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Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

bloomberg.com

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Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#41

Post by gumby »

exhilaration wrote: post #24
gumby wrote: post #19

What's the harm? By the end of the century robots will be doing most of the work anyway. People can concentrate on the things that matter to them instead.

By the end of the century robots will be doing most of the work anyway 1) What if they don't? 2) The end of the century is 78 years away, somebody's going need to turn you on your side every few hours when you're in that old folks home - what happens if there aren't enough people to do those jobs?

> somebody's going need to turn you on your side every few hours when you're in that old folks home - what happens if there aren't enough people to do those jobs?

Obviously we will have robots doing that job! Elder care is already a major area of robotics effort in Japan.

And if the robots don't get there? Well, it's not terrible. A smaller population doesn't need as many buildings erected, or crops grown etc. Some people can move in from other countries. I'm confident it will all work out.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#42

Post by Ekaros »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #33
throwaway_4ever wrote: post #12

Something has deeply deeply changed in society for a fertility rate to go from 6 to 0.8 in 60 years, the living memory of a single life. Before, society grew with the average working age person only needing to half support an elderly retiree. Now, that same working age person will need to support more than 2 elderly retirees themselves, over 4 times the resources. Has it occurred to people that, maybe, modern fertili…

> Before, society grew with the average working age person only needing to half support an elderly retiree. Now, that same working age person will need to support more than 2 elderly retirees themselves, over 4 times the resources. There a tenancy to forget that 60 years ago one working person would have to support a wife and several children.

It kinda amazing how we could probably point a point where productivity peaked that is how many people single working person can support. As before that depending on location pretty much everyone worked on one level or an other...

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#43

Post by Ekaros »

bagacrap wrote: post #11
dougmwne wrote: post #5

It is always unclear to me if this is a bad thing. In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off, or does it just look like a decline when you look at the country in aggregate? There is no shortage of squandered talent in the world. So many people work below their capability because there are just more people than opportunities. It seems like it’s not a problem to keep running the modern world, even with…

I think it's a problem because most societies rely on working age folks to support retirees. As birth rates fall off, the ratio of young to old reduces and too few people in the society are working for it to function well.

And the other issue is that the productivity in care work is still rather low. So we have to put quite large part of work force to something that is for general economy unproductive.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#44

Post by gumby »

rednerrus wrote: post #28
gumby wrote: post #19

What's the harm? By the end of the century robots will be doing most of the work anyway. People can concentrate on the things that matter to them instead.

Who's going to build and service the robots? Who's going to build the chips necessary to build the robots? Who's going to operate the ships required to move the parts to the destination to be assembled? Who's going to build the ships? Who's going to to secure the shipping lanes? Who's going to grow and process the food? We don't have the parts that we need now to build new cars and tractors. Can we really afford to b…

Well, there will be some jobs in robot service, but most of that work should be done by...robots. Self-driving ships don't need humans. Robots should be doing most of the ship building.

Growing and processing food should be highly automated, and soon. If we have "infinite" (renewable) energy we can cut down on the chemical input and have robots plucking each weed and carefully metering out the water. The price of "organic" should drop close to or even below "conventional".

> We don't have the parts that we need now to build new cars and tractors. Can we really afford to be building robots?

half a billion people have food insecurity, and with climate change that is growing. Can we really afford to build more meat puppets?

More to the point, the article talked about the population of SK dropping by a half by the end of the century. A transient parts problem today is irrelevant, especially given we have to design better robots over the next 78 years.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#45

Post by Ekaros »

gumby wrote: post #41
exhilaration wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the end of the century robots will be doing most of the work anyway 1) What if they don't? 2) The end of the century is 78 years away, somebody's going need to turn you on your side every few hours when you're in that old folks home - what happens if there aren't enough people to do those jobs?

> somebody's going need to turn you on your side every few hours when you're in that old folks home - what happens if there aren't enough people to do those jobs? Obviously we will have robots doing that job! Elder care is already a major area of robotics effort in Japan. And if the robots don't get there? Well, it's not terrible. A smaller population doesn't need as many buildings erected, or crops grown etc. Some p…

Or more callous take is that we let people either die or choose euthanasia... We might be in for serious societal changes.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#46

Post by Ekaros »

waterlaw wrote: post #35
throwaway_4ever wrote: post #12

Something has deeply deeply changed in society for a fertility rate to go from 6 to 0.8 in 60 years, the living memory of a single life. Before, society grew with the average working age person only needing to half support an elderly retiree. Now, that same working age person will need to support more than 2 elderly retirees themselves, over 4 times the resources. Has it occurred to people that, maybe, modern fertili…

Surrogacy will be the next big thing. Women in poorer countries will birth the children for wealthier nations. This will aid in the reduction of family formation in poorer countries and serve as population control. While ensuring no one country becomes too populated. H.G. Wells pointed out that we cannot have population control in one nation of the world, but not another. It must be worldwide, or it'd result in sever…

Is the actual process of birthing the limiting factor? Or is there other choices involved?

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#48

Post by RedditKon »

iammjm wrote: post #17

Peter Zeihan wrote a really interesting book about this topic recently - "The End of the World is Just the Begining". He sees population decline as one of the gravest dangers facing civilisation. Implication being in the title of the book.

I love Peter Zeihan and recommend him to everyone. His commentary on the intersection of population decline and Russia's geopolitical goals from The Accidental Superpower in 2014 also turned out to be on point.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#49

Post by RedditKon »

dougmwne wrote: post #5

It is always unclear to me if this is a bad thing. In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off, or does it just look like a decline when you look at the country in aggregate? There is no shortage of squandered talent in the world. So many people work below their capability because there are just more people than opportunities. It seems like it’s not a problem to keep running the modern world, even with…

It's a great thing for the environment, and a bad thing for the economy.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#50

Post by robocat »

waterlaw wrote: post #35
throwaway_4ever wrote: post #12

Something has deeply deeply changed in society for a fertility rate to go from 6 to 0.8 in 60 years, the living memory of a single life. Before, society grew with the average working age person only needing to half support an elderly retiree. Now, that same working age person will need to support more than 2 elderly retirees themselves, over 4 times the resources. Has it occurred to people that, maybe, modern fertili…

Surrogacy will be the next big thing. Women in poorer countries will birth the children for wealthier nations. This will aid in the reduction of family formation in poorer countries and serve as population control. While ensuring no one country becomes too populated. H.G. Wells pointed out that we cannot have population control in one nation of the world, but not another. It must be worldwide, or it'd result in sever…

> Surrogacy will be the next big thing

For most couples, the first 9 months for a child isn’t the problem, it is the costs of the following 2 decades.

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