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Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

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Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#41

Post by gizmo »

silverquiet wrote: post #36
gizmo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economists are worried because (retirement) savings are nothing more than a claim on future labor. As people grow older and are less capable of taking care of themselves other people need to care for them. People can be secure in their retirement when the number they have saved is sufficient to purchase the labor they need later in life. But what will the price of that labor be when birth rates collapse and there…

First, I'd say that if those politicians are so worried, then perhaps they should work on building societies that people actually want to bring children into. Mainly though, I wonder - where is all the extra productivity that has supposedly developed over the last half century or so? Shouldn't that be able to cover over a declining population?

David Graeber argues much of that productivity has been sucked up by the managerial and administrative class. Any increase in productivity is offset by a new layer of middle management.

I think we can also make a Moore's law analogy here. As CPUs get faster we write slower code.

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#42

Post by GeoAtreides »

javcasas wrote: post #34
GeoAtreides wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still haven’t haven’t heard a lot of good arguments for having these babies. A larger population means bigger numbers on the everything that's on a normal distribution, like intelligence. That one genius in a 100 million? With 1B population, you only have 10 of them. With 8B population, there are 80. That's 8x more chances one of them does or finds something revolutionary, 8x chances that person is not perishing…

Your generation's genius is currently wasting his life on a 12 hour minimum wage job to barely pay the rent on his shitty old tiny flat. He will not have the brainspace and time left to invent hyperspace interplanetary travelling. Fix the former first if you want the latter to happen.

I feel like my original comment fully addresses your point, but I will restate here in a shorter form for your convenience: 1) bigger population means more chances a potential genius is born in the right circumstances 2) we can have a smaller population if everyone lives at western standards (and then genetics becomes the bottleneck)

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#43

Post by rayiner »

michaelhoney wrote: post #14

"the whole world": - economists & businesspeople who can't conceive of a world without growth - religious people who think God wants them to be fruitful and multiply - atheists who think we have some kind of evolutionary imperative - parents who think that being childfree is an affront to their choices

That listing of people seems pretty comprehensive. If that’s not the “whole world” it comes pretty close! And to be clear, us parents think that being “childfree” is shallow and selfish, like being one of those sovereign citizens who doesn’t want to pay taxes. It’s basically being the ultimate hipster—thinking of oneself as being too special for something hominids have been doing for millions of years.

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#44

Post by [deleted] »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #25
atonse wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, that’s really quite reductive. It sounds more like this might be a choice you feel strongly about but are projecting selfishness on to others? This can be a totally fine choice for someone to make personally (which I support), but also not good for society as a whole. Both things can objectively be true.

Are you saying it's selfish to not have kids? Other than accidental parents, I've never met any who didn't have kids because they wanted them. How were they not acting selfishly?

[deleted]

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#46

Post by GeoAtreides »

imtringued wrote: post #19
GeoAtreides wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still haven’t haven’t heard a lot of good arguments for having these babies. A larger population means bigger numbers on the everything that's on a normal distribution, like intelligence. That one genius in a 100 million? With 1B population, you only have 10 of them. With 8B population, there are 80. That's 8x more chances one of them does or finds something revolutionary, 8x chances that person is not perishing…

I always hear this from people who are unwilling to fix current problems. They always push it onto some future genius that is going to pop up and act as the second coming of Jesus. In reality the average person is already more intelligent both in terms of education and IQ than people from a hundred years ago. The difference is that you are no longer losing them to mining accidents. Meanwhile the growth strategy glori…

The average person has a higher IQ, true, but the problems we face also require a higher IQ (and higher specialisation) than in the past.

It might sound misanthropic, but the average person is average. Nothing wrong with it, morally or otherwise, but they won't be doing revolutionary work in specialist fields, they will be raising families and be happy.

Like I said in my original comment, we can get by with a smaller population with western levels standard of living, and then only be constrained by genetics.

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#47

Post by GeoAtreides »

sadhorse wrote: post #39
GeoAtreides wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still haven’t haven’t heard a lot of good arguments for having these babies. A larger population means bigger numbers on the everything that's on a normal distribution, like intelligence. That one genius in a 100 million? With 1B population, you only have 10 of them. With 8B population, there are 80. That's 8x more chances one of them does or finds something revolutionary, 8x chances that person is not perishing…

Psychopathy is also on a normal distribution... this "big numbers" argument is very weak. We all know what the masses like to do with the environment.

More people also mean a bigger, smarter pool for recruitment into mental health professions. Again, the key word is massive parallelism: more people working in specialised fields, at the same time. And there are A LOT of specialised fields nowadays.

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#48

Post by gizmo »

rayiner wrote: post #43
michaelhoney wrote: post #14

"the whole world": - economists & businesspeople who can't conceive of a world without growth - religious people who think God wants them to be fruitful and multiply - atheists who think we have some kind of evolutionary imperative - parents who think that being childfree is an affront to their choices

That listing of people seems pretty comprehensive. If that’s not the “whole world” it comes pretty close! And to be clear, us parents think that being “childfree” is shallow and selfish, like being one of those sovereign citizens who doesn’t want to pay taxes. It’s basically being the ultimate hipster—thinking of oneself as being too special for something hominids have been doing for millions of years.

When people who don't want to be parents become parents out of obligation they tend to f up their kids.

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#49

Post by d1sxeyes »

anonzzzies wrote: post #3

Besides feeding the economy (and by that, I mean buying consumerist stuff from large corps) and providing the army with cannon fodder, I still haven’t haven’t heard a lot of good arguments for having these babies. Humanity would shrink (I think this is calculated to start after 2050 or so), but besides those two reasons, does that matter? Where is the foundation of the argument that we must have population growth to…

Because we're idiots and terrible at forward planning. Currently pensions and retirement ages are based on the idea that there will be some large cohort of people working to pay the pensions of the folks that are retired. In fact, governments are even borrowing against future pension contributions made by that cohort, so it's not even that the future cohort needs to pay for the current cohort, they need to cover it and some to make up for the lending. Realistically, this is never going to happen, and this is where fiscal policy starts to deviate from mathematical first principles.

In case there is some kind of reduction in the workforce, then we do not have a plan to care for our elderly. Already, young adults are finding it difficult to afford homes for themselves, even with a higher proportion of families with two incomes.

We would see an increase in the chasm between the rich and poor, as those able to own property would be able to both look after themselves and their families, and would be able to continue to grow their wealth by charging rent to those who are unable to afford to buy. This especially would be accentuated if population decline were gradual, as then the rich would be able to continue to snap up the homes that come onto the market and rent them out.

A short sharp halving of the population would likely leave a surplus of homes on the market, at affordable prices for everyone, and would perhaps even lead to a better quality of life for most. But that's not an organic process, and certainly leads to a worse quality of life for the unlucky half...

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#50

Post by silverquiet »

Havoc wrote: post #40
silverquiet wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not super thrilled about being compelled by evolution or a god.

Neither am I but evolution doesn’t seem inclined to engage in philosophical discussions

I suppose it's a subject I've long wondered about - am I just some sort of biological robot fulfilling some pre-determined program? Or have I actually been equipped with some sort of agency? I guess it's the old free will question and it may be unanswerable. That said, I can't say I've ever really felt much instinctual desire to reproduce, and if I have, perhaps I have reasoned myself out of the idea in some way. Either way it would seem that I am an evolutionary dead end. Am I supposed to feel some way about that? It seems like having an opinion on g=9.8m/s2 or the boiling point of water; useless.
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