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The global population pyramid

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Re: The global population pyramid

#131

Post by SolaceQuantum »

fullshark wrote: post #102
koonsolo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to give my not so popular answer for this. Western society is moving away from traditional families. When I ask my son what he wants to become when he's older, he says he wants to be a police officer. When I ask my 2 girls, they both want to become a mom. My social engineered response to this was "maybe you should become a school teacher, that way you can work with kids and be home when your kids are home".…

I find it bizarre culturally that being a stay at home mom is so frowned upon in many circles. The idea that working 9-5 for some corporation is one’s highest calling seems silly. Perhaps one day we will respect mothers again.

At what point were mothers respected in the western culture? (Respected == given as many resources as a corporate income would enable)

Re: The global population pyramid

#132

Post by fifnir »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #70
fifnir wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any constructive discussion is welcome. I want to attack the premise that a shrinking population is inherently a problem. The only clearly stated problem that I've seen is how social security will likely crumble since the fewer younger people won't be able to support the large aging population. But this ignores how productivity has been and will continue to rise thanks to machines. I think we can easily take care o…

> But this ignores how productivity has been and will continue to rise thanks to machines. While true for most of recorded, human history; that kind of assumption combined with hard limits like physics make your second point a more likely outcome. Unless you're suggesting humanity will re-engineer itself into a more sustainable form. EDIT: forced typo

Maybe I should have said efficiency instead of productivity ?

Re: The global population pyramid

#133

Post by anyanswers »

bhaak wrote: post #127
anyanswers wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you mind if I ask how old you are? The rights of women to freely choose careers, and to make their own reproductive decisions, are at least several decades old. i think OP of this subthread means "new" in the context of human society "new". Several decades is still pretty "new" if you take into account human history.

> i think OP of this subthread means "new" in the context of human society "new". Several decades is still pretty "new" if you take into account human history. The "woman stays at home taking care of the children and the man goes out and earns enough to feed the family" concept is also new if you take into account human history. It got introduced for the most part during the 19th century. Before that you couldn't aff…

quite true, but I feel like the "mother at home" cultural artifact still feels older in modern (european/american) human's psyche. It wasn't the best system, but it feels like the system that most of our societal changes have been seeking to rectify.

Your point about the 19th century is also interesting as its (mother at home) origins in that time period may explain why it's so ingrained and also deemed the default. It arose during the time of the biggest jump in human technological advancement (industrial revolution). Most of the propaganda for it references this correlation and uses it as a justification.

I don't agree with this sort of connection, but it is interesting to note.

Re: The global population pyramid

#134

Post by anyanswers »

anyanswers wrote: post #133
bhaak wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i think OP of this subthread means "new" in the context of human society "new". Several decades is still pretty "new" if you take into account human history. The "woman stays at home taking care of the children and the man goes out and earns enough to feed the family" concept is also new if you take into account human history. It got introduced for the most part during the 19th century. Before that you couldn't aff…

quite true, but I feel like the "mother at home" cultural artifact still feels older in modern (european/american) human's psyche. It wasn't the best system, but it feels like the system that most of our societal changes have been seeking to rectify. Your point about the 19th century is also interesting as its (mother at home) origins in that time period may explain why it's so ingrained and also deemed the default.…

sorry about the repetition of your point. I recently hit my head.

Re: The global population pyramid

#135

Post by fifnir »

koonsolo wrote: post #85
fifnir wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you genes will die along with you I get it, this is why I haven't already had a vasectomy, but your genes are nothing special, just a sample of the alleles in the population. I'm much more concerned about producing ideas that will outlive me and spreading those. Newton died a virgin yet he profoundly influenced the world. Similar with cultures, ancient greeks are long gone but their culture shaped the world.

Yes, I definitely agree. Genes are only 1 aspect of what can be passed on. But the question here is: Will the value of "men and women should fulfill the same roles in society" survive or die out?

Firstly, I would phrase the value as "People should not be restricted in the roles they can fulfill in society" (I don't think anyone serious(ly) argues that everyone should do exactly the same).

And no I don't think that this value is under threat from other cultures just because they reproduce more.

The value didn't get established in society because the people who held it reproduced more. Also, those who oppose it won't necessarily continue to reproduce more forever.

Atheists have smaller fertility rates than any religion, yet atheism is spreading more and more

Re: The global population pyramid

#136

Post by govg »

Anka33 wrote: post #87
bhouston wrote: post #25

My concern is that population will shrink after 2100 globally but it will already be shrinking in the rich countries long before that. And all indicators right now is that shrinkage will speed up. There is something wrong with rich modern secular society here or anywhere (it happens to all societies right now whether they are European, Japanese, Chinese, etc) in that it currently leads to sub replacement reproduction…

"if you encourage immigration" Bringing low IQ population into high societies will only end in tears.

I'm sure all the Hungarian / German scientists who powered the Manhattan project (and were fundamental in making USA the scientific superpower they are now), and the current grad school population of Asians are all causing American society to end in tears.

Re: The global population pyramid

#137

Post by bluntfang »

SeanAppleby wrote: post #113
bluntfang wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it comes to it, we will have no problem adopting a Brave New World style procreation strategy. Creating humans out of other human's blood/cells/dna/etc is either already here or imminent. http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/babies-from-bone-marrow

I don't think the problem is that people don't want to go through the mechanics of having kids, it's that they have other priorities that trump wanting to commit the massive amount of time and resources necessary to raise kids. That's a much more complex problem. I'd be highly skeptical that we could scale an alternative development environment that even approximated the benefits of having a loving family that wanted…

I suggest you give Brave New World, which i mentioned in the previous comment, a look. Huxley solves this problem with communal child rearing. Basically it's public school, but from child birth without the nuclear family model. The idea that you need a mom and dad (or even 2 parents) to love and raise a child is becoming obsolete.

Re: The global population pyramid

#138

Post by terryschiavo22 »

bhouston wrote: post #25

My concern is that population will shrink after 2100 globally but it will already be shrinking in the rich countries long before that. And all indicators right now is that shrinkage will speed up. There is something wrong with rich modern secular society here or anywhere (it happens to all societies right now whether they are European, Japanese, Chinese, etc) in that it currently leads to sub replacement reproduction…

We don't live in a rich modern secular society. Perhaps 10% of the US population does, but much of it lives at a low-middle class level where having kids is more of a luxury than a choice.

Re: The global population pyramid

#139

Post by jniedrauer »

gumby wrote: post #78
bhouston wrote: post #25

My concern is that population will shrink after 2100 globally but it will already be shrinking in the rich countries long before that. And all indicators right now is that shrinkage will speed up. There is something wrong with rich modern secular society here or anywhere (it happens to all societies right now whether they are European, Japanese, Chinese, etc) in that it currently leads to sub replacement reproduction…

There will still be a huge unemployed cohort "moving through the snake" (the diagram in the article is not as clear as the usual "Christmas tree" diagram" that shows a snapshot in time) world wide which can be deployed to equilibrate the labor imbalance. And that doesn't inherently have to lead to racism. For example the US bracero program in the 40s and 50s didn't exacerbate these issues in through the 1970s, nor di…

> An economic system not based on an age-based pyramid scheme and a move away from zero-sum scarcity mindsets will make addressing these issues much simpler.

I hope this is our future. But I am afraid that you are overestimating our society's capacity to change course without some supply shock. We'll keep doing what we're doing until something breaks and then there will be a very uncomfortable few decades and many will struggle to survive or die.

Re: The global population pyramid

#140

Post by lalaland1125 »

Mirioron wrote: post #31
bhouston wrote: post #25

My concern is that population will shrink after 2100 globally but it will already be shrinking in the rich countries long before that. And all indicators right now is that shrinkage will speed up. There is something wrong with rich modern secular society here or anywhere (it happens to all societies right now whether they are European, Japanese, Chinese, etc) in that it currently leads to sub replacement reproduction…

My worry is that at some point rich countries will start increasing in population again. In the past we thought that overpopulation is going to be a big global problem. It turned out that rich countries naturally ended up having fewer and fewer children. This stabilized their populations. And now we expect that this trend will continue. But why? What's to say that some shift in society won't trigger another populatio…

A shift in society that triggers higher population growth is actually more likely than you might think due to evolution. Groups that have cultural norms that increase fertility rates will steadily increase as a fraction of the population. As long as those groups can pass down their beliefs to their children with high probability, evolution will see those groups eventually become dominant.

A good example of this would be the Amish population, which has very good retention and fertility rates leading to quite high population growth.

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