4 ms·

"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 en

"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

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