Does population decline worry you?
I mean, it’s super important. The population of all of the places we love is shrinking. In 50 years, 30 years, you’ll have half as many people in places that you love. Society will collapse. We have to solve it. It’s very critical.
Uhhh…what? There are a handful of countries with recent population decline, but most of the world is still growing even if growth rates are slowing. I’ve never seen any credible projections of catastrophic population decline.
Replacement theory has a kernel of truth - more brown people are being born than white people.
It’s just not in any way a problem. Let the brown people immigrate to white countries. Boom, population crisis solved.
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.
The U.S. population grew at the slowest pace in history in 2021, according to census data released last week. That news sounds extreme, but it’s on trend. First came 2020, which saw one of the lowest U.S. population-growth rates ever. And now we have 2021 officially setting the all-time record.
U.S. growth didn’t slowly fade away: It slipped, and slipped, and then fell off a cliff. The 2010s were already demographically stagnant; every year from 2011 to 2017, the U.S. grew by only 2 million people. In 2020, the U.S. grew by just 1.1 million. Last year, we added only 393,000 people.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/03/american-population-growth-rate-slow/629392/
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.
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 🌚
I’m by no means pro-forced birth. But birth rate decline is a serious issue.
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.
but unless extreme measures are taken once it gets to that point, civilization as we know it will collapse.
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.
Yeah it’s a bit of a hyperbole, but the rate is what’s important. By the time we hit worldwide negative growth rates (which is projected to happen this century), it’s going to be way too late to have a discussion about whether or not that’s a good thing.
A good thing for some, a bad thing for others. Good for the environment, most likely. But we’re going to have to extensively reorganize the workforce.
Experts have generally agreed that any reduction in population size will come far too late to help with the current climate crisis. We’re either going to hit sustainability with our current population or die in the process.
Replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman, and there are about 100 countries under that rate. Yes, their populations are still growing, but much of that is through extension of life expectancy and immigration (which requires a higher birth rate somewhere else, lest that other places start seeing shrinking population).
It’s not an immediate crisis, but it is turning into a problem that should be addressed soon.
