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Basement Fertility

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Re: Basement Fertility

#91

Post by vanviegen »

ozim wrote: post #53
ozim wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that our whole economic system is basically a Ponzi scheme. You get your payoff when you are selling stocks on your retirement to "next fool in chain" so 20-30 year olds. Land, houses will not go up in value if there would be not enough people to buy them. While yes people migrate to the cities or to areas like Randstad and while yes there is housing shortage in such areas but if immigration from rural are…

To complete comment I have to add one more thought. Infinite growth is also required for high quality of life unfortunately. Once there is no promise of future earnings by spending now - we start going into zero sum game. Living in a society where every day you have to worry about not loosing piece of pie is really a bad life to live. Less people means lower pressure to find new ways of getting resources - if there i…

I don't buy that line of thinking.

People can still (on average) have career growth by taking an ever larger piece of the pie. And then they retire/die, leaving more pie for the young ones.

Also, we have the tech to make this pie comfortably big.

Re: Basement Fertility

#92

Post by fleddr »

notriddle wrote: post #86
fleddr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wide base of young people in the healthy pyramid will eventually grow old. Since it was wide, it means to keep the pyramid healthy, multiples of young people would need to be added. Whom will also grow old, needing even more young people.

Or most people need to die before they get old.

Maybe we can rephrase it as "visiting the metaverse".

Re: Basement Fertility

#93

Post by vanviegen »

moonchrome wrote: post #40
mikkergp wrote: post #11

Is there a version of economic thought that doesn't necessitate constant population growth? Why is low fertility rate seen as a bad thing? Often engineering is argued in terms of tradeoffs or meeting certain requirements. Rather than follow economic theories that depend on growth, can we develop economic theories that adapt to the trends of the population rather than the other way around(Musks' need for cheap labor n…

>Why is low fertility rate seen as a bad thing? Because you'll live way past your productive years and the things you will consume (services, goods, medical, etc.) still need to be produced/done by someone. The automation aspect in economy has been way overestimated - truck drivers were supposed to be automated 5 years ago, meanwhile we are facing real world issues because of truck driver shortages. Even jobs that we…

> Even jobs that were considered trivial to automate like cashers are still performed by humans - after decades of self checkout tech.

That's no longer true in my part of the world. In the supermarkets I frequent, I'm pretty sure that well over 2/3 of revenue is self-scanned.

Change often takes multiple decades. That doesn't mean it's not happening.

Re: Basement Fertility

#94

Post by screye »

tony_cannistra wrote: post #44

It feels like there's an implicit "More Kids Good" tone that pervades this. What's the "right" value for TFR? Why does it have to be higher? Why is it bad that it is lower in some places? The ecosystem we exist in / that sustains us surely has a carrying capacity.

"More Kids (than 1st world countries are having is) Good" is generally true.

Social security relies of the young bearing the burden of the old. Don't even get me started on the intangible energy of having little kids around. Not everyone wants kids, but most people like being a cool uncle/aunt.

> What's the "right" value for TFR?

Difficult problems exist in Grays. But even the most fervent believers on either side agree that the 'right number' is likely between and 1.5-2.5. With western TFR plummeting under 1.5, we can safely say the the call for 'more kids' is effectively a call for a slower decline in population; not 'more kids'.

> carrying capacity

Yep, that ecosystem is called the economy and the carry capacity is a lower bound, not an upper bound. Too few young people is the death knell of a civilization.

Also, population explosion is presently led by Africa in rates, and South Asia in sheer numbers. A few dozen more/less westerners (who're we kidding? mostly white people) isn't going to change the numbers by much.

Re: Basement Fertility

#95

Post by Dracophoenix »

mordae wrote: post #30

As was said by rossdavidh in the comments, "eyeballing the maps, I don't see a great correlation". I suspect this might have something to do with perception of supportive community rather than actual numbers. When to-be parents feel like they are on their own and neither $jobPeople, $friendlyPeople nor $familyPeople are actually going to help, they might be inclined to postpone. Living with parents in a sane multi-ge…

> Living with parents out of sheer necessity where parents look down on their offspring for not proving themselves in the world probably would not.

Not that I condone such practices, but how does that not affect birth rate in India?

Re: Basement Fertility

#96

Post by rndmize »

moonchrome wrote: post #40
mikkergp wrote: post #11

Is there a version of economic thought that doesn't necessitate constant population growth? Why is low fertility rate seen as a bad thing? Often engineering is argued in terms of tradeoffs or meeting certain requirements. Rather than follow economic theories that depend on growth, can we develop economic theories that adapt to the trends of the population rather than the other way around(Musks' need for cheap labor n…

>Why is low fertility rate seen as a bad thing? Because you'll live way past your productive years and the things you will consume (services, goods, medical, etc.) still need to be produced/done by someone. The automation aspect in economy has been way overestimated - truck drivers were supposed to be automated 5 years ago, meanwhile we are facing real world issues because of truck driver shortages. Even jobs that we…

> meanwhile we are facing real world issues because of truck driver shortages.

Not really. It feels like every few months we get another piece decrying the lack of truck drivers, only for it to gloss over issues of pay. There is no shortage of truck drivers; there's a shortage of places that don't try to exploit them.

Re: Basement Fertility

#97

Post by cgrealy »

antiverse wrote: post #81
cgrealy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Great Replacement" theory originated in the 2010s and is specifically about white people being replaced (in case anyone was in any doubt, it's racist bullshit). It's a (bullshit paranoid) predictive theory about the modern day that has nothing to do with the historical genocide of Native Americans by white people.

There's nothing really inherently racist about it, or bullshit. Mass immigration is a serious subject matter, one that deserves scrutiny and ruthless questioning. Avoiding the questions by calling it racist doesn't make it go away. It's been around for a lot longer than 2010. It has been a popular subject matter in Europe for decades [1]. I guess someone just decided to finally put a more official, catchy title to it…

"mass immigration" != "great replacement"

The "Great Replacement" specifically talks about this as being a deliberate plan by "wealthy elites", and again, is racist paranoid bullshit.

If you're going to talk about a specific thing, you can't just generalise it to every concern around immigration.

And while there are genuine concerns around immigration, like housing capacity, how to help migrants settle in, etc., most "people on the street" are just complaining about lazy immigrants who are simultaneously "stealing our jobs" and going on benefit.

Re: Basement Fertility

#98

Post by sjburt »

rossdavidh wrote: post #7

It would have been good to see an x-y plot of living with parents vs. fertility. Eyeballing the maps he showed, I don't see a great correlation. Scandinavia has mediocre fertility compared to the rest of Europe, but the lowest percentage living with their parents. Other nations like Greece do satisfy his hypothesis, but a real test would be to plot those two percentages on an x-y plot and see how well they correlate…

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRhDMqe8boEY...

I don't see any correlation at all.

Re: Basement Fertility

#99

Post by blep_ »

jimbob45 wrote: post #78
lotsofpulp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacement rate and “right” are not necessarily congruous. If you have the opinion that there are insufficient resources in the world to live the lifestyle you want for yourself or those you care about, you may think a lower fertility rate is more “right”. And if you think your tribe is in a competition for resources with all the other tribes, then you may want a higher fertility rate for your tribe and a lower one…

Any less than 2.1 and you have to have an uncomfortable conversation about which nation is going to be the sacrifice. Any more and you have to worry about overpopulation. That said, I'm of the opinion that we'll never really need to have any tough conversations about birth rates because they've fallen so drastically across the board. It seems that it will be enough to universally encourage higher birth rates in every…

> Any less than 2.1 and you have to have an uncomfortable conversation about which nation is going to be the sacrifice.

Only if you're the sort of person who cares about such things. I don't see any moral imperative to make sure any particular ethnicity or culture continues.

Before someone calls me the usual assortment of bad things, please take a moment to consider (1) the difference between treating existing people well and making new people, and (2) that I mean this literally and not in the "all the cultures besides the US should go away" sense, and would still take this position even in the blatantly racist "but that means you'd be a minority" situation you're about to try to catch me with.

Re: Basement Fertility

#100

Post by entropi »

moonchrome wrote: post #61
entropi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but you realize this requires indefinite exponential growth, right?

Why ? You're not living forever - and nobody is arguing for high fertility rates. Having 2-3 kids per generation sounds perfectly sustainable. 0 or 1 does not.

So, imagine x couples, each of whom has 3 kids in their lifetimes. In 80 years, there are now 3x/2 couples. In 160, there are 9x/4. There are now 11 billion people. Every 150 or so years, having 3 kids roughly doubles the population. (A better model would be a birth/death process with a #kids distribution with a mean 3 and death age with a mean 80, but not necessary to make my point, I think.)

This is exponantial growth.

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