In a decade or so politicians may start fighting to tear down the wall.
The one they refused to build?
The Population Bust
61–70 of 182 posts
Re: The Population Bust
#62Relying on a larger and larger population to keep supporting endless growth is not sustainable. I know this is unpopular, but: We need to find a way to sustainably live on this planet with a reasonably sized population. People keep talking about how the next generation needs to support all the debt and extravagances of the past generations but this unethical. the next generation was born without first being asked whe…
You can have economic growth without growing population or resource consumption. Either way, that still doesn’t address the problems of population decline.
You can, to an extent. There’s a limit to what one person can buy or contribute to an economy. It’s easier to sell 2 TVs to two people than it is 2 TVs to one person.
Re: The Population Bust
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can have economic growth without growing population or resource consumption. Either way, that still doesn’t address the problems of population decline.
You can, to an extent. There’s a limit to what one person can buy or contribute to an economy. It’s easier to sell 2 TVs to two people than it is 2 TVs to one person.
Productivity increases though, don't rely on population, and are the actual driver of economic growth. Growth due to population increase is the baseline rate and shouldn't count because people aren't more prosperous per-capita.
Re: The Population Bust
#64Why does it have to be "the end of capitalism" ? The world population will not disappear overnight. It will take several decades (at least) for that number to go down at some point in this century, and it has almost nothing to do with global spending, at least not in the short term.
Re: The Population Bust
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Birth rates are below replacement everywhere in the developed world and China and most other places except the middle east and africa. There is no need for forced sterilization or whatever you were alluding to.
Let me rephrase: what happens when the developing world, larger in population size, reaches the wealth of the developed world. Has the problem dissipated upon reaching that point?
Fertility rates have been decreasing rapidly all over the developing world. For instance, in Brazil it went from over 5 to around 1.7 in just 50 years. It has decreased so much that that country's very generous public pension system, created when the median age was around 18, eats most of the government's budget and has all but collapsed (current median age is 37).
Back in the 1970s your typical sci-fi dystopia was an overcrowded world. Personally I'm more afraid of a world with ghost cities inhabited by a handful of elderly people
Re: The Population Bust
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can, to an extent. There’s a limit to what one person can buy or contribute to an economy. It’s easier to sell 2 TVs to two people than it is 2 TVs to one person.
Productivity increases though, don't rely on population, and are the actual driver of economic growth. Growth due to population increase is the baseline rate and shouldn't count because people aren't more prosperous per-capita.
Productivity increases due to automation go to the owners of capital. Many individual’s productivity is not going up, therefore they are worth less.
Re: The Population Bust
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people will want to have large families, but on average it seems that most people don't.
If the tendency to have large families is heritable in some measurable way, maybe because of beliefs or personality traits, wouldn't the carriers of whatever makes them have more babies eventually overtake the rest of the population? It may not be the case that this is how it will work, but it's not a foregone conclusion that "on average" most people will continue to not want to have kids even in the "first world." (…
That seems plausible. I think it's reasonable to suppose that people who grew up in large families might themselves prefer to have large families, but I also suspect that personal preferences like that aren't all that sticky across more than a few generations. Maybe it balances out. For now, we can just say that most people in well-off societies aren't opting to have large families and that doesn't appear likely to change in the near future.
Re: The Population Bust
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you want there to be more Americans? Is there some advantage to more people living in the geographical region? Are you hoping that it will allow certain aspects of the culture to spread / persist? If the latter, would it be as good to cultivate those things at home and allow them to spread on their own merit? Or do you prefer for more people to exist under the national banner for its own sake?
I'm an American and I want there to be enough nurses and orderlies in American nursing homes when the time comes that I need them.
I’d rather go quietly into the night when the time comes that I’m not self sufficient (via assisted suicide). Perhaps that’s wishful thinking, and I won’t have the mental fortitude at that time.
Re: The Population Bust
#69This phenomena is why I'm strongly pro-immigration. Speaking as an American, I want there to be more Americans. We're not making them ourselves so we need to import. The more we import now, the better since the current population is both younger and more numerous than it will be in a few decades when we'd actually need the imported population. Doing it now means the Americanization of the immigrants will be more comp…
Problem 1: who would want to come to a country where they can be indoctrinated not to have babies?
Problem 2: it is unethical for rich people to depend on the fertility and then parental obligations of poor people in order to produce new people who will then be taxed to pay for the sterile old rich person. That is asking someone else to do all your hard work for you for free.
Re: The Population Bust
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can have economic growth without growing population or resource consumption. Either way, that still doesn’t address the problems of population decline.
You can, to an extent. There’s a limit to what one person can buy or contribute to an economy. It’s easier to sell 2 TVs to two people than it is 2 TVs to one person.
Yeah but that one person can have 20 different streaming subscriptions for the TV, for example. Or they could have a really really awesome TV instead of a shitty one. Economic value is somewhat subjective; if people are willing to buy a billion dollars of hats for their video game avatar, that’s a billion dollars of economic activity.