Naive question- why does the human population need to keep growing? Why can’t we let it shrink? If AI and robotics are going to come to fruition in the next 50 years, why do we need so many people?
India's surprise baby bust
361–370 of 1001 posts
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#362Re: India's surprise baby bust
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
With renewables and nuclear we have basically unlimited energy, which can solve a lot of resource related issues. What are you concerned we would run out of?
Helium? Rare earth minerals? Having to mine ever deeper because there are essentially no easily accessible mineral deposits? The fact that mining has enormous costs and the potential to permanently destroy sources of fresh water?
Rare earth minerals are not particularly rare or needed in huge quantities.
Helium is probably more limited but for most cases there is alternatives I.e. I believe people use argon.
Idk none of this seems overly pressing in terms of preventing a lost scarcity world
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#364Unless 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…
>but you'll won't solve the demographic crisis without them.
you won't solve it with them either. all of that feel good crap would bump the TFR of an average civilized country by 0.2. how can you have access to all the data in the world and still believe that the reasons are economical and not cultural?
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#365This 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…
I agree a lot with your hypothesis. Most people in my demographic (mid 30s American) that aren't having kids are choosing not to primarily because they don't want to really interfere with their current lifestyle. Money seems to be a part of it, but secondary to the high opportunity cost of children.
There are also social effects. When half your friends have kids and half don't, you can compare the lives of each and decide which you want to live. You won't be as isolated now if you choose not to have kids... in fact the trend seems to be that having children is the isolating choice.
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
having kids is a blast true, but you didn't know until you had them, and society keeps telling us otherwise. we need to change the message and educate youth about becoming parents. but also create a culture where having children is welcome. in the west we complain about kids running around, making noise, being not under control. and most importantly we blame the parents. in china every child is treated like a treasur…
>in china every child is treated like a treasure. sometimes even to a fault. but at least parents are not being blamed for having children, huh, I didn't know this. Thank you for sharing about your culture :)
i am not chinese, it's just an observation from living there.
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
Japan is not without problems related to a shrinking population i.e. https://eastasiaforum.org/2026/05/21/japans-immigration-poli... but it's a problem easily solved by just letting in more immigrants.
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Not decline, but Australia considered its population too small after the Second World War and very successfully integrated immigrants from an increasing diversity of source countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-war_immigration_to_Austra...
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#368This 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…
I grew up blue collar and pitched in with my father's work from a very young age. As a child I was able to balance out the time and expense of raising me by contributing back to the household. I have children and they just cannot contribute to my white collar job. They can participate in some chores, but they are essentially a massive money pit. Daycare is more than my mortgage. Public school gets out at like 2:30. I…
It takes a village.
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#369This 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…
There are so many factors. I think the biggest one is that the developed world looked at women and said "hey, they are just as smart and capable as men and if they work at companies we have 2x the workers" which is obviously true but what it leads to is a DINK society - and it locks you in. It is just much, much harder to raise children when both parents work and they don't live near their parents and other familial…
> A lot of the decrease is also correlated with access to birth control which drastically reduced accidental pregnancies which were a decent amount of the fertility rate
This was my first intuition.
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#370Lots of theories here. Industrialization. Wealth. Education. First world transformation. Kids' expense.
All of these are second-round of reasons.
Primary reason: Materialistic wealth or wealth in general is preferred over human contact.
Effect: People connection drops. Community drops. Independence and Individualism prosper.
Secondary effect: The seeds for family development (community, human connection, village camaraderie) go missing. Growing a family now requires artificial support. When family members grow up, their time is now spread across materialisms and career development. Career development goes up and takes priority. Wealth acquisition takes priority. Except everyone is doing this so basic needs have to be fulfilled with limited resources. All prices are now going up. What was the point of everyone working now? Wealth acquisition. hmm.
Tertiary Effect: Huge workforce looking for work. Wages diminish because supply went up. Businesses prosper. Market caps go up. Business becomes easier. Dominance becomes easier.
4th Effect: Debt goes up to fulfill materialistic quests. Interest locks in people into a debt that grows over time even if the supply of money does not go up. Now people are perpetually looking to complete paying off their debt. And they will perpetually need to work. And worker supply perpetually increases. Freedoms go away. Wealth centers on to certain people. They take over media, entertainment, recreation, and tourism. We end up with a tale of two worlds.
Edit: Before the primary reason goes into effect, I will acknowledge industrialization improved people's access to wealth and materialism. And that replaced human connection.