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Basement Fertility

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Re: Basement Fertility

#111

Post by dash2 »

One issue I see with the current debate: people are comparing e.g. Italy to Sweden. Then if you're Bryan Caplan you call for housing reform, and if you're a more typical academic you call for parenting leave and other Scandi social welfare policies.

Sure, Italy has fertility of 1.27. But Norway has fertility of 1.53! Comparing these is like comparing two ends of the Titanic. One end is sinking underwater. The other is relatively higher. But it will be underwater too a few hours later. 1.27 augurs rapid population collapse. 1.53 augurs slightly slower population collapse.

If you think far-below-replacement fertility is bad, then Scandinavia does not have the solution.

Re: Basement Fertility

#112

Post by microtherion »

finiteseries wrote: post #59
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.

China will depopulate >50% by 2100 (conservatively) and we’re still worrying about mid 20th century concepts like carrying capacities as if we aren’t a highly advanced (and depopulating) tool making species entirely capable of creating ecosystems wholesale and affecting said capacities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

If there were any place in the world where one would think that your supposed capability of creating ecosystems wholesale would manifest, it would be California with its nexus of engineers and venture capital. And yet, California is suffering from ever worsening drought conditions and forest fires, with no solutions in sight.

Conversely, depopulation on an otherwise healthy planet is a trivially solvable problem. Our species IS entirely capable of reproducing (even though the secret to doing so may have fallen into obscurity in certain incel segments of society).

Re: Basement Fertility

#113

Post by monksy »

> best way to make large homes affordable is to allow the construction industry to build freely.

No. Not even close. Once developers get into this, they always seek to achieve the highest price as possible.

> Deregulation leads to low prices which leads to ample living space

This is only true when there is desirable livable space, affordable materials to build the housing, cheap labor, and honest people who are doing the construction.

Regulation front: I do agree that overly strict zoning causes a lot of issues. However, we have an aggressively (some call it exceptional individualism) caustic population of people.

Economics still will fly in the face of the author here: An increase in population and a push for a mass audience.. that's going to create a scaricity in places they want to live. That will increase the total overall cost (cost to government for services, infrastructure, infrastructure pressure [this is more of a case in road based transit], land space/value, etc)

Re: Basement Fertility

#115

Post by stephc_int13 »

In my book, the end of the population explosion is good news.

Only the super-rich reaps the benefits of having a very large population.

I am pretty sure we can adapt easily before going extinct.

This is not a problem yet, and we're historically not very good at predicting the future, it won't happen overnight.

By the way, it is my understanding that politicians in Ancient Rome were also worried about the natality issue, for some time as you can see here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Julia

It is my pet theory that "modern" religions were inspired by those concerns and incorporated them in their own texts.

Re: Basement Fertility

#116

Post by dash2 »

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…

There are certainly theories where falling population is not a problem. (There's a theory for everything.) The question is whether those theories are right. One issue for economic growth is that many modern theories claim that growth is driven by ideas and innovations. Fewer people might lead to fewer ideas and innovations. If so, then we will be poorer as a result.

Here's a 2010 review suggesting population decline is no biggie: https://academic.oup.com/oxrep/article-abstract/26/4/583/453...

Here's a recent paper on the topic: https://www.bde.es/f/webbde/INF/MenuHorizontal/SobreElBanco/...

Update: here's a paper by Charles Jones. This might be better because (1) Charles Jones is rather famous growth economist and (2) it focuses specifically on population decline rather than population ageing.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w26651

Re: Basement Fertility

#117

Post by corrral »

vanviegen wrote: post #93
moonchrome wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

As another poster pointed out, self-scan checkout isn't automation, it just changes who does the work from paid employees to unpaid customers. The amount of human labor required remains similar to traditional cashier-staffed checkout.

Re: Basement Fertility

#118

Post by wolpoli »

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…

If you look at falling fertility rate within the demographic transition model, an economy will first enjoy a time where the number of dependent to the working age population will decrease (demographic transition), meaning that people will enjoy higher standard of living, economy will have excess capital for growth, and everyone is happy. Decades later, the number of dependent to the working age population will increase again (demographic aging), in which the unfortunate reverse will occur, and people will start sounding the alarm, and it's 2 decades too late to anything about it.

The vintage-futurism economic dream of 10 hour workweeks will be tough to achieve if we need many in the working age population taking care of the elderly.

Re: Basement Fertility

#119

Post by hypertele-Xii »

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…

Adults and in some cases minors get free housing in Finland, so naturally few people choose to live with their parents. Maybe similar in Scandinavia?

Re: Basement Fertility

#120

Post by propter_hoc »

Man, this is a dumb take. Even if there were a correlation (which there apparently isn't, per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31899793), there's zero way you can say that there's any sort of causational relationship.

Look, I can do this too:

* highly-developed western societies have lots of regulation

* highly-developed western societies have low birth rates

* highly-developed western societies have a high percentage of lawyers per capita

ergo, lawyers decrease the birth rate?

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