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The global fertility rate is falling

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Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#321

Post by JackFr »

inopinatus wrote: post #170
dqv wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because if you actually mean there's a "top" that is dictating human sexuality I am deeply, deeply interested in seeing a schematic diagram for how that system works. First, a top dictating human sexuality is hilarious to read out of context. Also somewhat accurate. Anyway, I don't think they mean there is a concrete system designed to keep people from reproducing. It's more of a feedback loop where the richest peop…

I think you're trying to very generously interpret a conspiracy theory that doesn't stand up to a moment's scrutiny. Access to contraception, and a rise in women's education and employment, are not a message imposed on society by the wealthy, inadvertently or otherwise, nor have they occurred on the timeline of concerns such as climate change and resource exhaustion. They are social consequences of the Enlightenment.

Consider how attitudes towards contraception have changed over time. There was a time, not that long ago, where the separation of procreation from the procreative act was considered harmful to both society and the individual.

There is a cultural elite, who’s effect has been so profound, they have led you to believe that such a cultural norm as we enjoy today was inevitable and have convinced the world that taking a perfectly healthy reproductive system and making it dysfunctional is “healthcare”.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#322

Post by Arbalest »

mchusma wrote: post #205

I hope Humanity grows many orders of magnitude larger and expands across the galaxy. The universe will be a more interesting place. Some people here are saying this is good for the environment. Having 20% fewer people won't do that. Clean energy and other technology will. You can easily fit 100B humans on earth, with more of the earth dedicated to nature preserves. (Maybe a trillion people https://youtu.be/8lJJ_QqIVn…

I agree. But.

So I think there's an unstated assumption about the driving force behind human population. Asides from a couple of pretty extreme environmentalists, most humans want a world well suited to the life of humans. This means that fundamentally, humans don't care what happens to other life forms. And why not, if everything is doomed to entropy, why would we favour the outcomes of non sentients over us? The issue is, however, humans do not live in an isolated bubble. We are part of the environment, and the environment is a part of us. We need to realise we are symbiotic with the environment, even if specific aren't all that important.

As for high population density cities, as others have said, it's the support infrastructure which is killing us. Otherwise, urbanisation alone would have already brought us many gains in terms of pollution.

So how does this mesh with still growing? Short answer: policy. Technology alone will not save us. We need a lot of social and cultural changes to also increase the material efficiency of each human. If we want to continue to expand, we need every last drop of ideation, experimentation and ambition. We need an environment for people to thrive, without having a class of people who too busy patting each other on the back, and another too busy surviving to contribute to the greater cause.

Edit: I should probably also have mentioned that Technology is getting harder, and we can less and less wait for the magic bullet. We need to act now (on efficiency), so that we have space to invest in the future.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#323

Post by nopinsight »

mdorazio wrote: post #303
corysama wrote: post #90

This article is quite exasperated, but doesn't say much. I'm far from an expert in this area, but here's what I've read elsewhere: We're quickly moving from the population explosion problem to the population implosion problem. No one planned it or made it happen. But, it looks like we're not actually going to overflow the planet with people standing shoulder to shoulder. Instead, the problem we're facing moving forwa…

Counterpoint: major world problems like climate change are a direct result of having too many people, and more specifically having too many people living unsustainable lifestyles. Worse, a large percentage of the world's population is now moving out of sustainable living into unsustainable living as a result of globalization (as people gain more wealth, they tend to want things like more meat and driving a car). The…

The rapid and massive increase in the number of global middle class is why virtual everything will be important for the planet. If virtual services and experiences become almost as useful and enjoyable as the real world, people will burn less fuel and cause less negative externalities.

(They could be better as well! Even those who enjoy traveling, for example, don’t care for the hassles of airport queuing, getting stuck in sardine-like plane seats, finding laundry places, etc.)

Obviously, real-world experiences necessary for genuine, long-term human connections should remain.

Note: Although the birth rate is falling, the number of global middle class is expected to rise a great deal in the next few decades, largely due to rapid economic development.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#324

Post by dropit_sphere »

arp242 wrote: post #195
dropit_sphere wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you define "this" as. If the problem is simply "not enough people," that of course is easy to remedy. I hear zoos have trouble getting pandas to mate. Why don't they just add some polar bears, or leopards, or even rabbits? What do you think the pandas would say if they could talk?

Ehm, those are different species? Are you suggesting that humans are made up of different species?

No, but since you mention it, it's interesting to note that one of the litmus tests for what constitutes a species is the ability to reproduce.

A state is a three-way bargain between the living, the state, and the unborn. The state imposes all sorts of inconveniences on us---why do we put up with it?

The constitution lists several reasons---common defense, general welfare, and to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity"

Imagine, privileging one's own children over someone else's! How aggressively family-ist.

In other words, one of the primary purposes of a state is to act as a vehicle for inheritance.

That's why immigration is not a solution---the point of a state isn't "people," it's our children, specifically. Without that, no one has skin in the game.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#325

Post by Leherenn »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #149

Its concerning that this article closes with the idea that "migration will become a necessity for all nations and not an option." There are multiple factors that limit population density, most important of which is access to space and clean water. The fact that a professor from London, with a population density of over 10,000 people per square kilometer [1] is advocating for continued growth is odd. [1]: https://en.w…

The sentence is a bit weird as well, if every one is having a population decline, then migration cannot be the solution, at least not globally.

Maybe he meant every one will compete for migrants, but some of them will lose the game. (Probably the poor and climate change hit countries.)

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#326

Post by anon9001 »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #176
anon9001 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely pushed from the top. Nobody outside of extreme religious communities sees increasing the population as a noble goal. At least in the US, children are effectively a tax on the working class. How many people do you know that had to keep working to put their kids through college? Why do workplaces have tax-incentivized college savings accounts? Why does it cost employees to add children to employer-spons…

Children inherently cost money. Someone has to pay it. You're trying to pretend like the system is designed to screw parents by burdening them with this cost source that is a child when simply put, children cost money. > How many people do you know that had to keep working to put their kids through college? College costs money. The incentives with government backed student debt has inflated that cost dramatically. Th…

I used to believe your line of reasoning, but I don't anymore.

> It was a moral hazard of a bad policy intended to make college accessible but in turn caused massive tuition inflation.

Do you really think that's unsolvable? That "bad policy" is corruption. That tuition inflation could be capped.

> Again if there are higher costs, someone has to pay them.

You would think we would all want to educate, insure, and support the next generation. Maybe some costs should be shared?

> They instead just had adverse effects due to the moral hazard of incentivizing colleges to raise tuition since the government will back the loan and the student doesn't understand how to make an informed decision on cost tradeoffs at their age. But this isn't the system being designed to prevent people from having children.

I know you're saying this unironically, but please consider that a system which allows an 18 year old to sign up to accrue tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of debt over 4+ years with no guarantee that they will be able to pay it back... well, maybe that's just not a system we should have built. You know who would love to build that system? Probably the recipients of the 18 year old's borrowed funds.

I have friends that are engineers in various fields, college educated, career people, and they're still struggling to save much of anything after childcare expenses and paying down their college debts.

It's no problem though, they just have to keep working and it's all fine. Unless they can't work for some reason, then they've got a big problem.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#327

Post by jcun4128 »

Maybe it's poor access to contraceptives but I personally know people(family) in a third-world country where a single person has 4+ kids... I'm like why, can you even afford it. These people are also still living on a dirt patch in the forest/woods. What's crazy too is in the 15+ years I left, it's still almost the same... I guess that's what happens when you're far away from major cities.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#329

Post by snowwrestler »

logicchains wrote: post #215
snowwrestler wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government and private retirement strategies both rely on cash transfers from younger workers. In a government system, the younger workers pay taxes which are transferred to retirees. In a private retirement system, younger workers are the purchasing counterparties as retirees sell off their investments. Retirement financing in general relies on future economic growth for future cashflow. That said, you don't necessa…

>Government and private retirement strategies both rely on cash transfers from younger workers. In a government system, the younger workers pay taxes which are transferred to retirees. In a private retirement system, younger workers are the purchasing counterparties as retirees sell off their investments. The core unit of the economy is not cash, it's value. Saving roughly corresponds to avoiding consumption and pres…

In a society that wishes to support people who are not producing value, the people who are producing value will need to overproduce.

Whether you measure the overage in units of lifetime granaries, or running annual surpluses, is primarily an accounting choice.

As a practical matter, it's impossible for one farmer to save up enough food to span their entire retirement. Storage is an expense, and food goes bad eventually. The concept of a retirement is only possible in a society that transacts value regularly.

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