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India's surprise baby bust

economist.com

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Re: India's surprise baby bust

#71

Post by btilly »

vachina wrote: post #14
i_idiot wrote: post #8

What's the strong case against population dwindling other than supporting aging population? Given the AI armageddon, it just makes sense to reduce the population. If there's less population, we need less production and less workers. Of course, countries have to deal with oldest population for a brief period of time.

The top 1% is freaking out at the thought of population shrinking because the cogs of the machine won’t turn itself.

The other 99% is even more dependent on the machine than the top 1%. They can build themselves reinforced bunkers, just in case. What is your plan if, say, the food distribution infrastructure breaks down?

Does that sound like an extremely unlikely outcome? Back in 2008, we came within hours of credit cards stopping working. Projections say that if credit cards stop working, food distribution breaks down. Mass hunger is not far behind that. And there is nothing like mass hunger to destroy a society.

Esoteric problems in financial markets have real world consequences. We've gone nearly a century since the last real demonstration of that. Don't discount the possibility that the next demonstration will be within your lifetime. And in our more interconnected world, it's likely to be a lot worse.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#72

Post by AndrewKemendo »

calepayson wrote: post #51
kranke155 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a large organism (human populaton on earth) reaching equilibrium and ceasing to grow does not equal to human extinction... it far more likely is just a temporary contraction that will then reverse when the conditions are set for it.

Ya but I’m 28 and have had enough with these contractions. For Christ sake can I get a sane decade so I can actually build a career. :)

I mean you can always be a farrier, lineman, septic sumper, cobbler etc…

What’s stopping you from being a welder or dentist?

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#73

Post by triceratops »

arbll wrote: post #25
hedora wrote: post #5

What’s the problem? We’re committed to destroying livable human habitat for 100M’s to 1B’s of people via global warming. That’ll be less painful if there are fewer people. Lower populations should lead to lower emissions growth too.

There's a significant risk it will lead to a large reduction in living standards. A lot of things like retirement funds are built with the assumption of infinite growth. This assumption will obviously break one day and when it does I don't see how it could go smoothly. On the plus side, it will likely lead to lower emissions, assuming it doesn't lead to massive wars or other destructive behaviors due to the instabili…

> retirement funds are built with the assumption of infinite growth

Of workers. Because retirement funds take money from workers to pay for retirees.

Assets and productivity, on the other hand, can grow a lot more than the population. Right now it's considered communism to tax assets. Once we get over that taboo things'll go a lot smoother.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#74

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

arbll wrote: post #61
marcuskaz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basis of capitalism is on growth. How can you continue to grow revenue constantly if there aren't more people to buy products or use your services. Additionally tax revenue decreases as fewer people are working, so less government services and employment would be available. Schools is a good example, as there are less children, you need less schools and consolidate. So there are less jobs for teachers, now it loo…

I don't think it's specific to capitalism. Any system needs workers to produce enough for retirees and children. If you have more retirees and less workers any system is going to struggle.

Growing, biological organisms need growth. Because once they stop growing, now they're in dying mode. It won't happen instantly, of course, but they're going to die. And it's this way with civilizations too. Rather than being one of the "disadvantages of capitalism", it may actually be a principle of life itself.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#75

Post by exitb »

mekdoonggi wrote: post #56

If they have the freedom to choose otherwise, they will. The global fertility "crisis" is simply individuals exercising their choices. Kids are really expensive, and if you want people to willingly have them outside of accidents, you're going to need to pay them a lot of money.

Rising kids also has a time, effort and opportunity costs which are not easily offset with money. I don’t think there’s a way to frame modern parenting in a way where it „pays off” in the same sense as it did in the past. As of now, it’s essentially a hobby.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#76

Post by mekdoonggi »

Infinite economic growth depends on women having babies above replacement. Therefore, the economic value of a woman having three babies is virtually unlimited, and the economic destruction of a woman having less is also unlimited (when projecting far enough into the future).

It really makes you wonder if some actors would feel a need to exercise control over this scarce and limited resource...

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#77

Post by [deleted] »

mywittyname wrote: post #16

> One study showed how the arrival of cable television in Indian villages in the 2000s led to a moderate fall in fertility. Soap operas depicting urban, middle-class women with small families may have changed norms (though some wonder whether people were just watching TV rather than having sex). The latter part seems like the most meaningful cause world wide. Sex is a boredom activity and we just aren't bored in the…

[deleted]

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#78

Post by [deleted] »

kakacik wrote: post #23
staminade wrote: post #11

Unless they roll-back women's rights and improvements in child mortality, societies will need to radically overhaul their entire relationship to supporting parenthood in order to reverse this trend. The economic costs of having children at a replacement rate are simply too high. We need universal childcare services, provided by the state and available to all, and other childcare-enabling reforms like automatic right…

Yeah I am not sure I will call that plumber or electrician which only works from home... some folks really live in bubbles, big or small

[deleted]

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#79

Post by toomuchtodo »

btilly wrote: post #71
vachina wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top 1% is freaking out at the thought of population shrinking because the cogs of the machine won’t turn itself.

The other 99% is even more dependent on the machine than the top 1%. They can build themselves reinforced bunkers, just in case. What is your plan if, say, the food distribution infrastructure breaks down? Does that sound like an extremely unlikely outcome? Back in 2008, we came within hours of credit cards stopping working. Projections say that if credit cards stop working, food distribution breaks down. Mass hunger…

This is a call for community and durable systems that serve the human instead of traditional systems built to aggregate and funnel capital to a few. The fertility crisis is a capital crisis (taxpayers needed to pay back debt issued today decades into the future, workers for corporate profits), not a crisis for the individual. I see it as an exciting opportunity to maintain and improve quality of life for humans while solving for decoupling from these suboptimal systems primarily built to extract and exploit. Solarpunk vibes.

https://ilsr.org/ is one resource, there are more.

(to your food example, the US harvests land the aggregate size of the state of Oregon just for biofuels, ethanol and biodiesel; this is, arguable, unnecessary, and there are many other examples of unnecessary economic activity that can be deprecated)

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#80

Post by btilly »

kranke155 wrote: post #37
Ajedi32 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in the extreme case, human extinction seems like a pretty bad thing.

a large organism (human populaton on earth) reaching equilibrium and ceasing to grow does not equal to human extinction... it far more likely is just a temporary contraction that will then reverse when the conditions are set for it.

Populations do not tend to grow to equilibrium and then stop. They tend to overgrow their environment, outstrip resources, and then collapse.

The result may not be extinction. But losing 90% of the human population won't feel that different if you're living through it.

A relevant book recommend, https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Succeed-Rev.... It walks through a variety of past examples of human societies that went through this. There is no reason to believe that our current world-wide society will fare better.

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