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Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

economist.com

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Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#131

Post by chinchilla2020 »

mlsu wrote: post #54
throwaway29291 wrote: post #5

Perhaps, instead, we can see this as a good thing and plan a graceful way back to a more sustainable population over the course of a century. Just yesterday yet another in a long line of reports talked about how humanity has not just bent but likely broken many of the Earth's ecological boundaries that humans and non-humans alike depend upon. We've known this for decades -- mountains upon mountains of studies in ecol…

I've seen this take before, especially around climate and the environment. It's correct that having 20,000 humans on Earth would be more (actually indefinitely) sustainable. These "degrowth" strategies mean tremendous suffering. People have to die to make degrowth possible. Those who stick around have to suffer of curable medical complications. They have to live hard lives without the comforts of modern life. Why do…

> The "environment" has enough raw material to increase the amount of computation on our planet by many orders of magnitude. And that's if we stay here on Earth -- if you want to think on "indefinitely" timescales, Earth's constraints may not apply.

There is no indication that humanity will be colonizing other planets any time soon. The greatest scientific minds on the planet cannot even run a sustainable Antarctic outpost. Maybe we can take baby steps towards getting McMurdo station self sufficient before we try colonizing Mars.

All jesustech and techno-optimism aside... countries that are educated and have high standards of living consume a vast amount of resources. No amount of green technology and renewables has been able to reverse this trend. Check out the 2022 mineral baby for the US. https://mineralseducationcoalition.org/mining-minerals-infor...

The reality is that population decline will be needed to save the planet.

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#132

Post by sieabahlpark »

amrocha wrote: post #97
mlsu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this take before, especially around climate and the environment. It's correct that having 20,000 humans on Earth would be more (actually indefinitely) sustainable. These "degrowth" strategies mean tremendous suffering. People have to die to make degrowth possible. Those who stick around have to suffer of curable medical complications. They have to live hard lives without the comforts of modern life. Why do…

Degrowth is about shifting our focus as a society from growth at all costs to sustainability and quality of life. It's not about killing people, it's not about worse medical care, it's not about less food. Our current growth strategy is not sustainable. Growth as a goal has failed. If we need to take a step back to reevaluate how to do it right going forward, that's fine.

[dead]

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#133

Post by bane »

There are quite a few comments here about "you need money to raise kids". There are similar statements made about housing size, cost, etc. and those end up on "but you don't need 8,000 sq ft to live!"

These are, frankly IMHO, bizarre arguments that seem conditioned on socio-commercial training along the lines of "you need a diamond to propose!".

Absolutely none of these are true:

- People had sex and stable relationships before diamond mines existed.

- You, strictly speaking, don't need any amount of square footage to live. You might be cold, wet, and miserable, but you'll be alive.

- Children existed for millions of years before money and will alarmingly, and generally, grow and learn regardless of what you do. You may not be happy with the outcome, but it'll happen.

A friend of mine is recently pregnant and focused on giving birth, but the medical expenses and doctor visits are becoming a burden. I mentioned to her that my grandmother gave birth to 12 children without a doctor on a farmhouse table at zero cost and no doctor visits. What she's paying for is not having a baby, but reducing child and mother mortality.

I have loads of family in South Korea, a country in near terminal population decline, and the reason I've always heard is "it's expensive to raise a child". But the real reason is, it's expensive to train a child to get into a top-3 university. Raising a child to adulthood is possible even in abject poverty.

We (us), as a civilization(s), are fundamentally dishonest about what our problems are, and it makes it difficult to reason about our solutions. "Children are expensive" turns into "have less kids" rather than "the road to top-3 universities are expensive" -> "let's be okay with kids getting into lesser schools or not any school at all" or "let's figure out how to make higher education more accessible".

We don't understand what we're even paying for, and why, and we need to relearn it and rethink it.

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#134

Post by mlsu »

georgeg23 wrote: post #125
mlsu wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not a human standpoint! Billions of old people, dying alone. I do not want to live in that world. Let alone encourage it!

You mean billions of old people, dying together!

Sounds a little too death-culty for my taste. :P

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#135

Post by Clubber »

steve_taylor wrote: post #9
megablast wrote: post #3

Good. Most of our modern problems are due to too many people. House prices, inflation, traffic, pollution, climate change, food scarcity, water, etc...

Overpopulation is the real inconvenient truth that no one wants to address.

It's not. We can sustain many more, probably 10B+. The problem is everyone wants to live in the same few places. This is mainly driven by economics (workplaces). The WFH revolution will solve a lot of this if it can be sustained.

Imagine if you can dig a well, get solar or any type of non-grid energy, and internet. There are no limits to where you can live, and most of the acreage in the US is cheap. You don't need to have millions of people in the same few square miles, at least in the US. We can go back to smaller communities of people more spread out, instead of 5-10 megacities and 50 or so big cities in the US.

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#136

Post by LapsangGuzzler »

rideg wrote: post #121

I think there is an interesting aspect of the depopulation that I haven't seen discussed yet: the scientific progress. If we have less and less people, there will be less brain power to innovate while as far as I can tell the innovation is getting more and more difficult as we moving forward. Just imagine inventing the wheel was probably easier than inventing the combustion engine. I have a feeling that the huge tech…

I think AI is just as, if not more of a threat, than population decline in this regard. With the ability to generate endless amounts of content on demand, an already overburdened and under-resourced education system is nowhere near sophisticated enough to deal with tools like ChatGPT. And scientific progress cannot happen unless we cultivate and nurture our education system.

We're already seeing younger people not understanding basic computing concepts like file systems because they grew up on locked-down mobile OSes that abstract this from users. AI is going to remove the affordances needed to learn on a scale we've never seen before.

https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#137

Post by thedailymail »

aylmao wrote: post #106
klipt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shrinking population does eventually have to lead to smaller (or fewer) cities.

IMO this is getting a bit too ahead of ourselves. IIRC, Russia and Japan are the countries with the most population shrinkage, and they've just lost 5 million and 2.5 million people off their peak. - 5 million / 148 million is 3% down from peak for Russia. - 2.5 million / 128 million is 2% down from peak for Japan. Most importantly, Russia's population decline (which started before Japan's) has leveled off. It hit a…

In Japan (where I live) at least it doesn't seem like a carrying capacity problem, but a general lack of desire among young people to start families.

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#138

Post by lambdaphagy »

aylmao wrote: post #106
klipt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shrinking population does eventually have to lead to smaller (or fewer) cities.

IMO this is getting a bit too ahead of ourselves. IIRC, Russia and Japan are the countries with the most population shrinkage, and they've just lost 5 million and 2.5 million people off their peak. - 5 million / 148 million is 3% down from peak for Russia. - 2.5 million / 128 million is 2% down from peak for Japan. Most importantly, Russia's population decline (which started before Japan's) has leveled off. It hit a…

Total population has oscillated for 20 years, but it would be mistaken to conclude that it's reached steady state because it's also been aging all the while. Meanwhile, TFR in Russia has been sub-replacement since at least 1990.

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#139

Post by pyuser583 »

djmips wrote: post #40
xeromal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a guess but it's gonna be plastic

"There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?"

“I’m the future everyone will be made of plastic!”

Re: Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

#140

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mdorazio wrote: post #44
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> House prices, inflation, traffic…food scarcity NIMBYism, combination of bad monetary policy and a supply shock, and bad urban planning. Tokyo has cheaper homes and less traffic than cities with a fraction of the population in America.

Yes and no. In the US, the vast majority of Americans want to own a single family home, not a condo or apartment [1]. That brings with it the necessity of personal vehicle ownership, which then compounds urban planning and traffic issues. And of course, you can't make more land near cities where people want to live, so you end up in a scarcity situation as the population grows (US population grows by over 1 million p…

> then you have to make the argument that people shouldn't be able to get what they want

This is basically acknowledging scarcity exists. There will always be fewer places with large plots near people than people want, irrespective of the number of people.

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