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Elder care is a pressing issue, but in general isn't this good news?
Not for the economy
This may be unpopular, but I already feel the earth is well beyond it’s ideal human population capacity. We are straining resources because of our bad policies and practices and politics.
Potentially. I think we'll see another explosion in population IF a cause it's addressed. What those causes may be is not yet fully identified.
No mention of economic inequality or rising cost of living?
Why is immigration not the answer to this? Eventually developed countries are going to have to get over their bigotry and open the borders.
Elder care is a pressing issue, but in general isn't this good news?
Not when you realize that the economy is largely a huge ponzi scheme which requires a constant stream of new participants to prop up asset prices and generate economic activity. The care issue is real, not so much because we need people to look after them, which potentially could be automated, but rather the new generations are the ones paying into the system and funding their pensions.
There's a short-term problem of society becoming "top-heavy", where there might not be enough young to pay for the continued care of the old. But in the long run this seems like a win. I wonder what impact it might have on climate projections.
Advancements in existing technology just aren’t going to be enough at the timeline we’re looking at. Political change is another non-starter because it just won’t happen on a global scale. Then there’s the fact that for the vast majority of people alive today, the Earth’s condition in 50 or 100 years is rightly not even on their radar.
There's a short-term problem of society becoming "top-heavy", where there might not be enough young to pay for the continued care of the old. But in the long run this seems like a win. I wonder what impact it might have on climate projections.
A big part of that problem is that most nations have a pension system where the active work force pays for the pension of the elder instead of each person paying their own pension by saving/investing troughout their lives.
The only solutions are technology or rationing care.
This may be unpopular, but I already feel the earth is well beyond it’s ideal human population capacity. We are straining resources because of our bad policies and practices and politics.
Enough food is already produced right now to feed every person on Earth [1]. Most estimates furthermore put the Earth's carrying capacity at around 2 billion more people than we already have [2].
The problems that people think of when they think of "overpopulation" are the result of insufficient distribution systems, corruption, unconstrained capitalism, faulty human psychology, and poor education. They are problems caused by human beings screwing over their fellow human beings. Some of these problems get easier to solve when you have more people, not fewer, and in any case, nobody's yet figured out how to make things much better in a shrinking economy.
[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241746569_We_Alread...
This may be unpopular, but I already feel the earth is well beyond it’s ideal human population capacity. We are straining resources because of our bad policies and practices and politics.
In my view, you are echoing propaganda. Nothing says humans have to live in cities and burn massive amounts of fossil fuels. The way we are living may be stressful to the planet, but humans aren't the problem... it's the way we are forced to live that is.
Almost everyone I know who is really well-off/rich is having several kids. Heck, Elon Musk, who is basically spending his life trying to solve these environmental problems as his multiple businesses, has six!
Why are their social norms and thoughts on this so different from the rest of us?