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as someone who squarely falls into the “probably don’t want kids because of overpopulation” category — i get the irony you’re trying to point out. but global o

as someone who squarely falls into the “probably don’t want kids because of overpopulation” category — i get the irony you’re trying to point out. but global overpopulation is not the same as national overpopulation. at some point we’re gonna run out of fucking food as a species. * the sooner we can get our heads out of our arses and past the primitive tribalism of “we need to have more than the other lot” as a species, the better. i squarely fall into the “migration is the solution, not the problem” camp too [0]. exactly because of that global perspective. plenty of people in the world. maybe it’s time we learned to share as a species? although fuck all chance of that happening any time soon in the current political climate. * someone usually attempts a retort about “technology will magically save all of us” to this point. which is just kicking the can down the road. [0]: edit to note that the problem i’m referring to here is national underpopulation specifically

oezi 2y ago
Some problems need tackling at the right time. We don't need to get too crazy about declining populations when we are facing more urgent issues. Maybe the world in 2050 will be so different that the issue has resolved itself. Always remember that the world was fine with 2bn people just 100 years ago.
- dijksterhuis 2y ago
  > Always remember that the world was fine with 2bn people just 100 years ago. we’ve gone from ~2 billion to ~8 billion in 100 years. compared to the (highly estimated) figures from before 100 years ago — that’s a massive increase. the graph is basically a line going straight up compared to the rest of (highly estimated) population data for the last 10k years. and growth is continuing. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population > Maybe the world in 2050 will be so different that the issue has resolved itself “maybe a miracle might happen” — is just kicking the can down the road in my book. we are out of balance with our surrounding environment. there will be a readjustment — whether we choose to make that readjustment ourselves (take responsibility for the problem), or let the readjustment happen (the problem really becomes a problem), is up to us as a species. > Some problems need tackling at the right time. some problems take a really long time and a lot of effort to work on so maybe starting to work on them early and proactively might be a good idea. like climate change. > We don't need to get too crazy about declining populations when we are facing more urgent issues. speaking of climate change, global overpopulation kinda has an impact on it! more people -> use more resources -> screwing up the planet faster
  - oezi 2y ago
    Your arguments are a bit all over the place for me to follow. I don't think it is kicking down the can if you don't have enough information to not get to much into panic mode. If this turns out to be an issue we can act. At the moment it looks like it to me that the climate crisis is more relevant than the demographic change, because as you said: Less people are actually better for the planet. With AI becoming more capable each year we might find that many of the issues of large elderly populations can be alleviated. Let's check back in 5 or 10 years if the demographics is really shaping up to be a problem.
  - IngoBlechschmid 2y ago
    > speaking of climate change, global overpopulation kinda has an impact on it! You are right, of course; but just to put some perspective to it: If Thanos-style the population and the CO2 emissions would be cut in half, this would not be enough at all -- we need to get back to 350 ppm (or similar). I'm writing this to counter the meme that "climate change is Africa's fault, because of their population count".
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  > Always remember that the world was fine with 2bn people just 100 years ago. But then leaders started promising the old people (majority of voters) wealth transfers from the young people. And that will cause friction, because these wealth transfers only made sense with growing proportions of young people.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    Those wealth transfers happened informally before the government formalized them. Social security takes a burden off young people as much as it gives to old people. Elder abuse is widespread in Confucian societies like Japan and China, it's the dark side of a culture that professes filial piety but actually breeds resentment in the young.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      A wealth transfer from child to parent / relative is different than a wealth transfer from young person to the collective of old people, apportioned wealth based on complicated and changing formulas. There exists an arbitrage opportunity where one can avoid the costs and compromises of coupling/parenting, and still retain some of the benefits. > Social security takes a burden off young people as much as it gives to old people. I don’t see it this way. If I were given the choice, I would not pay the government at all, and I would not expect anything from the government in the future. I already don’t, by way of knowing that my future benefits will be decreased in purchasing power via devaluation of currency and increased retirement age and changes in the benefit formula. And it wouldn’t change my burden at all, because I didn’t ask to be born, hence I don’t owe anyone in their old age (nor does anyone owe me in my old age).
- lolinder 2y ago
  The concern with demographic collapse isn't that the world won't be fine with fewer people, it's that the transition period is going to be extremely painful. During the increase in population kids are helpless for ~8 years before they're actually able to contribute to farms and whatnot, so the large number of extra children doesn't show. During demographic collapse, since it happens generally as life expectancies go up, elderly adults generally (with exceptions) spend decades getting less and less able to contribute before they die. We don't have answers for how to take care of them during that window.
  - trollbridge 2y ago
    Unless someone invents some kind of amazing robots like the promise of Tesla Bots except completely real, the only way to take care of older people is to have younger people taking care of them. (That includes younger people engaging in heroic lifesaving medical services for older people.) Eventually this would be a self-correcting problem, but in the most gruesome way one can imagine. And creating and maintaining Tesla Bots would require lots of young people, too... unless/until one finds a way to make them create and maintain themselves, which seems rather far off; I live in a world where computer servers don't really even maintain themselves.
  - anticorporate 2y ago
    I tend to take the opinion that we already dug our grave. It's not that different that the deserved skepticism for new "climate friendly" technologies. "The totally unsustainable behavior you had was bad. Here, have a slightly better option that allows you to keep doing the totally unsustainable thing with a slightly smaller footprint." Electric cars. Organic meat. Carbon offsets for flights. LEED certified McMansions. Every time we tell people the change isn't going to hurt, we lie to them. What we need are car-free communities, plant based diets, less travel, and smaller homes. Overpopulation isn't that different. Population reduction will hurt, but that doesn't mean it isn't necessary. I fully expect to get a lesser quality of care in my old age than my parents got. That sucks, but, that's reality. We're now in the consequences stage. We should be focusing on mitigating harm, not clinging to populating the planet in the way we used to.
  - oezi 2y ago
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  One argument is that an aging population will be set in its ways and not able or willing to adapt. If people think they can't afford to fix their own building to save their own lives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collapse how can you expect them to sacrifice a single penny to address problems like climate change that will affect future generations? Granted, fewer people in itself reduces our environmental impact, but some combination of young people and older people who feel invested in their offspring is necessary for us to face the future.
- api 2y ago
  The problem is economic and political. Witness the riots that took place in France when they even talked about raising the retirement age. If population declines that much, retirement will become structurally impossible for anyone but the relatively wealthy. Other types of social safety nets will also collapse, because at some point young working people will just balk at the tax burden they'll have to pay to support them with a shrinking cohort of workers. AI and automation could cushion the blow to some extent.
like_any_other 2y ago
But migration doesn't do anything to address global overpopulation. The places with population growth don't change [1], so they keep producing excess population. If anything, it makes addressing overpopulation much much harder - without immigration, each country can address overpopulation on its own. With immigration, they have to globally coordinate, and anyone who complies will be displaced by those who defect. Coordinating anything on a global scale is hard, but practically impossible when defection is incentivized. [1] Emigration is negligible compared to population growth - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6tSqGCfoCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6tSqGCfoCI
- dijksterhuis 2y ago
  updated with an edit about migration is a solution for national underpopulation specifically. (do t want anyone else to get confused about it). i wasn’t clear on that do i can see why you’re now arguing this point. on global overpopulation — i disagree. the only way to solve it is to co-ordinate globally. and that involves helping everyone else who doesn’t hsve stuff getting to a place of yeah we’ve kind of all got enough stuff now. or, alternatively, somehow everyone getting to a place where we realise “stuff” is abjectly meaningless and pointless as a measure for our individual/group success. basically, materialism needs to fuck off as our dominant incentivising thing.
  - like_any_other 2y ago
    > on global overpopulation — i disagree. the only way to solve it is to co-ordinate globally. and that involves helping everyone else who doesn’t have stuff getting to a place of yeah we’ve kind of all got enough stuff now. Here we agree. I should clarify there are multiple types of coordination - the kind you propose is the easier one. It can be global, but it really only needs two countries - one offering aid [1], and one receiving it. If someone defects, no big deal - someone else might step in, and in any case, the situation should be better than if there had never been aid in the first place. But getting every population on Earth to agree to and follow through with reducing their own fertility is the much harder kind of coordination. There will always be defectors, and these defections will (literally) add up and multiply. Unlike with aid, where the giver is only sacrificing as you say materialism, now their worry will be "will my group continue to exist?" [1] Whatever form that aid takes. There are arguments that simple material aid does more harm than good and hinders development, but surely there are forms of aid that help development, so this is not an excuse to stop aid entirely.
api 2y ago
We are nowhere near running out of food. Famines are largely political in origin, as are other forms of scarcity, usually resulting from trade embargoes and wars. I would have been worried about energy before we cracked cheap solar power and cheap batteries. At this point we have the technology to power ourselves off the sun even if we lack the political will to migrate to it quickly. Climate change is a danger but I do not believe it's existential unless we really do continue to burn carbon all through the 21st century without migrating to other energy sources and just DGAF. Climate change will cause regional disasters and migrations and political instability but I don't think it's going to cause any more death or suffering than large scale wars. (It may cause large scale wars.) If we did in fact have 1950s levels of global population growth ongoing, we would eventually hit major problems, but that is just not happening. The only place left with high birth rates is Africa and their birth rates are falling like everyone else's as they develop and urbanize.
palmotea 2y ago
> at some point we’re gonna run out of fucking food as a species. * No we're not. IIRC, birthrates are declining everywhere, and the global population will start to decline within my lifetime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population_projections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population_projections
- dijksterhuis 2y ago
  in the uk it was estimated we only have 100 or so harvests left on current farm land [0]. globally, the estimate is worse - 60 harvests [1]. 3.2 billion people are currently affected by soil degradation and its downstream effects [1 follow the links]. now there are initiatives being taken to try and address this specific problem, but this isn’t the only problem. we have finite resources on this planet and we are out of balance with our surrounding environment. one way or another, it’s gonna catch up to us. to quote one of my favourite NOFX tracks [2]: There's no more points of view when your only thought is food [0]: https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/only-100-harvests-left-in-uk-farm-soils-scientists-warn https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/only-100-harvests-left-in-uk-farm... [1]: https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/news-views/the-hidden-cost-of-uk-food-soil-degradation/ https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/news-views/the-hidden-cost-... [2]: https://youtu.be/VGZ1zZ-drQk https://youtu.be/VGZ1zZ-drQk

oezi 2y ago

Some problems need tackling at the right time. We don't need to get too crazy about declining populations when we are facing more urgent issues. Maybe the world in 2050 will be so different that the issue has resolved itself. Always remember that the world was fine with 2bn people just 100 years ago.

dijksterhuis 2y ago
> Always remember that the world was fine with 2bn people just 100 years ago. we’ve gone from ~2 billion to ~8 billion in 100 years. compared to the (highly estimated) figures from before 100 years ago — that’s a massive increase. the graph is basically a line going straight up compared to the rest of (highly estimated) population data for the last 10k years. and growth is continuing. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population > Maybe the world in 2050 will be so different that the issue has resolved itself “maybe a miracle might happen” — is just kicking the can down the road in my book. we are out of balance with our surrounding environment. there will be a readjustment — whether we choose to make that readjustment ourselves (take responsibility for the problem), or let the readjustment happen (the problem really becomes a problem), is up to us as a species. > Some problems need tackling at the right time. some problems take a really long time and a lot of effort to work on so maybe starting to work on them early and proactively might be a good idea. like climate change. > We don't need to get too crazy about declining populations when we are facing more urgent issues. speaking of climate change, global overpopulation kinda has an impact on it! more people -> use more resources -> screwing up the planet faster
- oezi 2y ago
  Your arguments are a bit all over the place for me to follow. I don't think it is kicking down the can if you don't have enough information to not get to much into panic mode. If this turns out to be an issue we can act. At the moment it looks like it to me that the climate crisis is more relevant than the demographic change, because as you said: Less people are actually better for the planet. With AI becoming more capable each year we might find that many of the issues of large elderly populations can be alleviated. Let's check back in 5 or 10 years if the demographics is really shaping up to be a problem.
- IngoBlechschmid 2y ago
  > speaking of climate change, global overpopulation kinda has an impact on it! You are right, of course; but just to put some perspective to it: If Thanos-style the population and the CO2 emissions would be cut in half, this would not be enough at all -- we need to get back to 350 ppm (or similar). I'm writing this to counter the meme that "climate change is Africa's fault, because of their population count".
lotsofpulp 2y ago
> Always remember that the world was fine with 2bn people just 100 years ago. But then leaders started promising the old people (majority of voters) wealth transfers from the young people. And that will cause friction, because these wealth transfers only made sense with growing proportions of young people.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  Those wealth transfers happened informally before the government formalized them. Social security takes a burden off young people as much as it gives to old people. Elder abuse is widespread in Confucian societies like Japan and China, it's the dark side of a culture that professes filial piety but actually breeds resentment in the young.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    A wealth transfer from child to parent / relative is different than a wealth transfer from young person to the collective of old people, apportioned wealth based on complicated and changing formulas. There exists an arbitrage opportunity where one can avoid the costs and compromises of coupling/parenting, and still retain some of the benefits. > Social security takes a burden off young people as much as it gives to old people. I don’t see it this way. If I were given the choice, I would not pay the government at all, and I would not expect anything from the government in the future. I already don’t, by way of knowing that my future benefits will be decreased in purchasing power via devaluation of currency and increased retirement age and changes in the benefit formula. And it wouldn’t change my burden at all, because I didn’t ask to be born, hence I don’t owe anyone in their old age (nor does anyone owe me in my old age).
lolinder 2y ago
The concern with demographic collapse isn't that the world won't be fine with fewer people, it's that the transition period is going to be extremely painful. During the increase in population kids are helpless for ~8 years before they're actually able to contribute to farms and whatnot, so the large number of extra children doesn't show. During demographic collapse, since it happens generally as life expectancies go up, elderly adults generally (with exceptions) spend decades getting less and less able to contribute before they die. We don't have answers for how to take care of them during that window.
- trollbridge 2y ago
  Unless someone invents some kind of amazing robots like the promise of Tesla Bots except completely real, the only way to take care of older people is to have younger people taking care of them. (That includes younger people engaging in heroic lifesaving medical services for older people.) Eventually this would be a self-correcting problem, but in the most gruesome way one can imagine. And creating and maintaining Tesla Bots would require lots of young people, too... unless/until one finds a way to make them create and maintain themselves, which seems rather far off; I live in a world where computer servers don't really even maintain themselves.
- anticorporate 2y ago
  I tend to take the opinion that we already dug our grave. It's not that different that the deserved skepticism for new "climate friendly" technologies. "The totally unsustainable behavior you had was bad. Here, have a slightly better option that allows you to keep doing the totally unsustainable thing with a slightly smaller footprint." Electric cars. Organic meat. Carbon offsets for flights. LEED certified McMansions. Every time we tell people the change isn't going to hurt, we lie to them. What we need are car-free communities, plant based diets, less travel, and smaller homes. Overpopulation isn't that different. Population reduction will hurt, but that doesn't mean it isn't necessary. I fully expect to get a lesser quality of care in my old age than my parents got. That sucks, but, that's reality. We're now in the consequences stage. We should be focusing on mitigating harm, not clinging to populating the planet in the way we used to.
- oezi 2y ago
PaulHoule 2y ago
One argument is that an aging population will be set in its ways and not able or willing to adapt. If people think they can't afford to fix their own building to save their own lives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collapse how can you expect them to sacrifice a single penny to address problems like climate change that will affect future generations? Granted, fewer people in itself reduces our environmental impact, but some combination of young people and older people who feel invested in their offspring is necessary for us to face the future.
api 2y ago
The problem is economic and political. Witness the riots that took place in France when they even talked about raising the retirement age. If population declines that much, retirement will become structurally impossible for anyone but the relatively wealthy. Other types of social safety nets will also collapse, because at some point young working people will just balk at the tax burden they'll have to pay to support them with a shrinking cohort of workers. AI and automation could cushion the blow to some extent.

like_any_other 2y ago

But migration doesn't do anything to address global overpopulation. The places with population growth don't change [1], so they keep producing excess population. If anything, it makes addressing overpopulation much much harder - without immigration, each country can address overpopulation on its own. With immigration, they have to globally coordinate, and anyone who complies will be displaced by those who defect. Coordinating anything on a global scale is hard, but practically impossible when defection is incentivized. [1] Emigration is negligible compared to population growth - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6tSqGCfoCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6tSqGCfoCI

dijksterhuis 2y ago
updated with an edit about migration is a solution for national underpopulation specifically. (do t want anyone else to get confused about it). i wasn’t clear on that do i can see why you’re now arguing this point. on global overpopulation — i disagree. the only way to solve it is to co-ordinate globally. and that involves helping everyone else who doesn’t hsve stuff getting to a place of yeah we’ve kind of all got enough stuff now. or, alternatively, somehow everyone getting to a place where we realise “stuff” is abjectly meaningless and pointless as a measure for our individual/group success. basically, materialism needs to fuck off as our dominant incentivising thing.
- like_any_other 2y ago
  > on global overpopulation — i disagree. the only way to solve it is to co-ordinate globally. and that involves helping everyone else who doesn’t have stuff getting to a place of yeah we’ve kind of all got enough stuff now. Here we agree. I should clarify there are multiple types of coordination - the kind you propose is the easier one. It can be global, but it really only needs two countries - one offering aid [1], and one receiving it. If someone defects, no big deal - someone else might step in, and in any case, the situation should be better than if there had never been aid in the first place. But getting every population on Earth to agree to and follow through with reducing their own fertility is the much harder kind of coordination. There will always be defectors, and these defections will (literally) add up and multiply. Unlike with aid, where the giver is only sacrificing as you say materialism, now their worry will be "will my group continue to exist?" [1] Whatever form that aid takes. There are arguments that simple material aid does more harm than good and hinders development, but surely there are forms of aid that help development, so this is not an excuse to stop aid entirely.

api 2y ago

We are nowhere near running out of food. Famines are largely political in origin, as are other forms of scarcity, usually resulting from trade embargoes and wars. I would have been worried about energy before we cracked cheap solar power and cheap batteries. At this point we have the technology to power ourselves off the sun even if we lack the political will to migrate to it quickly. Climate change is a danger but I do not believe it's existential unless we really do continue to burn carbon all through the 21st century without migrating to other energy sources and just DGAF. Climate change will cause regional disasters and migrations and political instability but I don't think it's going to cause any more death or suffering than large scale wars. (It may cause large scale wars.) If we did in fact have 1950s levels of global population growth ongoing, we would eventually hit major problems, but that is just not happening. The only place left with high birth rates is Africa and their birth rates are falling like everyone else's as they develop and urbanize.

palmotea 2y ago

> at some point we’re gonna run out of fucking food as a species. * No we're not. IIRC, birthrates are declining everywhere, and the global population will start to decline within my lifetime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population_projections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population_projections

dijksterhuis 2y ago
in the uk it was estimated we only have 100 or so harvests left on current farm land [0]. globally, the estimate is worse - 60 harvests [1]. 3.2 billion people are currently affected by soil degradation and its downstream effects [1 follow the links]. now there are initiatives being taken to try and address this specific problem, but this isn’t the only problem. we have finite resources on this planet and we are out of balance with our surrounding environment. one way or another, it’s gonna catch up to us. to quote one of my favourite NOFX tracks [2]: There's no more points of view when your only thought is food [0]: https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/only-100-harvests-left-in-uk-farm-soils-scientists-warn https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/only-100-harvests-left-in-uk-farm... [1]: https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/news-views/the-hidden-cost-of-uk-food-soil-degradation/ https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/news-views/the-hidden-cost-... [2]: https://youtu.be/VGZ1zZ-drQk https://youtu.be/VGZ1zZ-drQk