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

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

#261
post #124
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dark horse in this race will be climate changes. These predictions look natural, as extrapolation from the current situation with decreasing growth in population. I hope we (the politicians) don't hold tight to a strict plan, because if and when climate changes start to have a big impact, millions of people might have to move to different countries. These two things combined, decreasing population and massive mov…

Climate changes are way exaggerated. Almost all official predictions by IPCC etc, which aren’t addicted to clickbait, say that over the next few decades we will lose some GDP growth due to climate change. But world GDP will still grow. There won’t be starvation, or famine, etc. This is not the world ending apocalyptic scenario that’s thrown around in the media. Perhaps a few countries will become uninhabitable, but I…

I wish I could share your optimism.

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

#262
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I predict these issues will cause bigger problems than population expansion ever did. I think that unfettered population growth would have caused massive issues -- you could say that global warming is one of its legacies. But there will be a whole host of new issues as we face this new challenge of moving towards sustainable fertility. I suspect we will see a lot of government intervention with incentives towards l…

Many European countries have extremely generous benefits for raising children, but it has been broadly ineffective at raising birth rates - with the possible exception of the Czech Republic. I agree though that governments are going to try, and they may find a way to do it. There was a good episode of The Weeds podcast, "Baby making vibes," which talked about this. Some of it is focused on the American political lens…

Isn't the simple explanation for child birth falling so rapidly being the participation of women in the workforce? I didn't do any research but I just always assumed that it is.

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

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume people not consuming as much as the people in the EU and USA have a goal of consuming as much as the people in the EU and USA.

They very much do, but now they have to pay "carbon tax" invented by people who were responsible for most of the pollution until China

Carbon Tax money is not thrown out of the window. It will mostly stay in the same country, and it will create jobs and wealth for people who are part of the solution, not part of the problem.

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

#264
post #211
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many European countries have extremely generous benefits for raising children, but it has been broadly ineffective at raising birth rates - with the possible exception of the Czech Republic. I agree though that governments are going to try, and they may find a way to do it. There was a good episode of The Weeds podcast, "Baby making vibes," which talked about this. Some of it is focused on the American political lens…

Today we are at over 7 Billion. Suppose the population falls to say, 2 Billion or something like that. Is that a big problem? Like, what is the optimal number of people that this planet can support, without wreaking havoc on other species that also live here? 2 Billion is still a very large number... This might sound cruel, but the less humans the better.

It seems you answered your own question with:

> This might sound cruel, but the less humans the better.

Honestly any species will ALWAYS displace some other species. Nature doesn't just let usable energy lay around on long timescales.

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

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume people not consuming as much as the people in the EU and USA have a goal of consuming as much as the people in the EU and USA.

Prices show that people in the US have a goal of living lower-footprint lifestyles in walkable urban areas. We can't always get what we want. But which goals are attainable depends on policy choices.

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

#266
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not familiar with Roma, whats wrong with them?

Recently (1940s-1950s) forcibly settled former nomads whose culture hasn't yet made the necessary switch. To be fair, it took our Neolithic ancestors much longer than a few generations to adapt, too. Basically, not enough education and a lot of crime in the community. Combined with enormous brain drain, because whoever manages to succeed a bit, moves away and marries into the majority population, thus disappearing as…

The other side of that same building looks even worse:

https://goo.gl/maps/awS5Khbe17tqS18m9

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

#267

So sad to see this happen. Paul Ehrlich made a similar prognostication that never came to pass. There are many places in the world that did a similar thing and had to work to reverse it (S. Korea, Russia), by actually paying families to have children, and China recently reversed its draconian one child policy because they have seen first hand the problems it creates. Hopefully India doesn't run into the same problem…

Exactly. But how much effort was and is being put to control the psyche of the masses to achieve the population control? How much of this effort was original and far-sighted with good intentions?

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

#268
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…

Why does it top out there?

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

#269
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young people don't vote as much partly due to lack of habit, but also due to their jobs having less flexible scheduling and voter registration rolls being tied to where you live. Old people live in places longer, young people move more. It's simply a much bigger paperwork hurdle to get registered, find your polling place, etc. And that's assuming you can take time off and politicians have actually bothered trying to…

It's ridiculously easy to vote and with early voting being extended for WEEKS and mail-in voting also an option, there is no excuse other than apathy, ignorance, or laziness. If you can submit a tax return, you can vote.

Where you live, perhaps. Not every state functions that way.

My state (NH) has no early voting, and absentee/mail-in voting is only allowed for a few specific reasons. (in 2020, COVID was an acceptable reason, but it is not expected to be in future elections).

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

#270

When I was a child about 40 years ago there was a slogan "हम दो, हमारे दो" which translates to "We are a couple, we will have two children". Then in my teens it turned to "हम दो हमारे एक", ie, "We are a couple, we will have one child". It was on TV, in print ads, on the sides of buses, everywhere. There was also a huge move to make contraception easily available to every woman in the country. Then in the 90s TV was p…

It wasn't privatization that caused the disappearance of these ads, but the fact that the government decided to take a step back from pushing family planing after the disastrous efforts of the Indira Gandhi government.

Resources/education/contraceptives/abortion are still easily available to people, just without the dystopian ads or forced sterilization campaigns.

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