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What's the strong case against population dwindling other than supporting aging population? Given the AI armageddon, it just makes sense to reduce the populatio

by i_idiot 4mo ago

What's the strong case against population dwindling other than supporting aging population? Given the AI armageddon, it just makes sense to reduce the population. If there's less population, we need less production and less workers. Of course, countries have to deal with oldest population for a brief period of time.

vachina 4mo ago
The top 1% is freaking out at the thought of population shrinking because the cogs of the machine won’t turn itself.
- theflyinghorse 4mo ago
  Top 1% are too divorced from the real world to have ever seen a cog.
  - M95D 4mo ago
    But they have some ideea how many people need to work to make them that much money.
    - trumpdong 4mo ago
      Not really. They think LLMs can replace workers.
- OutOfHere 4mo ago
  Isn't that what AI and robots are intended to be for? As for the customers, B2B could still work.
- Ajedi32 4mo ago
  If the "cogs of the machine" freeze up and economy tanks the top 1% will be fine. You might not be.
  - danny_codes 4mo ago
    Depends what we mean by freeze up. Revolutions usually mean some part of the elite class gets killed or exiled. Happens all the time.
    - Enginerrrd 4mo ago
      Revolutions almost always involve one faction of the elites using the masses against another faction.
- btilly 4mo ago
  The other 99% is even more dependent on the machine than the top 1%. They can build themselves reinforced bunkers, just in case. What is your plan if, say, the food distribution infrastructure breaks down? Does that sound like an extremely unlikely outcome? Back in 2008, we came within hours of credit cards stopping working. Projections say that if credit cards stop working, food distribution breaks down. Mass hunger is not far behind that. And there is nothing like mass hunger to destroy a society. Esoteric problems in financial markets have real world consequences. We've gone nearly a century since the last real demonstration of that. Don't discount the possibility that the next demonstration will be within your lifetime. And in our more interconnected world, it's likely to be a lot worse.
  - toomuchtodo 4mo ago
    This is a call for community and durable systems that serve the human instead of traditional systems built to aggregate and funnel capital to a few. The fertility crisis is a capital crisis (taxpayers needed to pay back debt issued today decades into the future, workers for corporate profits), not a crisis for the individual. I see it as an exciting opportunity to maintain and improve quality of life for humans while solving for decoupling from these suboptimal systems primarily built to extract and exploit. Solarpunk vibes. https://ilsr.org/ https://ilsr.org/ is one resource, there are more. (to your food example, the US harvests land the aggregate size of the state of Oregon just for biofuels, ethanol and biodiesel; this is, arguable, unnecessary, and there are many other examples of unnecessary economic activity that can be deprecated)
    - btilly 4mo ago
      I could rant about the stupidity of spending fossil fuels, to grow biofuels, for no net gain in energy. But with a definite cost in engine wear. That said, like Democracy, capitalism is the worst economic system, except all of the others that have been tried. And there have been enough alternate experiments that I wouldn't want to literally bet my life on the next one working better.
      - toomuchtodo 4mo ago
- foobiekr 4mo ago
  Being able to punish and control others, especially sexual exploitation, is a huge part of the draw. You need lots of slaves for that.
Ajedi32 4mo ago
Well, in the extreme case, human extinction seems like a pretty bad thing.
- kranke155 4mo ago
  a large organism (human populaton on earth) reaching equilibrium and ceasing to grow does not equal to human extinction... it far more likely is just a temporary contraction that will then reverse when the conditions are set for it.
  - calepayson 4mo ago
    Ya but I’m 28 and have had enough with these contractions. For Christ sake can I get a sane decade so I can actually build a career. :)
    - AndrewKemendo 4mo ago
      I mean you can always be a farrier, lineman, septic sumper, cobbler etc… What’s stopping you from being a welder or dentist?
      - liglam 4mo ago
        [dead]
      - calepayson 4mo ago
        I feel like this is a joke but honest answer: I worked ocean rescue for 4 years then lived with some tech folks in sf who were making literally 5-10x my salary. What’s stopping me? Probably some combo of wanting to one day afford a home and a family without having to move to Memphis and the a sense that I’d get bored as a welder and therefore be a bad one. Man, septic pumper tho…
        M95D 4mo ago
        > some tech folks in sf who were making literally 5-10x my salary Don't worry. It's temporary.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
marcuskaz 4mo ago
The basis of capitalism is on growth. How can you continue to grow revenue constantly if there aren't more people to buy products or use your services. Additionally tax revenue decreases as fewer people are working, so less government services and employment would be available. Schools is a good example, as there are less children, you need less schools and consolidate. So there are less jobs for teachers, now it looks like an equilibrium issue since over time it will balance out. But those teachers who are losing their jobs are adults, tax payers, consumers now and the loss of spending has a cascading effect.
- arbll 4mo ago
  I don't think it's specific to capitalism. Any system needs workers to produce enough for retirees and children. If you have more retirees and less workers any system is going to struggle.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago
    Growing, biological organisms need growth. Because once they stop growing, now they're in dying mode. It won't happen instantly, of course, but they're going to die. And it's this way with civilizations too. Rather than being one of the "disadvantages of capitalism", it may actually be a principle of life itself.
- red-iron-pine 4mo ago
  e.g. how do you sell 100 million smartphones when the population is only 50 million, and can hardly afford to buy 1 (and certainly not more than 1)? this leads to layoffs how do phone shops like verizon or t-mobile stay open if people aren't buying? same for phone repair places? more layoffs more laid off people means less people going out to dinner, ordering pizza, taking trips, buying new cars. those businesses close, and layoff people. less workers means less tax revinue, either income tax, payroll tax, or sales tax (cuz people ain't buying shit). government offices cut bodies (layoffs) and reduce services. there are now less cops and more potholes. how do billionaires, whose wealth depends on publicly traded companies and their stocks, keep making money when no one can buy anything? spacex and tesla can make up numbers and stay afloat, somehow, but most stocks will tank.
stavros 4mo ago
That's the same question I have as well. We're a cancer that's spreading on the earth and we're worrying we aren't spreading fast enough. Yeah, I get that we want to support the aging population, but at this point we're doing it at the expense of humanity as a whole.
- Paradigm2020 4mo ago
  Instead of such generalizations which are meaningless anyway ( if you had cancer you'd get treatment to kill it, hence if you claim to be part of a cancer with the capability to kill yourself...) Choose to be the change you wanna see in the world and find other who want to do that and stop saying "woo be us" in public as it just doesn't help. The world is the way it is because we complain and consume too much and act & care too little. But change always starts with you and first your attitude. And then well inspire others with your actions to make this world (one of ) the best versions it can be
  - willmarch 4mo ago
    Not having kids is choosing to be the change they want to see in the world, no?
    - Paradigm2020 4mo ago
      Not religious at all but... "To those who is given much..." If all they do is not have kids and claim that we are a cancer the minimum they could do is that other classic Speaking is silver but silence is gold... And well I firmly believe the biggest problem is the pervasive desire to be weak and complain by those who have the possibility of actual impact. The battle is lost before it's fought and all. But yeah we are being led by people with "inferior" visions for the world ~ Plato... But calling ourselves shit ain't gonna help it's just giving yourself and easy exit.
      - willmarch 4mo ago
        You might not like it, but by choosing not to reproduce they ARE having an actual impact on the world (as this debate about their actions demonstrates). Maybe we, as a species, would have better long term outcomes if we reflected more before blindly charging forward exactly as our parents did (and their parents before them). Maybe they feel we should choose a different course and look for better/different ways of living and being as a species. There is no such thing as infinite growth, we should probably act accordingly.
calepayson 4mo ago
Shot in the dark but my sense is that a lot of our economics presumes growth and, if we don’t get it, a lot of terrible stuff happens. I feel pretty confident that ai will eventually be a large driver of growth but I do worry about whether it'll come soon enough.
- throwaway613746 4mo ago
  Terrible thigns like....cheaper housing and....higher wages. The horror.
- happytoexplain 4mo ago
  >a lot of our economics presumes growth and, if we don’t get it, a lot of terrible stuff happens What does this actually mean? Every time I try to wrap my head around why it's bad e.g. for a business to make a constant profit, rather than an increasing profit; or for the population to dip to some number and settle there, rather than increase; the explanations seem to become circular very quickly. I know it's partially my fault for not having a very strong economic education, but it also feels like something is fundamentally wrong with the theories - like they are making some underlying assumption about what is "good" that I don't share. But I can never seem to get down to it. The only thing I understand is that as the ratio of old to young grows, more taxes are needed, of course. But that would only be painful during a significant rate of change, not after the number is stable, no? Is that really somehow apocalyptic?
  - calepayson 4mo ago
    Honestly great question. I think of it as: I invest my wages to take advantage of compound interest. It’s kind of my only hope of having a family / owning a home / retiring. If stuff stops compounding, I’m fucked. Multiply by however many millions of people are on the same position. I don’t necessarily think the theories are making any assumption about what is good (except for the “greed is good dicks”)but more acknowledging that this is how our system currently works and the first generation to step off this ride will have a horrible time.
    - 4mo ago
NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago
>What's the strong case against population dwindling other than supporting aging population? Given the AI armageddon, Because you're not "dwindling the population" in the way you think. You're not taking an "8 billion" number and changing it to "4 billion". You're taking this growing organism, and switching it into a shrinking mode. Worse, you're changing it to "shrinking mode" in a way where you can't switch it out of that mode. It will, by necessity, shrink to nothing. And it shrinks quicker than you could imagine. When fertility rates are at 1.0 (China), each generation is one half the size of the previous. It doesn't seem like much has changed... there are 4 or so older generations that are still large (but non-reproductive). When you have a 0.5 fertility rate (South Korea), each generation is one quarter the size of the previous. Human extinction only takes about 12-14 generations at that rate. Less than 350 years. Even before it gets that far though, things get awful really quickly. It's not as if it's 350 years, and then everyone's gone. Those last few generations have no technology, they're huddled around in the dark trying not to starve. >If there's less population, we need less production and less workers. This isn't as true as it sounds. Some of our technology does not scale downward. If you need a nuclear power plant, this has a minimum number of workers. Even if you only want half the power, you can't get away with "half the workers". So, as there's less population, some technology will have to be abandoned. If you just employ people at the power plant despite that, then you're by necessity pulling those people from some other industry... it's an opportunity cost thing, and you have fewer opportunities. Sub-replacement fertility is human extinction. Not in 10,000 years, but in just a couple of centuries.
- ahtihn 4mo ago
  > Those last few generations have no technology, they're huddled around in the dark trying not to starve. At that point, the birth rate would quickly rise again, no? Because if you're back to living in a pre-industrial society, kids suddenly have value again. So it's likely that either there's a point of equilibrium or the population keeps swinging up and down. Total extinction seems unlikely.
  - geodel 4mo ago
    Indeed. And in context of India since that's what Economist's article is about. Having higher population growth is just insanity to me. After destroying land, water, air, forests, mountains and still barely enough for hundreds of millions souls I am not sure how population deflation can be a important concern at this point.
ndiddy 4mo ago
The problem isn't if the population gradually shrinks, it's if there's an uncontrolled downward spiral in fertility. If the birthrate gets below a certain point, then most people won't have any experience whatsoever interacting with babies or young children in their day-to-day life, and cultural norms will shift to make childlessness the default option. This marginalizes people who choose to have children, which pushes the birthrate down even further. This has happened in South Korea, where children are barred from many public places and it's hard to find housing in urban areas if you have children because the noise they make will piss off the neighbors. The birthrate is currently ~0.7 births per woman, meaning that every 100 South Koreans will have around 12 grandchildren. Here's a good article if you're interested: https://archive.ph/bM4Ff https://archive.ph/bM4Ff A few quotes: > Very little in Korean society seems to give young people the impression that child rearing might be rewarding or delightful. I met a stylish twentysomething news reporter at an airy, silent café in Seoul’s lively Itaewon district. “People hate kids here,” she told me. “They see kids and say, ‘Ugh.’ ” This ambient resentment finds an outlet in disdain for mothers. She said, “People call moms ‘bugs’ or ‘parasites.’ If your kids make a little noise, someone will glare at you.” She had recently vacationed in Rome, where adults drank at bars while their kids ran amok. She said, “Here, people would say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ > An artist named Daum told me that, when he was young, “if you kicked a ball into someone else’s property, you went and rang the doorbell and got it back.” That city no longer existed: “Now you get yelled at—‘You could’ve broken my window!’ ” There’s a special word for noise between floors. Complaints forced Daum and his wife, Dani, to leave their previous building; one neighbor said, “I can’t stand your children anymore!” > In the southern city of Gangjin, I stopped at a coffee shop and encountered a sign on the entrance that read “This is a no-kids zone. The child is not at fault. The problem is the parents who do not take care of the child.” The doors of Korean establishments are frequently emblazoned with such prohibitions. The only children I saw on Seoul’s public transit were foreigners. Kim Kyu-jin, who is by all accounts part of Korea’s first openly lesbian couple with a child, told me, “Five years ago, we didn’t think too deeply about ‘no-kids zones.’ Now we think it’s discriminatory. We always call places beforehand to ask if we can bring our daughter.”
- UtopiaPunk 4mo ago
  Is the concern that we'd marginalize parents and kids? As a parent of little kids, that's a concern that wasn't even on my radar. I had no idea that that was a major concern of people. Wild. I'm not saying it is a fabricated or unfounded fear, I just don't have that concern at all for myself. As a parent of little kids, I worry much more about them living fulfilling lives as they grow up in the future. I'm concerned about climate change, wars, and an economic system that will allow them to live self-actualized lives. I have no doubt that the population number plays some factor in that, creating problems that must be solved. But ultimately, humans have created amazing technologies and the Earth is bountiful. We can support whatever number of people is on the horizon (whether that number is larger or smaller), but society must choose to do so and adapt. My greatest fears are that governments and corporations consolidate their wealth and power to only an elite few, bending society to serve that elite. That is a fear exists regardless of the fertility rate. I think Charlie Chaplin's speech at the end of The Great Dictator is relevant and inspirational: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7GY1Xg6X20&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7GY1Xg6X20&t=2s Thank you for sharing your article. It's from a view so unlike my own, and it's been eye opening.
phendrenad2 4mo ago
People are replying that it'll lead to uncontrolled population collapse, and it'll disproportionately affect the poor. But the alternative is to keep growing the population until we run into a much harder problem to solve (water, food, climate) and then collapse. And won't that disproportionately affect the poor? And won't it be much worse, because the population will be much larger then?
ianm218 4mo ago
What is your case at all? AI could usher in a post scarcity world so why not have more humans who can enjoy better lives? You just said AI Armageddon as if there is an already predetermined ending that is widely agreed upon.
- red-iron-pine 4mo ago
  it could. but it won't. ai only solves labor, it doesn't solve human greed.
- pelotron 4mo ago
  I love how "post scarcity world" is tossed around as if the earth has infinite natural resources.
  - ianm218 4mo ago
    With renewables and nuclear we have basically unlimited energy, which can solve a lot of resource related issues. What are you concerned we would run out of?
    - Daishiman 4mo ago
      Helium? Rare earth minerals? Having to mine ever deeper because there are essentially no easily accessible mineral deposits? The fact that mining has enormous costs and the potential to permanently destroy sources of fresh water?
      - ianm218 4mo ago
        Rare earth minerals are not particularly rare or needed in huge quantities. Helium is probably more limited but for most cases there is alternatives I.e. I believe people use argon. Idk none of this seems overly pressing in terms of preventing a lost scarcity world
    - iamnothere 4mo ago
      Topsoil (the oncoming train nobody has noticed yet)
bryanlarsen 4mo ago
> other than supporting aging population? Isn't that enough? Imagine a world where a large percentage of the population are in nursing homes. A humane goal for a nursing home is 10:1 24/7. So that means 1 nurse for every 2.5 residents. Besides that, it's all about the speed of change. Current Korean levels of population halving every generation is going to cause tremendous upheaval. Shrinking and growing populations aren't necessarily problematic. What's problematic are populations that shrink or grow too quickly. Infrastructure adapted for N people works well for a number close to N, but not so well for 2N or 0.5N. There aren't too many people besides Elon Musk that are significantly worried that the US's replacement rate is 1.8 compared to the 2.1 constant population level. But numbers much below that do alarm many.
Hongwei 4mo ago
Our entire social contract relies on the a redistribution of wealth from young to old. Boomer Communism, it's currently called. If you are currently paying taxes, you are funding Medicare and Social Security (insert whatever name for your country). The deal is that when you retire, the next generation funds your entitlements. If the next generation is not large enough, that deal breaks down, leading to almost impossible political choices. Do we increase taxes on the remaining working population to fund the larger retired one? Do we defund entitlements and tell retirees to figure it out, when they themselves paid into the system that is now bankrupt?
- trumpdong 4mo ago
  Forget even the finances, the allocation of labor is a problem. Imagine 1 billion young people and they're all farmers, the next generation is 100 million young people, but they still have to feed 1.1 billion. No amount of financial shenanigans will avoid facing this basic fact.
FuriouslyAdrift 4mo ago
We only have one modern example of demographic crash to study... Japan. Total economic stagnation, spiraling population numbers, loss of anything anchored to manual labor, and an aging population. So far, it looks to be a way for slow extinction of a culture.
- guyzero 4mo ago
  Japan, a country famous for no one knowing what its culture is.
  - dyauspitr 4mo ago
    Reading about it in books and watching anime won’t prevent them from going functionally extinct in less than 200 years.
    - guyzero 4mo ago
      No one cares. Japanese culture today is nothing like it was 200 years ago.
      - functionmouse 4mo ago
        I care
        kordlessagain 4mo ago
        doubtful
      - dyauspitr 4mo ago
        I care. I don’t want the country of Japan to be a bunch of starving geriatrics a few decades from now.
    - triceratops 4mo ago
      I don't believe that will happen.
dyauspitr 4mo ago
Yeah but logically unless people start matching the replacement rate at some point it’s a lot of pain until you go extinct. Isn’t South Korea supposed to be functionally extinct in less than 100 years at this rate?
mystreamlincar 4mo ago
You need consumers to buy whatever an economy builds, regardless of AI involvement. As people retire they consume less.
illiac786 4mo ago
I think you’re missing the point, you’re assuming this brief moment will stop. Why would population stop declining?
- trumpdong 4mo ago
  sex feels good and you need a certain minimum amount of civilization to manufacture condoms
  - illiac786 4mo ago
    Ok, so civilisation collapse first. Ok, then I agree.
akudha 4mo ago
I don’t know what the right number is, but 8+ Billion doesn’t seem sustainable. It might be, if humans respected the environment, are nicer to each other etc. Since that doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon, the next best option might be to just have less humans, which hopefully might lead to less pollution, less exploitation of the environment etc
ericmcer 4mo ago
If you believe extraordinary individuals are a product of nature and we don't know how to nurture them into existence then it makes sense. Whatever confluence of events triggers an Einstein has the greatest number of chances to occur. Either way it seems dumb to structure our entire economy and future around elder care. I guess that is what you get when people older than 60 have 65% of the wealth and people under 40 have 7%.
InsideOutSanta 4mo ago
Yeah, a large portion of this is caused by better access to birth control, anyway. This is a good signal of a society becoming healthier and wealthier and should be celebrated. Given the constant productivity improvements, elder care is not something that can only be solved by having constantly growing populations.

by i_idiot 4mo ago

vachina 4mo ago

The top 1% is freaking out at the thought of population shrinking because the cogs of the machine won’t turn itself.

theflyinghorse 4mo ago
Top 1% are too divorced from the real world to have ever seen a cog.
- M95D 4mo ago
  But they have some ideea how many people need to work to make them that much money.
  - trumpdong 4mo ago
    Not really. They think LLMs can replace workers.
OutOfHere 4mo ago
Isn't that what AI and robots are intended to be for? As for the customers, B2B could still work.
Ajedi32 4mo ago
If the "cogs of the machine" freeze up and economy tanks the top 1% will be fine. You might not be.
- danny_codes 4mo ago
  Depends what we mean by freeze up. Revolutions usually mean some part of the elite class gets killed or exiled. Happens all the time.
  - Enginerrrd 4mo ago
    Revolutions almost always involve one faction of the elites using the masses against another faction.
btilly 4mo ago
The other 99% is even more dependent on the machine than the top 1%. They can build themselves reinforced bunkers, just in case. What is your plan if, say, the food distribution infrastructure breaks down? Does that sound like an extremely unlikely outcome? Back in 2008, we came within hours of credit cards stopping working. Projections say that if credit cards stop working, food distribution breaks down. Mass hunger is not far behind that. And there is nothing like mass hunger to destroy a society. Esoteric problems in financial markets have real world consequences. We've gone nearly a century since the last real demonstration of that. Don't discount the possibility that the next demonstration will be within your lifetime. And in our more interconnected world, it's likely to be a lot worse.
- toomuchtodo 4mo ago
  This is a call for community and durable systems that serve the human instead of traditional systems built to aggregate and funnel capital to a few. The fertility crisis is a capital crisis (taxpayers needed to pay back debt issued today decades into the future, workers for corporate profits), not a crisis for the individual. I see it as an exciting opportunity to maintain and improve quality of life for humans while solving for decoupling from these suboptimal systems primarily built to extract and exploit. Solarpunk vibes. https://ilsr.org/ https://ilsr.org/ is one resource, there are more. (to your food example, the US harvests land the aggregate size of the state of Oregon just for biofuels, ethanol and biodiesel; this is, arguable, unnecessary, and there are many other examples of unnecessary economic activity that can be deprecated)
  - btilly 4mo ago
    I could rant about the stupidity of spending fossil fuels, to grow biofuels, for no net gain in energy. But with a definite cost in engine wear. That said, like Democracy, capitalism is the worst economic system, except all of the others that have been tried. And there have been enough alternate experiments that I wouldn't want to literally bet my life on the next one working better.
    - toomuchtodo 4mo ago
foobiekr 4mo ago
Being able to punish and control others, especially sexual exploitation, is a huge part of the draw. You need lots of slaves for that.

Ajedi32 4mo ago

Well, in the extreme case, human extinction seems like a pretty bad thing.

kranke155 4mo ago
a large organism (human populaton on earth) reaching equilibrium and ceasing to grow does not equal to human extinction... it far more likely is just a temporary contraction that will then reverse when the conditions are set for it.
- calepayson 4mo ago
  Ya but I’m 28 and have had enough with these contractions. For Christ sake can I get a sane decade so I can actually build a career. :)
  - AndrewKemendo 4mo ago
    I mean you can always be a farrier, lineman, septic sumper, cobbler etc… What’s stopping you from being a welder or dentist?
    - liglam 4mo ago
      [dead]
    - calepayson 4mo ago
      I feel like this is a joke but honest answer: I worked ocean rescue for 4 years then lived with some tech folks in sf who were making literally 5-10x my salary. What’s stopping me? Probably some combo of wanting to one day afford a home and a family without having to move to Memphis and the a sense that I’d get bored as a welder and therefore be a bad one. Man, septic pumper tho…
      - M95D 4mo ago
        > some tech folks in sf who were making literally 5-10x my salary Don't worry. It's temporary.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

marcuskaz 4mo ago

The basis of capitalism is on growth. How can you continue to grow revenue constantly if there aren't more people to buy products or use your services. Additionally tax revenue decreases as fewer people are working, so less government services and employment would be available. Schools is a good example, as there are less children, you need less schools and consolidate. So there are less jobs for teachers, now it looks like an equilibrium issue since over time it will balance out. But those teachers who are losing their jobs are adults, tax payers, consumers now and the loss of spending has a cascading effect.

arbll 4mo ago
I don't think it's specific to capitalism. Any system needs workers to produce enough for retirees and children. If you have more retirees and less workers any system is going to struggle.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago
  Growing, biological organisms need growth. Because once they stop growing, now they're in dying mode. It won't happen instantly, of course, but they're going to die. And it's this way with civilizations too. Rather than being one of the "disadvantages of capitalism", it may actually be a principle of life itself.
red-iron-pine 4mo ago
e.g. how do you sell 100 million smartphones when the population is only 50 million, and can hardly afford to buy 1 (and certainly not more than 1)? this leads to layoffs how do phone shops like verizon or t-mobile stay open if people aren't buying? same for phone repair places? more layoffs more laid off people means less people going out to dinner, ordering pizza, taking trips, buying new cars. those businesses close, and layoff people. less workers means less tax revinue, either income tax, payroll tax, or sales tax (cuz people ain't buying shit). government offices cut bodies (layoffs) and reduce services. there are now less cops and more potholes. how do billionaires, whose wealth depends on publicly traded companies and their stocks, keep making money when no one can buy anything? spacex and tesla can make up numbers and stay afloat, somehow, but most stocks will tank.

stavros 4mo ago

That's the same question I have as well. We're a cancer that's spreading on the earth and we're worrying we aren't spreading fast enough. Yeah, I get that we want to support the aging population, but at this point we're doing it at the expense of humanity as a whole.

Paradigm2020 4mo ago
Instead of such generalizations which are meaningless anyway ( if you had cancer you'd get treatment to kill it, hence if you claim to be part of a cancer with the capability to kill yourself...) Choose to be the change you wanna see in the world and find other who want to do that and stop saying "woo be us" in public as it just doesn't help. The world is the way it is because we complain and consume too much and act & care too little. But change always starts with you and first your attitude. And then well inspire others with your actions to make this world (one of ) the best versions it can be
- willmarch 4mo ago
  Not having kids is choosing to be the change they want to see in the world, no?
  - Paradigm2020 4mo ago
    Not religious at all but... "To those who is given much..." If all they do is not have kids and claim that we are a cancer the minimum they could do is that other classic Speaking is silver but silence is gold... And well I firmly believe the biggest problem is the pervasive desire to be weak and complain by those who have the possibility of actual impact. The battle is lost before it's fought and all. But yeah we are being led by people with "inferior" visions for the world ~ Plato... But calling ourselves shit ain't gonna help it's just giving yourself and easy exit.
    - willmarch 4mo ago
      You might not like it, but by choosing not to reproduce they ARE having an actual impact on the world (as this debate about their actions demonstrates). Maybe we, as a species, would have better long term outcomes if we reflected more before blindly charging forward exactly as our parents did (and their parents before them). Maybe they feel we should choose a different course and look for better/different ways of living and being as a species. There is no such thing as infinite growth, we should probably act accordingly.

calepayson 4mo ago

Shot in the dark but my sense is that a lot of our economics presumes growth and, if we don’t get it, a lot of terrible stuff happens. I feel pretty confident that ai will eventually be a large driver of growth but I do worry about whether it'll come soon enough.

throwaway613746 4mo ago
Terrible thigns like....cheaper housing and....higher wages. The horror.
happytoexplain 4mo ago
>a lot of our economics presumes growth and, if we don’t get it, a lot of terrible stuff happens What does this actually mean? Every time I try to wrap my head around why it's bad e.g. for a business to make a constant profit, rather than an increasing profit; or for the population to dip to some number and settle there, rather than increase; the explanations seem to become circular very quickly. I know it's partially my fault for not having a very strong economic education, but it also feels like something is fundamentally wrong with the theories - like they are making some underlying assumption about what is "good" that I don't share. But I can never seem to get down to it. The only thing I understand is that as the ratio of old to young grows, more taxes are needed, of course. But that would only be painful during a significant rate of change, not after the number is stable, no? Is that really somehow apocalyptic?
- calepayson 4mo ago
  Honestly great question. I think of it as: I invest my wages to take advantage of compound interest. It’s kind of my only hope of having a family / owning a home / retiring. If stuff stops compounding, I’m fucked. Multiply by however many millions of people are on the same position. I don’t necessarily think the theories are making any assumption about what is good (except for the “greed is good dicks”)but more acknowledging that this is how our system currently works and the first generation to step off this ride will have a horrible time.
  - 4mo ago

NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago

>What's the strong case against population dwindling other than supporting aging population? Given the AI armageddon, Because you're not "dwindling the population" in the way you think. You're not taking an "8 billion" number and changing it to "4 billion". You're taking this growing organism, and switching it into a shrinking mode. Worse, you're changing it to "shrinking mode" in a way where you can't switch it out of that mode. It will, by necessity, shrink to nothing. And it shrinks quicker than you could imagine. When fertility rates are at 1.0 (China), each generation is one half the size of the previous. It doesn't seem like much has changed... there are 4 or so older generations that are still large (but non-reproductive). When you have a 0.5 fertility rate (South Korea), each generation is one quarter the size of the previous. Human extinction only takes about 12-14 generations at that rate. Less than 350 years. Even before it gets that far though, things get awful really quickly. It's not as if it's 350 years, and then everyone's gone. Those last few generations have no technology, they're huddled around in the dark trying not to starve. >If there's less population, we need less production and less workers. This isn't as true as it sounds. Some of our technology does not scale downward. If you need a nuclear power plant, this has a minimum number of workers. Even if you only want half the power, you can't get away with "half the workers". So, as there's less population, some technology will have to be abandoned. If you just employ people at the power plant despite that, then you're by necessity pulling those people from some other industry... it's an opportunity cost thing, and you have fewer opportunities. Sub-replacement fertility is human extinction. Not in 10,000 years, but in just a couple of centuries.

ahtihn 4mo ago
> Those last few generations have no technology, they're huddled around in the dark trying not to starve. At that point, the birth rate would quickly rise again, no? Because if you're back to living in a pre-industrial society, kids suddenly have value again. So it's likely that either there's a point of equilibrium or the population keeps swinging up and down. Total extinction seems unlikely.
- geodel 4mo ago
  Indeed. And in context of India since that's what Economist's article is about. Having higher population growth is just insanity to me. After destroying land, water, air, forests, mountains and still barely enough for hundreds of millions souls I am not sure how population deflation can be a important concern at this point.

ndiddy 4mo ago

The problem isn't if the population gradually shrinks, it's if there's an uncontrolled downward spiral in fertility. If the birthrate gets below a certain point, then most people won't have any experience whatsoever interacting with babies or young children in their day-to-day life, and cultural norms will shift to make childlessness the default option. This marginalizes people who choose to have children, which pushes the birthrate down even further. This has happened in South Korea, where children are barred from many public places and it's hard to find housing in urban areas if you have children because the noise they make will piss off the neighbors. The birthrate is currently ~0.7 births per woman, meaning that every 100 South Koreans will have around 12 grandchildren. Here's a good article if you're interested: https://archive.ph/bM4Ff https://archive.ph/bM4Ff A few quotes: > Very little in Korean society seems to give young people the impression that child rearing might be rewarding or delightful. I met a stylish twentysomething news reporter at an airy, silent café in Seoul’s lively Itaewon district. “People hate kids here,” she told me. “They see kids and say, ‘Ugh.’ ” This ambient resentment finds an outlet in disdain for mothers. She said, “People call moms ‘bugs’ or ‘parasites.’ If your kids make a little noise, someone will glare at you.” She had recently vacationed in Rome, where adults drank at bars while their kids ran amok. She said, “Here, people would say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ > An artist named Daum told me that, when he was young, “if you kicked a ball into someone else’s property, you went and rang the doorbell and got it back.” That city no longer existed: “Now you get yelled at—‘You could’ve broken my window!’ ” There’s a special word for noise between floors. Complaints forced Daum and his wife, Dani, to leave their previous building; one neighbor said, “I can’t stand your children anymore!” > In the southern city of Gangjin, I stopped at a coffee shop and encountered a sign on the entrance that read “This is a no-kids zone. The child is not at fault. The problem is the parents who do not take care of the child.” The doors of Korean establishments are frequently emblazoned with such prohibitions. The only children I saw on Seoul’s public transit were foreigners. Kim Kyu-jin, who is by all accounts part of Korea’s first openly lesbian couple with a child, told me, “Five years ago, we didn’t think too deeply about ‘no-kids zones.’ Now we think it’s discriminatory. We always call places beforehand to ask if we can bring our daughter.”

UtopiaPunk 4mo ago
Is the concern that we'd marginalize parents and kids? As a parent of little kids, that's a concern that wasn't even on my radar. I had no idea that that was a major concern of people. Wild. I'm not saying it is a fabricated or unfounded fear, I just don't have that concern at all for myself. As a parent of little kids, I worry much more about them living fulfilling lives as they grow up in the future. I'm concerned about climate change, wars, and an economic system that will allow them to live self-actualized lives. I have no doubt that the population number plays some factor in that, creating problems that must be solved. But ultimately, humans have created amazing technologies and the Earth is bountiful. We can support whatever number of people is on the horizon (whether that number is larger or smaller), but society must choose to do so and adapt. My greatest fears are that governments and corporations consolidate their wealth and power to only an elite few, bending society to serve that elite. That is a fear exists regardless of the fertility rate. I think Charlie Chaplin's speech at the end of The Great Dictator is relevant and inspirational: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7GY1Xg6X20&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7GY1Xg6X20&t=2s Thank you for sharing your article. It's from a view so unlike my own, and it's been eye opening.

phendrenad2 4mo ago

People are replying that it'll lead to uncontrolled population collapse, and it'll disproportionately affect the poor. But the alternative is to keep growing the population until we run into a much harder problem to solve (water, food, climate) and then collapse. And won't that disproportionately affect the poor? And won't it be much worse, because the population will be much larger then?

ianm218 4mo ago

What is your case at all? AI could usher in a post scarcity world so why not have more humans who can enjoy better lives? You just said AI Armageddon as if there is an already predetermined ending that is widely agreed upon.

red-iron-pine 4mo ago
it could. but it won't. ai only solves labor, it doesn't solve human greed.
pelotron 4mo ago
I love how "post scarcity world" is tossed around as if the earth has infinite natural resources.
- ianm218 4mo ago
  With renewables and nuclear we have basically unlimited energy, which can solve a lot of resource related issues. What are you concerned we would run out of?
  - Daishiman 4mo ago
    Helium? Rare earth minerals? Having to mine ever deeper because there are essentially no easily accessible mineral deposits? The fact that mining has enormous costs and the potential to permanently destroy sources of fresh water?
    - ianm218 4mo ago
      Rare earth minerals are not particularly rare or needed in huge quantities. Helium is probably more limited but for most cases there is alternatives I.e. I believe people use argon. Idk none of this seems overly pressing in terms of preventing a lost scarcity world
  - iamnothere 4mo ago
    Topsoil (the oncoming train nobody has noticed yet)

bryanlarsen 4mo ago

> other than supporting aging population? Isn't that enough? Imagine a world where a large percentage of the population are in nursing homes. A humane goal for a nursing home is 10:1 24/7. So that means 1 nurse for every 2.5 residents. Besides that, it's all about the speed of change. Current Korean levels of population halving every generation is going to cause tremendous upheaval. Shrinking and growing populations aren't necessarily problematic. What's problematic are populations that shrink or grow too quickly. Infrastructure adapted for N people works well for a number close to N, but not so well for 2N or 0.5N. There aren't too many people besides Elon Musk that are significantly worried that the US's replacement rate is 1.8 compared to the 2.1 constant population level. But numbers much below that do alarm many.

Hongwei 4mo ago

Our entire social contract relies on the a redistribution of wealth from young to old. Boomer Communism, it's currently called. If you are currently paying taxes, you are funding Medicare and Social Security (insert whatever name for your country). The deal is that when you retire, the next generation funds your entitlements. If the next generation is not large enough, that deal breaks down, leading to almost impossible political choices. Do we increase taxes on the remaining working population to fund the larger retired one? Do we defund entitlements and tell retirees to figure it out, when they themselves paid into the system that is now bankrupt?

trumpdong 4mo ago
Forget even the finances, the allocation of labor is a problem. Imagine 1 billion young people and they're all farmers, the next generation is 100 million young people, but they still have to feed 1.1 billion. No amount of financial shenanigans will avoid facing this basic fact.

FuriouslyAdrift 4mo ago

We only have one modern example of demographic crash to study... Japan. Total economic stagnation, spiraling population numbers, loss of anything anchored to manual labor, and an aging population. So far, it looks to be a way for slow extinction of a culture.

guyzero 4mo ago
Japan, a country famous for no one knowing what its culture is.
- dyauspitr 4mo ago
  Reading about it in books and watching anime won’t prevent them from going functionally extinct in less than 200 years.
  - guyzero 4mo ago
    No one cares. Japanese culture today is nothing like it was 200 years ago.
    - functionmouse 4mo ago
      I care
      - kordlessagain 4mo ago
        doubtful
    - dyauspitr 4mo ago
      I care. I don’t want the country of Japan to be a bunch of starving geriatrics a few decades from now.
  - triceratops 4mo ago
    I don't believe that will happen.

dyauspitr 4mo ago

Yeah but logically unless people start matching the replacement rate at some point it’s a lot of pain until you go extinct. Isn’t South Korea supposed to be functionally extinct in less than 100 years at this rate?

mystreamlincar 4mo ago

You need consumers to buy whatever an economy builds, regardless of AI involvement. As people retire they consume less.

illiac786 4mo ago

I think you’re missing the point, you’re assuming this brief moment will stop. Why would population stop declining?

trumpdong 4mo ago
sex feels good and you need a certain minimum amount of civilization to manufacture condoms
- illiac786 4mo ago
  Ok, so civilisation collapse first. Ok, then I agree.

akudha 4mo ago

I don’t know what the right number is, but 8+ Billion doesn’t seem sustainable. It might be, if humans respected the environment, are nicer to each other etc. Since that doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon, the next best option might be to just have less humans, which hopefully might lead to less pollution, less exploitation of the environment etc

ericmcer 4mo ago

If you believe extraordinary individuals are a product of nature and we don't know how to nurture them into existence then it makes sense. Whatever confluence of events triggers an Einstein has the greatest number of chances to occur. Either way it seems dumb to structure our entire economy and future around elder care. I guess that is what you get when people older than 60 have 65% of the wealth and people under 40 have 7%.

InsideOutSanta 4mo ago

Yeah, a large portion of this is caused by better access to birth control, anyway. This is a good signal of a society becoming healthier and wealthier and should be celebrated. Given the constant productivity improvements, elder care is not something that can only be solved by having constantly growing populations.