7 ms·

Population tipping point could arrive by 2030

33 points by bikenaga 3y ago

quattrofan 3y ago
[dead]
realfeel78 3y ago
Let’s step back and ask why we’re being asked to assume it would be inherently bad if the global population were to start to decline.
- spurgu 3y ago
  Because the economy and thus everything around you relies on constant growth. Personally I'd be happy with a world with a lot less people, finding some sort of equilibrium. But it would necessitate a lot of pain to get there.
  - pupppet 3y ago
    Yep growth, a state of permanent, must-have growth. Or put another way, a world built upon the notion you must never be satisfied. Not to go all Agent Smith on everyone, but he had a point.
  - croes 3y ago
    Not everything needs to grow constantly, most of the time you don't need more people, the people just need more money.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    I am really not so sure. It's hard to think of a way but we'd find a way. For starters, a lot of academics and other people who currently work on relatively useless problems like the Higgs boson could actually put their mind to work on something more practical and we'd come up with all sorts of inventions to make our lives easier, and perhaps we wouldn't make the old mistakes of being very unsustainable.
- deleted 3y ago
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- andrewstuart2 3y ago
  Isn't it usually because our retirement systems assume the next generation can foot the bill for the current generation since they'll be a larger generation?
  - croes 3y ago
    Nope, normally rising productivity can do the same unless you don't want workers to participate on the benefits of rising productivity.
  - formerly_proven 3y ago
    Worker productivity is still going up. You can also just extract a larger share, it's not written in stone that 20% of gross income goes into paying pensions. There is no particular reason why that number can't be 30%. Or 40%.
    - jandrewrogers 3y ago
      For this to work you need the dwindling percentage of people working to voluntarily acquiesce to having a large portion of their income redirected to people who are not working.
      - candiodari 3y ago
        So what you're saying is that someone needs to lose something they currently have. Either people in general ... or the government. Which is what the original thesis was, I believe, that someone needs to lose. But it gets a lot worse. The problem is that growth AND decline are both exponential processes. Not just growth. Decline too. Which means whatever percentage you say has to go to taking care of old people ... give it 20 years and it'll be more. A factor more. In fact, it will quickly rise to over 100% if population doesn't stabilize. In nature, for many species the exponential nature of shrinking population causes, by itself, without other causes, extinction. Luckily, usually local extinction. Cats are a great example of this. Areas almost always have a lot of cats ... or none. If you take current examples (that are getting worse) you see that what happens is that every generation about halves. BUT 4-5 generations are alive simultaneously. So in order to keep the same level of elderly care the expenses need to double 5 times. There's a tiny problem ... even theoretically 20% expenses on the elderly can only double twice. The third time you double it, it goes over 100%. But when maintaining elderly care takes 100% of global human labor, we're only about halfway to a real declining population. Or to put it more realistically, after all humans don't just undergo natural processes (thankfully), we adapt: unless population is growing at a minimum rate, the elderly will be abandoned. As soon as it becomes clear that this cannot be avoided, if needed we'll breed humans like in the Matrix to prevent this from continuing. Why? The people making that decision ... are the ones who are about to meet that fate. This is be why a declining economy is so incredibly, incredibly destructive. Exponential growth, with a growth rate smaller than one, is a killer.
- adamisom 3y ago
  Because innovation will likely decrease simultaneously with needing to support a far greater fraction of unproductive retirees. I also always wonder if folks with your view see no moral issue with humanity disappearing, or with mass population decline in any way other than fewer children being born.
  - hypeatei 3y ago
    Why does innovation or humanity need to exist? I don't see an obvious point or reason to life at all; much less the "growth and innovation" needed for the economy.
    - exoverito 3y ago
      If there is no innovation then standards of living will not improve, and the future will look bleak for many people. Nihilism is incredibly dangerous and desperate people often turn to totalitarian ideologies which promise meaning and purpose.
      - hypeatei 3y ago
        This assumes the current day isn't already bleak for many in our current system.
        exoverito 3y ago
        I make no such assumption, only pointing out the obvious fact that a world of no innovation, declining living standards, and a dying population will only exacerbate bleakness. It's essentially the dystopian setting for Children of Men.
      - xnx 3y ago
        There's a lot to look forward to in a world where the natural environment isn't increasingly mined for resources and paved over. Planet Earth is an absolute Eden all we can think to do is convert all its natural wonders into materials and energy to make unsatisfying technological baubles.
- jimbob45 3y ago
  we're being asked Are you an anti-natalist? I've been seeing hordes of y'all popping up on reddit recently.
  - EnigmaFlare 3y ago
    TIL antenatal is not written "anti-natal"! People who attend antenatal classes are certainly not anti-natalists. One of those terms should really be dropped from the language.
  - switchbak 3y ago
    When I reflect on the folks I've rubbed shoulders with over the last couple decades, I think there has been this implicit anti-natal bias. I think it mostly creeped in because of environmental and social concerns, and it seems to correlate with a kind of hip urbanite mentality. It's pretty shocking to me how long it took me to actually confront these assumptions. In the 80's overpopulation seemed like one of the most pressing concerns, but the situation is a lot more context-specific and nuanced than the message I received. Many people still haven't updated their programming, and act like I'm a raving lunatic when I bring up concerns around demographics in advanced societies. This despite us knowing about this generally for a _long_ time in places like South Korea and Japan. I'm sure I have lots of other similar blind spots, but those buggers are hard to find.
    - imtringued 3y ago
      There is nothing worse than telling people who don't want to have children to have children. You do realize that we are biological creatures? If someone genuinely doesn't want to have children, then they must have overcome their evolved natural tendency and that means they probably have a very good reason. Natalists don't understand that a system of optimistic procreation also requires the children created in this process to decide whether the blood line should be continued. Parents don't know what kind of life their children are going to lead and whether those children are going to lead a life worth living or not. So the natalist is utterly, utterly dependent on the anti-natalist for his procreation strategy to be moral. The anti-natalist has the task of reducing the amount of life that is not worth living, so that only life that is worth living ends up reproducing. In short, the anti-natalist must improve life, whereas the natalist simply hopes that they give birth to an anti-natalist. For the natalist to attempt to improve life is proof that they are not a natalist.
- deleted 3y ago
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- bregma 3y ago
  All Ponzi schemes rely on the influx of new capital or they collapse.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    That is true, but in this case, the collapse can be quite graceful. We'd just need to use a lot less energy and stop producing 90% of goods. The good thing is that we can get by without them.
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    And pension systems are the grandest Ponzi schemes of all.
- xnx 3y ago
  Humans have shown themselves to be pretty clever and adaptable, so I'm optimistic we can thrive even as we unwind ourselves from the ponzi scheme of unlimited growth on a fixed planet.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    Me too. In fact, I bet if push comes to shove, we will come up with solutions we simply can't come up with for now because we are comfortable. Right now, all of us are typing on some computers, comfy and thinking intellectually. If we HAD to and were pushed by the physical parameters of need, I bet our inventiveness would go through the roof and we'd solve the problem.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    Unlimited growth by all practical means is probably not a problem, even with only this planet. Half of the nutrients eaten worldwide by people right now are grown with artificial fertiliser, which is made by literally sucking nitrogen out of air. Humans are making great use of resources that are utterly worthless for all other living beings, such as oil, natural gas, uranium and more. What will be the next toxic waste product that humans will harness for productive goals? And even if there is no next such resource, economic growth can be achieved using less resources by increasing efficiency. So even if humanity decided to stop increasing the resource usage right now, we would still continue to see almost limitless economic growth just by smarter ways of using the resources.
- ericmcer 3y ago
  Well it will suck for us, if you are 20-50 right now you better hope robotic workers will be around to support us when we are too old to be useful. In the long run yeah it will improve everyones quality of life if we can level the population out at a lower number.
  - rideontime 3y ago
    Many 20- to 50-year-olds already have no hope of "retiring" in any traditional sense of the term.
- sholladay 3y ago
  It’s probably a good thing in almost every way except for the economics and care for the elderly, the latter of which could hypothetically be solved with robots but I think we’re still a ways out from that being practical and widespread. The economic implications could also be pretty severe. Our economy is modeled such that we prosper when money flows and there is growth. With less people to be taxed, less people to buy things, and less people putting their money in the markets, the economic engine will stall and then shrink. Everyone loses when that happens. The Great Depression didn’t happen because money literally disappeared, it was more like hoarding and stagnation. That will happen again when the population declines. That said, I’m not out here telling people to have babies just so the economy won’t crash. Boom and bust seems to be part of our nature. Perhaps eventually we will move to an economic model that is more resilient to such things but I doubt it will happen anytime soon.
- 39896880 3y ago
  Hm, I don’t think we’re being asked to assume. FTA: >’For middle- to high-income, low-fertility countries, falling below replacement level could mean labor shortages and pressure on health care systems, nationalized health insurance, and social security programs. Meanwhile, low-income countries that still have high fertility are at heightened risk of falling further behind on the world’s economic stage, Ezeh says. “They will not be able to make the necessary investments to improve health, well-being, and education” with too few resources to support a booming population.’ That sounds pretty bad.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  You've got some good answers, but I'll add another: Fast changes to any sort of complicated system are always problematic. Going from rapid growth to decline within a couple of generations is likely to be much more problematic than the same change happening over a couple of dozen generations.
- BashiBazouk 3y ago
  I think it would be fantastic to drop the world population to a sustainable two or three billion. The "problem" is the house of cards built out of debt. Large debt from government borrowing to your large mortgage is that it assumes a growing economy and inflation will reduce it's relative value over time. Go the other direction and it all falls apart pretty fast. On the other hand the quickest way to realistically reduce emissions by half is to reduce the population by half. And yes, I know the numbers do not work out as linearly as the flippant comment would assume...
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    > On the other hand the quickest way to realistically reduce emissions by half is to reduce the population by half. That's nonsense. A reasonable time period for halving the population naturally would be 3 generations, or about 100 years. We already have proof it can be done faster: Britain has halved their emissions in 35 years. We need to do a lot more than halve CO2 emissions, and we need to do it in a lot less than 100 years. The goal is net zero by 2050. And while that's a very difficult goal, it's not a completely impossible goal either.
    - exoverito 3y ago
      Britain halved their emissions primarily because the West has been deindustrializing and offshoring their production to China. Global CO2 emissions have still increased significantly in the past 35 years, so these national figures are mostly just accounting tricks. Also if things get bad we can just use stratospheric aerosols to cool the Earth. Terraforming would be like a thousandth the cost of trying to completely replace all energy infrastructure by 2050. I'm not opposed to building more sensible energy production like advanced fission, but given how slow, inefficient, and expensive infrastructure has become in the West I wouldn't bet that net zero happens by 2050, especially without decimating the middle classes.
- disambiguation 3y ago
  "Why" is because it's an easy way to get clicks and ad revenue. Otherwise its just to soften people up to the inevitable blow.
Ericson2314 3y ago
People love to freak out about this, but look how the Black Plague really kicked off the early modern world in Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_deepening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_deepening is, IMO, underrated. It's an easy way to understand how the post-plague years were so impactful. If a few decades from now apartment towers in China are full of migrants from around the world, I will not complain.
- EnigmaFlare 3y ago
  Back then, population was at capacity, so the plague opened up previously-used capacity to the survivors. Today is completely different. We're not at capacity and won't benefit from fewer (educated/productive) people, which are exactly the ones not reproducing.
  - throwfish3000 3y ago
    We're not at capacity?
  - itishappy 3y ago
    > We're not at capacity By many accounts we're over. Got a source?
    - EnigmaFlare 3y ago
      Global growth rate today about 1% per year which is 10x higher than it was in Europe in the middle ages. It would be hovering around 0 if we were at capacity. In Europe, it was 0 on average between 1300 and 1400 (black death), so they were still growing otherwise but just barely compared to now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth#/media/File:World_population_growth,_1700-2100,_2022_revision.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow... You could speculate that our current population isn't sustainable because it depends on non-renewable resources, but that's on a longer time scale than we're talking about here.
- Finnucane 3y ago
ddoolin 3y ago
I think this is a good thing. I think we should learn how to take care of the people and planet we have before we start trying to increase our numbers. Indeed, it will probably be required by the people anyway.
- swed420 3y ago
  Transitioning out of a consumption based casino economy riddled with planned obscelecence and anticompetitive practices seems like an obvious thing to include.
vavooom 3y ago
“There’s a tendency to dismiss this as sort of like, yeah, we’ll worry about it in the future. But I think it’s becoming more of an issue that has to be tackled sooner rather than later.” This is an increasing phenomena of our century and it continual feels like we keep kicking these big socio-economic problems (i.e. social security, climate change) down the road.
- croes 3y ago
  You don't need more people to tackle social security etc. You need money and we have enough just badly distributed.
croes 3y ago
Is fertility the correct term? Dropping fertility is worrisome, less children because of conscious decisions is not.
- RandallBrown 3y ago
  Yes. I've made the same mistake before in assuming that fertility rate measures if women are physically able to give birth, but it's really just the number of babies women have in their lifetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
- _Microft 3y ago
  Yes, in the language of demography at least. See the Wikipedia article on fertility.
zug_zug 3y ago
Whenever an article like this gets written I immediately see so many comments to the effect of "It's obviously X." No. It's not obviously anything. It's not obvious. Saying it's obvious seems actively harmful to me. The only thing that's obvious to me is that precise measurement and research would be the smart thing to do. I'd love to try to understand the change through whatever data we can. What variables correlate (geography? income? religion?)? Can we break down what % of this is changes in unwanted pregnancies? Can we break down what % of this is people physically unable to have kids? Can we break down what % of this is pessimism about the future? What about genetics? This is a question that's worthy of millions of dollars of research imo.
lkrubner 3y ago
Within my lifetime the population of the planet has doubled, from 4 billion to 8 billion. That was a dangerous, sudden surge. If we take a break, and maybe lower the population a little, that seems like a positive thing. "Population doubles in one lifetime" is something I expect from bacteria, not complex mammals that use much of the planet's resources.
- EnigmaFlare 3y ago
  Your same argument could be applied to technology. Should we maybe underclock our computers a little too, just in case of some nebulous fear of speed?
- tczMUFlmoNk 3y ago
  It does seem worth noting that 4→8 billion took 48 years (1974–2022), whereas 2→4 billion took 47 years (1927–1974). So at the very least the growth rate is not entirely novel in the range that you quote. By contrast, 1→2 billion took 123 years (1804–1927), according to the estimates of at [1], though Wikipedia suggests that data prior to the 20th century may be unreliable. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_milestones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_milestones
- switchbak 3y ago
  At first glance this sounds reasonable. But when you actually examine what a demographic collapse on a grand scale could look like - it's possible that this amount to the kind of suffering that we haven't seen in a century. There's no way to know, because it's uncharted territory, but the potential downside seems huge. "maybe lower the population a little" - some societies will have some gradual reduction in population. Many countries are already or will soon have their populations of young people decline drastically. Our societies are pretty fragile systems, and when you change the ratio of young to old at the rate we're going to, it's hard to anticipate how these systems will cope.
- mbrumlow 3y ago
  Eh. Ans in your lifetime you possibly saw humanity use horse and cart as main transportation to the cyber truck (depending on your age) This does not happen without population growth. You also saw the quality of life of the average person also more than double. Even if you expect it from bacteria, you imply it a bad because bacteria? What sort of logic is this? Should humanity stop doing anything it sees other forms of life it does not view favorably doing? If so. You go first… let’s start with breathing.
agomez314 3y ago
This is a ticking time bomb with greater impact that climate change...the social and financial institutions in the US assume a large, young working group supporting a smaller, older population - once this starts to reverse the result will be upheaval as gov'ts will attempt to "quickfix" this by taxation. “But above all he [the prince] must refrain from seizing the property of others, because a man is quicker to forget the death of his father than the loss of his patrimony.” I predict euthanasia will become more socially acceptable as people realize that they cannot support their elders. There's so much more to this issue but one question i'd like to raise is that before birth control, people were "oppressed by nature" as it were in that they would have children whether they wanted or not (unless the baby was killed). Now, people can choose whether or not to have children - this is unheard of in the history of evolution and with profound consequences that our society has not grappled with seriously. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VAtXBEt0Ws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VAtXBEt0Ws
- croes 3y ago
  Ever heard of productivity? The industrial revolution reduces the amount of people necessary to provide social security for the elder, modern technology can do the same unless you don't want workers to participate on the rise of productivity.
  - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
    Productivity doesn't matter as long as all the wealth generated from the increases is captured at the top.
    - croes 3y ago
      Therefore the last part of my last sentence.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  this of course calls to mind that famous quote from literature: My name is Inigo Montoya, you unfairly taxed my inheritance, prepare to die.
coderintherye 3y ago
Younger folks may not realize one of the reasons this is discussion-worthy is because previous generations had to (and still do) contend with Malthusians and Neo-Malthusians arguing the end of the world was coming from overpopulation. Hans Rosling and other scientists showed clearly with data that this wasn't going to be the case mostly because when the childhood mortality rate when down so did the fertility rate, but, well doom-sayers going to doom-say. Now the doom-sayers are flipping sides and saying underpopulation will be the end of the world.
- Finnucane 3y ago
  Well, we still have climate change and the generalized destruction of the environment to be Malthusian about.
- solumunus 3y ago
  It’s not going to be the end of the world but it could easily be economically devastating.
  - scoofy 3y ago
    It's not going to be economically devastating. It's just going to mean countries are going to have to make tough decisions they don't want to. The era of free money for retirees to live more comfortably is over. People will have to live modestly in retirement. Most millennials can tell you that you can live a quality life with fewer resources, it's just that people will have to do unspeakable things like riding a bicycle instead of driving an SUV to places like the grocery store. If we are concerned with a short-term economic catastrophe, I think our attention should be on the impact of large language models on unskilled and semi-skilled labor.
    - bigboy12 3y ago
      I don’t get it. They bitch about overpopulation, they bitch about under population. Just smell the goddamn flowers.
andreygrehov 3y ago
> It’s no surprise that fertility is dropping in many countries, which demographers attribute to factors such as higher education levels among people who give birth, rising incomes, and expanded access to contraceptives In other words, highly educated people who have money don't want kids? That makes zero sense to me. From a personal observation, people who have higher income usually have more kids than a typical family can afford.
- squigz 3y ago
  Or, in other words, being more educated means you better understand how to avoid unwanted pregnancy (and the associated implications), rising incomes means better access to contraceptives and healthcare, and expanded access to contraceptives means... well, I shouldn't need to explain that one.
- travem 3y ago
  Your personal observation may be influenced by other factors. Looking at this data from the US you can see that as family income increases, the birthrate drops - https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
Ancalagon 3y ago
seems like labor is about to get more expensive - esp skilled labor
mg 3y ago
Maybe that is the solution to the Fermi paradox.
jlos 3y ago
Whatever the reasons, benefits, and challenges of population decline, the amount of disdain for human life these kind of articles bring out of people is astonishing. Sustainable growth is important - but why desire less life instead of more sustainable life? And the desire to see less human lives its little more thinly disguised resentment. If you cannot see the value and beauty in life, that is a personal failure on your own part. And you failed because you chose not to look beyond suffering to see what is beautiful and worthwhile. You've failed to strive beyond your hardships to see meaning and beauty in your own life, so you've become resentful at life itself.
- mrtesthah 3y ago
  I don't see any disdain for human life in these threads. What I see are people who value life over economic growth for growth's sake.
  - friend_and_foe 3y ago
    You don't see any? It seems a common trope in threads like these "the world would be better with less people."
    - mrtesthah 3y ago
      Do you think that statement implies that human life is valueless or that people currently living should die? I don't. Simply having fewer children or (ideally) using less resources per capita accomplishes that goal just fine.
      - friend_and_foe 3y ago
        "Disdain for human life" doesn't equate to "people should die" (although I do think "there should be less people" is what some might call a dog whistle for many). Saying "there should be less people" unequivocally expresses disdain for human life, not necessarily hatred but often enough it does.
- 3y ago

33 points by bikenaga 3y ago

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Let’s step back and ask why we’re being asked to assume it would be inherently bad if the global population were to start to decline.

spurgu 3y ago
Because the economy and thus everything around you relies on constant growth. Personally I'd be happy with a world with a lot less people, finding some sort of equilibrium. But it would necessitate a lot of pain to get there.
- pupppet 3y ago
  Yep growth, a state of permanent, must-have growth. Or put another way, a world built upon the notion you must never be satisfied. Not to go all Agent Smith on everyone, but he had a point.
- croes 3y ago
  Not everything needs to grow constantly, most of the time you don't need more people, the people just need more money.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  I am really not so sure. It's hard to think of a way but we'd find a way. For starters, a lot of academics and other people who currently work on relatively useless problems like the Higgs boson could actually put their mind to work on something more practical and we'd come up with all sorts of inventions to make our lives easier, and perhaps we wouldn't make the old mistakes of being very unsustainable.
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andrewstuart2 3y ago
Isn't it usually because our retirement systems assume the next generation can foot the bill for the current generation since they'll be a larger generation?
- croes 3y ago
  Nope, normally rising productivity can do the same unless you don't want workers to participate on the benefits of rising productivity.
- formerly_proven 3y ago
  Worker productivity is still going up. You can also just extract a larger share, it's not written in stone that 20% of gross income goes into paying pensions. There is no particular reason why that number can't be 30%. Or 40%.
  - jandrewrogers 3y ago
    For this to work you need the dwindling percentage of people working to voluntarily acquiesce to having a large portion of their income redirected to people who are not working.
    - candiodari 3y ago
      So what you're saying is that someone needs to lose something they currently have. Either people in general ... or the government. Which is what the original thesis was, I believe, that someone needs to lose. But it gets a lot worse. The problem is that growth AND decline are both exponential processes. Not just growth. Decline too. Which means whatever percentage you say has to go to taking care of old people ... give it 20 years and it'll be more. A factor more. In fact, it will quickly rise to over 100% if population doesn't stabilize. In nature, for many species the exponential nature of shrinking population causes, by itself, without other causes, extinction. Luckily, usually local extinction. Cats are a great example of this. Areas almost always have a lot of cats ... or none. If you take current examples (that are getting worse) you see that what happens is that every generation about halves. BUT 4-5 generations are alive simultaneously. So in order to keep the same level of elderly care the expenses need to double 5 times. There's a tiny problem ... even theoretically 20% expenses on the elderly can only double twice. The third time you double it, it goes over 100%. But when maintaining elderly care takes 100% of global human labor, we're only about halfway to a real declining population. Or to put it more realistically, after all humans don't just undergo natural processes (thankfully), we adapt: unless population is growing at a minimum rate, the elderly will be abandoned. As soon as it becomes clear that this cannot be avoided, if needed we'll breed humans like in the Matrix to prevent this from continuing. Why? The people making that decision ... are the ones who are about to meet that fate. This is be why a declining economy is so incredibly, incredibly destructive. Exponential growth, with a growth rate smaller than one, is a killer.
adamisom 3y ago
Because innovation will likely decrease simultaneously with needing to support a far greater fraction of unproductive retirees. I also always wonder if folks with your view see no moral issue with humanity disappearing, or with mass population decline in any way other than fewer children being born.
- hypeatei 3y ago
  Why does innovation or humanity need to exist? I don't see an obvious point or reason to life at all; much less the "growth and innovation" needed for the economy.
  - exoverito 3y ago
    If there is no innovation then standards of living will not improve, and the future will look bleak for many people. Nihilism is incredibly dangerous and desperate people often turn to totalitarian ideologies which promise meaning and purpose.
    - hypeatei 3y ago
      This assumes the current day isn't already bleak for many in our current system.
      - exoverito 3y ago
        I make no such assumption, only pointing out the obvious fact that a world of no innovation, declining living standards, and a dying population will only exacerbate bleakness. It's essentially the dystopian setting for Children of Men.
    - xnx 3y ago
      There's a lot to look forward to in a world where the natural environment isn't increasingly mined for resources and paved over. Planet Earth is an absolute Eden all we can think to do is convert all its natural wonders into materials and energy to make unsatisfying technological baubles.
jimbob45 3y ago
we're being asked Are you an anti-natalist? I've been seeing hordes of y'all popping up on reddit recently.
- EnigmaFlare 3y ago
  TIL antenatal is not written "anti-natal"! People who attend antenatal classes are certainly not anti-natalists. One of those terms should really be dropped from the language.
- switchbak 3y ago
  When I reflect on the folks I've rubbed shoulders with over the last couple decades, I think there has been this implicit anti-natal bias. I think it mostly creeped in because of environmental and social concerns, and it seems to correlate with a kind of hip urbanite mentality. It's pretty shocking to me how long it took me to actually confront these assumptions. In the 80's overpopulation seemed like one of the most pressing concerns, but the situation is a lot more context-specific and nuanced than the message I received. Many people still haven't updated their programming, and act like I'm a raving lunatic when I bring up concerns around demographics in advanced societies. This despite us knowing about this generally for a _long_ time in places like South Korea and Japan. I'm sure I have lots of other similar blind spots, but those buggers are hard to find.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    There is nothing worse than telling people who don't want to have children to have children. You do realize that we are biological creatures? If someone genuinely doesn't want to have children, then they must have overcome their evolved natural tendency and that means they probably have a very good reason. Natalists don't understand that a system of optimistic procreation also requires the children created in this process to decide whether the blood line should be continued. Parents don't know what kind of life their children are going to lead and whether those children are going to lead a life worth living or not. So the natalist is utterly, utterly dependent on the anti-natalist for his procreation strategy to be moral. The anti-natalist has the task of reducing the amount of life that is not worth living, so that only life that is worth living ends up reproducing. In short, the anti-natalist must improve life, whereas the natalist simply hopes that they give birth to an anti-natalist. For the natalist to attempt to improve life is proof that they are not a natalist.
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bregma 3y ago
All Ponzi schemes rely on the influx of new capital or they collapse.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  That is true, but in this case, the collapse can be quite graceful. We'd just need to use a lot less energy and stop producing 90% of goods. The good thing is that we can get by without them.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  And pension systems are the grandest Ponzi schemes of all.
xnx 3y ago
Humans have shown themselves to be pretty clever and adaptable, so I'm optimistic we can thrive even as we unwind ourselves from the ponzi scheme of unlimited growth on a fixed planet.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  Me too. In fact, I bet if push comes to shove, we will come up with solutions we simply can't come up with for now because we are comfortable. Right now, all of us are typing on some computers, comfy and thinking intellectually. If we HAD to and were pushed by the physical parameters of need, I bet our inventiveness would go through the roof and we'd solve the problem.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  Unlimited growth by all practical means is probably not a problem, even with only this planet. Half of the nutrients eaten worldwide by people right now are grown with artificial fertiliser, which is made by literally sucking nitrogen out of air. Humans are making great use of resources that are utterly worthless for all other living beings, such as oil, natural gas, uranium and more. What will be the next toxic waste product that humans will harness for productive goals? And even if there is no next such resource, economic growth can be achieved using less resources by increasing efficiency. So even if humanity decided to stop increasing the resource usage right now, we would still continue to see almost limitless economic growth just by smarter ways of using the resources.
ericmcer 3y ago
Well it will suck for us, if you are 20-50 right now you better hope robotic workers will be around to support us when we are too old to be useful. In the long run yeah it will improve everyones quality of life if we can level the population out at a lower number.
- rideontime 3y ago
  Many 20- to 50-year-olds already have no hope of "retiring" in any traditional sense of the term.
sholladay 3y ago
It’s probably a good thing in almost every way except for the economics and care for the elderly, the latter of which could hypothetically be solved with robots but I think we’re still a ways out from that being practical and widespread. The economic implications could also be pretty severe. Our economy is modeled such that we prosper when money flows and there is growth. With less people to be taxed, less people to buy things, and less people putting their money in the markets, the economic engine will stall and then shrink. Everyone loses when that happens. The Great Depression didn’t happen because money literally disappeared, it was more like hoarding and stagnation. That will happen again when the population declines. That said, I’m not out here telling people to have babies just so the economy won’t crash. Boom and bust seems to be part of our nature. Perhaps eventually we will move to an economic model that is more resilient to such things but I doubt it will happen anytime soon.
39896880 3y ago
Hm, I don’t think we’re being asked to assume. FTA: >’For middle- to high-income, low-fertility countries, falling below replacement level could mean labor shortages and pressure on health care systems, nationalized health insurance, and social security programs. Meanwhile, low-income countries that still have high fertility are at heightened risk of falling further behind on the world’s economic stage, Ezeh says. “They will not be able to make the necessary investments to improve health, well-being, and education” with too few resources to support a booming population.’ That sounds pretty bad.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
You've got some good answers, but I'll add another: Fast changes to any sort of complicated system are always problematic. Going from rapid growth to decline within a couple of generations is likely to be much more problematic than the same change happening over a couple of dozen generations.
BashiBazouk 3y ago
I think it would be fantastic to drop the world population to a sustainable two or three billion. The "problem" is the house of cards built out of debt. Large debt from government borrowing to your large mortgage is that it assumes a growing economy and inflation will reduce it's relative value over time. Go the other direction and it all falls apart pretty fast. On the other hand the quickest way to realistically reduce emissions by half is to reduce the population by half. And yes, I know the numbers do not work out as linearly as the flippant comment would assume...
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  > On the other hand the quickest way to realistically reduce emissions by half is to reduce the population by half. That's nonsense. A reasonable time period for halving the population naturally would be 3 generations, or about 100 years. We already have proof it can be done faster: Britain has halved their emissions in 35 years. We need to do a lot more than halve CO2 emissions, and we need to do it in a lot less than 100 years. The goal is net zero by 2050. And while that's a very difficult goal, it's not a completely impossible goal either.
  - exoverito 3y ago
    Britain halved their emissions primarily because the West has been deindustrializing and offshoring their production to China. Global CO2 emissions have still increased significantly in the past 35 years, so these national figures are mostly just accounting tricks. Also if things get bad we can just use stratospheric aerosols to cool the Earth. Terraforming would be like a thousandth the cost of trying to completely replace all energy infrastructure by 2050. I'm not opposed to building more sensible energy production like advanced fission, but given how slow, inefficient, and expensive infrastructure has become in the West I wouldn't bet that net zero happens by 2050, especially without decimating the middle classes.
disambiguation 3y ago
"Why" is because it's an easy way to get clicks and ad revenue. Otherwise its just to soften people up to the inevitable blow.

Ericson2314 3y ago

People love to freak out about this, but look how the Black Plague really kicked off the early modern world in Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_deepening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_deepening is, IMO, underrated. It's an easy way to understand how the post-plague years were so impactful. If a few decades from now apartment towers in China are full of migrants from around the world, I will not complain.

EnigmaFlare 3y ago
Back then, population was at capacity, so the plague opened up previously-used capacity to the survivors. Today is completely different. We're not at capacity and won't benefit from fewer (educated/productive) people, which are exactly the ones not reproducing.
- throwfish3000 3y ago
  We're not at capacity?
- itishappy 3y ago
  > We're not at capacity By many accounts we're over. Got a source?
  - EnigmaFlare 3y ago
    Global growth rate today about 1% per year which is 10x higher than it was in Europe in the middle ages. It would be hovering around 0 if we were at capacity. In Europe, it was 0 on average between 1300 and 1400 (black death), so they were still growing otherwise but just barely compared to now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth#/media/File:World_population_growth,_1700-2100,_2022_revision.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow... You could speculate that our current population isn't sustainable because it depends on non-renewable resources, but that's on a longer time scale than we're talking about here.
Finnucane 3y ago

ddoolin 3y ago

I think this is a good thing. I think we should learn how to take care of the people and planet we have before we start trying to increase our numbers. Indeed, it will probably be required by the people anyway.

swed420 3y ago
Transitioning out of a consumption based casino economy riddled with planned obscelecence and anticompetitive practices seems like an obvious thing to include.

vavooom 3y ago

“There’s a tendency to dismiss this as sort of like, yeah, we’ll worry about it in the future. But I think it’s becoming more of an issue that has to be tackled sooner rather than later.” This is an increasing phenomena of our century and it continual feels like we keep kicking these big socio-economic problems (i.e. social security, climate change) down the road.

croes 3y ago
You don't need more people to tackle social security etc. You need money and we have enough just badly distributed.

croes 3y ago

Is fertility the correct term? Dropping fertility is worrisome, less children because of conscious decisions is not.

RandallBrown 3y ago
Yes. I've made the same mistake before in assuming that fertility rate measures if women are physically able to give birth, but it's really just the number of babies women have in their lifetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
_Microft 3y ago
Yes, in the language of demography at least. See the Wikipedia article on fertility.

zug_zug 3y ago

Whenever an article like this gets written I immediately see so many comments to the effect of "It's obviously X." No. It's not obviously anything. It's not obvious. Saying it's obvious seems actively harmful to me. The only thing that's obvious to me is that precise measurement and research would be the smart thing to do. I'd love to try to understand the change through whatever data we can. What variables correlate (geography? income? religion?)? Can we break down what % of this is changes in unwanted pregnancies? Can we break down what % of this is people physically unable to have kids? Can we break down what % of this is pessimism about the future? What about genetics? This is a question that's worthy of millions of dollars of research imo.

lkrubner 3y ago

Within my lifetime the population of the planet has doubled, from 4 billion to 8 billion. That was a dangerous, sudden surge. If we take a break, and maybe lower the population a little, that seems like a positive thing. "Population doubles in one lifetime" is something I expect from bacteria, not complex mammals that use much of the planet's resources.

EnigmaFlare 3y ago
Your same argument could be applied to technology. Should we maybe underclock our computers a little too, just in case of some nebulous fear of speed?
tczMUFlmoNk 3y ago
It does seem worth noting that 4→8 billion took 48 years (1974–2022), whereas 2→4 billion took 47 years (1927–1974). So at the very least the growth rate is not entirely novel in the range that you quote. By contrast, 1→2 billion took 123 years (1804–1927), according to the estimates of at [1], though Wikipedia suggests that data prior to the 20th century may be unreliable. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_milestones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_milestones
switchbak 3y ago
At first glance this sounds reasonable. But when you actually examine what a demographic collapse on a grand scale could look like - it's possible that this amount to the kind of suffering that we haven't seen in a century. There's no way to know, because it's uncharted territory, but the potential downside seems huge. "maybe lower the population a little" - some societies will have some gradual reduction in population. Many countries are already or will soon have their populations of young people decline drastically. Our societies are pretty fragile systems, and when you change the ratio of young to old at the rate we're going to, it's hard to anticipate how these systems will cope.
mbrumlow 3y ago
Eh. Ans in your lifetime you possibly saw humanity use horse and cart as main transportation to the cyber truck (depending on your age) This does not happen without population growth. You also saw the quality of life of the average person also more than double. Even if you expect it from bacteria, you imply it a bad because bacteria? What sort of logic is this? Should humanity stop doing anything it sees other forms of life it does not view favorably doing? If so. You go first… let’s start with breathing.

agomez314 3y ago

This is a ticking time bomb with greater impact that climate change...the social and financial institutions in the US assume a large, young working group supporting a smaller, older population - once this starts to reverse the result will be upheaval as gov'ts will attempt to "quickfix" this by taxation. “But above all he [the prince] must refrain from seizing the property of others, because a man is quicker to forget the death of his father than the loss of his patrimony.” I predict euthanasia will become more socially acceptable as people realize that they cannot support their elders. There's so much more to this issue but one question i'd like to raise is that before birth control, people were "oppressed by nature" as it were in that they would have children whether they wanted or not (unless the baby was killed). Now, people can choose whether or not to have children - this is unheard of in the history of evolution and with profound consequences that our society has not grappled with seriously. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VAtXBEt0Ws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VAtXBEt0Ws

croes 3y ago
Ever heard of productivity? The industrial revolution reduces the amount of people necessary to provide social security for the elder, modern technology can do the same unless you don't want workers to participate on the rise of productivity.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  Productivity doesn't matter as long as all the wealth generated from the increases is captured at the top.
  - croes 3y ago
    Therefore the last part of my last sentence.
bryanrasmussen 3y ago
this of course calls to mind that famous quote from literature: My name is Inigo Montoya, you unfairly taxed my inheritance, prepare to die.

coderintherye 3y ago

Younger folks may not realize one of the reasons this is discussion-worthy is because previous generations had to (and still do) contend with Malthusians and Neo-Malthusians arguing the end of the world was coming from overpopulation. Hans Rosling and other scientists showed clearly with data that this wasn't going to be the case mostly because when the childhood mortality rate when down so did the fertility rate, but, well doom-sayers going to doom-say. Now the doom-sayers are flipping sides and saying underpopulation will be the end of the world.

Finnucane 3y ago
Well, we still have climate change and the generalized destruction of the environment to be Malthusian about.
solumunus 3y ago
It’s not going to be the end of the world but it could easily be economically devastating.
- scoofy 3y ago
  It's not going to be economically devastating. It's just going to mean countries are going to have to make tough decisions they don't want to. The era of free money for retirees to live more comfortably is over. People will have to live modestly in retirement. Most millennials can tell you that you can live a quality life with fewer resources, it's just that people will have to do unspeakable things like riding a bicycle instead of driving an SUV to places like the grocery store. If we are concerned with a short-term economic catastrophe, I think our attention should be on the impact of large language models on unskilled and semi-skilled labor.
  - bigboy12 3y ago
    I don’t get it. They bitch about overpopulation, they bitch about under population. Just smell the goddamn flowers.

andreygrehov 3y ago

> It’s no surprise that fertility is dropping in many countries, which demographers attribute to factors such as higher education levels among people who give birth, rising incomes, and expanded access to contraceptives In other words, highly educated people who have money don't want kids? That makes zero sense to me. From a personal observation, people who have higher income usually have more kids than a typical family can afford.

squigz 3y ago
Or, in other words, being more educated means you better understand how to avoid unwanted pregnancy (and the associated implications), rising incomes means better access to contraceptives and healthcare, and expanded access to contraceptives means... well, I shouldn't need to explain that one.
travem 3y ago
Your personal observation may be influenced by other factors. Looking at this data from the US you can see that as family income increases, the birthrate drops - https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...

Ancalagon 3y ago

seems like labor is about to get more expensive - esp skilled labor

mg 3y ago

Maybe that is the solution to the Fermi paradox.

jlos 3y ago

Whatever the reasons, benefits, and challenges of population decline, the amount of disdain for human life these kind of articles bring out of people is astonishing. Sustainable growth is important - but why desire less life instead of more sustainable life? And the desire to see less human lives its little more thinly disguised resentment. If you cannot see the value and beauty in life, that is a personal failure on your own part. And you failed because you chose not to look beyond suffering to see what is beautiful and worthwhile. You've failed to strive beyond your hardships to see meaning and beauty in your own life, so you've become resentful at life itself.

mrtesthah 3y ago
I don't see any disdain for human life in these threads. What I see are people who value life over economic growth for growth's sake.
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  You don't see any? It seems a common trope in threads like these "the world would be better with less people."
  - mrtesthah 3y ago
    Do you think that statement implies that human life is valueless or that people currently living should die? I don't. Simply having fewer children or (ideally) using less resources per capita accomplishes that goal just fine.
    - friend_and_foe 3y ago
      "Disdain for human life" doesn't equate to "people should die" (although I do think "there should be less people" is what some might call a dog whistle for many). Saying "there should be less people" unequivocally expresses disdain for human life, not necessarily hatred but often enough it does.
3y ago