The endgame of capitalism is slavery.
Anon isn't worried about population decline
3 days ago by 🍹Early to RISA 🧉 to c/greentext
JeSuisUnHombre 60 points 3 days ago
The early game of capitalism was slavery
MalReynolds 26 points 3 days ago
Midgame pretty much unions, now mostly a speed bump in the rearview mirror.
Perhaps that should change.
BillionaireStew 1 point 3 days ago
And it never ever ever goes as planned because the bigots running the eugenics program are myopic twits.
GonzoAtBarstow 99 points 3 days ago
8+ billion people on the planet and people complain about not enough people.
Ponzi schemes aren't sustainable.
whalesnrainbows 43 points 3 days ago
Yeah, people worried about “population decline” are actually concerned about their preferred race/religion losing political & cultural power.
It’s a dog whistle every time
thebestaquaman 10 points 3 days ago
It's a dog whistle every time.
Population decline isn't inherently a problem (unless you're a racist worried about "your people" losing power). Too rapid population decline is a big problem. We're already seeing the effects: When the sum of birth rates and working-age immigration fall fast enough, the ratio of working-age people to care-needing people also falls. I don't think I need to explain why it's a problem that every able-bodied working age adult will be responsible (directly or indirectly) for taking care of more people. It puts more pressure on everyone, and impacts societies ability to care for those in need of it.
A controlled, slow, population decline would probably just be a good thing at this point. However, that's not what prognoses are pointing towards, and that's why (non-racist) people are worried.
whalesnrainbows 2 points 3 days ago
I’ll acknowledge that saying it’s a dog whistle every time was slightly hyperbolic.
However, I’d argue that the claim that the global human population is declining too rapidly is actually pretty hotly contested. The world's population is still growing — around 8.2 billion now, heading toward a peak near 10.3 billion in the 2080s.
That being said, in some countries there will be a surplus of retirees and not enough workers to fund them through the existing tax structure, which is a legitimate problem. But it's a problem best remedied through better social safety nets, not by popping out more babies.
The biggest contention I have with the concern over population decline is that population decline doesn’t matter at all if we don’t adequately address climate change within the next decade. If someone’s house is actively on fire and they express concern to me that their roof should be re-shingled, I’m not going to give a shit about their roof shingles until I’m certain their roof will survive the fire.
thebestaquaman 1 point a day ago
Thanks, that was a much more nuanced take that I have a much easier time agreeing with :)
I think the population problem has some in common with food distribution: There's enough food in the world, it's just distributed in such a way that some places have obesity as a societal-level issue, while other places people are dying of malnourishment.
Similarly, the global population is increasing, however it's increasing far more rapidly that sustainable in some places, while declining more rapidly than sustainable in others.
There's only so much you can do by redistributing wealth in a better way (which I think we should, regardless). It doesn't help to tax the rich if there isn't any manpower you can buy with that tax income to actually do the work that needs doing. I think that's the scary part about a rapid population decline: We're heading towards a situation (in some places) where the ratio of capable workers to people needing care approaches 2:1, which means a far larger fraction of the population will need to spend their entire working career as direct care providers than is currently the case. You can't really alleviate a manpower shortage with just money.
TheTetrapod 2 points 3 days ago
I was gonna say we could start pushing people out on ice floes when they get past 60, but climate change is ruining that for us too.
Psionicsickness 1 point 2 days ago
Easy solution, eliminate the boomers. Crisis averted.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod 0 points 2 days ago
This is mostly a joke, but I do foresee a time when a very authoritarian government just kills a bunch of old people.
For example, during the One Child Policy the Chinese government did hundreds of thousands of forced abortions.
deadbeef79000 9 points 3 days ago
Hegemony is the word you're looking for.
Yeah, always a dog whistle.
HerbGrower 4 points 3 days ago
Why would I care about how many people are the same race as me? It could only be a problem if you keep racism.
porous_grey_matter 16 points 3 days ago
it's almost like you have your answer already
Fallibilist 10 points 3 days ago
Worry about population decline isn't about wanting more people. It's about wanting there to be enough working-age people to cover the retirement and medical payments of the ones no longer working. We know exactly how many 30-year-olds we'll have in 20 years and it's simply not enough. Something has to give and usually the first to go is the benefits for the people who most need them.
666dollarfootlong 21 points 3 days ago
Or maybe the something that has to give is a minority class of people (the .1%) getting a few percent higher tax "burden"
Fallibilist 2 points 3 days ago
I highly doubt that would be anywhere near enough even if the issue was only limited to the country with the highest number of ultra wealthy people which it isn't.
Seleni 6 points 3 days ago
Elon Musk could end world hunger. Full stop. He wouldn’t even notice the dip in his finances. (He offered once, claiming if someone gave him a concrete number, he would pay it, and a nonprofit took him up on it. Surprise, surprise, the whiny little snit backed out.)
They totally could fix the problem. But to those rich shitheads, it’s not a problem. It’s a feature.
BlaestEgnen 5 points 3 days ago
Sort of depend on perspective, hunger only exists because there's no political will to remove it.
We produce more food globally than we consume, and we can multiply it several times with the same cost of space by swapping more meat for vegan crops.
We have plenty of space for everyone to have shelter, the problem is largely due to the issue that most people want to live in a metropolitan area. So the price for living in a highly sought out location increases to unmanageable levels.
A key factor is the big difference between the kinds of jobs you can get in a more rural location compared to the bigger urban centers. Everyone are forced to move to urban locations to study, causing most people to form their first adult social and professional circles around whichever urban location they studied at.
There's a lot of minor things that needs to be done, what exactly differs by country. But making the rural regions more accessible to live in should be considered across most countries. One simple first step, would be to make remote capable jobs offer their workers to do it all remotely. Government office workers, could quite easily spearhead such an initiative; I bet some people would move closer to nature, if they could hold onto their bread
UltraGiGaGigantic 4 points 3 days ago
usually the first to go is the benefits for the people who most need them.
Then this way of life is not worth saving.
GonzoAtBarstow 4 points 3 days ago
That falls back to "ponzi schemes aren't sustainable"
It's broken.
ageedizzle 1 point 3 days ago
The problem with calling it a ponzi scheme is that this would apply in all contexts, even in very basic economies without money. If you have a tribe of hunter gathers and suddenly they have a sharp decrease in their birth rate, they too would have a hard time taking care of their elderly/children.
isleepinahammock 0 points 3 days ago
Why the obsession with only retirees? What matters is the dependency ratio.
The dependency ratio counts the total number of dependents, not just the retirees the eugenicists like to focus on. By the end of the century, globally we'll have a dependency ratio similar to the level it was in the mid-20th century.
MalReynolds 2 points 3 days ago
When do they teach 'carrying capacity' and what happens after it's exceeded these days?
superduperpirate 79 points 3 days ago
Ya know, I have vague memories of reading an argument somewhere that the black plague killed off so many peasants that the surviving ones had materially less shitty conditions for a little while, due to scarcity and all that.
MutantTailThing 20 points 3 days ago
Facilitated by such space age concepts as washing your fucking hands and not drinking the corpse-water.
abbadon420 18 points 3 days ago
That's "prevention" you're talking about, not "treatment", generally considered better, but still.
blackberry28 7 points 3 days ago
U mean the one in Russia where one of the researchers recently died?
kestrel7_7 1 point 3 days ago path: 0 26240393 26240444 26240577 26247765, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
Mulligrubs 49 points 3 days ago
Look what happened after the plague, 50% of the population was gone.
It broke the back of the Catholic church and feudalism. Peasants got their first pay raise... ever.
Ledivin 4 points 2 days ago
It broke the back of the Catholic church and feudalism. Peasants got their first pay raise... ever.
You're missing maybe the most important part of this: ...eventually. It was at least 40 years after the plague hit, and probably more like 70-100, depending how exactly you're counting. AKA it might get better after we're all dead
impairedimperator 1 point 2 days ago
That seems...obvious?
Why would the effects of reduced population happen before the population is reduced?
OctopusNemeses 48 points 3 days ago
When the population was predicted to explode into the 21st century, the news said this was a big problem. Now the population is expected to gradually decline. The news is saying this is a big problem.
Funkt4st1c 16 points 3 days ago
I think you mean to say conservative. People hate change regardless of positivity or level of train knowledge
lessthanluigi 6 points 3 days ago
The Onion of course, onionguy!
FavouriteShapes 6 points 3 days ago
Both can be a problem
rumba 2 points 3 days ago
Booms have market opportunity, and busts have market opportunity.
That said, having too many people to do the work is a lot less dangerous than not enough people to do the work.
The bust comes with a high risk of a total economic collapse. Those houses get cheap, but food, sanitary, and energy security are at risk. Living in a rotting infrastructure is very different than living in an expanding but underdeveloped infrastructure.
Leveling out or a slow population decline would be good in some scenarios. If we're going from 2.5:1 down to 0.25:1, you'll end up with another boomer wave, pissed off at the government, ripe for scenarios that make today's problems seem like an annoying party.
ageedizzle 3 points 3 days ago
The rotting infrastructure problem is made a lot worse by urban sprawl
rumba 4 points 2 days ago
What happens in the rural areas when the need for grocery stores halves, all the walmarts pull out, we have to re-invent logistics. I expect people will either have to go back to making everything themselves, or they'll have to bunch back together around resources.
ageedizzle 2 points 2 days ago
Yeah. But people won't change willingly. A lot of the suburbs around my city are pretty rich areas. I don't expect those people to willingly move to the denser inner city anytime soon. More likely they'll petition city hall to keep their subdivisions running until the city goes bankrupt from the financial burden of supporting a subdivision that does not bring in enough property taxes to support itself
HerbGrower 8 points 3 days ago
Build more housing so that houses are more affordable, bring on the 4 day work week.
Expensive houses just funnels more money into the hands of banks and landlords without providing any benefit to society.
limdaepl 18 points 3 days ago
What those „retiree per worker“ graphs always fail to mention is how productivity increased over the same period.
Those two workers today produce about as much as 8 did in the 50s so supporting the retirees should in fact be easier today, not harder.
That it isn’t is because wages didn’t increase proportionately.
boonhet 3 points 3 days ago
That it isn’t is because wages didn’t increase proportionately
Yes, because your wages go to said retirees. Who do you think owns all the companies not increasing your wages?
UltraGiGaGigantic 4 points 3 days ago
Sounds like everyone shouldn't have kids then so the kids are not forced to go through the burden of caring for douchebags.
WizardofFrobozz 3 points 3 days ago
People forget how much was going right in the 90s, especially in the states. Boomers were in their prime working years (paying into Social Security instead of collecting it), women’s participation in the workforce had hugely expanded, and a decade of strong economic growth and job creation meant more people working, lower unemployment, and more money going into the system. Obviously some of that was demographic luck, but the Clinton economy was actually putting people to work.
Funkt4st1c 26 points 3 days ago
If theres a shortage in the labor market, you either fill it with slavery or raise wages.
Americans track record seems to indicate the former waaayyyy before the latter
boonhet 2 points 3 days ago
Raising wages fucks the people trying to retire because their stock holdings lose value. It'll have to be slavery if you want to continue having retirement as a thing. Ideally colonialism + slavery, just import slaves from countries still experiencing population growth, such as many African ones...
Wait I think something about this idea might be problematic
Couldbealeotard 1 point 3 days ago
If you can't afford to tip, you can't afford to eat out. Maybe you should get a second job that pays $2ph
boonhet 20 points 3 days ago
Okay, but retirement is based off there being more people working than not, so in countries with national pensions we'll have to significantly raise taxes, and in countries without such a system, retirees who are invested into index funds, need publicly traded corporations to start underpaying their employees even more (it's really eye-opening when you realize people over 55 own 73% of all the resources of the US, from money to stocks to real estate).
FavouriteShapes 13 points 3 days ago
Sounds to me like we'll have to do a communism, i.e banding together to help each other out more, to allow people to retire in comfort. The horror!
(Just in case it seems like I'm dismissing anything you said, I'm not, and thank you for your analysis. My main takeaway is that it seems an unavoidable problem)
ageedizzle -1 points 3 days ago
This is not about communism vs capitalism, its about the ratios. If there are 5 old people for every young person then how are we supposed to take care of all the old people? There’s just not enough manpower.
FavouriteShapes 6 points 3 days ago
No, it's about the scale of society and how we support ourselves in retirement, though. See, if retirement funds rely on, as the guy above me says 1. Companies underpaying their employees and 2. Governments taxing a group of more people in the below generations than there are to support in the top - then those are unsustainable sources of retirement comfort.
So what would be sustainable? Well historically, and in some countries today, old people need family to support them into old age. You would need either your own kid, with their own house big enough for you, or a rich little nephew with a house big enough for all you and your siblings to live in while retired.
Or... We just do the decent thing and take care of non-relatives. To ease the load on, say, retirement homes, we'd need to agree across society to bring the old people into communities of younger adults, and those younger adults would need to check on them regularly.
Sice this requires a community binding together, you might call it "communism." Though it isn't necessarily Marxism.
ageedizzle 1 point 2 days ago
We should be in a situation where people need to take in like 5 non-relative old people into their homes and provide them constant care (which they cannot do if they are at work). It's not sustainable no matter your economic system.
isleepinahammock 2 points 3 days ago
Why do you care about the ratio of workers to old people? What matters is the ratio of dependents to workers. We have more retirees, but we also have fewer children. This isn't that hard. If we could manage the Baby Boom of the 50s, we can manage this.
LH0ezVT 1 point 2 days ago
What matters even more is total productivity per citizen. It does not matter if a house is built by 20 builders with shovels or 5 builders with excavators. What matters is the house being built. And productivity per worker has massively risen and is, in my opinion, going to rise further.
ageedizzle 1 point 2 days ago
That's an interesting point but I'm not sure if the numbers really add up. As I understand it, the number of dependents will be greater from population decline (primarily due to an aging population) than it was during the baby boom
ageedizzle 1 point 2 days ago path: 0 26248026 26249238 26250426 26255463 26262569, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
ageedizzle 7 points 3 days ago
Population decline is a global phenomenon. You can't offset this loss with immigration when the countries people are coming from are also experiencing a population decline. We (in the West) are currently using immigration to offset this loss now, but when the population decline really starts hitting other parts of the globe (as it is projected to do within the next few decades) then that will no longer be a solution.
locahosr443 3 points 3 days ago
Poorly is my understanding
XiJinpingStanAccount 1 point 3 days ago
Actually it is a communism vs capitalism thing. The problem arises in both, but the solutions available depend on the system. I reccomend you look up how China is handling its massive elderly population. For example the elderly there have huge public parks and get outside moving and socializing a lot. In big cities it's common for them to have mid day slow dance meetings in the parks. This is only possible because the government's priority is not producing profit for billionaires but caring for its people. So it maintains these things and the public transport required to get the elderly there, and the assistance to keep them fed and healthy.
This video is 15 years old: https://youtu.be/SvmV7GRRPq0
When people stay active and a part of their community into their old age instead of sitting in their huge houses alone or in a nursing home they require much less support to keep living.
LH0ezVT 3 points 2 days ago
Username checks out... I am not particularly happy about many of the things china does, and I don't think "but they are not the US" is an excuse for authoritarianism and imperialism, they got a way better culture of how to deal with old people than the west, both in traditions and in institutions.
XiJinpingStanAccount 0 points 3 days ago
Another great vid: https://youtu.be/RnCCY2YtVX0
isleepinahammock 4 points 3 days ago
Hogwash. You forgot the other half of the equation. We don't have as many children to support. Notice how people obsessed over birth rate always focus on the retiree:worker ratio rather than the dependent:worker ratio? The problem disappears once you realize we can simply take money that we were spending on childcare and shift it to eldercare.
majster 2 points 2 days ago
Children live with parents. If retirement becomes burden of your offspring this will have interesting consequences.
Re resource shift: in my country we managed to increase total employment in education while birthrates continue to dwindle
jumping_redditor 0 points 3 days ago
isn't that specifically the government pentions? social security and somewhat less important to those that have personal retirement accounts?
chunes 19 points 3 days ago
The population isn't declining, though. See for yourself: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
Edit: Granted, it is in some countries: China, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea to name a few.
inconel 18 points 3 days ago
The slowing down of population growth is real though. Trend of fewer children is across the board not just developed countries. Current trajectory estimates population to peak out in 2050-2080 and then decline, for some in their youth in next 30 or 50 years may not be that too far to completely dismiss.
Denjin 8 points 3 days ago
Scroll down that page a bit and you'll find the "Rate of Growth" chart where you can see a clear decline in birth rate increase globally since the 1960s and it'll only be another decade or so with current trends before we are in genuine negative population growth. And that's also assuming there are no more pandemics and/or global scale ecologocial catastrophes likely to happen in that time (there almost certainly will be).
Eq0 4 points 3 days ago
That’s not what the given website says. The given source predicts a continuous growth until at least 2100, while the growth rate slowly grinds to a halt but doesn’t go negative. Obviously this is only one possible forecast, others give different outcomes
whyNotSquirrel 1 point 3 days ago
I think it's because we are living longer and the effects of lower birthrate will be shown later
isleepinahammock 15 points 3 days ago
Even the fears about the economy and government spending are bullshit. Notice the folks obsessing over birthrates always quote the retiree to worker ratio. They don't talk about the dependent to worker ratio, and that's what really matters. Yes, our populations are aging, and yes that means relatively more old people to take care of. But we in turn also have far fewer children to take care of. If we can adapt to the Baby Boom era, we can adapt to an aging population.
Further afield, fears about human extinction are total bullshit. No country is a monolith; every nation has groups within it with higher and lower relative birth rates. If the birth rate stays low and never recovers among the mainstream society, eventually the smaller groups end up composing most of the population, and then the birth rate recovers. The Amish inherit the Earth.
Or, if even that fails, ultimately technology loss alone stabilizes your birthrates. Eventually your population falls so low that you just can't physically manufacture reliable birth control anymore. That's a product of industrial production. It requires a certain minimum population size to run a factory. Below that and we just regress to earlier technological eras. Eventually we end up back in a mostly agrarian state, and suddenly having kids is once again economically beneficial.
EmilieEasie 14 points 3 days ago
Yeah, there will probably be some growing (er, shrinking) pains, but I'm totally fine if the world just wasn't meant to have 10 billion people on it
abbadon420 2 points 3 days ago
More like 10 million. Back to the stone age!
EmilieEasie 1 point 3 days ago
Now that would be a really surprising development!
Ashrakal 13 points 2 days ago
Population decline is fine. It’s the population boom driven by World War II panic that was the oddity instead.
In a matter of time, we might return to population levels from the 17th century, and if we do, then so what? A single individual will become all the more valuable, similar to how European nations valued labour more after the Black Death occurred. History likes to repeat itself, even if not necessarily by events like the plague.
NotAnOtter 13 points 3 days ago
Lower population is generally better for almost all sectors.
But lowering the population means killing people or restricting birthing rights.
Earthwormjim91 14 points 3 days ago
Well no. That’s a wildly incorrect take.
Birth rates are already decreasing and are below replacement rate in many places already. Fertility rates are at an all time low. They naturally decrease as income and quality of life increases.
The global fertility rate is 2.2 births per woman. Which is just barely above replacement. In most developed nations, that rate is down in the 1.6 range, well below replacement.
Total Human population is excepted to peak within 50 years and then begun naturally declining, but many countries are already there. China has seen several consecutive years of population decline. India is seeing a leveling off of population growth and will soon decline. The US is increasing solely off of immigration. Japan has a decreasing population. Same with Korea. 8 EU countries have seen population declines over the last 20 years.
If you wanted to see population decline in the US specifically, banning immigration would do it and we’d see a decline in the next census.
lightnsfw 12 points 3 days ago
People can also just stop breeding. Seems to be happening in a lot of developed countries. Might be slower but I bet the population will level off eventually. Or plummet dramatically from climate change/right wing political policies.
nforminvasion 3 points 3 days ago
Yeah... It's something that has to happen naturally or really slowly to not be eugenicist AF.
jumping_redditor 0 points 3 days ago
war kills people and is sometimes popular
Chick0nPlayz 12 points 3 days ago
who will work unskilled jobs if there aren't enough people to do them?
Immigrants usually
isleepinahammock 2 points 3 days ago
I mean, this is a pretty silly response. Is there a hidden population of Martians I'm not aware of, eager to immigrate to Earth to work our low skill jobs?
adjectivenoun 2 points 3 days ago
Huh? Global population is still growing. (More slowly now, but the slope is still strongly positive.) We haven't hit peak human population yet and won't any time soon. That means if the population of the US declines, we can just import more USians.
isleepinahammock 0 points 3 days ago
We're talking about a global phenomenon here. It's pretty racist to assume that other groups of human beings are somehow fundamentally different from your own. It's pretty xenophobic to believe that the countries with high birth rates will just maintain them forever.
The problem isn't the US running out of workers. The problem is the entire world running out of workers.
alcoholicorn 3 points 3 days ago
They are fundamentally different; the west is looting their country for resources and cheap labor, they will maintain high birthrates so long as neocolonialism prevents them from developing their own means of production.
Tudsamfa 10 points 2 days ago
Considering how people struggle with the comparatively small hiccup that is the current Iran-US war, I find it hard to believe that all commenters here would be fine when global trade dwindles.
I however am built different and would simply survive economic and societal collapse.
PuddleOfKittens 17 points 2 days ago
If society is constantly getting richer every single year and has for decades... Why are people still struggling? Either poor people are unreasonable/irrational, we don't actually care about reducing cost of basic necessities,or the wealth increases are being siphoned out elsewhere.
Population decline would be a non-issue in a functioning economy, because a small shrinkage of the economy would be a non-issue.
LodeMike 10 points 2 days ago
I always hate it when someone says that we would need to reduce our standard of living to remain sustainable. It's 100% bullshit predicted on using a definition of "standard of living" that nobody understands (roughly speaking I think it's only used to compare two different persons or groups in an idealized snapshot in time). We waste so much food. Some of it's necessary, but, 40%??
kestrel7_7 4 points 2 days ago
yes! If there wasn’t so much overconsumption by a small set of very rich folks everyone could live a comfortable life sustainably, it’s so frustrating
LH0ezVT 1 point 2 days ago
Society is going to collapse anyway, the question is, how hard and how badly. The whole idea behind "not sustainable" is that it is not possible to sustain something. I personally rather hit the brakes than accelerate before hitting the wall.
Tudsamfa 0 points 2 days ago
The whole idea behind “not sustainable” is that it is not possible to sustain something.
-1 That is not "the idea!", that is the definition. A recursive one at that.
-2 That doesn't really follow from either your or OPs comments. What is not sustainable? The economy, society, global trade? Did you delete a sentence?
I think your comment makes more sense if I was arguing for people to counteract population decline. I am not. I was simply pointing out that it won't be sunshine and rainbows as OP and many commenters here seem to believe.
BetaDoggo_ 6 points 2 days ago
Japan is a whole other mess caused by the exotic monetary policy used to cushion the real estate crash and a risk adverse corporate culture unwilling to properly make use of it, causing investment to stagnate.
boonhet 1 point 3 days ago
The rich in this case == old people. People over 55 own 73% of the US. Billionaires don't come close to the wealth of boomers. In countries with national pensions they just do it via taxation, in the US it's via retirement funds invested in the companies abusing workers.
People don't seem to get that everything has a cost in human labor to it and if you want people to continue enjoying the benefits of what is actually a pretty good economy all things considered, there need to be enough workers. If there are not enough workers, you can't have retirement anymore. In fact, a few decades from now we'll have to get rid of retirement as a concept unless we want actual slavery.
rizzothesmall 6 points 2 days ago
Who will pay to care for the aging population? Welp, whether you live in a socialised care country or the United hellscapes of America, the answer is: you will. Or your kids will, or whatever generation we're talking about here.
Even if you do live in the US and have no elderly relatives, the insurance companies will have to hike the shit out of their premiums to remain profitable.
The fewer working age people there are compared to people past working age, the worse it will be.
impairedimperator 3 points 2 days ago
Yep. There's a big bowl of shit, and some day it must be eaten. The choice becomes: do you eat the shit, or do you add a little squirt and pass it to your kids?
Shayeta 1 point a day ago
I would imagine that the most cost-effective (realistic) way of solving it would be through some sort of culling.
Nothing flashy like forced euthanasia. But a reduction in available healthcare here, a drop in funding for elderly services there, some "dead weight" propaganda, and life expectancy would sink like a brick; all the while these policies would be presented as unavoidable cost-cutting measures to keep up appearances.
RBWells 1 point a day ago
Yeah but that's just a pyramid scheme. We can't just keep growing the human population forever.
Started working at 15, figure I'll work till I'm 75. Or until I die, whatever. If I can. It's fine, not ideal but fine. I would have appreciated maternity leave more than retirement. The time then would have been a lot more valuable.
Triasha 5 points 3 days ago
There are real challenges to population decline, especially rapid decline like Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine, russia, and China are facing.
The US and Great Britain are not looking at that rapid decline. For us, it's a problem to be managed. Every generation of schoolchildren is 75% the size of the preceeding generation.
That's manageable. No promises that we will do anything to manage it, but it's not crisis level. Other countries will have greater problems. JApan has been doing Allright.
Eq0 16 points 3 days ago
Japan has not been doing all right. Their economy has long stagnated, working conditions have been maintained rough with very long working hours and recently they have pivoted on their isolationism bordering on racism to accept workers for outside Japan.
It’s not horrible, but it’s not all right either
Triasha 5 points 3 days ago
A falling population with a stagnant economy sounds bad but that's a rising standard of living.
Long hours are not captured in GDP but Japan had that problem long before the population pyramid inverted.
PragmaticOne 5 points 2 days ago
We are humans and as such we have always adapted. We will adapt again. You can all live in fear re population decline if you like but I’m just getting on with it.
FavouriteShapes 3 points 3 days ago
I feel like this as well.
42yeah 2 points a day ago
The biggest problem is the aging population and the need to support them via social security, etc. As the population ages, the distribution becomes an inverted pyramid and we’ll need to pay for more and more people’s retirement. It’ll slowly become worse and worse as one person will eventually be responsible for the survival of 4-5 old people (and their family notwithstanding). Otherwise I think a declining population is fine.
queermunist 3 points a day ago
Immigration doesn't exist.
PixeIOrange 1 point 3 days ago
Communism!!!¡! 😡
fluffykittycat 1 point 2 days ago
What's the connection between population decline and tight knit communities and crime? I can't see any
14th_cylon 3 points 2 days ago
Big anonymous city is better environment for crime than village of 50 where everyone knows each other by name.
kestrel7_7 3 points 2 days ago
Except in practice living in the city no one ever steals from me and all the folks I know who live in rural areas are like “watch out for methheads, they’ll steal your shit”
fluffykittycat 1 point 21 hours ago
Yeah rural areas are crime hotspots, even after accounting for lower population
Dead_or_Alive 0 points 3 days ago
Lol, cool story now tell me what the National, State and Local governments are going to with all of the debt accumulated when populations were higher!
Brkdncr 0 points 2 days ago
“I guess we’ll have to increase wages”. Doesn’t work when there aren’t enough working people to maintain critical infrastructure.
World wide population decline is going to cause some serious problems. The US will need to establish a strong immigration policy to absorb people fleeing failing countries/geographies while continuing to provide food, and the transportation of that food, to the rest of the us.
Ledivin 2 points 2 days ago
The US will need to establish a strong immigration policy to absorb people fleeing failing countries/geographies
Why would anyone be running to the US? Do you think people dream of being forced into labor camps?
Eheran 3 points 2 days ago
People still illegally immigrate to the USA right now despite everything that is going on. The reason is also still the same and I see no reason why that should change in the next decades. I mean other than a civil war, but that is not going to happen even if Trump grabs power so...
Brkdncr 2 points 2 days ago
The US has a lot of space and a lot of farmland. Most countries don’t. As ocean transportation of food (amongst other resources) becomes less reliable due to lack of security, people will be fleeing their failed or failing country to one that’s more stable.
You’re right to think that the US has shit policies for immigration now but I think that will change once population decline starts affecting how much food is stocked at grocery stores.
I anticipate things being a lot worse than they are even now over the next 15 years. Multiple wars, state-sanctioned sea piracy, and a failure in the complex supply chain that creates advanced chipsets used for things like servers/workstations, satellites, weather prediction, stock markets, etc. leading to a mini-collapse as a best-case scenario.
Brkdncr 0 points 2 days ago
I’m well aware. I think it’s temporary though. I believe that there will be significant problems when the cost of importing food skyrockets, the cost of domestic food skyrockets, and the farmers are telling their local news that they need immigrants back.
This might happen soon too, we just signed a deal with the devil to try to cap the exploding cost of diesel. That fuel is used to create and move food.
meaansel 0 points a day ago
With fewer people more things will count as "too niche to be commercially viable". I lived in a village where I couldn't find a pencil 3b or softer at local stores.
I hope anon enjoys mainstream music more than i do
LH0ezVT 4 points a day ago
Meh, the 70s had half the world population that we have now, and created much of the kick-ass music and arts that we still hold in high value. And, to be honest, a 3b pencil is really a luxury first world problem. Besides, the more important metric for that will be population density. In a city of 100000 or more, it makes sense to have a dedicated arts and crafts store, maybe even more. In a village of 1000, not so much.
meaansel -1 points 3 days ago
Who's gonna build that real estate with fewer people around? Where would money for higher salary come from with fewer customers? Pollution argument is a "carbon footprint" type of bullshit to shift responsibility to general population from companies that actually do most of pollution, and violently defend their right to do so. Communities become less highly knit because of third spaces dying, phones colonising spare time, and algorithms pushing people to have worse view of world and each other.
Increase population should increase efficiency (economies of scale, many products of intellectual labor being infinitely replicatable) - and efficiency did increase at the same time as population. It's just that salaries didn't.
Mental gymnastic to make worsening conditions of ordinary people somehow fault of other ordinary people.
meaansel 0 points a day ago
How do you account for buildings decaying with time? Let's look at shorter term too while we're at it. Luckily, we don't have to speculate - in Japan a lot of towns depopulate, locally due to people moving to big cities, as well as generally due to population decline. They have increased bear attacks, car brigdes use of which is banned because they are old, but municipalities don't even have money to demolish them, healthcare less available
SippyCup 1 point 13 hours ago
We'll make do. We're very good at making do. Might even say the best at making do.
If our civilization is propped up on the next generation supplying us with an ever increasing population for the meat grinder, what we have is actually a planet wide ponzi scheme. We would do well to make do with less.
UltraGiGaGigantic 5 points 3 days ago
algorithms pushing people to have worse view of world and each other.
You got a source for your bold claim that humans and the world are good?
kestrel7_7 2 points 3 days ago
Just because toxic algorithms are making people worse doesn’t mean they’re inherently good, nothing that person said implied that. But also, buddy, you seem kinda depressed, and I’m sorry for that. Most people are basically good most of the time. The vast majority of everyone wants what is best for everyone else, we just have really shitty information about each other.
lessthanluigi -7 points 3 days ago
If only I could give a million upclicks to a single comment
ThatGuyNamedZeus -5 points 3 days ago
what the hell is this WEF UN propaganda? ...Oh wait...the EU talks about depopulating too.
But they stop short of saying what they actually want, which is to cull half of humanity
boonhet 2 points 3 days ago
Literally the opposite of what's being talked about? The issue is people aren't having enough kids and our economic system is predicated on there being enough people working to support those who don't work (kids, retirees, disabled people). Over the coming decades, we won't have enough people for all the people who need to be supported.
UltraGiGaGigantic 2 points 3 days ago
Do we want to live in a world where small business cant hire anyone?
Yes. Fuck your tiny dictatorship.
kestrel7_7 -1 points 2 days ago
100%. Weird that you’re catching downvotes for pointing it out
greentext
@sh.itjust.works
8826
2064
4738
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
go to feed...
greentext
@sh.itjust.works
8826
2064
4738
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
go to feed...
The people that want higher birth rates don't care about higher wages, the environment, or people's safety.
They just need workers they can milk them until they can't work anymore. They need these workers to spend all their money so they have to keep working.
save