"The World" aka USA. That old American thing of projecting its reality to the rest of the world. I mean, ok I get the point that its a global phenomenon but most of the projected consequences or hypothesized causes by the author are americanized conditions applied to the rest of the world..
It's just mentioned that their birth rate is below replacement rates. What about the impacts? Switzerland has been below replacement rates since 1970. Italy since 1976. There should be evidence of the "catastrophe" by now.
Disappointing for this viewpoint to persist in a world exceeding a majority of planetary boundaries and carrying capacity when half the global population (4B vs 8B-10B) being steady state (or perhaps a bit less, depending on where the total fertility rate lands) would be just fine.
Of particular note is the the author’s mention of new life potentially having less value (“slumping”); on the contrary, there is plenty of life today that is already treated as low value with no one coming to help. But “more people please,” for equal helpings of economic and ideological reasons.
I look forward to a future earth with fewer people.
More people than in the 1950s, to be sure, and the world didn't end then.
This "argument" is bad faith and predicated on living within our means being a bad thing a priori with no demonstration that this is in fact true.
When future historians look back on the last half century, I suspect they will pass over war, terror, and populism to settle on infertility as the decisive event of the age.
Let's be clear, "infertility" is, in the eyes of the WHO:
a disease of the male or female reproductive system defined by the failure to achieve a pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse.
and the worlds population is having fewer children in advanced economies largely through choice not disease.
It's well past time to start evaluating economies without the assumption that unlimited growth is the one and only tue goal and measure of success.
That seems pretty implausible. Some people have low fertility and others have high. Over time low fertility sub-populations will become less common and high fertility groups will become more common. That's just evolution. It's normal for a population to vary up and down a bit.
The future will look like Africa and South America becoming more populous and sending people to North and South America to work taking care of the elderly low fertility folks who have no children to take care of them. I don't know the details about Asia, but probably a similar pattern.
That type of thing plus MAID to get rid of the elderly that we can't care for - I highly doubt population will decrease. That's just not what evolution does.
Demographics shows populations decreasing in mass anytime people urbanize as children become expensive instead of a necessity like on the farm. This is happening all over Europe, China, Japan, South Korea...etc. People are still having sex, but using protection and other means to not have babies.
Africa will eventually urbanize as well and as infant mortality goes down will be in the same boat as everywhere else. Religion will thwart this in some places (perhaps temporarily or maybe permanently).
This feels like such a dogwhistle for blaming women for getting educated and wanting more.
Sheryl Sandberg criticized women in her book, Lean In to not pick a career based on if it would be good for having children when you weren’t even in a relationship. But so few of us can afford outside help and we can see that for most het couples that work is gonna fall squarely on the woman.
There are many people that want children or more children but doesn’t have the resources for them. Why not pay every parent 10k per child until the child is 10 years old? Subsidize fertility treatment? Work to make the corporate world more family friendly?
I know the author claims that those with the best quality of life still have low birth rates, but what are those societies pushing?
Corporations are strongly pushing natalism which seems to have found a home in contrarian conservative politics. The formulae is simple, more consumers and thus better prices for goods which corporations make and the assets they own. There are more workers competing for the same jobs so their input costs are cheaper. The actual costs associated with large populations are externalized. Keeping a ponzi economic system going is simply a bonus. I'm a foot-voting libertarian (anti-corporatist) not a commie but this shit stinks.
We're not going to get greater innovation out of more people if those people have to spend their lives toiling to survive while eating increasingly unhealthy food. I don't see why we couldn't have graceful degradation of the population. The idea that we'll need many people to look after us as we get old is predicated on people living rather unhealthy lifestyles. We would be far better off looking after our health and being good stewards of the environment.
Yep it is a ponzi scheme that resists some form of equilibrium IMO.
The downside to what's happening is reduced growth in plenty of things or at least glacially slow growth. I hate rampant consumerism, but it's hard to imagine the growth in computing power without it. Imagine if we had all just stopped with the Commodore 64 lol and called it good enough. The same goes for practically everything.
The upside is that my labor becomes more and more valuable and corporate America becomes less all encompassing.
But yeah. I wonder what will happen if this trend persists? Will deflation happen? What if people go back to just having different clothes based on the seasons and not on a 52-week fashion cycle like many women? Is that so bad?
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 38.7 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day
Of particular note is the the author’s mention of new life potentially having less value (“slumping”); on the contrary, there is plenty of life today that is already treated as low value with no one coming to help. But “more people please,” for equal helpings of economic and ideological reasons.
Random example: https://reliefweb.int/report/world/suffering-silence-10-most...
More people than in the 1950s, to be sure, and the world didn't end then.
This "argument" is bad faith and predicated on living within our means being a bad thing a priori with no demonstration that this is in fact true.
Let's be clear, "infertility" is, in the eyes of the WHO: and the worlds population is having fewer children in advanced economies largely through choice not disease.It's well past time to start evaluating economies without the assumption that unlimited growth is the one and only tue goal and measure of success.
The future will look like Africa and South America becoming more populous and sending people to North and South America to work taking care of the elderly low fertility folks who have no children to take care of them. I don't know the details about Asia, but probably a similar pattern.
That type of thing plus MAID to get rid of the elderly that we can't care for - I highly doubt population will decrease. That's just not what evolution does.
Africa will eventually urbanize as well and as infant mortality goes down will be in the same boat as everywhere else. Religion will thwart this in some places (perhaps temporarily or maybe permanently).
Sheryl Sandberg criticized women in her book, Lean In to not pick a career based on if it would be good for having children when you weren’t even in a relationship. But so few of us can afford outside help and we can see that for most het couples that work is gonna fall squarely on the woman.
There are many people that want children or more children but doesn’t have the resources for them. Why not pay every parent 10k per child until the child is 10 years old? Subsidize fertility treatment? Work to make the corporate world more family friendly?
I know the author claims that those with the best quality of life still have low birth rates, but what are those societies pushing?
We're not going to get greater innovation out of more people if those people have to spend their lives toiling to survive while eating increasingly unhealthy food. I don't see why we couldn't have graceful degradation of the population. The idea that we'll need many people to look after us as we get old is predicated on people living rather unhealthy lifestyles. We would be far better off looking after our health and being good stewards of the environment.
The downside to what's happening is reduced growth in plenty of things or at least glacially slow growth. I hate rampant consumerism, but it's hard to imagine the growth in computing power without it. Imagine if we had all just stopped with the Commodore 64 lol and called it good enough. The same goes for practically everything.
The upside is that my labor becomes more and more valuable and corporate America becomes less all encompassing.
But yeah. I wonder what will happen if this trend persists? Will deflation happen? What if people go back to just having different clothes based on the seasons and not on a 52-week fashion cycle like many women? Is that so bad?