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Are We Doomed?

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Re: Are We Doomed?

#41

Post by nsoonhui »

I want to be proven wrong, but I feel that demographic collapse is the single biggest crisis facing the developed world today. In this regard, the US is actually doing better than East Asian countries and Europe, but the trend is unmistakable — modern, affluent states are committing voluntary suicide because their citizens are simply not willing to have children.

Generally, populations with higher birth rates come from poorer countries or communities with lower living standards. Israel is the only major exception, but once you analyze the social strata it becomes clear why: higher-income groups still have lower fertility than the religious ones (especially the ultra-Orthodox and Arab Muslims) by a wide margin, even though the higher-income groups still have higher birth rates than other OECD countries. This creates long-term strains on society.

Another interesting fact is that groups with higher socioeconomic status (SES) tend to have lower birth rates. If SES correlates with IQ, then there’s an uncomfortable but politically incorrect implication: the smarter groups are having fewer children, while the less advantaged groups are having more. A few generations later, it’s not hard to see where this leads — human intelligence may trend downward. That is simply evolution at work.

Climate change, wars, pandemics, and natural disasters won’t wipe out humanity; we’ve survived all of those and recovered. But demographic collapse driven by high living standards is new territory, and I am genuinely, deeply worried.

Re: Are We Doomed?

#42

Post by txrx0000 »

nsoonhui wrote: post #39
Ekaros wrote: post #29

My feeling is that birth rate could be solved in properly authoritarian country. With policies that won't fit to most "western" schemes. Ban birth control pill Ban Abortion Largely limit social media Subsidize recreational activities like bars and other such drugs After people have accidental kids, they will figure out the food, housing and so on.

China is now encouraging higher birth rates after many years of the one-child policy. But the general consensus is that it hasn’t been very successful, even with the CCP’s authoritarian power. The causes are multi-dimensional and difficult to solve: high living costs, changing social values, and younger generations who no longer want to marry young—or marry at all. Even North Korea has to encourage women to give birt…

The CCP has not really exercised its authoritarian power to raise birth rates yet because it's not a big enough problem and might never become one.

The birth rate fell in North Korea because people are genuinely starving, whereas in other places it's mostly because of birth control. These are not comparable situations.

Re: Are We Doomed?

#43

Post by Hammershaft »

nsoonhui wrote: post #41

I want to be proven wrong, but I feel that demographic collapse is the single biggest crisis facing the developed world today. In this regard, the US is actually doing better than East Asian countries and Europe, but the trend is unmistakable — modern, affluent states are committing voluntary suicide because their citizens are simply not willing to have children. Generally, populations with higher birth rates come fr…

Demographic collapse paired with high fertility for scientifically illiterate religious groups (Like the amish, who have a fertility rate of over 6) might still pair terribly with climate change driven by positive feedback loops (like methane leaking from thawing permafrost). We'll lose the technological and state capacity needed to mitigate & adapt while the global climate slowly trends towards an uninhabitable equilibrium.

Re: Are We Doomed?

#44

Post by mns »

hakFoo101 wrote: post #20
yanhangyhy wrote: post #7

Human history is full of this ridiculous hand-wringing over nothing. some people don't actually do shit, just sit around pointing fingers and nitpicking. They skip the real work of digging into social change and fixate on surface-level bullshit. The fertility rate mess really boils down to just two core reasons: in fancy democratic developed countries, folks are so damn self-absorbed that the whole system screws over…

your suggestion of "socialize childcare big-time" is tried in EU, countries like sweden offers the best support of families and yet are parley getting the numbers up without immigration, the root of the drop is the change of women role in society, finding a political sweet spot is required, if women get a salary from the government when they have more than 3 kids then it might encourage families to take the big step…

Some countries are even working against people having children. Germany introduced a new law that now if the parents have their combined salaries over a certain amount, you get 0 child care. And the funny thing is that that limit is very low for people living in a big city. This policy came from the Greens actually, which are supposed to be more left leaning. But they couldn't care about this, or women or families, for them anyone who earns a bit above average needs to be punished. In our case, just when we were actually thinking of having a baby, we realised that if we actually would do it, our income would be basically more than halved because my wife earns even more than me, so not only would we earn way less, but we would earn way less with an extra child in our family, so yeah, thanks for the support.

Re: Are We Doomed?

#45

Post by Qem »

yanhangyhy wrote: post #27
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> folks are so damn self-absorbed that the whole system screws over regular people and kills their vibe for having kids. Or maybe, just maybe,having kids just isnt that great and people (and especially women) are finally realising it.

> Or maybe, just maybe,having kids just isnt that great and people (and especially women) are finally realising it. Reproduction's a straight-up genetic instinct in humans. You're basically talking about something so screwed up that it makes people straight-up ignore their built-in drive to have kids.

> Reproduction's a straight-up genetic instinct in humans.

Sex is the straight-up genetic instinct with a strong drive. It used to correlate very closely with reproduction, so the difference between the two was meaningless. The issue is we managed to decouple them, with modern reliable hormonal birth control.

Re: Are We Doomed?

#46

Post by Qem »

theturtlemoves wrote: post #23
DaveZale wrote: post #9

stage left exit homo economicus stage right enter homo paganicus, accompanied by those twins homo philosiphus and homo philobaccus pass the wine around. True story, I took a course in environmental microbiology, and at a certain point, the instructor had a slide titled, "Ideal Conditions for Reproduction" and below that the words, "A Swiss Chalet on a cold night, a bottle of wine, and a warm fireplace"

In other words: no pressure. Pressure seems to be another factor why many women don't have kids. That and mixed messages about what constitutes a good person and not being told that your fertility starts tanking after 30

> not being told that your fertility starts tanking after 30

It baffles me that science books in school don't have a nice graph showing how fertility changes with age. It's plain negligence. It causes people to set unrealistic expectations regarding their expected life trajectory.

Re: Are We Doomed?

#47

Post by Qem »

txrx0000 wrote: post #35
palmotea wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Birth rates aren't plummeting around the world at the same time. They are "plummeting around the world at the same time," they just didn't start plummeting everywhere at the same time. > The labor gap is a short-term problem and can be fixed with immigration and maybe AI. Birth rates aren't plummeting around the world at the same time. By the time the birth rate becomes a problem in Africa, America would have long…

> They are "plummeting around the world at the same time," they just didn't start plummeting everywhere at the same time. This is pedantic. Do you understand what "at the same time" means? By the time birth rates plummet below replacement rate in Africa, they would have risen well above replacement again in Europe and North America. > Except Africa can't fill the gap for everywhere else, and if immigration is the "so…

> By the time birth rates plummet below replacement rate in Africa, they would have risen well above replacement again in Europe and North America.

What makes you think they will rise again in a timely manner? Demographers naively predicted the rates would stop decreasing and magicaly stabilize close to replacement levels, and failed miserably. To my best knowledge there is no indication the current trends will reverse or at least stabilize any soon.

Re: Are We Doomed?

#48

Post by wolvesechoes »

Ekaros wrote: post #29

My feeling is that birth rate could be solved in properly authoritarian country. With policies that won't fit to most "western" schemes. Ban birth control pill Ban Abortion Largely limit social media Subsidize recreational activities like bars and other such drugs After people have accidental kids, they will figure out the food, housing and so on.

This problem is more nuanced that any party involved in the discussion admits.

It is a combination of consumerist, pseudo-individulistic, hedonistic, nihilistic culture, economic exploitation under late-stage capitalism, destruction of familial and local ties, access to birth control, women emancipation etc.

Even such authoritarian countries like China are still very much soaked in the same systemic goo, so you may ban abortions if you like, but that won't change much.

Re: Are We Doomed?

#49

Post by jrs235 »

nsoonhui wrote: post #41

I want to be proven wrong, but I feel that demographic collapse is the single biggest crisis facing the developed world today. In this regard, the US is actually doing better than East Asian countries and Europe, but the trend is unmistakable — modern, affluent states are committing voluntary suicide because their citizens are simply not willing to have children. Generally, populations with higher birth rates come fr…

Ever watch the movie Idiocracy? Was a stupid "comedy", today it seems to be a prophetic documentary.

Re: Are We Doomed?

#50

Post by wolvesechoes »

polotics wrote: post #21

One statement in there grates: the idea that there never was a big population drop before. We know it from genetic records that human population dropped to a very low number. The human population bottleneck around 70,000 years ago, ie Toba supervolcano eruption, with 1,000 to 10,000 breeding individuals. There may have been other humans around, their lines all died out.

Problem is not shrinking population. Problem is shrinking population with shrinking share of children and young adults and growing share of old people in the time when most people are completely helpless without access to modern goods and services.
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