121–130 of 154 posts
8 billion monkey men on the planet! The human population needs to drop 90% The only people averse to this are the ones running the ponzi schemes...
It’s not about economic conditions, or culture, or religion, or anything like that. It’s modernity itself
That's an interesting position. I'd love it if you'd elaborate on what you mean. What exactly is it about modernity? Certainly you don't just mean the year number.
The problem with Modernity is that the systems and structures that humans have built to ensure continued human flourishing within these deeply rooted social bonds have grown far beyond their original scale. You can blame capitalism, the state, whatever, it doesn't really matter. What's important is that as the state or capital grow (and they have to, or be killed by others which do), they must necessarily tear down the old order; debride the old traditions which hinder its continued growth.
The end-state of this, which we can see best in places like East Asia, or California, is society in which humans are interchangeable chess pieces. People are atomized from any received community or tradition. Thus, reproduction is viewed not as a natural stage of life — an essential component in the ordered tradition in which they live their life — but as an object of luxury consumption. Very luxury! Which is why people in these regions tend to stick to one kid, maybe two (and if you walk around Seoul, you'll see plenty of dogs in strollers: much cheaper!)
In societies which haven't yet reached that end state, we see the same effect as the forces of Modernity inexorably creep in: religion wanes, tradition falters, birthrates fall. Be it Salt Lake or Suzhou, Tehran or Tokyo, we see this pattern in every place wherever Modernity is made manifest.
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That's an interesting position. I'd love it if you'd elaborate on what you mean. What exactly is it about modernity? Certainly you don't just mean the year number.
Humans are not singular organisms, we're a colony species. We are evolved for (and thrive in) social groups. These social groups are not just voluntary associations, but are deeply rooted traditions - whether that's based in family, faith, or nation. The problem with Modernity is that the systems and structures that humans have built to ensure continued human flourishing within these deeply rooted social bonds have g…
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> The ratio of housing cost vs real income almost tripled over the last 20 years in Sweden I think this is all that needs to be said on these articles. (There's a lot more that _could_ be said, such as how few actual birthing HN readers there are, but I think the economics is really simple at the root of it.) Besides, even the countries with really the worst outlook and conditions aren't falling all that fast. Russia…
Russia's not a great example to look at. They're one of the only 'Western' countries that's historically actually maintained a healthy fertility rate. The big catch in their numbers is that in the 90s the country turned into a near anarchic hellhole. But they managed to pull out of that and have had a growing fertility rate since 1998, which has been met with an ever widening array of pro-natal incentives, and a gene…
Russia has lower fertility rate than EU average, at 1.50 vs 1.53. And a higher and faster growing share of Muslim population than Europe.
Overall, death rate is about 1.37x more than birth rate in Russia (999.14 vs 728.02 per 100K in first 10 months of 2023 - link to official stats https://statprivat.ru/demo2020?r=3). In EU it's 10.7 vs 9.5 per 1000 (in a full year), so only 1.12x the difference. Births are 8% lower per 1000 and deaths, 12% higher. Plus, Russia has a higher proportion of Muslim population than any EU country and it grows faster too, so for white population situation is beyond dire: in ethnic Russian majority regions apart from Moscow and St. Petersburg, death rate at 2.5-3x the birth rate is the norm.
If you've been under impression that Russia somehow has some sound demographic policy and/or family culture and is doing better in this respect than any European country, you're just a victim of Putin's propaganda. Compared to EU states, Russia is only better than Bulgaria in this respect.
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> The ratio of housing cost vs real income almost tripled over the last 20 years in Sweden I think this is all that needs to be said on these articles. (There's a lot more that _could_ be said, such as how few actual birthing HN readers there are, but I think the economics is really simple at the root of it.) Besides, even the countries with really the worst outlook and conditions aren't falling all that fast. Russia…
Also the rising inaccessibility of child care. All other industries get some productivity boost, but in child care it is the opposite (productivity is going down per worker over time).
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> The ratio of housing cost vs real income almost tripled over the last 20 years in Sweden I think this is all that needs to be said on these articles. (There's a lot more that _could_ be said, such as how few actual birthing HN readers there are, but I think the economics is really simple at the root of it.) Besides, even the countries with really the worst outlook and conditions aren't falling all that fast. Russia…
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every... I'm very much a believer that housing costs are at the root of a whole lot of what's wrong with... everything. It's long past debate and long past time for neighborhoods to come up with a "vision." We need state and national level mandates for zoning reform and density increase, and if you're against it too bad. NIMBYs had 50 years to come up with someth…
People vehemently do not want density increases around them or "changes to the character of the neighbourhood", and if driving the birth rate down helps with that goal then they're fine with it.
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I was thinking of countries more like India and Nigeria, both of which, despite becoming richer and having lower fertility themselves, have populations projected to exceed China's, and both projected to become too hot to live in without big problems. Its not literally an "endless" supply, but its easily enough to cover gaps in the west. If fertility fell 75% in the west, could probably fill it with people from those…
I think endless supply of "brown" people is going to become limited supply of brow immigration because voices in rich western countries are not going to see that as win-win.
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There’s a quiet part I am going to say out loud. On a global scale, population decline isn’t an issue. The problem is /where/ the population decline is happening. Most of the global birth rate is made up by countries with low GINI indexes, low education, and high religiosity. Most of the decline is in high GINI index, highly educated, secular countries. This population shift has a seriously high risk of causing the g…
Capitalism eating itself?
Every time fertility decline comes up I consistently see the same arguments about why fertility is declining: people are just not comfortable enough to want to have children. I just don’t buy this. I have seen reasons like workspace discrimination, lack of parental leave, economic uncertainty and poverty in general used as reasons why young adults are not choosing to have children and it doesn’t quite make sense to m…
Alternatively, we just don't worry about it. We are a planet trying to find the resources for eight billion human beings and we already know the backbone of our global agriculture solution is an unsustainable fossil-fuel-based phosphate cycle. People choosing to not have replacement-number of children is one of the more humane ways to balance the cold equations for subsequent generations.
Crossposting from my own Reddit comment about the same article: No, it's just that the policies aren't changing fast enough to match the drop in culture pressure/attitudes that used to push people to have kids (especially religious ones). Major things that have pushed people to have kids: * De facto retirement plan / can actually make you richer (sorta) * Cultural/religious pressure * Emotional personal reasons: you…
> Major things that have pushed people to have kids What about evolutionary pressure - the biological impulse? Or, are we humans post-evolution and have overridden the innate impulse to reproduce?