentalism and fascism, but feel free to s/ideology/neutral equivalent/g
csharpminor 3y ago
A government’s source of revenue is working age taxpayers. Its biggest cost is the social safety net for the elderly. It seems natural for them to care about population growth? Where would they get the money for UBI if their tax base is contracting every year? Immigrants (at the scale Spain needs) don’t want to move to a shrinking economy. Spaniards themselves are leaving the country to look for work. As an example, Central American immigrants will immigrate through multiple low growth countries specifically to get to the U.S. for work. To GP’s point though, I think Spain’s population problems aren’t all that related to dense apartments and more tied to economic opportunities.
- anthk 3y ago
  Living in Spain it's far easier than in the US. We already speak Spanish, and knowing the jargon from Spain it's just a matter of literal weeks. Also, the healthcare options, the lack of violence even at night (relatively, every city has its 'bad zones' but even with that it's far safer) and the welfare state makes their lives a paradise compared to, for instance, a hell zone in the Dominican Republic or narcozones in Mexico.
ShrigmaMale 3y ago
you're acting as though an immigrant from any of the dense population centers has the same impact as a native-born child on the culture and economy. that is false. sometimes it's for the better (in America, we have many well-educated immigrants from India and China). sometimes it's for the worse (see Europe's struggles with uneducated muslim immigrants from north Africa and the Middle East). importing large groups of people sometimes works; we did it pretty well in America because we had so much room to grow. transportation and communication were also much harder, so it was less easy for people to maintain ties to their former country and family there; they adapted a little more, though ethnic ghettos were still a problem. it's not an intractable problem but saying "just get immigrants bro" isn't really a good solution. we are sometimes biased in the US because we are selective (too much so, I think). we bring in the best from high-population areas like Africa and India and we see benefits for that. on the other hand, while migrant working and a moderate level of illegal immigration are fine and even economically beneficial, it would be silly to deny that the current levels are causing severe problems. when you lose that selectivity and control, things don't turn out so well. and to import enough people to make up for falling birthrates we would have to broaden our horizons beyond skilled workers.
- Lord-Jobo 3y ago
  >you're acting as though an immigrant from any of the dense population centers has the same impact as a native-born child on the culture and economy. that is false I am not, i am acting like immigrating literally anybody is going to be massively better than a declining population. If they live in a country, they are paying for housing, food, and services, and almost certainly have a job. taxes on top of all of that. I think the attitude of being picky is fine and wise, right now, but eventually you are really going to just want anyone instead of going inverted.
  - localplume 3y ago
    [dead]
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    This simply isn't true. They're not going to be paying for housing and services and having a job if they commit crimes and go to prison. Certain host countries have found that certain immigrant groups tend to have very high crime rates and cause a lot of social problems. And even if they avoid crime and have a job, extremely low-paid immigrants aren't going to be paying much in taxes under a highly progressive taxation scheme. High-skill immigrants are almost always a big win for the host country because of the things you cite, and more (they bring innovation, start businesses, etc). Low-skill/low-education ones are a crapshoot. It's better to have an inverted population pyramid than deal with all the social ills that come from immigrants that cause too many problems.
Tade0 3y ago
> world really seem REALLY misplaced to me. Population growth concerns are easily mitigated with immigration which will stay in demand until the rest of the worlds fertility rates catch up(40+ years) The population of prospective immigrants who completed 12 years of education or more is already largely gone, because the fertility rates in countries with this level of development are either already below replacement or on the way to it at a rapid pace. And you need at least that to contribute to an advanced economy.
3seashells 3y ago
Worked for Beirut, herzigovinah etc.
LudwigNagasena 3y ago
This concern over fertility vs immigration seems REALLY misplaced to me. The goal is not to maximise the tax revenue of an abstract entity called “country”. It’s about people, their values, their desires and their abilities to achieve them.
- redeeman 3y ago
  and the desires of a great many people is to vote themselves to a greater cut of other peoples money. So then it IS about maximizing "tax revenue"
  - LudwigNagasena 3y ago
    I don’t think it’s so simple. Many people have other values beyond material wants.
    - redeeman 3y ago
      i never said it was the only desire
BeetleB 3y ago
> This is slightly aside, but the concerns over fertility rates in the first world really seem REALLY misplaced to me. Since the early days of humanity, we've relied on children taking care of us in our old age. I haven't seen a solution for that. Nursing homes are not a solution. I listened to some grim statistics from my state recently. In many nursing homes, the ratio of staff to patients is 6:1. It takes 6 full time employees to take care of 1 patient. Now I'll grant that these numbers were outliers, because the population was challenging - many/most of these patients had dementia, etc. And they were handling rural areas - you'd get better scaling in the city. Still, I'm sure in a major metropolitan area it's at least 2:1. And that doesn't account for the poor existence in those places (abuse by employees, abuse by fellow residents - you're screwed if you don't have family members advocating for you). And that's for patients who get to go. Many elderly will have chronic conditions which are bad enough that you can't live alone, but generally not bad enough for Medicare or health insurance to pay for assisted living. Examples are things like mobility issues - only long term health care insurance covers this, and it's way too expensive. I don't own such a policy and likely won't ever be able to afford it.
- anthk 3y ago
  Having children as a solution to wipe your ass in the future sounds selfish as hell... Maybe we should invent more on robotics and healthcare so elderly people could live as independent as if they were in their 40's.
  - BeetleB 3y ago
    And until we do, we need more people, as bad as it may be for the environment. It's not as if no one thought of what you're saying. I think you don't appreciate how unfeasible it is currently. First off you have economics. Can we make it cheaply enough so that it's available to everyone, and not just white collar folks? Even putting aside the economics of it, once you start itemizing all the possible ways one would need help, you'll realize you're effectively asking for the equivalent of an intelligent android.
treis 3y ago
> Population growth concerns are easily mitigated with immigration which will stay in demand until the rest of the worlds fertility rates catch up(40+ years), and the population growth concerns themselves are a reflection of an outdated (or soon to be outdated) economic model that we should probably focus on replacing or phasing out? It's way way easier to deal with neutral/slight growth than shrinking. Like take teachers as an example. In an ideal world the demand for them is the same year in year out. Every year X of them will retire and Y new graduates will be hired. In a declining world you need 3% fewer teachers every year so when 3% retire you don't hire new ones. Multiply that across every industry and you have a youth unemployment crisis.

Unearned5161 3y ago

I'm curious to hear what sort of economic models you have in mind that works with a non-growing or declining population

cies 3y ago
We can look at "prosperous" (let's find some happiness index) countries that have seen declining population for a while. Japan comes to mind. It's not like Japan deteriorated into some extreme poverty because of it, right? So maybe it's not that bad, "to be in decline" (in population number, or related GDP), as we are meant to believe?
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > Japan comes to mind. I think it's a little too early to draw conclusions. Japan reached their peak population in about 2010, and the decline since has been mild.
- luckydata 3y ago
  give it time, they will have issues taking care of their aging population without a sufficient number of people of age that can provide economic output and care. It's a problem that eventually fixes itself but until we work through the "backlog" it will be pretty painful.
  - cies 3y ago
    Do we have examples of this? I know these arguments, but I wonder if that will really happen. Maybe public care will shrink, but still many of the aging boom generation will afford private care, or not need much of it. > ...pretty painful. How will the subjected population notice that you reckon? Prices change, sure, but many of us on earth also live in a lot more luxury than 200 years ago: so we have some fat on our bones.

analognoise 3y ago

“We made it terrible for our own people to make families, but don’t worry! We can keep the party going by importing loads of people due to economic forces!” Sounds so incredibly shitty. If an economic system works so poorly for people they have to be imported (I.e. locals who want to form families can’t) it should be dismantled. I care about “global capital” far less than I care about my compatriots ability to form strong families. We should absolutely be worried by terrible birth rates.

cies 3y ago
> If an economic system works so poorly for people they have to be imported Interesting thought. The notion that GDPpopulation has to grow comes comes from that economic system. The problem is that the economic system dictates policy to such a large extend that democracy is a farce. > I care about “global capital” far less than I care about my compatriots ability to form strong families. +1 > We should absolutely be worried by terrible birth rates. Why? What's the daily life/ human problem with becoming less humans? (I know the economic GDPpopulation reason, and I know why militarily that IS very important)
- cies 3y ago
  i meant "GDP x population"; messed with the formatting.
caskstrength 3y ago
> If an economic system works so poorly for people they have to be imported (I.e. locals who want to form families can’t) it should be dismantled. Most of developed countries have bad fertility rate, some developing and/or poor countries have good fertility rate. People in rich countries don't have children not because they can't afford to, but because they don't want to.
- analognoise 3y ago
  You’re right, it’s not that a standard wage can’t even get you an apartment, medical care is astronomical, and the capitalists are ruining everything. It’s that people stopped wanting kids. How silly of me. We undid all the evolutionary programming of our species to play XBox and rent. …or it’s that the system is broken and we should cease importing people because the only people that “win” in that situation are those connected to global capital.

cies 3y ago

> population growth concerns themselves are a reflection of an outdated (or soon to be outdated) economic model that we should probably focus on replacing or phasing out? I have the same sentiment. Though I take that "reflection" means that it was the economic model we live in/under is what gave rise to the "population growth concerns". That's part of why it's so hard to think of alternatives from within this model.

genman 3y ago

[flagged]

Joeri 3y ago

I agree that immigration is a quick fix for a low fertility rate. But the people worrying about fertility rates fear cultural displacement by immigrants. They want less immigration, not more, and instead see a return to family values as the answer to the fertility rate problem. Anyway, the problem is not the current decline in population, it is a fertility rate that remains far below a replacement rate. That means there is no bottom to the population decline. The immigration solution would need to be applied again and again.

mkaic 3y ago
I want more immigration AND more fertility, personally.
kjkjadksj 3y ago
People worrying about cultural displacement in europe need to crack open a history book and understand the movement of people is just how the world works. Its like the movement of air from different pressure areas. Most spanish people are actually a mix of moors and visigoths, other mediterranean people through history, and even celtic or germanic peoples who by and large displaced some earlier occupant of the iberian pennisula, who displaced some even earlier people, and so on and so forth until we get to whoever displaced the neanderthals. And all of this displacement involved assimilation too. Acting like migration should stop now would be like asking the wind to stop blowing or the tides to stop. Its like a natural law that people will go where theres better opportunities for them.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  You're talking about the moors and visigoths in Spain, but did you forget those people integrated with the locals by invading? They weren't exactly welcomed with open arms, they just forced their way in and then took over. That's how the history of most of Europe looks, with all those examples of people displaced by newcomers. Why would any sane person want this? Just because it happened commonly in the past doesn't mean it's a good thing. In the modern world, we've mostly agreed that invading other places just because you want to live there, and want to marginalize or kill the people already living there, is no longer acceptable. Are you honestly saying you want to go back to those days?

kubb 3y ago

It’s ideology. People living in religious communities often worship fertility, and try to make breeding as widespread as possible. Blood based nationalism is obsessed with the “race” (unscientific term) not dying out. For both, having children and raising them in the same ideology is crucial for preserving their existence. For the global liberal capitalism, the only way it can maintain its egalitarian promise is for it to rely on infinite growth. You can promise to the exploited that they will have even more people to exploit in the future if they keep their head down and stick with the status quo for long enough. It’s starting to hit external limits given by the environment, and available space only recently. Meanwhile, some societies are aging and doing fine. The economy can be fine tuned to prioritize basic needs, and sustainably supply the people regardless of their age. For example automation in agriculture means that we’ll need less and less people to produce food. UBI is just one tool that could be useful here.

harperlee 3y ago
Not positioning myself here but ideology is one of those partisan despective words that have another-side-of-the-coin words (“culture” in this case, but see religion vs. cult, indoctrination vs. education, etc.). Several spanish regions are very keen on maintaining their particular culture.
- kubb 3y ago
  Ideology is just a system of ideas. Of course I don’t like religious fundamentalism and fascism, but feel free to s/ideology/neutral equivalent/g

csharpminor 3y ago

A government’s source of revenue is working age taxpayers. Its biggest cost is the social safety net for the elderly. It seems natural for them to care about population growth? Where would they get the money for UBI if their tax base is contracting every year? Immigrants (at the scale Spain needs) don’t want to move to a shrinking economy. Spaniards themselves are leaving the country to look for work. As an example, Central American immigrants will immigrate through multiple low growth countries specifically to get to the U.S. for work. To GP’s point though, I think Spain’s population problems aren’t all that related to dense apartments and more tied to economic opportunities.

anthk 3y ago
Living in Spain it's far easier than in the US. We already speak Spanish, and knowing the jargon from Spain it's just a matter of literal weeks. Also, the healthcare options, the lack of violence even at night (relatively, every city has its 'bad zones' but even with that it's far safer) and the welfare state makes their lives a paradise compared to, for instance, a hell zone in the Dominican Republic or narcozones in Mexico.

ShrigmaMale 3y ago

you're acting as though an immigrant from any of the dense population centers has the same impact as a native-born child on the culture and economy. that is false. sometimes it's for the better (in America, we have many well-educated immigrants from India and China). sometimes it's for the worse (see Europe's struggles with uneducated muslim immigrants from north Africa and the Middle East). importing large groups of people sometimes works; we did it pretty well in America because we had so much room to grow. transportation and communication were also much harder, so it was less easy for people to maintain ties to their former country and family there; they adapted a little more, though ethnic ghettos were still a problem. it's not an intractable problem but saying "just get immigrants bro" isn't really a good solution. we are sometimes biased in the US because we are selective (too much so, I think). we bring in the best from high-population areas like Africa and India and we see benefits for that. on the other hand, while migrant working and a moderate level of illegal immigration are fine and even economically beneficial, it would be silly to deny that the current levels are causing severe problems. when you lose that selectivity and control, things don't turn out so well. and to import enough people to make up for falling birthrates we would have to broaden our horizons beyond skilled workers.

Lord-Jobo 3y ago
>you're acting as though an immigrant from any of the dense population centers has the same impact as a native-born child on the culture and economy. that is false I am not, i am acting like immigrating literally anybody is going to be massively better than a declining population. If they live in a country, they are paying for housing, food, and services, and almost certainly have a job. taxes on top of all of that. I think the attitude of being picky is fine and wise, right now, but eventually you are really going to just want anyone instead of going inverted.
- localplume 3y ago
  [dead]
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  This simply isn't true. They're not going to be paying for housing and services and having a job if they commit crimes and go to prison. Certain host countries have found that certain immigrant groups tend to have very high crime rates and cause a lot of social problems. And even if they avoid crime and have a job, extremely low-paid immigrants aren't going to be paying much in taxes under a highly progressive taxation scheme. High-skill immigrants are almost always a big win for the host country because of the things you cite, and more (they bring innovation, start businesses, etc). Low-skill/low-education ones are a crapshoot. It's better to have an inverted population pyramid than deal with all the social ills that come from immigrants that cause too many problems.

Tade0 3y ago

> world really seem REALLY misplaced to me. Population growth concerns are easily mitigated with immigration which will stay in demand until the rest of the worlds fertility rates catch up(40+ years) The population of prospective immigrants who completed 12 years of education or more is already largely gone, because the fertility rates in countries with this level of development are either already below replacement or on the way to it at a rapid pace. And you need at least that to contribute to an advanced economy.

3seashells 3y ago

Worked for Beirut, herzigovinah etc.

LudwigNagasena 3y ago

This concern over fertility vs immigration seems REALLY misplaced to me. The goal is not to maximise the tax revenue of an abstract entity called “country”. It’s about people, their values, their desires and their abilities to achieve them.

redeeman 3y ago
and the desires of a great many people is to vote themselves to a greater cut of other peoples money. So then it IS about maximizing "tax revenue"
- LudwigNagasena 3y ago
  I don’t think it’s so simple. Many people have other values beyond material wants.
  - redeeman 3y ago
    i never said it was the only desire

BeetleB 3y ago

> This is slightly aside, but the concerns over fertility rates in the first world really seem REALLY misplaced to me. Since the early days of humanity, we've relied on children taking care of us in our old age. I haven't seen a solution for that. Nursing homes are not a solution. I listened to some grim statistics from my state recently. In many nursing homes, the ratio of staff to patients is 6:1. It takes 6 full time employees to take care of 1 patient. Now I'll grant that these numbers were outliers, because the population was challenging - many/most of these patients had dementia, etc. And they were handling rural areas - you'd get better scaling in the city. Still, I'm sure in a major metropolitan area it's at least 2:1. And that doesn't account for the poor existence in those places (abuse by employees, abuse by fellow residents - you're screwed if you don't have family members advocating for you). And that's for patients who get to go. Many elderly will have chronic conditions which are bad enough that you can't live alone, but generally not bad enough for Medicare or health insurance to pay for assisted living. Examples are things like mobility issues - only long term health care insurance covers this, and it's way too expensive. I don't own such a policy and likely won't ever be able to afford it.

anthk 3y ago
Having children as a solution to wipe your ass in the future sounds selfish as hell... Maybe we should invent more on robotics and healthcare so elderly people could live as independent as if they were in their 40's.
- BeetleB 3y ago
  And until we do, we need more people, as bad as it may be for the environment. It's not as if no one thought of what you're saying. I think you don't appreciate how unfeasible it is currently. First off you have economics. Can we make it cheaply enough so that it's available to everyone, and not just white collar folks? Even putting aside the economics of it, once you start itemizing all the possible ways one would need help, you'll realize you're effectively asking for the equivalent of an intelligent android.

treis 3y ago

> Population growth concerns are easily mitigated with immigration which will stay in demand until the rest of the worlds fertility rates catch up(40+ years), and the population growth concerns themselves are a reflection of an outdated (or soon to be outdated) economic model that we should probably focus on replacing or phasing out? It's way way easier to deal with neutral/slight growth than shrinking. Like take teachers as an example. In an ideal world the demand for them is the same year in year out. Every year X of them will retire and Y new graduates will be hired. In a declining world you need 3% fewer teachers every year so when 3% retire you don't hire new ones. Multiply that across every industry and you have a youth unemployment crisis.