The challenge is that nobody seems to have an answer for “how many people is enough?” Ten billion? 100? We should aim to maintain equilibrium or a slow decrease over centuries so this seems like a necessary, if unpleasant, shift. Unless we go to new planets, I guess.
The question is - how can be free up a higher percentage of people who are able to propel humanity forward from the drudgery of wage slavery in a sustainable manner?
And you need to effectively allocate cognitively proficient people to this as well, not just anyone.
So what, the article says it pretty much in the beginning that older generations are actually more like parasites, they should pull themselves up by the bootsraps
And this is why the US should reform and allow immigration instead of being racist against people from "LA" and Africa.
I have read various articles over the years stating the US economy is/was outdoing the rest of the Tier 1 Countries due to its immigration, even broken as it is. Now we have these racists in charge and they have no idea how much long term economic harm they are doing to the economy.
Again, I am still surprised how Wall Street is letting this happen. Now that they got their Tax Cut for the Rich, maybe the will push back against Trump.
Eventually we will get to fining people who does not have children (Directly or indirectly through taxes), which will make whole thing worse, because they won't be able to afford children even more.
>> The aging populations of rich countries are relying on ever fewer workers to support their economy, dooming those younger generations to a future of higher taxes, higher debt, or later retirement—or all three.
The fallacy here is that the article does not consider the possibility of rising worker productivity. If productivity rises quickly enough, the ever fewer workers could face a future of lower taxes, lower debt, and earlier retirement.
It's also interesting that the Atlantics of the world have gone from "global fertility is rising and we're all doomed" to "global fertility is falling and we're all doomed". I wonder if in between there was ever an Atlantic article stating that global fertility was optimal and we are not, for the next couple weeks or so, all doomed.
Amazing to me that this article did not breath a word on technological innovations over the same period of projections. Factory automation is not a fantasy. The advent of sophisticated AI systems is not top secret. Strides in robotics and in farming and cow milking and even care of elderly are not secret.
If you are doing projection in just one dimension you can be assured to be wrong.
Mechanical automation took off in the 70s-90s. Today, most people in developed countries work in service jobs, often behind screens. If AI becomes advanced enough, many of these jobs could disappear.
Here's another angle: In poor countries where farming is the main occupation, birth rates tend to be high. But as farming becomes automated, birth rates drop. Following this pattern, AI could push people out of service jobs and potentially impact birth rates in a similar way.
Of course this is just my mind making stuff up. Who know how it'll turn up.
The problem is that the time benefits of automation are never returned to the people. We'll just invent new bullshit jobs.
(paid) hours worked per family are massively up over time despite exponential progress. We have stuff but no time nor security.
The countries with the most dire birth rates are the ones with a workaholic culture.
The depressing reality is rather than giving people back their time, even more of it will be pushed for in the future, to sustain the ageing population.
Is this really a crisis? Or is it only a crisis because we've built the global economy around the idea that "number go up" forever? Growth at all costs, even cooking the planet, is central to capitalist mindset that dominates the world.
We're also currently devoting an absurd amount of resources developing technology aimed at replacing as much human labor as possible. All this while Western culture continues to indoctrinate us with the belief that our lives are meaningless without the jobs they are also trying to eliminate.
Meanwhile the world population has reached 8.2 billion and is still rising. There are plenty of people out there. Just not the kind of people that those in power want.
This is why immigration is so important to the economy of a developed nation. You bring in families from around the world, give them amazing opportunities, then hire them to take care of the elderly and keep the lights on. Instead, our nation is trying to shut the door like a lone hoarder living in a pile of rotting trash.
I read every single one of these scare stories as an indictment how ridiculous the "infinite growth" economic model has been.
There's very little to worry about here. Humans are amazingly adaptable, and will find ways to thrive without increasing the population by billions. There are all kinds of benefits to a population that isn't expanding exponentially.
I hang out in these pronatal communities, mostly on Twitter. It's a very interesting mix. There's far right wing Nazis and far left wing Communists, atheists and deeply conservative Christians and Muslims. All groping for any clue about how to get people to have more kids. No one knows what recipe of key thing will make people have more.
It reminds me of Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Chase" (Season 6, Episode 20). It's the one where Picard and crew follow a trail of genetic clues left by an ancient humanoid species, eventually discovering that most major humanoid species in the Alpha Quadrant, including Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and Humans, share a common ancestry. Once they figure it out, they all start shooting again and race for the prize.
I imagine the pronatal community will do the same thing if a recipe is discovered.
The other thing is that I do a lot of worldbuilding with mega large societies, like 1 trillion people. It's a weird thing, but fun for me.
In looking at all the data we have on nations and the fun story building aspects, one thing pops out over and over: population. I'd you want to model a city or a province or a state, you need to know the population more than anything else. That'll be the best guide to the number of subway stops, patents per capital, gasoline station placement, average talking and walking speed, etc. it's the key.
And you find that countries/cities/states with higher raw population are generally better places to live. It seems that the more people there are in an arbitrary area, the better things are in gestalt.
So, when we complain that we've got too many people, I think that's wrong. I think we're not taking care of people we'll enough. But in my ramblings through government datasets, it seems that more people is generally just an objectively good thing.
IMO there's no replacement TFR fix without mass immigration or some state system to figure out state surrogacy and state orphanage - queue "imperical kinderblock". All the pronatalist policies seem to bring TFR to ~1.6 (but declining), I surmise mix in some punitive policies (i.e. high income / wealth transfer tax for childless) can bring it up slightly higher. But seems like modern life just paradoxically too comfy or stressful to incentivize raising 2.1 TFR kids. Go look at rich middle east countries, every incentive from resources, to religion, to culture to cheap "help" is there, but all those countries gradually going under TFR2. Every 0.1 TFR is about 5% new birth shortfall from stabilizing population, i.e. population will continue to decline. Can kind of TFR "hack" by engineering population sex ratio to be more female, i.e. 60:40 female:male brings replacement TFR to ~1.7, so maybe future is just all female. But all of htis is just a lot of work to... not let the blacks/browns in.
My utopian vision is that people should largely be freed from work. The new job is to create families, raise them, and enjoy them. No coercion is needed for these families to be created, we'll produce them out of boredom. Similar to when there's a sustained power outage.
This won't happen though. Instead we'll combine neural-link and AI and will effectively become bionic beings. You'll be forced to join as to not become an obsolete sub-creature.
30 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 55.5 ms ] threadPrevious:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44423897 - June 2025 (22 comments)
We are not on track for equilibrium or a slow decrease over centuries. We are on track for a demographic cliff.
The question is - how can be free up a higher percentage of people who are able to propel humanity forward from the drudgery of wage slavery in a sustainable manner?
And you need to effectively allocate cognitively proficient people to this as well, not just anyone.
I have read various articles over the years stating the US economy is/was outdoing the rest of the Tier 1 Countries due to its immigration, even broken as it is. Now we have these racists in charge and they have no idea how much long term economic harm they are doing to the economy.
Again, I am still surprised how Wall Street is letting this happen. Now that they got their Tax Cut for the Rich, maybe the will push back against Trump.
the economy will collapse if everyone stops having children
really makes you think
The fallacy here is that the article does not consider the possibility of rising worker productivity. If productivity rises quickly enough, the ever fewer workers could face a future of lower taxes, lower debt, and earlier retirement.
It's also interesting that the Atlantics of the world have gone from "global fertility is rising and we're all doomed" to "global fertility is falling and we're all doomed". I wonder if in between there was ever an Atlantic article stating that global fertility was optimal and we are not, for the next couple weeks or so, all doomed.
Probably not. Doomers gotta doom.
One looks at the size of the population, which is projected to keep growing for a while. It keeps growing because people live for a long time.
The second looks at the age distribution of the population. What comes after the population peak.
Both are valid problems.
If you are doing projection in just one dimension you can be assured to be wrong.
Here's another angle: In poor countries where farming is the main occupation, birth rates tend to be high. But as farming becomes automated, birth rates drop. Following this pattern, AI could push people out of service jobs and potentially impact birth rates in a similar way.
Of course this is just my mind making stuff up. Who know how it'll turn up.
(paid) hours worked per family are massively up over time despite exponential progress. We have stuff but no time nor security.
The countries with the most dire birth rates are the ones with a workaholic culture.
The depressing reality is rather than giving people back their time, even more of it will be pushed for in the future, to sustain the ageing population.
My sister got three kids, but she got them after 30.
My mom and my grandma got their first child with 20.
In other words, is it perhaps ("only") a two-generation pain-span the world is going to have to endure?
We're also currently devoting an absurd amount of resources developing technology aimed at replacing as much human labor as possible. All this while Western culture continues to indoctrinate us with the belief that our lives are meaningless without the jobs they are also trying to eliminate.
This is why immigration is so important to the economy of a developed nation. You bring in families from around the world, give them amazing opportunities, then hire them to take care of the elderly and keep the lights on. Instead, our nation is trying to shut the door like a lone hoarder living in a pile of rotting trash.
There's very little to worry about here. Humans are amazingly adaptable, and will find ways to thrive without increasing the population by billions. There are all kinds of benefits to a population that isn't expanding exponentially.
For my part, I'm not convinced the issues will be insurmountable and terrible.
I hang out in these pronatal communities, mostly on Twitter. It's a very interesting mix. There's far right wing Nazis and far left wing Communists, atheists and deeply conservative Christians and Muslims. All groping for any clue about how to get people to have more kids. No one knows what recipe of key thing will make people have more.
It reminds me of Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Chase" (Season 6, Episode 20). It's the one where Picard and crew follow a trail of genetic clues left by an ancient humanoid species, eventually discovering that most major humanoid species in the Alpha Quadrant, including Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and Humans, share a common ancestry. Once they figure it out, they all start shooting again and race for the prize.
I imagine the pronatal community will do the same thing if a recipe is discovered.
The other thing is that I do a lot of worldbuilding with mega large societies, like 1 trillion people. It's a weird thing, but fun for me.
In looking at all the data we have on nations and the fun story building aspects, one thing pops out over and over: population. I'd you want to model a city or a province or a state, you need to know the population more than anything else. That'll be the best guide to the number of subway stops, patents per capital, gasoline station placement, average talking and walking speed, etc. it's the key.
And you find that countries/cities/states with higher raw population are generally better places to live. It seems that the more people there are in an arbitrary area, the better things are in gestalt.
So, when we complain that we've got too many people, I think that's wrong. I think we're not taking care of people we'll enough. But in my ramblings through government datasets, it seems that more people is generally just an objectively good thing.
This won't happen though. Instead we'll combine neural-link and AI and will effectively become bionic beings. You'll be forced to join as to not become an obsolete sub-creature.