161–170 of 239 posts
Africa, China and Asia have healthy fertility because they have community and multigenerational family units. Not big homes.
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Yet populations across Europe are not shrinking. Birth rates may go up and down but people still want to move there. Seems to work, so far. To use the phrase “die out” stinks 30’s Germany to me, and I think you could stand to think twice before using such verbiage.
Especially because these sorts of predictions have happened before. Look at this prediction for the world in 2022 from 1922: >Vive la France? > No one would be left to appreciate the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe. > French scientists were concerned about the nation’s birth rate 100 year ago. In 1860, there had been 1 million births in the country. In 1922, the number had fallen to 450,000. > As one observer not…
The two big changes from previous decades are women’s financial independence and birth control methods that are 100% effective and relatively convenient and cheap, essentially separating the acts of having sex and becoming parents.
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> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement >[...] is a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory [...] Native Americans would disagree.
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.
It’s not bullshit. The UN itself is where the term originated and it’s clear that whites are being replaced. The questions are whether that’s an undesirable thing and what the best course of mitigation is.
Typically, once people admit that, they start trying to justify why whites should be replaced. However, any argument justifying white replacement can be used equally effectively for any other group (e.g. Israelis, Muslims, Chinese, blacks, etc). IMHO best not to attempt to replace anyone so that we don’t devolve into Hitlers.
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
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> 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.
Or at least all the people buying 20 items or less will, or whatever the figures may be. In previous example, take the 20 checkout lanes, leave 10 staffed by a few employees, and install 20 self check out terminals staffed by a few employees. Direct everyone with full carts to the employees, and people with few items to the self checkout.
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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
Okay, and it's bad that china will depopulate? Won't every nation, eventually? Are you making like a "suffering / loss of life is bad" argument? It's hard to disagree with that, if you are. (I certainly don't.) I think you're deriding my use of "Carrying capacity" as an archaic concept, but your retort is that we're "creating ecosystems." But, every organism within an ecosystem "creates" it just by existing as part o…
As an aside: Would it be possible to favourite a reply? I have only figured out how to do that with submissions.
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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…
The much derided (sometimes rightly so tho’) subject of Evolutionary Psychology will probably have a couple of books worth to support that.
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few things impact this 1. Force to sell due to medicare or other end of life expenses (you can not have any assets if you need full time nursing care paid for by medicare) 2. the "Reverse mortgage" people fall for. 3. Baby Boomers, a Single Asset split 5-8 ways does not go far 4. the houses owned really were not that good. My Grandparents owned their home, bought it right after WWII, the house was a small 2 bed 1 bat…
>the houses owned really were not that good. My Grandparents owned their home, bought it right after WWII, the house was a small 2 bed 1 bath they raised 4 kids in... It is still in the family but it is out-dated by modern standards. Young people complain how much more expensive homes are now, and then can't be bothered to accept a starter home.. "I just can't understand why I can't afford this 3,600 sq foot home nea…
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What is striking in this development is the destruction of our social fabric. From African village model to the nuclear family is a massive step, made possible by the nation state. Arguably this impoverishes community/extended family life. The most extreme form can regularly be read in the news: somebody found dead in their home, undetected for weeks or months. But not even that is enough. Even within the scope of th…
While it has its issues, I'm not altogether convinced that the nuclear family is a bad thing. We seem to function best at tribal scale. Jokes aside, most family units are functional. Family scales well. Large-enough families invite dysfunction jokes, but they have a shared genetic interest. You can always coerce or compel family to do things like share resources or settle disputes against their own self-interest. Mor…
Huh?
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And if I were a man, there's no way I would just let a house become marital property if I owned it outright before the marriage, especially considering how family courts screw men over. That's a surefire way to homelessness, unless you are very (SV engineer or doctor) rich.
The property acquired before marriage is yours after divorce. The split part are properties acquired during marriage, unless you have prenup that says otherwise for some reason. That has zero to do with whether it is safe to move into in-laws house when you are entering vulnerable period of pregnancy and being primary caregiver for small kids. Because both severely limit your economic options even in best conditions.