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The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

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Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#241

Post by bombcar »

api wrote: post #54
rendang wrote: post #51

The selection effects of this transition will be really fascinating to see after the fact. The species has spent a long time under selection pressure for "having more kids", but is being subjected for the first time to "having more kids while extreme prosperity and modern telecommunications exist" which is a very different thing.

I had an evolutionary bio professor in college say this: "you don't understand evolution until you understand how contraception could lead to overpopulation." Anything placed in the path of reproduction is a barrier to be overcome. If there is anything in the human genome that correlates with a positive desire to choose to have children, we are selecting hard for that right now. We may see a bottleneck this century a…

Basically “if only the Amish have kids, in 200 years there’s going to be a large percentage of Amish”.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#242

Post by nradov »

worik wrote: post #170
WalterBright wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fact, not a theory. The wealth in the economy did not exist 100 years ago. Therefore it must have been created. And where did Musk's money come from? Who did he transfer it from?

> And where did Musk's money come from? No body (?) is contending that in a free market wealth is not created. The contention is that when wealth is created it tends to head to other wealth. When a bank lends capital and has a choice of lending to, say, Elon Musk or me, I think the bank will make that rational choice and lend to Elon. Thus once you have some wealth attracting more wealth is less difficult than from b…

The "Boots theory" of economics is garbage, just utter nonsense. I don't understand why people keep mentioning it here without applying any critical thinking. It simply doesn't apply to the vast majority of actual consumer products. Some of most durable, longest-lasting footwear I ever bought was also among the cheapest. By contrast the expensive stuff tends to be fussy, fragile, and impossible to repair. This generally applies to apparel, electronics, automobiles, appliances, bicycles, firearms, etc.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#243

Post by pfannkuchen »

anonym29 wrote: post #200
pfannkuchen wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: my thought process tends to be somewhat autistic, I don’t mean any offense. As a non gay man I am just curious to hear your perspective. From a strictly biological perspective, I think it could be argued that gay “sex” isn’t actually sex. Like, what makes it sex? Is it sex for pleasure? Or is it something adjacent to sex? That has some commonalities with sex, but isn’t actually sex. Like there is a part o…

Not the person you're asking, but I'm of the impression that colloquially, the verb "sex" includes more than strictly the traditional historical definition. I'll refrain from getting into specific details here, but I think the answer to this question is that many people use words in a manner that diverges from literal definitions. There's a concept in linguistics that language is constantly evolving. As someone on th…

Thanks for the reply. I do have similar impedance mismatches with the social consensus in a lot of areas. In everyday life I basically do what you are suggesting, but internally I end up having thoughts like this that I typically only feel safe sharing non-anonymously with people who are close.

I do sometimes wonder whether mass education and extensive media exposure from childhood have essentially brainwashed all but the most stubborn-minded of us, who are then labeled “autistic”.

On the topic, if we did take a strict definition of sex, this seems like a fruitful angle of attack for traditionalists. Like, today gay men are regarded as having lots and lots of sex, which is awesome. But if you take this other perspective, most of them are virgins, which is lame. I wonder why the traditionalists/far right haven’t taken this propaganda approach…

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#244

Post by nradov »

chrisco255 wrote: post #115
adriand wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My concern is the intersection of rightwing natalism with Silicon Valley ideology leading to technological “solutions” involving, essentially, test tube babies. Take women out of the picture entirely. I can especially see a dystopian dynamic involving the “we have to compete with China” or “they’re doing it / about to do it in China” narratives.

A "test tube baby" is simply an IVF pregnancy. What is the problem with parents using IVF to conceive?

IVF isn't a problem per se, and it's great that we have those option for prospective parents who want it. But it's unreliable, expensive, and simply not a scalable solution to anything.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#245

Post by Terr_ »

rayiner wrote: post #11
Arainach wrote: post #7

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

Rent is the bigger issue than affordability per se. My wife pointed out the other day that we had our second and third kids shortly after we stopped living in apartments and bought a house. We didn't plan to have a significant age gap between our first (who we had in law school) and our other kids, and we earned a lot of money the whole time, it just happened that way. She's convinced that having the extra space subc…

Hmmm... What if a wide variety of economic actors have somehow managed to slurp up all the surplus that previously went to "paying it forward" in terms of raising children?

Rent is a common complaint, but consider the costs of childcare, needing two incomes to stay afloat, etc.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#246

Post by bombcar »

TrackerFF wrote: post #38

Ironic as it may sound, coming from a childfree millennial, I'm kind of puzzled how the system will survive. Both my grandparents died in their 90s, and spent over 30 years are retirees - mainly living off their state pension. As people become older, they'll either have to work longer, or the system will come crashing down. Especially with lower fertility rates. My generation should be birthing kids as the previous o…

I often meditate on this - can even the concept of index fund retirement survive an actual depopulation scenario?

Of course, older forms of retirement can still work (have ten kids each of who have ten kids and you command an army in retirement; perhaps they’ll even call you King) - but aside from that where does the growth come from when not from population or immigration?

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#247

Post by bombcar »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #82
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social welfare state will still exist, it'll just be more costly as drag than it is today (in the US, ~$1.1T/year of uncompensated caregiving occurs, for example). Capitalism is more the challenge, it's built on squeezing the aggregate working age population for profits, and that cohort is in terminal decline over the long term. Between global sovereign debt load [1] and the demand for future profits (slides 31-33 of…

A tfr of 1.7, the welfare state will be costly but exist. A tfr of .73 like korea has? Long term, that’s 1 20 year old and 3 45 year olds taking care of half a baby, 7 70 year olds and 10 95 year olds

70 year olds can work, and will have to. Already in many places you have two positively ancient people where one is the caregiver for the other.

People make it work because they have to, but the pressure of taking care of even more will further reduce the desire to get ahead - that has another mouth to feed.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#248

Post by anonym29 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #243
anonym29 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the person you're asking, but I'm of the impression that colloquially, the verb "sex" includes more than strictly the traditional historical definition. I'll refrain from getting into specific details here, but I think the answer to this question is that many people use words in a manner that diverges from literal definitions. There's a concept in linguistics that language is constantly evolving. As someone on th…

Thanks for the reply. I do have similar impedance mismatches with the social consensus in a lot of areas. In everyday life I basically do what you are suggesting, but internally I end up having thoughts like this that I typically only feel safe sharing non-anonymously with people who are close. I do sometimes wonder whether mass education and extensive media exposure from childhood have essentially brainwashed all bu…

No offense, but I'm not particularly interested in helping wargame propaganda strategies for either side of culture war debates. I'm not particularly interested in seeing culture zealots succeed at dehumanizing people, regardless of alignment.

Edit: I understand you see the topic of discussion as an abstract strategic question. I don't, and I'm not particularly interested in embracing that framing. We seem to have different fundamental values and framing here and I'm unsure of whether it's productive for me to advocate my framing, when you may not be particularly interested in embracing my framing either. I certainly have no right to demand you must accept my framing, but if we've reached a values/framing-based impass here, then I sincerely wish you all the best in life, but I will respectfully decline to engage further - it doesn't seem productive for either of us to continue if we both come from frameworks that are mutually incompatible with one another.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#249

Post by nradov »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #85

I'm probably going to get in trouble for this, but the population numbers and statistics for Africa are totally unreliable. Fertility and total population are all wrong. The DRC is said to have 100M people, but check out satellite imaging. There's no chance -- and I mean none -- that it actually has 100M people. Unless 9-out-of-10 inhabitants live in the woods under tree cover, the actual population of the country is…

It's quite possible that China's population has also been significantly exaggerated. One thing that the China actually does quite well is universal childhood vaccination for certain diseases. Independent researchers looked at the number of vaccine doses ordered and found that it's way lower than the official government birth statistics would suggest.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/05/key-facts...

Now this is an unproven "conspiracy theory" but it's entirely plausible that corrupt local officials have inflated population numbers in order to be able to embezzle more of the funds that flow in from the central government. A lot of people might exist only on paper, but it's impossible for outsiders to precisely quantify.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#250

Post by nradov »

bombcar wrote: post #246
TrackerFF wrote: post #38

Ironic as it may sound, coming from a childfree millennial, I'm kind of puzzled how the system will survive. Both my grandparents died in their 90s, and spent over 30 years are retirees - mainly living off their state pension. As people become older, they'll either have to work longer, or the system will come crashing down. Especially with lower fertility rates. My generation should be birthing kids as the previous o…

I often meditate on this - can even the concept of index fund retirement survive an actual depopulation scenario? Of course, older forms of retirement can still work (have ten kids each of who have ten kids and you command an army in retirement; perhaps they’ll even call you King) - but aside from that where does the growth come from when not from population or immigration?

Index funds will survive anything short of a complete collapse of the financial system. Even if returns are low, they only have to be better than the alternatives (on a risk adjusted basis).
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