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Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

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Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#51

AKA 'people should have more kids!' 'Wait! Not in those shithole countries!' Declining birthrates alarmists are essentially sponsoring the great replacement theory. Not with words or by shilling the conspiracy online but with their alarmism as conflated to just particular geographic areas without looking at the whole globe. Global population is still growing and will continue to do so during our lifetime. The relativ…

The fact that "Declining birthrates alarmists are essentially sponsoring the great replacement theory" is one of the reasons we put together this document. Demographic collapse as a risk (and related risks related to declining populations) deserves to be explored from a non-racially/religiously motivated angle. Just because some racially/religiously motivated groups care about a problem does not mean that everyone wh…

> We merely attempt to take a sober approach to issues around population decline and potential solutions.

Sober..."The Demographic Apocalypse".

Also what population decline? You and I will both be dead before the peak is even in.

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#52
post #28

Birth rates for humans are self-regulating, like with any other animal population. We are nearing the point of saturation of how many people the current environment can bear. Good. If there will be some mass extinction, or new resources available, birth rates will increase accordingly. No need for intervention here.

If you consider massive amounts of suffering and death caused by resource shortages to be “good” then we have very different values systems

This is not about deaths (mass extinctions usually not follow from resource exhaustion, but from some crisis), this is about less people being born. Which is how human population self-regulates given the estimation of resource availability.

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#54
Hey, i've read the intro and the first part: a remark to the authors: Calhoun experiment haven't been published, this is vrey much popsci, and it is hard to look at the "results" and make conclusions or inference about human behavior. A much better study was by hammock[0], with control group and no anthropomosrphism from the author.

I have some contempt for papers using Calhoun. It's fine for movies, but not for serious business. If "The limit to growth" used him for his models, nobody would have taken them seriously. If you want more impact an credibility, you might want to reword everything and use newer studies of overpopulation "in mice" (or not a all, and present this like a partisan point of view, imho it is better than justifying by bad science)

[0] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Behavioral-changes-due...

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#55

AKA 'people should have more kids!' 'Wait! Not in those shithole countries!' Declining birthrates alarmists are essentially sponsoring the great replacement theory. Not with words or by shilling the conspiracy online but with their alarmism as conflated to just particular geographic areas without looking at the whole globe. Global population is still growing and will continue to do so during our lifetime. The relativ…

I think it's just good to have open discussion on what these demographics changes might mean in the context of different societies. Both Europe and North America will see increasing migration from more overpopulated and poorer parts of the world, and this obviously presents its challenges to societies in the both ends of the flow. I don't believe in "great replacement theory", what is happening is just a natural cons…

Genuine question: what part(s) of the world do you consider overpopulated?

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Addendum Quote "The economic systems of virtually all developed countries are predicated on an assumption of constant growth"—I'm with you that shrinking societies will be facing a wholly new set of societal problems. However an economic system that is predicated on constant growth will necessarily fail at some point in the future because physics. We as a species have to find ways to prevent that from happening. To k…

>However an economic system that is predicated on constant growth will necessarily fail at some point in the future because physics. Nonsense. And the audacity to add "because physics" at the end. Newton himself proved this wrong. 1+ 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.125.... Is this sequence constant growing? Yes. Is this sequence infinitely increasing? Yes. Does this sum up to a finite value? Also yes!

But that's not our growth. Our system suppose constant exponential growth. And to use your maths:

1% + 0.5% + 0.25% + 0.125%....

Is this sequence constant growing? Yes. Is this sequence infinitely increasing? Yes. Does this sum up to a finite value? _Sadly no_

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#57

Birth rates for humans are self-regulating, like with any other animal population. We are nearing the point of saturation of how many people the current environment can bear. Good. If there will be some mass extinction, or new resources available, birth rates will increase accordingly. No need for intervention here.

This is definitely one view—and it's totally valid. We put together this document for those who are concerned about the implications of some mass extinction (e.g. that populations that survive the mass extinction are far less likely to be gender egalitarian, so it may be that groups who want to protect women's rights over the long run will care more while groups optimizing for other things will care less).

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#58

AKA 'people should have more kids!' 'Wait! Not in those shithole countries!' Declining birthrates alarmists are essentially sponsoring the great replacement theory. Not with words or by shilling the conspiracy online but with their alarmism as conflated to just particular geographic areas without looking at the whole globe. Global population is still growing and will continue to do so during our lifetime. The relativ…

I think it's just good to have open discussion on what these demographics changes might mean in the context of different societies. Both Europe and North America will see increasing migration from more overpopulated and poorer parts of the world, and this obviously presents its challenges to societies in the both ends of the flow. I don't believe in "great replacement theory", what is happening is just a natural cons…

I assure you wholeheartedly that brain-drain is not the big problem for Africa it's made out to be. It's a very big red herring for sure.

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#59
post #34

Outside of high-tech solutions (external wombs, anti-aging) there's one social: a totalitarian country forcing women to have kids. The only country I could see it happening is China. In the absence of one of the three solutions, technological civilization will peak this century. It's not poverty or culture that leads to not having kids, it's industrialization. Any culture that automates agriculture to a sufficient le…

Outside high tech solutions, we could just make raising children cheap again. The cost of raising children into adulthood skyrocketed in the last century. No surprise people gave up on being parents. Just make sure housing is affordable, and subside public daycare, education up to university, and health assistance for would be parents, and a lot of people would proudly step forward.

We address this somewhat in the document. It seems the effect affordable childcare has is more limited than one would hope, though it certainly helps!

That said, having kids above repopulation rate might not just be about making things affordable. If people don't have a strong reason to have more than two kids, and if kids don't have tactical value like they did when they contributed to the family business (e.g. did farm labor, helped around a household, provided old-age care), then it can be difficult to justify having more than two even if raising kids is totally cost neutral (simply because it's more complicated to have a larger family—more of a logistical and mental burden).

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#60

...maybe if didn't work so hard to make our socity into a hypercompetitive hellhole intelligent and educated people would also start having more children! Give people guranteed free life-time education from daycare to university + some standard of free universal healthcare (sure, you'll have to pay for your antiaging, but not for a broken leg!) and more people will enjoy having more children. Maybe engineer the world…

Ah yes, the old “More from the fit, less from the unfit” view of reproduction. Where “fit” of course is “like me.” There’s a long history of this sort of eugenics.
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