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The problem is multifaceted, because we not only aren't told the truth, we are told lies that make things even worse, and people seem to like those. For exampl

The problem is multifaceted, because we not only aren't told the truth, we are told lies that make things even worse, and people seem to like those. For example, overpopulation has been a concern for many decades, yet politicians that ignore the problem, or actually advocate for more population, somehow keep getting elected. Either democracy has broken beyond repair, or humanity averages to dumb. I'm inclined to the latter, because I believe that every individual, even if they can do smart things, is very dumb in other things.

alephnerd 2mo ago
> overpopulation has been a concern for many decades, yet politicians that ignore the problem, or actually advocate for more population, somehow keep getting elected Most societies have reached a point where fertility rates have declined to below replacement.
- xienze 2mo ago
  > Most societies have reached a point where fertility rates have declined to below replacement. And governments in those countries are importing as many people as they can to paper over their own population decline.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    What's the international market price of a person?
- cwnyth 2mo ago
  This is a dubious use of "society", and it ignores the fact that the world population is growing at an extremely fast rate still.
  - irishcoffee 2mo ago
    The world population will peak sometime between 2060 and 2100, and then start declining. 2060 is like… 34 years away. https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      Not close enough to avoid total ecosystem collapse.
      - irishcoffee 2mo ago
        [flagged]
      - tremon 2mo ago
        That's ok, total ecosystem collapse will also reduce the human population.
  - somenameforme 2mo ago
    Populations can grow, even rapidly, in the short run even with collapsed fertility. This is because in part it's a lagging metric, but more importantly (and less intuitively) because fertility also determines the age ratios within a society. Imagine a society has a common fertility rate of 1 then that means each successive generation is half as large as the one prior. So if there's 1 new born, then there's 2 20-40 year olds, 4 40-60 year olds, and so on. High fertility rates result in societies with far more younger than elderly populations, and vice versa for low fertility societies. In the past most societies had high fertility rates, which means there are relatively few elderly, relative to younger people, today. So the global death rate is relatively low as the the number of people annually exiting the stage is relatively low. But when low fertility generations start to die off, this gets turned upside down. You'll have large numbers of elderly dying off, and they'll make up the majority of the population. But this only happens ~80 years after the birth of the low-fertility generation. This is why Japan looks so catastrophic today even though their fertility rate is much higher than places like South Korea. They've had a mediocre fertility rate since the 60s which then went into collapse in the 70s. By contrast South Korea had a fertility rate of 6 in the 60s, and didn't fall below replacement until the 80s. So Japan has had a solid decade or two head start. The fact we still aren't at the life expectancy of the first below replacement generation in Japan also means today is still going to be seen as 'the good ole days' for them. And this is where most countries are headed.
    - imtringued 2mo ago
      This something people don't understand. Fertility rate only affects the current generation. You cannot retroactively increase the fertility rate to fix the problem. If the current generation has a 1.0 fertility rate, that means the next generation will be half as large. If said generation now doubles it's fertility rate to 2.0 it will only maintain the size of that generation, all the old people will age out and be gone all at once. Now you might say, fine, let's fix it, 4.0 fertility rate, that will only double the size of the next generation, meaning it will only fix one generation of 1.0 fertility. You have stabilized the population, not increased it. Even if you do this, you now run into a huge bottleneck: parents need to take care of their old parents and their large family all at once. You fixed the biological problem but you're now running into economic collapse.
- jhbadger 2mo ago
  Most developed societies. When you live by subsistence agriculture, having lots of kids is a benefit as they are free labor. When a culture urbanizes and industrializes, they are less of a benefit.
  - somenameforme 2mo ago
    It's most societies, period. Of the 237 nations and territories recognized by UN, only 42% had a sustainable fertility rate. [1] It seems reasonable to assume kids having more positive economic power in the past played a significant role, but there's counter-examples abounds in modern times. Nigeria is heavily urbanized yet has one of the highest fertility rates in the world. Or on the other end of the spectrum, Thailand has a very large chunk of people living off farming, yet has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
    - tremon 2mo ago
      What's a "sustainable" fertility rate to you? Given that the current human biomass is completely unprecedented in all of history and is only made possible by artificial energy inputs (fossil fuels and ammonia/fertilizer), I posit that the only sustainable fertility rate is well below 2.0
      - nickserv 2mo ago
        When discussing fertility rates "sustainable" usually means "ratio of births to deaths in order to have a stable population". In developed economies that's around 2.1 children per woman. Anything under that and the population declines without immigration.
        somenameforme 2mo ago
        Not only does it decline, but it declines exponentially. This is why fertility changes will have a far bigger impact on societies than most people appreciate. If a country has a fertility rate of 1 (and places like South Korea are now well below that even) then that means each successive generation is 50% smaller. And this change is compounding. So after 5 generations, for instance, your generational size will be 97% smaller (1 - 0.5^5). And all the while this is happening your economy is getting wrecked not only because suddenly you have far fewer people, but because your society turns into a giant retirement home, as fertility also determines the age ratios within a society. You can see this by working backwards. Again taking a fertility rate of 1 as an example, if we have 1 newborn then we have 2 20-40 year olds, 4 40-60 year olds, 8 60-80 year olds, and so on. So you have a shrinking economy paired alongside an even smaller ratio of workers, and much greater social strains on that economy as well. This is also why immigration isn't anything more than a very short-term bandaid. When you're speaking of population declines near 100% over such small windows of time, you end up needing to basically replace the entire population of a region. Doing this with immigration, let alone as this is increasingly a global crisis, just isn't realistic. And this is completely ignoring the social consequences of such actions.
gruez 2mo ago
>For example, overpopulation has been a concern for many decades, yet politicians that ignore the problem, or actually advocate for more population, somehow keep getting elected. Are you from the 1800s? Malthusianism has been discredited for decades, thanks to the green revolution and falling fertility rates. Not to mention all politicians that tried to do something (ie. didn't "ignore the problem") have a sorry track record - eugenics, one child policy, or forced sterilizations.
- amanaplanacanal 2mo ago
  I don't believe they are talking about malthusianism. That's a straw man. The arguement is that the sheer number of people is causing damage to the natural environment, not that we can't grow enough food to feed people.
  - imtringued 2mo ago
    The problem is that the problem is not the sheer number of people, it's the ratio between people and resources.
    - folkrav 2mo ago
      Can't the sheer number of people make what would be considered a proper ratio utterly unsustainable?
- ASalazarMX 2mo ago
  I don't care about doctrines, I'm only in favor that politicians let birth rates naturally decline as people try to give better lives to fewer kids, and themselves. My grandparents had a dozen kids, my parents had three, I had zero. That's good for the planet, and the economy can take it with proper preparation. Infinite growth, in any form, is a fairy tale for economists.
  - somenameforme 2mo ago
    I don't really follow this logic on two accounts. First is that when you remove yourself from the gene pool what you're effectively doing is simply ensuring that a larger percent of the children of the next generation come from families whose values you'd probably find quite distasteful. And their children will also end up holding those values at a high rate. This means that in the future 'your' values will have less influence and 'their' values will have more. This effect is going to be much greater than any sort of resource consumption reduction on what happens to the planet in the future. The second is that the status quo on Earth is never sustainable. For but one example among many on this note, Earth has gone through multiple mass extinctions - long before humans arrived on the scene - and it will continue to do so; in fact we're rather overdue for one. So the idea of living in perpetual harmony with the planet sounds like a nice goal, but is itself also a fairy tale. This certainly isn't an argument to just YOLO away the Earth, but rather that doing things that are relatively self destructive for the sake of trying to achieve a perpetual harmony is unwise, because that goal is impossible to achieve.

alephnerd 2mo ago

> overpopulation has been a concern for many decades, yet politicians that ignore the problem, or actually advocate for more population, somehow keep getting elected Most societies have reached a point where fertility rates have declined to below replacement.

xienze 2mo ago
> Most societies have reached a point where fertility rates have declined to below replacement. And governments in those countries are importing as many people as they can to paper over their own population decline.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  What's the international market price of a person?
cwnyth 2mo ago
This is a dubious use of "society", and it ignores the fact that the world population is growing at an extremely fast rate still.
- irishcoffee 2mo ago
  The world population will peak sometime between 2060 and 2100, and then start declining. 2060 is like… 34 years away. https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Not close enough to avoid total ecosystem collapse.
    - irishcoffee 2mo ago
      [flagged]
    - tremon 2mo ago
      That's ok, total ecosystem collapse will also reduce the human population.
- somenameforme 2mo ago
  Populations can grow, even rapidly, in the short run even with collapsed fertility. This is because in part it's a lagging metric, but more importantly (and less intuitively) because fertility also determines the age ratios within a society. Imagine a society has a common fertility rate of 1 then that means each successive generation is half as large as the one prior. So if there's 1 new born, then there's 2 20-40 year olds, 4 40-60 year olds, and so on. High fertility rates result in societies with far more younger than elderly populations, and vice versa for low fertility societies. In the past most societies had high fertility rates, which means there are relatively few elderly, relative to younger people, today. So the global death rate is relatively low as the the number of people annually exiting the stage is relatively low. But when low fertility generations start to die off, this gets turned upside down. You'll have large numbers of elderly dying off, and they'll make up the majority of the population. But this only happens ~80 years after the birth of the low-fertility generation. This is why Japan looks so catastrophic today even though their fertility rate is much higher than places like South Korea. They've had a mediocre fertility rate since the 60s which then went into collapse in the 70s. By contrast South Korea had a fertility rate of 6 in the 60s, and didn't fall below replacement until the 80s. So Japan has had a solid decade or two head start. The fact we still aren't at the life expectancy of the first below replacement generation in Japan also means today is still going to be seen as 'the good ole days' for them. And this is where most countries are headed.
  - imtringued 2mo ago
    This something people don't understand. Fertility rate only affects the current generation. You cannot retroactively increase the fertility rate to fix the problem. If the current generation has a 1.0 fertility rate, that means the next generation will be half as large. If said generation now doubles it's fertility rate to 2.0 it will only maintain the size of that generation, all the old people will age out and be gone all at once. Now you might say, fine, let's fix it, 4.0 fertility rate, that will only double the size of the next generation, meaning it will only fix one generation of 1.0 fertility. You have stabilized the population, not increased it. Even if you do this, you now run into a huge bottleneck: parents need to take care of their old parents and their large family all at once. You fixed the biological problem but you're now running into economic collapse.
jhbadger 2mo ago
Most developed societies. When you live by subsistence agriculture, having lots of kids is a benefit as they are free labor. When a culture urbanizes and industrializes, they are less of a benefit.
- somenameforme 2mo ago
  It's most societies, period. Of the 237 nations and territories recognized by UN, only 42% had a sustainable fertility rate. [1] It seems reasonable to assume kids having more positive economic power in the past played a significant role, but there's counter-examples abounds in modern times. Nigeria is heavily urbanized yet has one of the highest fertility rates in the world. Or on the other end of the spectrum, Thailand has a very large chunk of people living off farming, yet has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
  - tremon 2mo ago
    What's a "sustainable" fertility rate to you? Given that the current human biomass is completely unprecedented in all of history and is only made possible by artificial energy inputs (fossil fuels and ammonia/fertilizer), I posit that the only sustainable fertility rate is well below 2.0
    - nickserv 2mo ago
      When discussing fertility rates "sustainable" usually means "ratio of births to deaths in order to have a stable population". In developed economies that's around 2.1 children per woman. Anything under that and the population declines without immigration.
      - somenameforme 2mo ago
        Not only does it decline, but it declines exponentially. This is why fertility changes will have a far bigger impact on societies than most people appreciate. If a country has a fertility rate of 1 (and places like South Korea are now well below that even) then that means each successive generation is 50% smaller. And this change is compounding. So after 5 generations, for instance, your generational size will be 97% smaller (1 - 0.5^5). And all the while this is happening your economy is getting wrecked not only because suddenly you have far fewer people, but because your society turns into a giant retirement home, as fertility also determines the age ratios within a society. You can see this by working backwards. Again taking a fertility rate of 1 as an example, if we have 1 newborn then we have 2 20-40 year olds, 4 40-60 year olds, 8 60-80 year olds, and so on. So you have a shrinking economy paired alongside an even smaller ratio of workers, and much greater social strains on that economy as well. This is also why immigration isn't anything more than a very short-term bandaid. When you're speaking of population declines near 100% over such small windows of time, you end up needing to basically replace the entire population of a region. Doing this with immigration, let alone as this is increasingly a global crisis, just isn't realistic. And this is completely ignoring the social consequences of such actions.

gruez 2mo ago

>For example, overpopulation has been a concern for many decades, yet politicians that ignore the problem, or actually advocate for more population, somehow keep getting elected. Are you from the 1800s? Malthusianism has been discredited for decades, thanks to the green revolution and falling fertility rates. Not to mention all politicians that tried to do something (ie. didn't "ignore the problem") have a sorry track record - eugenics, one child policy, or forced sterilizations.

amanaplanacanal 2mo ago
I don't believe they are talking about malthusianism. That's a straw man. The arguement is that the sheer number of people is causing damage to the natural environment, not that we can't grow enough food to feed people.
- imtringued 2mo ago
  The problem is that the problem is not the sheer number of people, it's the ratio between people and resources.
  - folkrav 2mo ago
    Can't the sheer number of people make what would be considered a proper ratio utterly unsustainable?
ASalazarMX 2mo ago
I don't care about doctrines, I'm only in favor that politicians let birth rates naturally decline as people try to give better lives to fewer kids, and themselves. My grandparents had a dozen kids, my parents had three, I had zero. That's good for the planet, and the economy can take it with proper preparation. Infinite growth, in any form, is a fairy tale for economists.
- somenameforme 2mo ago
  I don't really follow this logic on two accounts. First is that when you remove yourself from the gene pool what you're effectively doing is simply ensuring that a larger percent of the children of the next generation come from families whose values you'd probably find quite distasteful. And their children will also end up holding those values at a high rate. This means that in the future 'your' values will have less influence and 'their' values will have more. This effect is going to be much greater than any sort of resource consumption reduction on what happens to the planet in the future. The second is that the status quo on Earth is never sustainable. For but one example among many on this note, Earth has gone through multiple mass extinctions - long before humans arrived on the scene - and it will continue to do so; in fact we're rather overdue for one. So the idea of living in perpetual harmony with the planet sounds like a nice goal, but is itself also a fairy tale. This certainly isn't an argument to just YOLO away the Earth, but rather that doing things that are relatively self destructive for the sake of trying to achieve a perpetual harmony is unwise, because that goal is impossible to achieve.