141–150 of 182 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does it follow that efficient automation will cause population levels to not matter?
I think the idea is that humanity is basically a pyramid scheme. It takes more and more people to cover the debts and improve the world they received from the previous generations. I don't particularly agree with this viewpoint.
As my former boss often says, we don't have problems only challenges.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To preserve what 'culture' exactly? When you say 'our' who are you referring to?
Obviously he means the American culture and by our he means Americans. There's no denying that if immigration is high enough, and assimilation poor enough, culture will change very quickly. Not saying its the case in the US but it's simple to understand what he meant.
Why does it have to be "the end of capitalism" ? The world population will not disappear overnight. It will take several decades (at least) for that number to go down at some point in this century, and it has almost nothing to do with global spending, at least not in the short term.
It's about time that people stopped regarding declining population as a threat and started treating it as an opportunity instead. As my former boss often says, we don't have problems only challenges.
Seems like it’s a threat for countries that depend on a growing work force to pay pensions for retirees. But a benefit for a strained planet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm Australian, have lived in the US, and now live in Denmark. I'm also pro immigration, both for skilled and unskilled workers. However Non-Western (as defined by the Danish Ministry of Statistics) has been financially costly for the welfare state, and the assumption that unskilled immigrant descendents will (as a whole) outperform their parents has not been realized. There's blame on both sides. Denmark doesn't do…
By definition welfare is a net loss. Otherwise it wouldn’t be needed. How can it be bad for immigrants to get more than they put in, but not citizens? The “immigrants will get more out of welfare than they put in” is exactly how welfare is supposed to work!
It's not a zero sum game.
Relying on a larger and larger population to keep supporting endless growth is not sustainable. I know this is unpopular, but: We need to find a way to sustainably live on this planet with a reasonably sized population. People keep talking about how the next generation needs to support all the debt and extravagances of the past generations but this unethical. the next generation was born without first being asked whe…
> Relying on a larger and larger population to keep supporting endless growth The article talks about "growth" as though it has to be absolute growth, but it doesn't; it only needs to be per capita growth. If the population is shrinking, absolute growth can be negative but per capita growth can still be positive (all that's necessary is that the rate of absolute decline of the economy is less than the rate of decline…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women
We're they raping in order to replenish their armies? The claim is rather far fetched.
From the article: "At the festival, Romulus gave a signal, at which the Romans grabbed the Sabine women and fought off the Sabine men. The indignant abductees were soon implored by Romulus to accept Roman husbands".
That the second phase may have employed carrots as well as sticks does not detract from the fact that the Romans have thereby managed to expand their reproductive capacities while simultaneously contracting that of the rival Sabines.
It's about time that people stopped regarding declining population as a threat and started treating it as an opportunity instead. As my former boss often says, we don't have problems only challenges.
Space is not going to save us any time soon, people suck at restraining themself and given our current situation we can approximate our planet to a close system with finite resources.
So yeah, I'd go with less babies. Or more deaths, but one is more pleasant.
Relying on a larger and larger population to keep supporting endless growth is not sustainable. I know this is unpopular, but: We need to find a way to sustainably live on this planet with a reasonably sized population. People keep talking about how the next generation needs to support all the debt and extravagances of the past generations but this unethical. the next generation was born without first being asked whe…
Well said.
Let's face it. Capitalism doesn't need to exist. What need to exist is the human race. Capitalism might as well be a byproduct of our rapid technological advances comes with industrial revolution.
If we think out of box, this might be as well an outlier of our history. Productivity rarely increases this much and drastically through human history, and guess what, the world is fine.
We might as well approaching the ultimate limit that we are testing the Earth's very capacity under the name of growth.
Maybe acknowledging that technology advances later will slow down (it probably already does), the easy to grab resources are fully utilized, and we might not further optimize our energy efficiency, isn't an abnormal thing in the future.
Capitalism is a tool we devised, now it has probably fulfilled its destiny, at least for that time being. And the focus of global governance should shift from being the economical winner to co-exist peacefully and sustainably in a controlled way.