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India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

science.org

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Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#241

Post by foolinaround »

rmk wrote: post #137
zpeti wrote: post #48

Global population will basically top out at 9-10bn. I look forward to the problems we will face then, and the apocalyptic narratives the media will invent about this new problem. Here's my shot at a few: - Even with better quality of life its going to be hard to make people who are over 70 work productively. But without children less and less people will need to take care of this large old age group. And they will ne…

Unless there are more pandemics and wars that intervene. This pandemic has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist. I think we are perhaps 80% of the way to an endemic with successive mutations becoming less and less lethal, so perhaps the true death toll is in the 15-20 million range. Any large scale war between nation-states can have a pretty high death toll if things escalate out of co…

> This pandemic has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist.

A more accurate way to state would be "This pandemic and the varying response to it by different nations has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist."

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#242

Post by jessaustin »

8note wrote: post #202
tharne wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say this. We have this weird habit in the West of trivializing raising one's own children, as if that's not "real work". A lot folks would rather raise their children instead of outsourcing it to strangers just to work a job they hate.

Raising children might not be what people are best at, and it's more efficient to work a job that can pay for this stranger, and to have money left over.

There aren't many qualities that disqualify a person from humanity, but being so bad at caring for one's own children that an employee would do a better job might be an example.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#243

Post by motohagiography »

Has anyone stepped back and critically considered the axioms a worldview that celebrates depopulation of a people? You would have to believe it's technically not genocide if you aren't pulling a physical lever, and because you have been party to "managing" it with incentives, you haven't terminated entire genetic lineages using what is essentially deception - which further implies those lives and lineages have no intrinsic value. One would also have to believe in the primacy of their own genes and themselves as the effect, which if someone said it out loud they would be laughed out of the room for their racism.

While I am personally inclined to misanthropy as a kind of social filter, the Malthusian horror of this article celebrating infertility in India strikes me as pretending that an active genocide is somehow more acceptable when you frame it as a kind of cultural euthenasia. Are they saying the quiet part out loud?

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#244

Post by dominotw »

zpeti wrote: post #48

Global population will basically top out at 9-10bn. I look forward to the problems we will face then, and the apocalyptic narratives the media will invent about this new problem. Here's my shot at a few: - Even with better quality of life its going to be hard to make people who are over 70 work productively. But without children less and less people will need to take care of this large old age group. And they will ne…

> Already eastern europe, india, phillipines etc are becoming rich enough that much much less people want to emmigrate.

i am not quite sure what the timeframe of this prediction but at the moment all my street in india will pack their bags and relocate without a second thought to USA if given a choice. And this is an upper middle class neighborhood.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#245

Post by gromitss »

zpeti wrote: post #48

Global population will basically top out at 9-10bn. I look forward to the problems we will face then, and the apocalyptic narratives the media will invent about this new problem. Here's my shot at a few: - Even with better quality of life its going to be hard to make people who are over 70 work productively. But without children less and less people will need to take care of this large old age group. And they will ne…

As cheap labor goes down, we are going to be forced into massive automation. There are plenty of challenges around this but the primary problem is going to be the massive concentration of wealth into a few hands. There has to be some form of redistribution that plays well with game theory and doesn’t sour a powerful segment of the population into being against it.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#246

Post by baskethead »

akudha wrote: post #214
inglor_cz wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if said lady only rejoins the workforce for 20 years, the savings are fairly significant. Also, knowing Hungary, this is probably intended as a subtle disincentive for the local Roma ghetto population. All the Central and Eastern European states fiddle with their welfare systems not to incentivize higher birthrates among the Roma ghetto population, even if they do not want to state this aloud. That is why the be…

Not familiar with Roma, whats wrong with them?

They are gypsies, aren’t they?

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#247

Post by givemeethekeys »

zionic wrote: post #196
givemeethekeys wrote: post #146

Urbanization and education have been among the two greatest downward pressures on population growth.

What if we find out it's not actually urbanization/education, but a correlating exposure that happens when societies industrialize and there's no way out? Education doesn't explain male sperm counts being down 50% in 50 years.

Yes, definitely industrialization is probably the deeper cause. Industrialization made possible the kind of urbanization and demand for education that we have today.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#248

Post by droopyEyelids »

virgilp wrote: post #165
droopyEyelids wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends what you mean by 'need'. From the perspective of eudaemonia, yes, the surviving population needs goods and services to continue. With a sub-replacement birthrate, there are fewer 'new' people to provide the goods and services for the remaining. This creates inflationary pressure and deprivation. From the perspective of 'will the world end?' no- the Earth will continue to exist even without any people at al…

> the Earth will continue to exist even without any people at all. Nobody cares about that perspective; it's an obvious and not particularly interesting observation... yeah universe existed without humans and can obviously continue to exist without humans too. When people talk about "world end" they talk about the humanity, not the physical world around us.

I agree and that's why it was a footnote- that's the point I was making. But on much of the Internet you'll find people eager to misunderstand this very point, so some defensive writing is justified.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#249

Post by gromitss »

motohagiography wrote: post #243

Has anyone stepped back and critically considered the axioms a worldview that celebrates depopulation of a people? You would have to believe it's technically not genocide if you aren't pulling a physical lever, and because you have been party to "managing" it with incentives, you haven't terminated entire genetic lineages using what is essentially deception - which further implies those lives and lineages have no int…

Yes I can. A child unborn is not a child killed so it doesn’t fit your classification of “genocide”. We need about a tenth of the humans we currently have on the planet unless we figure out interplanetary colonization. This is a way that is almost entirely painless and can be achieved with almost no coercion. It’s a panacea we desperately need.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#250

Post by gromitss »

twobitshifter wrote: post #21

They didn’t mention the last two years as possibly contributing to less childbirth. There could be counteracting effects there, stuck together with nothing to do, vs nobody to meet and nothing to do - but it at least deserves a mention. This 2019-2021 drop could bounce right back up if people chose to delay childbirth.

That’s not it. Most of South Asia has been seeing a drastic drop in birthdate over the last few decades.
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