this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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In essence, when the growth rate slows to a certain point, people are dying faster than they're being replaced, and the trend can only continue unless everyone starts having 10 kids.
It's a matter of job replacement. Maybe AI will partly help, or maybe we'll open our borders so immigrants can come end masse and do all the jobs we don't have enough people for, but unless extreme measures are taken once it gets to that point, civilization as we know it will collapse.
I'm by no means pro-forced birth. But birth rate decline is a serious issue.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/03/american-population-growth-rate-slow/629392/
Growth is growth. It's not tracking only births, it's tracking births against deaths. Population decline is people dying faster than they're being replaced, but even "very slow growth" would still mean the population is increasing.
There are countries that decline in population even though they try to offset it with immigration, Japan is ahead of everyone in that.
But every time someone talks about the decline in population they usually aren't afraid of people going extinct, they are afraid of working hands supply going low imo 🌚
Not anymore, Japan has one of the highest birthrates in Asia now.
You mean, the rest of the Asia has gone below even further? Also, birthrate isn't the only factor, and birthrate of Japan is highest among developed Asian countries, it's not highest overall
You're right, I was thinking east Asia when I said "Asia" and should have been clearer, and it's more that Japan's has fallen the slowest
Uh what. Source on that please?
https://fortune.com/asia/2024/03/12/asia-worlds-lowest-birth-rates-baby-bonus-not-working-singapore-south-korea-hong-kong-japan/
It's less "Japan's got higher" than "Japan's fell the slowest compared to other Asian countries"
Yeah, mostly because they've got no more births to reduce lol. Keep in mind these are the worst countries in Asia, though. There's still plenty that have decent birth rates (for now)
Yea I mentioned in another comment I should have clarified "east Asia" in the original comment. The rest of the southern and western asian continent have much higher birthrates.
Yeah, it matters to capitalists who need an inexhaustible supply of exploitable workers.
For regular folk, it's not a problem.
As long as you either have many tens of millions, or you don't care about electricity, water, food, and you're extremely physically isolated and/or hidden very well and armed to the teeth, it shouldn't affect you much.
For the rest of us it's something to worry about. Infrastructure needs a lot of trained people to operate. Once the train gets going it doesn't stop, and that means as time goes on it gets worse and worse until it reaches a point of stability some X years after collapse. And you won't be able to freely and adaquetely hunt/pick your food if you're anywhere near a city until point X, because everyone else will be doing the same. Also some idiots will be bathing in the only still good stream near you with whatever leftover chemicals they can find.
Your country can open the immigration floodgates and become a country without borders (i.e. become whatever country is currently your neighbor) but that comes with similar problems listed above.
So as you can see, it's not an issue for a small privileged few. For the rest of us, its a big fucking deal. I would encourage you to look into it.
Not really, it's a matter of replacement. Plus we need a lot more people if we're going to become a multi-planet species for survival. Nothing to do really with capitalism.
If only there were people desperate for a better life here, alive now, perhaps in a neighboring country or even entire other continent bordering the states.
Population decline is a good thing. Raising a child requires more resources than caring for elderly. When the elderly die, that frees up even more land and resources for the next generation.
The Black Plague caused the Renaissance. WW2 killed almost exclusively all the healthiest and most productive workers at the prime of their working lives. The result was the survivors experienced unprecedented wealth for a generation.
When the population declines such that a person with a high school diploma can once again own a home and support a family of 4, the population will increase again.
I agree that a Phoenix will rise from the ashes, but make no mistake, there will be many ashes, you and I and most of us posting here likely included.
But we are long overdue for a reset. Maybe this time we can just skip the internet infrastructure during rebuild, and develop near-peer networks instead.
I don't understand why you think there would be any ashes? Extreme population decline like the Black Plague or WW2 caused extreme wealth. Slow decline will cause a slow increase in wealth in the following generations. If we have half the people we only need half the goods manufactured which means half the people is fine. We had only 4 Billion people in 1980. It wasn't a post apocalypse hellscape. So if we returned to 4 billion it would be fine.
The only people who suffer from population decline whether it was the Plague or great wars are the wealthy because their livelihood comes from skimming a little from all the workers.
ETA: The 4 billion people in the 80s was still growth. Infrastructure has been scaled up, and it will take a ton of work to scale down - work which we will be hard-pressed to find enough skilled laborers for. Also overpopulation isn't the main driver behind climate change, overconsumption is. We are a society of consumers, we buy convenience, and evil corporations force planned obsolescence on us to make us buy more. Many of us will scoff at high-priced long-lasting items yet still buy a new iPhone every 3 years.
If you reduce the population as fast as its decreasing now, lower than replacement rates, all modern conveniences including infrastructure and faith in the economy are going to take a hit. That includes the internet and hospitals and all internet-dependant companies. Public utilities like trash, shipping - we already saw how many products were discontinued and companies went out if business because of the inability to get parts, over a 6 month (at first) brief shortage of truck drivers, which is still recovering 4 years later. If you think the economy is bad now, wait until faith in the market completely collapses and we have a full-on crash, not just a recession. It's been showing signs for years now, and things aren't improving.
Throw in experienced power plant operators, people that install and maintain pipes and lines, water treatment plants, public transit, the people that make parts for the machines that installs the infrastructure, the vehicles, etc. Everything you can think of will be affected, along with many things most people never think about.
Immigration is a way to slow it down, but almost every country on Earth has falling birth rates at the moment. Immigrants coming from, say, Mexico and Canada to US will only delay the problem, and cause a larger problem for those allied countries we rely so much on.
You can find pros and cons, and it's been a while since I did heavy research into the subject, but my takeaway was that once we reach a certain point, mass deaths will start to occur, especially in population centers. Rural communities won't be affected as much provided they have plenty of weapons and systems for defense, livestock, agriculture and close community. Knowledge will need to be retained - on disease, birth complications, fixing nuts and bolts technology, etc. Authoritarian countries who decide to force birth (whether by force or accommodations - see USSR support and metals for mothers with greater than X number of children) will become a serious threat.
There are many variables and moving parts, but one thing is for certain: there will not be mass population decline without major hurt for everyone.
It takes virtually nothing to scale down. Again see WW2. Millions of the best workers in Europe, Asia, and America were dead. No one needed to put in overtime to not grow wheat for the dead.
I don't want to keep saying it but WW2. The working population was decreased far faster than today. You don't need extra factory workers to not produce iPhones.
I ran a large internet company. You don't need many people to serve millions of customers. If there were less people, there would be less equipment installed. Less customers means less employees needed. So service would not suffer. If anything it would improve. Because Internet servers/bandwidth is built with oversubscription built in. You don't really have 100mbs service. It's that peak usage for your local neighborhood is modeled such that as long as everyone isn't using maximum bandwidth all the time, you have the illusion of 100mbs at any time. Reducing customers over time means that existing networks and servers could handle unusual loads without slowdowns.
It's the same with hospitals. You don't need more doctors when you have less patients.
You don't need parts because you have less people that want to buy your product.
When German and Japanese factories were bombed and the experienced operators were killed, someone else was trained and took their place the next day.
As older people die, you get younger people to take their place. You don't need population growth for that. If anything, population decline means the younger generation gets better training because there are more of experienced people giving the fewer younger people their knowledge. Instead of one teacher with 50 students it can be 1 teacher with 10 students.
Population decline doesn't mean tomorrow 99.9% of the entire planet suddenly disappears tomorrow. We have had far more rapid population declines in history and the results have always been overwhelming positive.