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India's surprise baby bust

economist.com

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Re: India's surprise baby bust

#101

Post by boelboel »

happytoexplain wrote: post #66
calepayson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shot in the dark but my sense is that a lot of our economics presumes growth and, if we don’t get it, a lot of terrible stuff happens. I feel pretty confident that ai will eventually be a large driver of growth but I do worry about whether it'll come soon enough.

>a lot of our economics presumes growth and, if we don’t get it, a lot of terrible stuff happens What does this actually mean? Every time I try to wrap my head around why it's bad e.g. for a business to make a constant profit, rather than an increasing profit; or for the population to dip to some number and settle there, rather than increase; the explanations seem to become circular very quickly. I know it's partiall…

There's no reason to think things would stabilize but even if things roughly stabilize in terms of population there's problems.

When a certain region in a country gets a cluster of great companies or really any productive advantage you would want more buildings and people there. In a country with a growing population that would make most sense as you need to build houses regardless as there's more people entering the job market who need a home. In a country with a stagnant population for every home you build another needs to be abandoned. This is more expensive especially when this happens enough where a school in the 'abandoned town' closes and a new school should be made in the better town. You can see how the first is more efficient, you don't waste your fine buildings.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#102

Post by kranke155 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #91
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.

The population is not "reaching equilibrium", it's shrinking. If it was reaching equilibrium you'd expect the births per women to be slowly reducing until it approaches 2.1 and then staying there. It's dropping substantially below that. And there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the contraction is temporary, the causal factors seem largely unrelated to the existing population size.

How can you say it’s not temporary if it’s just started?

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#103

Post by alsetmusic »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #69

This has happened to every single society [*] as it industrializes [0], and offering extensive support and incentives to parents (e.g. as has been tried in Scandinavian countries) does very little to reverse this trend [1, 2]. My hypothesis is that as societies industrialize, they afford their population more and more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children. So many people I know put of…

Which is not a bad thing. We have limited resources. It’s not a bad thing to slow down. Even if we’re having fewer babies, we’re far from endangered, despite some (dishonest, IMO) narratives.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#104

Post by kranke155 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #94
btilly wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 soci…

> They tend to overgrow their environment, outstrip resources, and then collapse. That's not what's happening here. Birth rates are below 2.1 in many countries who are no where close to "outstripping their resources". There are other factors causing the contraction which have nothing to do with resource limitations. In fact it seems like it's the opposite: richer nations with more resources tend to have lower birth r…

Has any organism ever extinguished itself as you describe ? This whole human extinction thing… isn’t that catastrophising? We are a 7-8 billion individuals away from extinction.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#105

Post by phendrenad2 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #91
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.

The population is not "reaching equilibrium", it's shrinking. If it was reaching equilibrium you'd expect the births per women to be slowly reducing until it approaches 2.1 and then staying there. It's dropping substantially below that. And there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the contraction is temporary, the causal factors seem largely unrelated to the existing population size.

That's... not how equilibrium works. A self-balancing segway or robot doesn't reach the balance point and then freeze in place. There are oscillations. And it isn't a pretty sine wave either. Considering the massive number of factors that go into something like "global population growth", expect a VERY chaotic graph indeed, like the stock market, but worse.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#106

Post by btilly »

happytoexplain wrote: post #66
calepayson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shot in the dark but my sense is that a lot of our economics presumes growth and, if we don’t get it, a lot of terrible stuff happens. I feel pretty confident that ai will eventually be a large driver of growth but I do worry about whether it'll come soon enough.

>a lot of our economics presumes growth and, if we don’t get it, a lot of terrible stuff happens What does this actually mean? Every time I try to wrap my head around why it's bad e.g. for a business to make a constant profit, rather than an increasing profit; or for the population to dip to some number and settle there, rather than increase; the explanations seem to become circular very quickly. I know it's partiall…

Here is what it actually means.

When the economy is growing, investment makes sense. Why put your money under the mattress when it could be out there, working for you?

When the reverse happens, investment stops making sense. Why risk your money when it becomes worth more while it is sitting under your mattress?

But stopping investment does not just mean stopping speculative investment. It means stopping investment in other things as well. Like maintenance. This guarantees that things are going to become worse over time. Which is a feedback loop that makes investment even less worthwhile.

This has happened in the USA before. The last time is called the Great Depression. Read through accounts of what it was like. Would you like to go through that now?

History also teaches that the longer it is between economic setbacks, the worse the next one tends to be. We've gone far longer since a depression than at any point in history. Our next one is likely to be correspondingly more terrible.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#108

Post by mekdoonggi »

vkou wrote: post #99
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.

There's no amount of money (that society could ever afford to pay) that could convince my wife to have children.

Yep. And that's good! That's freedom of choice. Similarly, my wife wanted children, and there's no amount of money that could replace the joy of having our child.

Everything is better when we have the freedom to make a choice.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#109

Post by liglam »

mekdoonggi wrote: post #108
vkou wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no amount of money (that society could ever afford to pay) that could convince my wife to have children.

Yep. And that's good! That's freedom of choice. Similarly, my wife wanted children, and there's no amount of money that could replace the joy of having our child. Everything is better when we have the freedom to make a choice.

[dead]

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#110

Post by btilly »

kranke155 wrote: post #104
Ajedi32 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They tend to overgrow their environment, outstrip resources, and then collapse. That's not what's happening here. Birth rates are below 2.1 in many countries who are no where close to "outstripping their resources". There are other factors causing the contraction which have nothing to do with resource limitations. In fact it seems like it's the opposite: richer nations with more resources tend to have lower birth r…

Has any organism ever extinguished itself as you describe ? This whole human extinction thing… isn’t that catastrophising? We are a 7-8 billion individuals away from extinction.

Yes. Read through https://www.the-scientist.com/universe-25-experiment-69941 to see that, given a good enough environment, mice can wipe themselves out. Here is a particularly telling passage:

Eventually Universe 25 took another disturbing turn. Mice born into the chaos couldn’t form normal social bonds or engage in complex social behaviors such as courtship, mating, and pup-rearing. Instead of interacting with their peers, males compulsively groomed themselves; females stopped getting pregnant. Effectively, says Ramsden, they became “trapped in an infantile state of early development,” even when removed from Universe 25 and introduced to “normal” mice. Ultimately, the colony died out. “There’s no recovery, and that’s what was so shocking to [Calhoun],” says Ramsden.

Like the mice, our population is going into reverse. And that description of behavior, looks awfully prescient when I compare to humans on social media today...

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