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What? No it doesn't. There's no reason we can't have a society that lets people have ~2 kids happily on average. Collapsing population numbers will be a disaste

What? No it doesn't. There's no reason we can't have a society that lets people have ~2 kids happily on average. Collapsing population numbers will be a disaster for everyone involved -- this isn't even some quirk of capitalism (though that is why the rates are collapsing in the first place) but just a consequence of the simple fact that the elderly require the young to take care of them.

edhelas 1y ago
"Collapsing" is really the word we should use there ? Shrinking okay. Collapsing is the word we use about the biodiversity collapse, or the collapse of some environmental numbers. There's no catastrophy about having a population shrinking, we are doing that to most of the other species on the planet and only a few people seems to really care. We are in a humanity re-adjustement, not a collapse.
- cryptonector 1y ago
  Europe is heading towards less than half the replacement rate. Japan is already there. South Korea is at one third the replacement rate. This is the story almost worldwide, and soon can be expected to be worldwide. In China and India there is also sex selection abortions and male preference to make things worse. Exponential on the way up, and on the way down. Reversing such steep declines isn't possible in one generation without a "Marshall plan" for fertility, which means that in one generation the next cohort of fertile females will be half the size of today's if today's fertility rate is half of replacement. If the situation persists then the next cohort will be one quarter of today's. These declines are much sharper than past growth rates. What if these fertility declines persist for three generations? How many generations can they persist for anyways?
  - edhelas 1y ago
    How many generation it could have continue to grow exponentially ? What goes up ends up to going down at one point. We are reaching some limits, in a society that was used to think that we could push boundaries continuously endlessly for several centuries.
    - cryptonector 1y ago
      > How many generation it could have continue to grow exponentially ? Declines are also exponential. Plateuing could have been a thing. But instead we're now in a steep decline mode. It will be 150 years before populations increase again.
    - cryptonector 1y ago
      > How many generation it could have continue to grow exponentially ? Probably many, as long as the growth rate was low enough, or zero. We can't grow forever, but that doesn't mean that the alternative must be to decline and overshoot whatever is a good population size (but alas this is what we are now bound to do).
  - unstablediffusi 1y ago
    Japan gets singled out all the time (the WEF types really want it to be more vibrant for some reason, so every other day, there's an article about how "Japan will not survive" without open borders), but its TFR is like 10% below most Western countries. SK though... yeah, something is uniquely broken there.
  - alexey-salmin 1y ago
    > Reversing such steep declines isn't possible in one generation without a "Marshall plan" for fertility "Reversal" isn't possible with our without Marshall plan. What you need is young females and what you have is aging population, no amount of money or political will can change that. Even if we (I'm in Europe) manage to get out of decline, the recovery will take several generations which means a century of time. South Korea is screwed way beyond repair by my estimates.
- littlestymaar 1y ago
  The fertility rate has indeed been collapsing for the past few years. It will only cause a population shrinking in the short term though, but it's still very concerning because being surrounded by kids is a big source of motivation to have kids yourself, and the less kids in a society the harder it becomes to raise kids yourself. The current trend implies that the human specie is collapsing at a similar as the rest of biodiversity, it's not a readjustment.
  - edhelas 1y ago
    Are you scared of that ?
    - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
      I think it will be quite unpleasant for my peers and I if there's not enough working age adults around to produce goods and services for us when we're old.
      - edhelas 1y ago
        Because you thought that this trend could have continued for centuries? We built an economy based on the fact that resources and population could grown indefinitely and now we are surprised that we cannot cope with limits. Looks like we'll have to learn it the hard way.
        littlestymaar 1y ago
        You're mixing things up: What's desirable is not population expansion but neither is population collapse, it's population stability. This also has nothing to do with Capitalism being built for perpetual growth: of course it is deemed to fail at some point in a finite world, but that's irrelevant to the topic of demography. If anything, the system will see the population decline as an opportunity, as it means fewer people to share the resources with.
        1y ago
fnordpiglet 1y ago
Why? Why do we need more people for? We have a society that lets people have all the children they want. But they don’t want more children. I’d note fwiw replacement rate in the US is currently 2.08 children, and current fertility is around 1.6/couple. On a comment about US policy - With immigration we have a growth in population, without it we will drop rapidly. I don’t think however people will be badgered into having kids by politicians, even with bribing. Most people I know that don’t have or have one kid, including myself, do so because they don’t want to have more kids. No amount of incentive changes that.
- SXX 1y ago
  If you can financially sustant all children you want then you are exception. Majority of people don't have this kind of option to begin with and the more children you have less financial resources you have.
  - fnordpiglet 1y ago
    My grandmothers family was eight kids in the Great Depression, homeless. In fact there is a strong inverse correlation between wealth and fertility.
- littlestymaar 1y ago
  > Why? Why do we need more people for? You don't necessarily need “more people”, but you'd need population to be at least close to stable.
  - cosmicgadget 1y ago
    > Why?
    - SXX 1y ago
      If you have lots of aging population and not enough of workforce to run infrastructure you have a problem. We can pretend that AI and robots will come soon enough, but that can as well not happen.
chneu 1y ago
Our natural resources can't support endless growth. We have to cap somewhere. Most estimates say we are about 1.7-2x the population we should be at to be "sustainable".

edhelas 1y ago

"Collapsing" is really the word we should use there ? Shrinking okay. Collapsing is the word we use about the biodiversity collapse, or the collapse of some environmental numbers. There's no catastrophy about having a population shrinking, we are doing that to most of the other species on the planet and only a few people seems to really care. We are in a humanity re-adjustement, not a collapse.

cryptonector 1y ago
Europe is heading towards less than half the replacement rate. Japan is already there. South Korea is at one third the replacement rate. This is the story almost worldwide, and soon can be expected to be worldwide. In China and India there is also sex selection abortions and male preference to make things worse. Exponential on the way up, and on the way down. Reversing such steep declines isn't possible in one generation without a "Marshall plan" for fertility, which means that in one generation the next cohort of fertile females will be half the size of today's if today's fertility rate is half of replacement. If the situation persists then the next cohort will be one quarter of today's. These declines are much sharper than past growth rates. What if these fertility declines persist for three generations? How many generations can they persist for anyways?
- edhelas 1y ago
  How many generation it could have continue to grow exponentially ? What goes up ends up to going down at one point. We are reaching some limits, in a society that was used to think that we could push boundaries continuously endlessly for several centuries.
  - cryptonector 1y ago
    > How many generation it could have continue to grow exponentially ? Declines are also exponential. Plateuing could have been a thing. But instead we're now in a steep decline mode. It will be 150 years before populations increase again.
  - cryptonector 1y ago
    > How many generation it could have continue to grow exponentially ? Probably many, as long as the growth rate was low enough, or zero. We can't grow forever, but that doesn't mean that the alternative must be to decline and overshoot whatever is a good population size (but alas this is what we are now bound to do).
- unstablediffusi 1y ago
  Japan gets singled out all the time (the WEF types really want it to be more vibrant for some reason, so every other day, there's an article about how "Japan will not survive" without open borders), but its TFR is like 10% below most Western countries. SK though... yeah, something is uniquely broken there.
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
  > Reversing such steep declines isn't possible in one generation without a "Marshall plan" for fertility "Reversal" isn't possible with our without Marshall plan. What you need is young females and what you have is aging population, no amount of money or political will can change that. Even if we (I'm in Europe) manage to get out of decline, the recovery will take several generations which means a century of time. South Korea is screwed way beyond repair by my estimates.
littlestymaar 1y ago
The fertility rate has indeed been collapsing for the past few years. It will only cause a population shrinking in the short term though, but it's still very concerning because being surrounded by kids is a big source of motivation to have kids yourself, and the less kids in a society the harder it becomes to raise kids yourself. The current trend implies that the human specie is collapsing at a similar as the rest of biodiversity, it's not a readjustment.
- edhelas 1y ago
  Are you scared of that ?
  - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
    I think it will be quite unpleasant for my peers and I if there's not enough working age adults around to produce goods and services for us when we're old.
    - edhelas 1y ago
      Because you thought that this trend could have continued for centuries? We built an economy based on the fact that resources and population could grown indefinitely and now we are surprised that we cannot cope with limits. Looks like we'll have to learn it the hard way.
      - littlestymaar 1y ago
        You're mixing things up: What's desirable is not population expansion but neither is population collapse, it's population stability. This also has nothing to do with Capitalism being built for perpetual growth: of course it is deemed to fail at some point in a finite world, but that's irrelevant to the topic of demography. If anything, the system will see the population decline as an opportunity, as it means fewer people to share the resources with.
        1y ago

fnordpiglet 1y ago

Why? Why do we need more people for? We have a society that lets people have all the children they want. But they don’t want more children. I’d note fwiw replacement rate in the US is currently 2.08 children, and current fertility is around 1.6/couple. On a comment about US policy - With immigration we have a growth in population, without it we will drop rapidly. I don’t think however people will be badgered into having kids by politicians, even with bribing. Most people I know that don’t have or have one kid, including myself, do so because they don’t want to have more kids. No amount of incentive changes that.

SXX 1y ago
If you can financially sustant all children you want then you are exception. Majority of people don't have this kind of option to begin with and the more children you have less financial resources you have.
- fnordpiglet 1y ago
  My grandmothers family was eight kids in the Great Depression, homeless. In fact there is a strong inverse correlation between wealth and fertility.
littlestymaar 1y ago
> Why? Why do we need more people for? You don't necessarily need “more people”, but you'd need population to be at least close to stable.
- cosmicgadget 1y ago
  > Why?
  - SXX 1y ago
    If you have lots of aging population and not enough of workforce to run infrastructure you have a problem. We can pretend that AI and robots will come soon enough, but that can as well not happen.

chneu 1y ago

Our natural resources can't support endless growth. We have to cap somewhere. Most estimates say we are about 1.7-2x the population we should be at to be "sustainable".