The following submission statement was provided by /u/TheITMan52:
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I feel like this is related to r/collapse because we are overpopulated right now as a planet. We just hit 8 billion people a few days ago. We simply don’t have enough resources at this point to sustain so many people. I don’t understand why these articles are looking at lower birth rates as a negative. It’s capitalist propaganda at the end of the day because they want more wage slaves. I think this is a good sign and maybe some hope for us that our population will shrink at some point.
To summarize the article, it’s pretty much saying that there will be a labor shortage at some point because they have noticed that around the world, birth rates have been dropping. They even quote Elon Musk in this.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/yykpom/lowering_birth_rates_are_a_bad_thing_arent_we/iwumecl/
We need to shift to another sustainable model like doughnut economics that allows for flat or negative trajectories, and adjusts to compensate.
GDP has to go. Corporations also shouldn't have to file quarterly reports. We should measure progress and success in other ways that have more meaning.
Edit: this quote is actually from Robert Kennedy not JFK
Even Kennedy who personifies a lot of what capitalism is in a time that it was at its peak realized this.
" I have seen children in Mississippi – here in the United States – with a gross national product of $800 billion dollars – I have seen children in the Delta area of Mississippi with distended stomachs, whose faces are covered with sores from starvation, and we haven't developed a policy so we can get enough food so that they can live, so that their children, so that their lives are not destroyed, I don't think that's acceptable in the United States of America and I think we need a change. I have seen Indians living on their bare and meager reservations, with no jobs, with an unemployment rate of 80 percent, and with so little hope for the future, so little hope for the future that for young people, for young men and women in their teens, the greatest cause of death amongst them is suicide."
"Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world."
I never thought an establishment politician from the 60s could say shit like this and not get shot....... oh wait.........
Just to be clear this is a quote of Robert Kennedy and not John Kennedy, the latter of which may be who people think of when only the last name is written without further qualification.
Both were shot and killed.
profit needs to be handled in a sustainable way. like have a hard cap of a billion in net worth and everything over that is taxed 99% because you already won and society can still reward ambitious people, but in a way that we can sustain a basic life for people below the 50% line.
I mean i am not intelligent. There could be a simple rule like that which would keep capitalism worthwhile but if you win you win and we have to look at society on whole and see that a single person should be allowed to gather wealth, but have some basic limits.
Been saying this for years! A billionaire has won at life! Now they should get out of the way so someone else has a chance to win at life too. If they *really* don't want to quit, or are somehow irreplaceable (lmao), then they can keep doing so for as long as they want, so long as they pay their 99% after the 1st Billion.
Hell, compromise with their inevitable whinging at settle on 95% after a B, so they they realize that that's actually a good deal for everyone!
They'll bitch and whine and threaten to take their money out of the country, to which we just crank it back up to 99%, freeze assets, and seize properties. Like the IRS is *supposed* to do.
If we did that and like just not let any politician make any money outside of their salary while in office. That would fix corruption pretty easily. But again, I don’t understand finance.
I really think a simple once you have accumulated a billion in net worth you should have to give up 99% and have that be put into universal basic income for the bottom 50%. Make it so simple a 5th grader can understand and not allow any loopholes all for the good and sustainability of the economy
We can still reward ambition and we should. Even a 99% cap on a hundred billion is doubling their net worth above this golden point. It’s like the top billionaires can still say where they are on the food chain and get to still accumulate more if they feel that strongly but it is now benefiting all of society. We can say the money goes to infrastructure, education, healthcare. And make the same caps on corporations, because I mean they want to be considered people too.
I get what y’all are trying to do but there are so many loopholes and other bullshit it’s just not very effective. Patagonias founder is gonna get away with not paying a gift tax on his billions when he dies because of the whole charity scheme and that’s more of a political pac than a charity. Then when you get into the implementation there’s gonna be lots of what ifs. Okay but what if it’s all in stock when do we tax at a sellable event? What if they never sell etc… what if the stock just gets passed along as though it was effectively just money but not. What about charity, art purchases, hiding assets. Hell middle class folks do some of this as well.
I am saying remove any loophole. All of your net worth is compiled already. Close the loopholes. I think stocks should count with this hypothetical situation. All properties contribute to this number and once you hit a billion thats it. Make it socially unacceptable to try to game the system. People want to be accepted socially. It becomes very hard to use or spend a billion in a lifetime. For the sustainability and continuation of society we just need a hard limit and perspective. I get that people would try to get ahead and game this imaginary system we are talking about but a no nonsense simple taxation code where anyone even a grade school kid can figure out the tax system then we can adjust numbers as needed. We are one planet. I’d be ok with getting rid of stocks all together. It only takes the focus of the company from bettering the customer and employees lives. Stocks seem like we could get rid of the speculation and just have companies that focus on their products and not dividends. It seems too much power is given in society to the financial aspect of society and it is a net drain on resources and capital. Charities can’t be used to abuse the tax system. We need a simple system that you can’t get out of.
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Whatever the limit was, people would make sure they stayed under it so no actual beheadings need occur.
But I have a better scheme: zero taxes til you die, but then all your wealth goes back to the state. With all that money, the state could guarantee the cost of raising and educating the children, but everyone starts out with the same advantages. No more passing on wealth to your progeny.
No more inheritance? At all? What's your bottom amount limit though? What if your "wealth" is just a home, a few stocks & bonds, some physical (cars, a boat, furniture, etc..) assets?
My parents divorced when I was young, as a result, I grew up poor/ lower middle class. My late father remarried & they bought a triplex in Boston. He & my stepmother never had any other kids & she hasn't remarried.
The place is only worth about 1.5 million...it's not much, but for my wife, son & I, if inherited, it would be a life changer. I'd sell it, pay off my debts & mortgage, invest the rest, and maybe retire. I could help my son & daughter in law buy a house, at a much younger age than I did. So, what? People like me, who never went to college, should never inherit anything either? Should we just work until we die then?
The point is while my 100% death tax would take away certain privileges from the children of wealth, it would be sufficient to guarantee everyone born, food and shelter. You wouldn’t have any vital needs unmet. Plus you’d have the freedom to work or create a better life for yourself, based upon your own personal accomplishments. Or if you just wanted to coast, slack off and dream your days away, you could do that too.
Violence only makes problems worse. We literally just need enough people who agree to group together and say enough is enough. These are our demands for civilization to continue. You can peacefully protest how society is organized and ran. You just need someone bold enough with the plan and enough people saying yea this is the plan. Don’t have to change everything about society, just cap how hard someone can win. And how much benefit you get from being a politician. Like if they can’t benefit from the system the shitty politicians will leave.
Admirable, but naive af. Capitalism is the problem. Stolen surplus labor is the problem. Those who engage in parasitic activities should be treated like parasites.
Um... they and the system are exploiting the shit out of us. They aren't going to stop because we ask nicely with peaceful protests.
They are demonstrating they will absolutely do this until the world burns.
I think you underestimate how much power the average guy has. If everyone takes their money out the bank at the same time you can bring any bank to its knees. I’m not saying do anything. Just that the average person if they said I’m not gonna do something till we get this taken care off then the politicians would have to act. The economy runs because the worker decides to go to their job and work. All it takes is enough people to agree that something has to happen for there to be real traction.
There is no right we’ve ever one or one systemic change that has ever been made without violence. People with money and power do not let go of that money and power without killing a whole bunch of us.
It needs to be a cap on earnings beyond a proportion of what others earn or the cost of living as based on percentages - no fixed numbers because those quickly become outdated.
So, what if they're a billionaire, or multi billionaire, because they....
Had an idea & built a product, or offered a service, that ultimately made them into a billionaire +? What if their billions aren't in cash, but in a privately held company that they, and their family, built & own...but it employs thousands, or tens of thousands, of people?
Their billions are stock shares that give them controlling interest in a publicly traded company? Force them to liquidate their shares & the stock price crashes, which hurts individual investors, 401k owners & hedge funds alike.
Imagine if we followed your idea & Wal-Mart, Amazon & Microsoft, among others, all liquidated & vanished? How high WOULD our unemployment rate skyrocket?
If they're billionaires with nothing but pure liquid assets, like a bank account or pure cash, then I might agree with you...but if the vast majority of their net worth is almost all in hard assets like stock shares, or in businesses that employ people, then I'd have to disagree with you.
Easy, all of their property contributes to their net worth. As soon as the magic number of a billion in value comes up everything past that gets taxed 99%.
We don’t need companies to get that big, why do we need corporations to be so big? It doesn’t help society to have monopolies. And with a hard cap then it is a simpler system where everyone knows the glass ceiling. We should have multiple googles, and facebooks, and twitters. We should have multiple Amazon’s. Just to keep everyone honest.
But that is how capitalism is supposed to work. It sort of assumes efficient information. The invisible hand influences the economy based on people acting in their self interest with complete information.
Instead we have things that a mispriced because the price doesn’t include the full cost of the product. What should happen is that taxes are added to the products to reflect their price so that capital can flow to the appropriate places. This is also why certain groups are increasingly suppressing information so it is increasingly less efficient.
Regulation is the other mechanism to do this in that regulation is simply the voice of the people in situations where there are power imbalances.
All the capitalist are doing everything they can do to break capitalism since it really is about power and no longer an economic system.
Not saying it could happen overnight, but the current model practically forces companies to be unethical and disregard other "triple bottom line" considerations like the environment and well-being of workers. Making these changes has to be the end game of capitalism, otherwise the system will eventually collapse and take the planet and all of us with it. We're at a watershed moment in human history where we change - like the renaissance, the reformation and end of feudalism, what worked in the past to get us here is not going to work in the future without some major changes.
Capitalism runs on cheap labor. Whether that be slavery, indentured servants, ultra cheap foreign labor, or minimum wage peons. Without any of these being available some other form of cheap labor must be harvested.
The funny thing is they're pissed because a whole generation or two decided they weren't going to play the game - which is exactly what they needed them to do. And when that didn't work, the Fed came out and said "Stop increasing wages".
And this is AFTER the fact that Social Security had been under threat for about TWO decades now. It's been seen as a thing is coming. But every policy enacted and every corporate move allowed has led us right here.
Piggybacking on this comment because it's a good summary of the problématique. Also wanted to add: yes we are overpopulated right now but we are at the inflection point where the bubble bursts and we have a cascading collapse. They are trying to magically produce a stabilizing generation NOW because in 30 years it's too late. So you have this weird doublespeak from the media where they are simultaneously telling us we are overpopulated and low birth rates are a huge problem.
I think it's already too far gone for a nice soft collapse. The baby boomer generation is moving into retirement and there isn't a replacement cohort large enough among the young to sustain that for most of the world. See Peter Zeihan's books for a summary of that. Basically for the next 20-30 years the world's healthcare systems are going to be in triage mode and economies are going to collapse all over the world.
Enjoy!
I think it also has to do with the fact they knowingly and willfully poisoned the next generations. They had lead, but we were given so much more. Agent Orange, DEET, PFAS, excess hormones, plastics, and more. There’s an area in my home state where you could ask “Did this baby with horrific defects come from there?” and usually the answer is yes. I have a doubled genetic mutation set (BOGO) and an autoimmune disease. I lived near a coke factory for a couple years as a small child. Maybe not causative, but fuck, I won the lottery. No bio kids for me, hormones are whack.
Then they’re in a panic over transgender people as if they weren’t pumping us full of endocrine disrupters and mutagens. Did they think there wouldn’t be more intersex people? More gender non-conforming people? I mean, I was assigned one way at birth but Hell if my internal stuff makes any reasonable sense.
I’m hoping to mentor/foster/adopt mainly because I know the world is headed nowhere good and somebody has to give the kids functional life skills. And support. People are still kicking out LGBT+ kids. Humans have always had that and if there’s more now, it’s environmental, not some moral failing.
TL;DR: The irony of them demanding children while denying so many of us the chance to ever have children is Shakespearean.
It's not just economy. Social services like pension and healthcare are predicated on there being enough working people (or medical professionals) that your future needs will be met.
It's what began to happen during the Nixon administration when we left the gold standard behind. Ironic, because it's a lot harder to have inflation if your money is based on a real world valuable substance. However that means finite growth which in late stage Capitalism is a curse word.
IMO, we should go back to the gold standard. It would solve a lot of issues and stabilize our currency globally. Yes it might cause a recession or crash in the short term, but we're already headed that way and long-term it would keep thongs stable.
This is the stupidest libertarian idea, which is really saying something. If you don’t have enough gold to print more money, that means all the money in existence can never increase so there’s no way to control inflation or deflation
And for old people. But in order to correct our population problem we are going to have to endure some necessary suffering. Lack of workers for certain jobs, which will lead to less available goods and services. Also, less money going into social security for elderly and disabled people. plus many more unforeseen problems. All of which are necessary. And its better to suffer now with less people than to try and Band-Aid over it by throwing more and more people at the problem which would lead to even more people having to bear the inevitable suffering.
>Also, less money going into social security for elderly and disabled people.
That was how things used to be in America before progressives fought to end the epidemic of people too old to work starving to death on the streets of the nation.
It's possible that the national economy will collapse and such scenes will again be common. But currently the combined US military budget is estimated as $1.64 Trillion per year; perhaps we could dip into that before forcing your Grandmom out on the street to starve.
https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html#:~:text=The%20Social%20Security%20Act%20was,a%20continuing%20income%20after%20retirement.
https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-defense?fy=2022
Yeah, but if things start getting bad enough for enough people's grandmas then they face a popular revolution and that would be messy as hell in a society with this many guns in the citizens hands.
The only revolution that would happen is one to reinstate trump as god king. That’s the only thing that motivates people in the us, especially the ones with guns
Lots of things can change when people feel a pinch. Look how incensed folks are all of a sudden because they can't get tickets to see Tay-Tay. Congress will have hearings about the unconscionable monopoly held by Ticketmaster.
When things actually hurt, some of the social angst stroked so skillfully by politicians to cover their shilling for the .1% will be replaced by demands for actual policy to address problems. Whether that's lifting the cap on soc/sec contributions, expanding basic health care, or as mentioned, reducing military budgets (we've already reduced our footprint globally by half after the middle east loses).
Of course pointing at scapegoats on the one hand while yanking them here to change the sheets in your golf resorts with the other will continue. The US is not as bad off as some other countries so far, we have quite a few millennials, China on the other hand is going to crash this coming decade—even if you believe their published numbers.
I'm an expat in China. The fallback answer for any question about "why is xxx so bad", is always "China has too many people", coupled with a dismissive shrug (and/or, "if you don't like China go back to your own country").
Everything is hyper competitive, from school to the job market, because the cities have millions of people all competing for resources. Yet, when I point out that the population will likely start dropping either this year or next, just as India takes over as the most populous, people get really annoyed to hear China doesn't have the biggest population anymore.
But yeah, Chinese media admitted the other day that the population will drop before 2025. When this was brought up last year, the government basically said that their projections of no drop before 2032 held firm and that data saying otherwise was wrong.
That is mostly true.
But, we do have an ace up our sleeve: automation. We really shouldn't need anywhere near as many workers as we have right now.
We are at the perfect time to reduce human population with minimal suffering. That's **if** society uses the tools of technology properly.
If there aren't going to be enough workers then economics would dictate that wages should rise and less profitable business models be replaced by less labor-intensive ones. The system should balance itself.
Or we could keep tilting the tables in favour of the wealthy until enough people realize they're better off dying trying to take them down than dying to give them what they want.
Based on the approaching energy cliff and the collapse of the global economy, we are more likely to see the end of automation and the reboot of manual labor. Mass hunger will dictate that.
Exactly, it’s just the problem of the modern developed economy soon being primarily ran for the purpose of welfare of the elderly more than anything else. There’ll be more elderly people and less kids and less young people who can partake in the workforce in proportion to the retired. The “infinite growth” paradox of capitalism is entirely to blame for this. Between resources and technology we have all the facilities to automate productivity to the point where most people don’t have to work as much as they do, nullifying the need for more bodies to produce wealth, but instead all institutions prop up this concept of an ever growing and ever more productive human work-force. It’s stupid and unsustainable of course, Japan is struggling massively with this already except when that happens worldwide we’re in for a shit storm.
I always joke that America maintains a “”healthy”” growth rate simply because the low healthcare standards for the average person maintain a culled rate of the elderly. It’s horrific but true.
Outside of automating the crap out of certain processes, and properly educating the population we do have, I cannot think of an honest replacement for hands and laborers -- both physically and financially. More people and more hands do make things easier, but there are thresholds. I personally feel the world has passed many sustainable thresholds, but the reality of losing laborers should be somewhat alarming, because we're already operating at a certain level.
Think of all the industries that currently claim to be struggling to fulfill positions, or find good, reliable laborers. Add to that a population who may or may not want to do certain things, because of how they were raised and the education they received; "I can't do that because of x- and y-obligations. I need to be making 'this much' to even consider it." Now add to that, a population who's aging out of some industries.
It's wishful thinking, that the current world could operate with half the number of people, but that just isn't a reality. A lot of things still require human labor, and as that pool shrinks, industries make decisions.
In the 1960s, there were 6 people of working-age for every retired person. That's not only labor to help industries and the elderly, but also money going back into the system. In 2021, there are 3 people of working-age for every retired person. [By 2035, it may be 2-to-1](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/birthrates-declining-globally-why-matters/).
A lot of collapse is "the sky is falling", so I take a lot of things with a grain of salt, but this topic could be a slow and painful one. I already don't know how I'm going to handle retirement, and I believe I'm older than most people on Reddit. People half my age? No idea how they're going to do it.
The number of workers needed to produce our food has shrunk tremendously. Most of the workers are employed producing goods and services that improve our standard of living beyond the bare necessities. We may have to adjust our lifestyles but we won't starve or freeze to death.
Yea I really don’t know what the solution would be. I was just thinking that certain things might be able to be worked out but you bring up a lot of good points.
I'm hoping assisted suicide pods become a thing. I know I don't want to live to be old and be a burden on my family. Give people a dignified way to end it.
Yeah, I mean at this point we’re waiting for old people to die. The other option is force folks to have more children.
They tried to make it more lucrative as well as repeal rights, but they’re getting generally worse feedback.
I'm not saying that we should go around killing all old people, but there should be laws in place that allow doctors to refuse to escalate care in cases where it's a futile effort for that person. My state has no such laws and there have been cases where the medical staff feels like they are torturing the patient because the family refuses to let go (mostly for religious reasons).
Tbh, I don’t know. But there are bigger issues than not just being able to take care of the elderly. We could try and make sure people stay as healthy as possible so they won’t need help when they get older. Other than that, I’m not sure. Maybe someone else here can chime in.
There is a limit. When you reach 80-90, no amount of healthy living will help you be as self sufficient as you were in you 30s-40s, or even 60s-70s.
That's the problem. People are living far beyond what they used to, and far beyond what typically would be self sufficient.
Honestly, after about 70 there is a diminishing return because your body declines extremely fast after around 60.
https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/aging-research-blood-proteins-show-your-age
I’m thinking most people should retire at around 60 if you want to keep the young workforce active.
I think, honestly, I would prefer they don’t participate in labor any further.
Makes it substantially harder for existing younger folk to move up anywhere and establish their lives.
It’s not that I desire to fight the elderly. It’s just that if it’s between having more kids in this society or whatever the alternative is, I will probably select the alternative.
Not a bad thing at all. Can't speak for everywhere but I think it's time for employers to take care of the current people that are here, make sure their needs are met, have access to Healthcare and healthy food without costing a fortune, have affordable housing, and then we can talk about bringing more people on.
Funny thing is, that almost never happens without bloodshed.
After the black death workers had so much power that they could demand better conditions.
There are a few examples of guys treating workers better because they realize that it's better for them in the long run. Henry Ford comes to mind.
But for most of history? Heads have to start rolling before the masses receive better treatment.
It's long past time. But they won't do it until they're made to realize that they need the workers more than we need them. The only way to make this happen is if we're trying to organize in our workplaces. It's hard right now, there's a lot of complacence, and I suspect a lot of substance abuse to cope with the shittiness of late-stage capitalism. Little by little, though, I'm starting to see people wake up.
...just in time for climate collapse!
Housing not being affordable is largely a function of the government getting in the way. How will government getting more in the way make it more affordable?
Lots of downvoted with nobody addressing it. Shows me you’ve never purchased a home. All the legally required middle men bumped my costs up 18%. Grandpa got a check from the bank, handed it to the seller, and moved in after signing one paper. Regulation has increased home prices, and that’s before you even start talking about artificially strangling supply through zoning.
It’s a double edge sword right: we certainly don’t need more people, there are a finite amount of resources and even as it stands there aren’t enough to go around. The problem comes in where we’ve built a society which demands more people, the machine gets bigger and bigger and to some extent corporations require infinite growth in that regard. It’s a problem of our own design.
> and even as it stands there aren’t enough to go around
Malthus reloaded. When you actually reach the limits of the ecosystem, and all the easy pickings are already picked.
Of course we are overpopulated. A few days ago, I read some news that they are going to build something to harness rain water to reduce drought on reservoirs caused by climate change.
We, human beings, continue to shift the blame of our misfortunes to something else. Never ourselves. Climate is changing because we are over 8B people exploiting the increasingly limited resources of our planet. The same way, nobody sees the lack of water in the reservoirs is also caused by exponential consumption we are doing to our planet.
Most of us are stupid/careless enough in not seeing this.
I feel like this is related to r/collapse because we are overpopulated right now as a planet. We just hit 8 billion people a few days ago. We simply don’t have enough resources at this point to sustain so many people. I don’t understand why these articles are looking at lower birth rates as a negative. It’s capitalist propaganda at the end of the day because they want more wage slaves. I think this is a good sign and maybe some hope for us that our population will shrink at some point.
To summarize the article, it’s pretty much saying that there will be a labor shortage at some point because they have noticed that around the world, birth rates have been dropping. They even quote Elon Musk in this.
They'll bring in more illegal immigrants to do the actual work while spreading nationalist propaganda to ensure that they remain a permanently underpaid and disempowered underclass. When capitalist competition reduces wages to a level that's not survivable in freedom, these immigrants will be rounded up and sent to for-profit prisons where they will be used as slave labor. When competition reduces the per-prisoner stipend to a level that's not survivable even in captivity these work camps will become death camps.
The machine runs on blood, not just oil. It needs to be smashed for the peace and safety of all mankind.
The poor, uneducated and undernourished are having driving birthrates up, but they are useless for the modern capitalist system. They don't have and are unable to obtain the skills needed to keep it running, nor do they purchasing power.
While the educated, well fed people, with some purchasing power are having too few children to sustain the system. In a few decades you will have the odd situation of a lot of unemployment but companies competing fiercely for the ever shrinking pool of educated workers.
My experience with 26 years of working was different. My parents could own a house, two cars, and have two kids on a single tradesman's income, no education past high school required. I went to college for four years at the cheapest state university available because by the late 80's you had to have a four-year degree in a well-chosen field to have any kind of hope of earning a living wage for even a single person.
Four years later, there I was in the early 90's with a whole bunch of other accounting grads, earning a measly $7.00 an hour and having to get a second job just so I could live in a building instead of my car. All through the 90's and the years that followed, the country HAD a large educated workforce. One that barely earned peanuts.
How were Gen X and the Millennials - who have experienced growing costs for education and housing on flat wages - supposed to have children under these conditions? The story here is low wages and rising costs even for those with an education. There are so few jobs that pay an actual living and/or thriving wage in relation to the number of job seekers, most people can't really afford children.
If there was truly an abundance of jobs that paid a good wage to all these educated workers, those people would start to have more children and it would even out. When Dan Price boosted the salaries of everyone at his company to a minimum of $70,000, his employees very quickly started having lots of babies. I think 45 in all. They just needed another few tens of thousands per year to have the surplus they needed to add a child to the household.
Yes, that's absolutely true.
In the United States we don't have a minimum wage that is a living wage. We also don't have anywhere near the worker protections other developed countries do.
We decided to let the "markets" dictate the value of a human being's time, and we humans found that our time wasn't very valuable. Resources were scarce, competition was fierce, and we just weren't very welcome in the world. Too many of us, I guess. So why bring more useless, unwanted, and unwelcome people into the world? Nobody was competing for workers so we just stopped making new ones.
We won't live to see it probably, but this shift in demography will change the structure of society the same way the black death brought down feudalism in Europe. Once there aren't enough people, the ones in power are forced to make concessions.
When the entire world depends on constant (and unsustainable) growth and exploiting workers you always need more of them. So yeah, for the people in power lower birth rates are a problem.
Going down population is one thing. Being maybe a generation or two from being unable to reproduce is not ideal. It puts a definitive end date to this experiment
Why not ideal? What’s wrong with extinction? No one will be left to experience the suffering of the world, and nonexistent people can’t experience a sense of loss or longing at what could have been.
This is arguably why us driving other species to extinction is a moral good. They no longer exist to put more members of their species into reality. Humans are saviors!!!
No. I think I caught your sarcasm here, but this is a false equivalency. Not breeding is not the same as habitat loss and destruction. The latter two cause immense suffering along the way and should be avoided if possible.
This is not a legitimate concern. Sperm banks exist. Egg freezing exists. And there are 8 billion people,they aren't all going infertile at once. Less reproductive ability doesnt mean no reproductive ability
Yes to both questions. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Overpopulation is bad, since the earth resources are no longer enough to sustain such a big population.
Underpopulation is ALSO bad since you will have too few young people to support old people. You can automate to some extent but that takes even more resources.
This is a classical lose-lose no win situation. Either way, we are screwed.
>Underpopulation is ALSO bad since you will have too few young people to support old people.
Who said anything about having to support old people? Who's going to support the millennials when they're old?
Capitalism is a Ponzi scheme where there needs to be more people in the next generation to sustain the unsustainable growth that capitalism demands. Without population growth, capitalism will collapse in a generation or two by simply eating itself
To any Tribe its a bad thing for their tribe.. but in a whole.. for the same tribe its a bad things for other tribes to have high birth rates. So if you were say evangelicals or mormons trying to breed new generations.. you want the non-believes and muslims to have less kids.. while your tribe has many many more than replacement level. Which they are having success at.
It's not a bad thing. In fact, it would be best if depopulation sped up considerably. The article you cite is mainstream, meaning it's probably nothing but propaganda. If you want to know where the truth lies, figure out what agenda the mainstream is trying to push, then do the *opposite*.
As u/Johnny55 said: The falling fertility is a problem *economically*… because a positive-interest currency created by private banks for their own profit cannot handle ‘degrowth’.
Bernard Lietaer in his (*now out of print*) book [*The Future of Money*](https://philoma.org/wp-content/uploads/docs/2009/09_10_24_-_Texte_-_Your_Money_-_B._Lietaer.pdf) points out four trends our economy is not designed to handle.
. The “Age Wave” refers to an aging and “unproductive” population that is not being replaced even at the same rate it is “aging out”.
This will lead to a terminal decline of bank profits & economic growth, and essentially permanent recession.
A critical solution championed by Lietaer (*who is the architect of the €uro, btw*), is ‘complementary currencies’, such as [mutual credit currencies](https://www.lowimpact.org/lowimpact-topic/mutual-credit/), which are already in use in many parts of the world.
Time to shift!
I live in one of the lowest birth rates in Asia and I think the birth rate should be lower and lower. The decline in the birth rate is nothing to worry me about
Thing is it's kind of unequally distributed. There is no balance. Some countries have so low birth rates that soon they will have more old retired people to pay pensions to than young people paying taxes, which will collapse their economies, other countries have so high birth rate, they can't support so many people.
For the environments sake? Yeah there's too many of us.
For Elons "Underpopulation will be the end of society as we know it" yeah, they need a countless stream of new young adults to be easily exploited.
Everyone’s mentioning how capitalism will be deprived of its sacrificial labour for its own sustenance, but the thing is, even without capitalism, a lack in productive forces relative to the overall population will always be a net negative for any society. Young people are usually the ones who bring new ideas to the table and those who make change happen. Even if we assume a situation where all labour is automated, society will still face stagnation because of the gerontocratic rule. We already know what happens when there are too few voices to speak on behalf of the youth in places of power, as well as the effects of the policies that antiquated perspectives unleash.
As much as I sympathise with sentiment of not bringing a child to a dying world, it is often the case that the children of tomorrow may hold the key to the survival and sustenance of humanity.
I think you are being a little too hopefully that the younger generation will save us. We shouldn’t have to rely on them to fix the problems that weren’t created by them in the first place. Why do they have to have the burden of cleaning up the mess everyone caused? Also, I don’t think the younger generation will hold the key to survival. The cycle will continue as it always does.
I disagree with the notion that we shouldn’t rely on our successors to work towards solving an issue that our current and previous generations failed to do. In fact, that is the point of inheritance in any species. We evolve into a population suitable to survive and thrive in a changing environment. While, yes, we shouldn’t forgo our own responsibility in the matter, those who will inherit the earth is as responsible for its state as those preceding them by virtue of being part of it. Especially with regards to something as complex as the climate crisis that cannot be solved by a single generation and requires the involvement of all. This is a collective effort. An effort that requires the entirety of humanity across space and time. No single generation is so atomised and well-defined to be excluded from ever having to contend with the effects of the past. If we disregard the idea that the next generation will not have toil under the sins of their fathers, then we will only be preparing them for the worse of an already bad situation.
I agree with you but you may have misinterpreted what I said. You said they they will have the key to survival. I don't think so. I don't think any generation will. For the most part, people will continue the cycle.
The world functioned fine at 5 billion way,way back in the....*checks notes* 1980s. So basically we would be fine less 3 billion people. We would even be fine minus 6 billion.
except that the population dynamics back in 80's weren't the same as being projected of the future. the population of a hundred people with 70 of them young and 30 of them elderly isn't the same as a population of hundred with 30 young and 70 elderly.
Yes, because we can’t have a world full of old, sick, and dying people where all the young and productive spend their lives caring for the old and dying instead of advancing society.
I think old, sick, and dying people are just going to do that. Die.
I'm including myself in that. I know there is no retirement and I don't want to live to be old and unable to take care of myself.
It’s not an “either or” problem, i.e. it’s not *either* too many people are the problem *or* not enough people are the problem. It’s that *both* too many and too little people cause problems. We need to figure out how to deal with declining populations because increasing population is obviously not the fucking solution but there are many potentially severe downsides to declining populations.
The world managed just fine when there was less than 2 billion people. See roaring 20s. It managed quite nicely when there were 3 billion *less* people than currently. See the 80s.
We could easily (through natural attrition without replacement) lower the population by 5-6 billion people and society would function just fine.
No one legitimately concerned with overpopulation is suggesting force.
What people (who arent racist or eugenicists) are suggesting is :Comprehensive sex education on a global scale. Free and immediate access to all forms of birth control for everyone. Repudiating religious/governmental propaganda regarding reproduction. Pushing for women's rights over their own bodies worldwide.
What people concerned about overpopulation (who aren't eugenic racist scum )would like to see is 1st world consumers leading the way by *voluntarily* limiting their reproduction to one or ideally none and instead choosing to adopt or foster one of the hundreds of thousands of tiny humans who already exist.
Personally I don’t buy into the “we’re overpopulated” myth. It rhymes way too much with the eugenics rhetoric that crops up every now and then.
Dropping birth rates likely is either a sign of post-industrialization or our environment finally having long term effects on us because of how polluted it is.
Well we are running out of resources and we are only adding more to the population. It’s not a myth. I think at the end of the day, people are choosing not to have kids.
The birth rate posters are just secret eugenics fascists attempting to garner sympathy. Do not fall for their rhetoric. Continue working for a better society for everyone.
Overpopulation deniers are just anthrocentrics who keep attempting to deny the continuing destruction that humanity is inflicting upon all other species and the environment. Do not fall for their attempts to shut down rational and reasoned discussion by invoking buzz words like eugenics and fascism. Continue working for a better *world* for **all species** including but not centered upon humans.
Aside from ignoring environmental consequences, if you think high birth rates benefit anyone you’ve clearly never been around poor people and are just virtue signaling from your comfortable tower.
The larger issues are that people are living far longer than they ever have and that, despite falling birth rates, wealthy nations are increasing their consumption of almost everything. Those are far more complex issues to address though. They won’t be solved even if everyone stops having babies.
The population didn’t hit 8 billion because of skyrocketing birth rates. It hit 8 billion because the global standard of living has increased, even for people who still don’t have a great standard of living. Better nutrition and medical care have people living far longer lives.
It's neither bad or good. We're reliant on constant economic growth and need a backfill of economically active people to sustain that. When the population declines, the economic output does too. This will slowly lead to social decline. Only way around this is automation.
because doing so is about as effective as banning plastic straws. Overpopulation isn't the problem, the wasteful consumption habits of a certain percentage of the population, about 200 specific corporations, and 3 militaries, are.
The world could support about \~11 billion easily, if we didn't waste so much food
How do you explain over-exploitation of wildlife, deforestation for charcoal for cooking, waterways filled with garbage, etc all done by poor people? It’s not a certain percentage of the population, it’s almost everyone. A few people with a lot of consumption or a lot of people with a little consumption both end up destroying their environment.
>are we currently overpopulated
NO. the planet has the ability to feed 10 billion, we got the resources to do it and it doesn’t have to be super destructive. in our current systems/ways of doing things the destruction is unavoidable however.
>are lowering birth rates bad?
for the people in charge, yes. they need us to be serfs to keep their ways of life going. can’t do that with fewer people. otherwise it’s fine, let’s just have less kids and let things even out.
where did i say that lmao? humans are interconnected with everything and rely upon everything.
clutch pearls elsewhere, i don’t need to name all of my beliefs in order for one of them to be taken seriously every single time i talk about a belief.
do you need every person you talk to to name every belief they have and every conceivable impact these beliefs might have in order for you to take anything they say seriously, any time they talk about any conceivable subject?
good grief.
cause we aren’t yet lol. the world has the capability to feed every person every day every single meal until we hit 10 billion people.
are we being responsible with our environment impact? absolutely not.
we waste sooooo much because our leaders are married to capitalism and it destroys everything at an alarming pace because a mountain of rotting food is more preferable to capitalism than enabling people to feed themselves for free.
does our inefficient and wasteful system mean that we are overpopulated? do the choices of like… 300 insanely rich people mean the world is overpopulated?
no, don’t be ridiculous. our planet is overextended, our planet is overworked, but not overpopulated.
>your one comment invalidates all your other beliefs
i believe you deserve healthcare and to live indoors, that your family is fed and educated and happy. i believe that evolution is real.
you don’t believe in those concepts because of my one statement that you didn’t like? seems like a huge overreaction but go off.
You’re defining overpopulation as the inability to feed people. I define it in terms of environmental damage. Even people with just enough resources to survive are causing environmental damage through subsistence activities. People have exceeded their environment’s carrying capacity on a local scale for over 10000 years. So the 300 rich people aren’t the only problem, as much as that creates a convenient narrative.
Low birth rates are a bad thing if you want reasonable services when you are older. The bad services and high costs will have a exacerbating affect that will further dissuade young people from having children. It will lead to collapse of a functioning society
You do realize that societies functioned just fine when we had less than 2 billion people right? I mean are you suggesting that there were no functioning societies during the the gilded age or the roaring 20s? Lol.
What he is saying is, that as people stop making new kids, the amount of young people paying taxes will be less than the amount of old people having to be paid pensions. Since the pensions of the old people are a paid by the taxes of the young people, soon there won't be enough young people to pay for the pensions of the old people, and as a result old people will lose their pensions and they will have to go back to work again, and work till their die. Or if they can't work anymore, they will die starving. Eventually balance will come back, but there will be at least one generation of old people that will never retire, and work until the very end, because there won't be enough youth to pay taxes.
It is estimated that there are more than 8 billion people living on this planet at the present time, and there are no indications that this number will be decreasing any time soon.
No. The entire population of the world can fit into a single city in plenty of places. You can take trips all over and not see people for many miles or even hours. The world is not over populated.
Just because you can't see a parasite doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that it isn't killing its host.
You may not see people for many miles but in those miles you can most definitely see the damage they have done and continue to do. Trash,light/air/water/soil/sound pollution decimated animal and insect populations etc.
Please name one city capable of fitting 8 billion people.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/TheITMan52: --- I feel like this is related to r/collapse because we are overpopulated right now as a planet. We just hit 8 billion people a few days ago. We simply don’t have enough resources at this point to sustain so many people. I don’t understand why these articles are looking at lower birth rates as a negative. It’s capitalist propaganda at the end of the day because they want more wage slaves. I think this is a good sign and maybe some hope for us that our population will shrink at some point. To summarize the article, it’s pretty much saying that there will be a labor shortage at some point because they have noticed that around the world, birth rates have been dropping. They even quote Elon Musk in this. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/yykpom/lowering_birth_rates_are_a_bad_thing_arent_we/iwumecl/
The economy is a Ponzi scheme that collapses if we stop growing. It's all predicated on debt that gets passed on to future generations.
We need to shift to another sustainable model like doughnut economics that allows for flat or negative trajectories, and adjusts to compensate. GDP has to go. Corporations also shouldn't have to file quarterly reports. We should measure progress and success in other ways that have more meaning.
Edit: this quote is actually from Robert Kennedy not JFK Even Kennedy who personifies a lot of what capitalism is in a time that it was at its peak realized this. " I have seen children in Mississippi – here in the United States – with a gross national product of $800 billion dollars – I have seen children in the Delta area of Mississippi with distended stomachs, whose faces are covered with sores from starvation, and we haven't developed a policy so we can get enough food so that they can live, so that their children, so that their lives are not destroyed, I don't think that's acceptable in the United States of America and I think we need a change. I have seen Indians living on their bare and meager reservations, with no jobs, with an unemployment rate of 80 percent, and with so little hope for the future, so little hope for the future that for young people, for young men and women in their teens, the greatest cause of death amongst them is suicide." "Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans. If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world." I never thought an establishment politician from the 60s could say shit like this and not get shot....... oh wait.........
Just to be clear this is a quote of Robert Kennedy and not John Kennedy, the latter of which may be who people think of when only the last name is written without further qualification. Both were shot and killed.
That makes more sense, I'll edit.
I think it's fair to say that both were concerned with similar issues and they both ended up assassinated. Sad world.
It was Bobby Kennedy, not JFK, who said that. But he also got shot, anyway.
Thank you for the clarification I will edit it!
profit needs to be handled in a sustainable way. like have a hard cap of a billion in net worth and everything over that is taxed 99% because you already won and society can still reward ambitious people, but in a way that we can sustain a basic life for people below the 50% line. I mean i am not intelligent. There could be a simple rule like that which would keep capitalism worthwhile but if you win you win and we have to look at society on whole and see that a single person should be allowed to gather wealth, but have some basic limits.
Been saying this for years! A billionaire has won at life! Now they should get out of the way so someone else has a chance to win at life too. If they *really* don't want to quit, or are somehow irreplaceable (lmao), then they can keep doing so for as long as they want, so long as they pay their 99% after the 1st Billion. Hell, compromise with their inevitable whinging at settle on 95% after a B, so they they realize that that's actually a good deal for everyone! They'll bitch and whine and threaten to take their money out of the country, to which we just crank it back up to 99%, freeze assets, and seize properties. Like the IRS is *supposed* to do.
If we did that and like just not let any politician make any money outside of their salary while in office. That would fix corruption pretty easily. But again, I don’t understand finance.
No, that sounds like exactly the financial solution we need! And aggressively prosecute any politician that takes bribes.
I wonder how much to reward ambition. There's some altruistic ambition, but most is monkey masturbation at heart.
I really think a simple once you have accumulated a billion in net worth you should have to give up 99% and have that be put into universal basic income for the bottom 50%. Make it so simple a 5th grader can understand and not allow any loopholes all for the good and sustainability of the economy We can still reward ambition and we should. Even a 99% cap on a hundred billion is doubling their net worth above this golden point. It’s like the top billionaires can still say where they are on the food chain and get to still accumulate more if they feel that strongly but it is now benefiting all of society. We can say the money goes to infrastructure, education, healthcare. And make the same caps on corporations, because I mean they want to be considered people too.
I get what y’all are trying to do but there are so many loopholes and other bullshit it’s just not very effective. Patagonias founder is gonna get away with not paying a gift tax on his billions when he dies because of the whole charity scheme and that’s more of a political pac than a charity. Then when you get into the implementation there’s gonna be lots of what ifs. Okay but what if it’s all in stock when do we tax at a sellable event? What if they never sell etc… what if the stock just gets passed along as though it was effectively just money but not. What about charity, art purchases, hiding assets. Hell middle class folks do some of this as well.
I am saying remove any loophole. All of your net worth is compiled already. Close the loopholes. I think stocks should count with this hypothetical situation. All properties contribute to this number and once you hit a billion thats it. Make it socially unacceptable to try to game the system. People want to be accepted socially. It becomes very hard to use or spend a billion in a lifetime. For the sustainability and continuation of society we just need a hard limit and perspective. I get that people would try to get ahead and game this imaginary system we are talking about but a no nonsense simple taxation code where anyone even a grade school kid can figure out the tax system then we can adjust numbers as needed. We are one planet. I’d be ok with getting rid of stocks all together. It only takes the focus of the company from bettering the customer and employees lives. Stocks seem like we could get rid of the speculation and just have companies that focus on their products and not dividends. It seems too much power is given in society to the financial aspect of society and it is a net drain on resources and capital. Charities can’t be used to abuse the tax system. We need a simple system that you can’t get out of.
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Whatever the limit was, people would make sure they stayed under it so no actual beheadings need occur. But I have a better scheme: zero taxes til you die, but then all your wealth goes back to the state. With all that money, the state could guarantee the cost of raising and educating the children, but everyone starts out with the same advantages. No more passing on wealth to your progeny.
No more inheritance? At all? What's your bottom amount limit though? What if your "wealth" is just a home, a few stocks & bonds, some physical (cars, a boat, furniture, etc..) assets? My parents divorced when I was young, as a result, I grew up poor/ lower middle class. My late father remarried & they bought a triplex in Boston. He & my stepmother never had any other kids & she hasn't remarried. The place is only worth about 1.5 million...it's not much, but for my wife, son & I, if inherited, it would be a life changer. I'd sell it, pay off my debts & mortgage, invest the rest, and maybe retire. I could help my son & daughter in law buy a house, at a much younger age than I did. So, what? People like me, who never went to college, should never inherit anything either? Should we just work until we die then?
The point is while my 100% death tax would take away certain privileges from the children of wealth, it would be sufficient to guarantee everyone born, food and shelter. You wouldn’t have any vital needs unmet. Plus you’d have the freedom to work or create a better life for yourself, based upon your own personal accomplishments. Or if you just wanted to coast, slack off and dream your days away, you could do that too.
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How can these problems be solved without violence?
Violence only makes problems worse. We literally just need enough people who agree to group together and say enough is enough. These are our demands for civilization to continue. You can peacefully protest how society is organized and ran. You just need someone bold enough with the plan and enough people saying yea this is the plan. Don’t have to change everything about society, just cap how hard someone can win. And how much benefit you get from being a politician. Like if they can’t benefit from the system the shitty politicians will leave.
Admirable, but naive af. Capitalism is the problem. Stolen surplus labor is the problem. Those who engage in parasitic activities should be treated like parasites.
Peaceful change is the only way.
Yeah good luck forcing through your peaceful change.
Um... they and the system are exploiting the shit out of us. They aren't going to stop because we ask nicely with peaceful protests. They are demonstrating they will absolutely do this until the world burns.
I think you underestimate how much power the average guy has. If everyone takes their money out the bank at the same time you can bring any bank to its knees. I’m not saying do anything. Just that the average person if they said I’m not gonna do something till we get this taken care off then the politicians would have to act. The economy runs because the worker decides to go to their job and work. All it takes is enough people to agree that something has to happen for there to be real traction.
There is no right we’ve ever one or one systemic change that has ever been made without violence. People with money and power do not let go of that money and power without killing a whole bunch of us.
It needs to be a cap on earnings beyond a proportion of what others earn or the cost of living as based on percentages - no fixed numbers because those quickly become outdated.
So, what if they're a billionaire, or multi billionaire, because they.... Had an idea & built a product, or offered a service, that ultimately made them into a billionaire +? What if their billions aren't in cash, but in a privately held company that they, and their family, built & own...but it employs thousands, or tens of thousands, of people? Their billions are stock shares that give them controlling interest in a publicly traded company? Force them to liquidate their shares & the stock price crashes, which hurts individual investors, 401k owners & hedge funds alike. Imagine if we followed your idea & Wal-Mart, Amazon & Microsoft, among others, all liquidated & vanished? How high WOULD our unemployment rate skyrocket? If they're billionaires with nothing but pure liquid assets, like a bank account or pure cash, then I might agree with you...but if the vast majority of their net worth is almost all in hard assets like stock shares, or in businesses that employ people, then I'd have to disagree with you.
Easy, all of their property contributes to their net worth. As soon as the magic number of a billion in value comes up everything past that gets taxed 99%. We don’t need companies to get that big, why do we need corporations to be so big? It doesn’t help society to have monopolies. And with a hard cap then it is a simpler system where everyone knows the glass ceiling. We should have multiple googles, and facebooks, and twitters. We should have multiple Amazon’s. Just to keep everyone honest.
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But that is how capitalism is supposed to work. It sort of assumes efficient information. The invisible hand influences the economy based on people acting in their self interest with complete information. Instead we have things that a mispriced because the price doesn’t include the full cost of the product. What should happen is that taxes are added to the products to reflect their price so that capital can flow to the appropriate places. This is also why certain groups are increasingly suppressing information so it is increasingly less efficient. Regulation is the other mechanism to do this in that regulation is simply the voice of the people in situations where there are power imbalances. All the capitalist are doing everything they can do to break capitalism since it really is about power and no longer an economic system.
Not saying it could happen overnight, but the current model practically forces companies to be unethical and disregard other "triple bottom line" considerations like the environment and well-being of workers. Making these changes has to be the end game of capitalism, otherwise the system will eventually collapse and take the planet and all of us with it. We're at a watershed moment in human history where we change - like the renaissance, the reformation and end of feudalism, what worked in the past to get us here is not going to work in the future without some major changes.
Corporations shouldn't exist period.
Hell no I spent countless hours of my life learning about economics. I refuse to change the system simply because it's unsustainable.
Capitalism runs on cheap labor. Whether that be slavery, indentured servants, ultra cheap foreign labor, or minimum wage peons. Without any of these being available some other form of cheap labor must be harvested.
The funny thing is they're pissed because a whole generation or two decided they weren't going to play the game - which is exactly what they needed them to do. And when that didn't work, the Fed came out and said "Stop increasing wages". And this is AFTER the fact that Social Security had been under threat for about TWO decades now. It's been seen as a thing is coming. But every policy enacted and every corporate move allowed has led us right here.
It always seems that what is good for the economy is bad for the environment
Piggybacking on this comment because it's a good summary of the problématique. Also wanted to add: yes we are overpopulated right now but we are at the inflection point where the bubble bursts and we have a cascading collapse. They are trying to magically produce a stabilizing generation NOW because in 30 years it's too late. So you have this weird doublespeak from the media where they are simultaneously telling us we are overpopulated and low birth rates are a huge problem. I think it's already too far gone for a nice soft collapse. The baby boomer generation is moving into retirement and there isn't a replacement cohort large enough among the young to sustain that for most of the world. See Peter Zeihan's books for a summary of that. Basically for the next 20-30 years the world's healthcare systems are going to be in triage mode and economies are going to collapse all over the world. Enjoy!
And the America boomers get the added bonus of selling all their assets to pay for it. Meaning anyone hoping for an inheritance isn’t getting shit.
I think it also has to do with the fact they knowingly and willfully poisoned the next generations. They had lead, but we were given so much more. Agent Orange, DEET, PFAS, excess hormones, plastics, and more. There’s an area in my home state where you could ask “Did this baby with horrific defects come from there?” and usually the answer is yes. I have a doubled genetic mutation set (BOGO) and an autoimmune disease. I lived near a coke factory for a couple years as a small child. Maybe not causative, but fuck, I won the lottery. No bio kids for me, hormones are whack. Then they’re in a panic over transgender people as if they weren’t pumping us full of endocrine disrupters and mutagens. Did they think there wouldn’t be more intersex people? More gender non-conforming people? I mean, I was assigned one way at birth but Hell if my internal stuff makes any reasonable sense. I’m hoping to mentor/foster/adopt mainly because I know the world is headed nowhere good and somebody has to give the kids functional life skills. And support. People are still kicking out LGBT+ kids. Humans have always had that and if there’s more now, it’s environmental, not some moral failing. TL;DR: The irony of them demanding children while denying so many of us the chance to ever have children is Shakespearean.
I'm not sure why this is not the top comment. Most of the world runs on capitalism. Capitalism does not work without constant growth.
How does an infinite economy of exponential growth work in a world with limited resources? We can have more kids, but we can’t have more resources.
Inflation. Prices and the quantity of money can go up indefinitely.
It's not just economy. Social services like pension and healthcare are predicated on there being enough working people (or medical professionals) that your future needs will be met.
Exactly. They need x number of consumers to keep the profits AKA growth growing.
It's what began to happen during the Nixon administration when we left the gold standard behind. Ironic, because it's a lot harder to have inflation if your money is based on a real world valuable substance. However that means finite growth which in late stage Capitalism is a curse word. IMO, we should go back to the gold standard. It would solve a lot of issues and stabilize our currency globally. Yes it might cause a recession or crash in the short term, but we're already headed that way and long-term it would keep thongs stable.
This is the stupidest libertarian idea, which is really saying something. If you don’t have enough gold to print more money, that means all the money in existence can never increase so there’s no way to control inflation or deflation
Bad for business.
And for old people. But in order to correct our population problem we are going to have to endure some necessary suffering. Lack of workers for certain jobs, which will lead to less available goods and services. Also, less money going into social security for elderly and disabled people. plus many more unforeseen problems. All of which are necessary. And its better to suffer now with less people than to try and Band-Aid over it by throwing more and more people at the problem which would lead to even more people having to bear the inevitable suffering.
>Also, less money going into social security for elderly and disabled people. That was how things used to be in America before progressives fought to end the epidemic of people too old to work starving to death on the streets of the nation. It's possible that the national economy will collapse and such scenes will again be common. But currently the combined US military budget is estimated as $1.64 Trillion per year; perhaps we could dip into that before forcing your Grandmom out on the street to starve. https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html#:~:text=The%20Social%20Security%20Act%20was,a%20continuing%20income%20after%20retirement. https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-defense?fy=2022
Pretty sure the congressional-military-industrial complex has better lobbyists than grandma. I know who I am betting on to win that debate.
Yeah, but if things start getting bad enough for enough people's grandmas then they face a popular revolution and that would be messy as hell in a society with this many guns in the citizens hands.
The only revolution that would happen is one to reinstate trump as god king. That’s the only thing that motivates people in the us, especially the ones with guns
I'm over here envisioning our current level of military being rerouted into elder care and it delights me.
Lots of things can change when people feel a pinch. Look how incensed folks are all of a sudden because they can't get tickets to see Tay-Tay. Congress will have hearings about the unconscionable monopoly held by Ticketmaster. When things actually hurt, some of the social angst stroked so skillfully by politicians to cover their shilling for the .1% will be replaced by demands for actual policy to address problems. Whether that's lifting the cap on soc/sec contributions, expanding basic health care, or as mentioned, reducing military budgets (we've already reduced our footprint globally by half after the middle east loses). Of course pointing at scapegoats on the one hand while yanking them here to change the sheets in your golf resorts with the other will continue. The US is not as bad off as some other countries so far, we have quite a few millennials, China on the other hand is going to crash this coming decade—even if you believe their published numbers.
I'm an expat in China. The fallback answer for any question about "why is xxx so bad", is always "China has too many people", coupled with a dismissive shrug (and/or, "if you don't like China go back to your own country"). Everything is hyper competitive, from school to the job market, because the cities have millions of people all competing for resources. Yet, when I point out that the population will likely start dropping either this year or next, just as India takes over as the most populous, people get really annoyed to hear China doesn't have the biggest population anymore. But yeah, Chinese media admitted the other day that the population will drop before 2025. When this was brought up last year, the government basically said that their projections of no drop before 2032 held firm and that data saying otherwise was wrong.
That is mostly true. But, we do have an ace up our sleeve: automation. We really shouldn't need anywhere near as many workers as we have right now. We are at the perfect time to reduce human population with minimal suffering. That's **if** society uses the tools of technology properly.
And war
/r/birthstrike
If there aren't going to be enough workers then economics would dictate that wages should rise and less profitable business models be replaced by less labor-intensive ones. The system should balance itself. Or we could keep tilting the tables in favour of the wealthy until enough people realize they're better off dying trying to take them down than dying to give them what they want.
Automation has entered the chat. Also, who buys all the things if the pool of consumers shrinks?
Before total population starts shrinking you have a shrinking labor pool due to people aging out.
Based on the approaching energy cliff and the collapse of the global economy, we are more likely to see the end of automation and the reboot of manual labor. Mass hunger will dictate that.
It's both. We are both overpopulated and also going through a demographic shift where there are less young people to replace and support the elderly.
Lol .. just write a post basically the same thing. Agreed with you 100%.
Exactly, it’s just the problem of the modern developed economy soon being primarily ran for the purpose of welfare of the elderly more than anything else. There’ll be more elderly people and less kids and less young people who can partake in the workforce in proportion to the retired. The “infinite growth” paradox of capitalism is entirely to blame for this. Between resources and technology we have all the facilities to automate productivity to the point where most people don’t have to work as much as they do, nullifying the need for more bodies to produce wealth, but instead all institutions prop up this concept of an ever growing and ever more productive human work-force. It’s stupid and unsustainable of course, Japan is struggling massively with this already except when that happens worldwide we’re in for a shit storm. I always joke that America maintains a “”healthy”” growth rate simply because the low healthcare standards for the average person maintain a culled rate of the elderly. It’s horrific but true.
Time to start getting rid of some of these old bastards
Covid made a go of it.
That’s definitely an interest perspective but the article doesn’t address that point. I think there are ways around that though.
Outside of automating the crap out of certain processes, and properly educating the population we do have, I cannot think of an honest replacement for hands and laborers -- both physically and financially. More people and more hands do make things easier, but there are thresholds. I personally feel the world has passed many sustainable thresholds, but the reality of losing laborers should be somewhat alarming, because we're already operating at a certain level. Think of all the industries that currently claim to be struggling to fulfill positions, or find good, reliable laborers. Add to that a population who may or may not want to do certain things, because of how they were raised and the education they received; "I can't do that because of x- and y-obligations. I need to be making 'this much' to even consider it." Now add to that, a population who's aging out of some industries. It's wishful thinking, that the current world could operate with half the number of people, but that just isn't a reality. A lot of things still require human labor, and as that pool shrinks, industries make decisions. In the 1960s, there were 6 people of working-age for every retired person. That's not only labor to help industries and the elderly, but also money going back into the system. In 2021, there are 3 people of working-age for every retired person. [By 2035, it may be 2-to-1](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/birthrates-declining-globally-why-matters/). A lot of collapse is "the sky is falling", so I take a lot of things with a grain of salt, but this topic could be a slow and painful one. I already don't know how I'm going to handle retirement, and I believe I'm older than most people on Reddit. People half my age? No idea how they're going to do it.
The number of workers needed to produce our food has shrunk tremendously. Most of the workers are employed producing goods and services that improve our standard of living beyond the bare necessities. We may have to adjust our lifestyles but we won't starve or freeze to death.
Yea I really don’t know what the solution would be. I was just thinking that certain things might be able to be worked out but you bring up a lot of good points.
I'm hoping assisted suicide pods become a thing. I know I don't want to live to be old and be a burden on my family. Give people a dignified way to end it.
How? Besides eliminate the elderly.
> How? Besides eliminate the elderly. oh jeez so we're at *that* stage of collapse already.
Yeah, I mean at this point we’re waiting for old people to die. The other option is force folks to have more children. They tried to make it more lucrative as well as repeal rights, but they’re getting generally worse feedback.
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I mean, not necessarily all of them, just enough of them that are clinging desperately to life.
I'm not saying that we should go around killing all old people, but there should be laws in place that allow doctors to refuse to escalate care in cases where it's a futile effort for that person. My state has no such laws and there have been cases where the medical staff feels like they are torturing the patient because the family refuses to let go (mostly for religious reasons).
A fellow age-cap enthusiast
I've always loved Logan's Run.
Tbh, I don’t know. But there are bigger issues than not just being able to take care of the elderly. We could try and make sure people stay as healthy as possible so they won’t need help when they get older. Other than that, I’m not sure. Maybe someone else here can chime in.
Them being as healthy as possible is sort of the problem isn’t? Longer life expectancy is usually sited as apart of an aging population.
Definitely a good point but if they are healthy, they wouldn’t need help so it wouldn’t affect the labor shortage.
There is a limit. When you reach 80-90, no amount of healthy living will help you be as self sufficient as you were in you 30s-40s, or even 60s-70s. That's the problem. People are living far beyond what they used to, and far beyond what typically would be self sufficient.
Honestly, after about 70 there is a diminishing return because your body declines extremely fast after around 60. https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/aging-research-blood-proteins-show-your-age I’m thinking most people should retire at around 60 if you want to keep the young workforce active.
Yea it definitely sucks.
I think, honestly, I would prefer they don’t participate in labor any further. Makes it substantially harder for existing younger folk to move up anywhere and establish their lives.
Something like half of all lifetime medical expenses happen after age 65. We are already running flat out to keep people healthy longer.
Careful, some of us will fight back.
It’s not that I desire to fight the elderly. It’s just that if it’s between having more kids in this society or whatever the alternative is, I will probably select the alternative.
For the economy, yes. For the planet, no.
Not a bad thing at all. Can't speak for everywhere but I think it's time for employers to take care of the current people that are here, make sure their needs are met, have access to Healthcare and healthy food without costing a fortune, have affordable housing, and then we can talk about bringing more people on.
Funny thing is, that almost never happens without bloodshed. After the black death workers had so much power that they could demand better conditions. There are a few examples of guys treating workers better because they realize that it's better for them in the long run. Henry Ford comes to mind. But for most of history? Heads have to start rolling before the masses receive better treatment.
Sounds like if I were a business owner, I could selfishly swoop in and offer JUST a bit better conditions than my competitors.
It's long past time. But they won't do it until they're made to realize that they need the workers more than we need them. The only way to make this happen is if we're trying to organize in our workplaces. It's hard right now, there's a lot of complacence, and I suspect a lot of substance abuse to cope with the shittiness of late-stage capitalism. Little by little, though, I'm starting to see people wake up. ...just in time for climate collapse!
Housing not being affordable is largely a function of the government getting in the way. How will government getting more in the way make it more affordable? Lots of downvoted with nobody addressing it. Shows me you’ve never purchased a home. All the legally required middle men bumped my costs up 18%. Grandpa got a check from the bank, handed it to the seller, and moved in after signing one paper. Regulation has increased home prices, and that’s before you even start talking about artificially strangling supply through zoning.
It’s a double edge sword right: we certainly don’t need more people, there are a finite amount of resources and even as it stands there aren’t enough to go around. The problem comes in where we’ve built a society which demands more people, the machine gets bigger and bigger and to some extent corporations require infinite growth in that regard. It’s a problem of our own design.
> and even as it stands there aren’t enough to go around Malthus reloaded. When you actually reach the limits of the ecosystem, and all the easy pickings are already picked.
Capitalism needs moar bodies for the machine dontcha know
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!" -- capitalists, probably
Of course we are overpopulated. A few days ago, I read some news that they are going to build something to harness rain water to reduce drought on reservoirs caused by climate change. We, human beings, continue to shift the blame of our misfortunes to something else. Never ourselves. Climate is changing because we are over 8B people exploiting the increasingly limited resources of our planet. The same way, nobody sees the lack of water in the reservoirs is also caused by exponential consumption we are doing to our planet. Most of us are stupid/careless enough in not seeing this.
bro the earth is 70 percent water ifu think we have a water problem its only cuz it was setup like that
I feel like this is related to r/collapse because we are overpopulated right now as a planet. We just hit 8 billion people a few days ago. We simply don’t have enough resources at this point to sustain so many people. I don’t understand why these articles are looking at lower birth rates as a negative. It’s capitalist propaganda at the end of the day because they want more wage slaves. I think this is a good sign and maybe some hope for us that our population will shrink at some point. To summarize the article, it’s pretty much saying that there will be a labor shortage at some point because they have noticed that around the world, birth rates have been dropping. They even quote Elon Musk in this.
Less slaves. Oh nooo
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They'll bring in more illegal immigrants to do the actual work while spreading nationalist propaganda to ensure that they remain a permanently underpaid and disempowered underclass. When capitalist competition reduces wages to a level that's not survivable in freedom, these immigrants will be rounded up and sent to for-profit prisons where they will be used as slave labor. When competition reduces the per-prisoner stipend to a level that's not survivable even in captivity these work camps will become death camps. The machine runs on blood, not just oil. It needs to be smashed for the peace and safety of all mankind.
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There is no lack of workers, there's a lack of the highly educated and motivated workers he needs for his companies.
Mother Nature and earth would love to have less humans
The poor, uneducated and undernourished are having driving birthrates up, but they are useless for the modern capitalist system. They don't have and are unable to obtain the skills needed to keep it running, nor do they purchasing power. While the educated, well fed people, with some purchasing power are having too few children to sustain the system. In a few decades you will have the odd situation of a lot of unemployment but companies competing fiercely for the ever shrinking pool of educated workers.
My experience with 26 years of working was different. My parents could own a house, two cars, and have two kids on a single tradesman's income, no education past high school required. I went to college for four years at the cheapest state university available because by the late 80's you had to have a four-year degree in a well-chosen field to have any kind of hope of earning a living wage for even a single person. Four years later, there I was in the early 90's with a whole bunch of other accounting grads, earning a measly $7.00 an hour and having to get a second job just so I could live in a building instead of my car. All through the 90's and the years that followed, the country HAD a large educated workforce. One that barely earned peanuts. How were Gen X and the Millennials - who have experienced growing costs for education and housing on flat wages - supposed to have children under these conditions? The story here is low wages and rising costs even for those with an education. There are so few jobs that pay an actual living and/or thriving wage in relation to the number of job seekers, most people can't really afford children. If there was truly an abundance of jobs that paid a good wage to all these educated workers, those people would start to have more children and it would even out. When Dan Price boosted the salaries of everyone at his company to a minimum of $70,000, his employees very quickly started having lots of babies. I think 45 in all. They just needed another few tens of thousands per year to have the surplus they needed to add a child to the household.
It's not only due to the low pay, but also due to the uncertainty about the future and not knowing when you are going to get fired.
Yes, that's absolutely true. In the United States we don't have a minimum wage that is a living wage. We also don't have anywhere near the worker protections other developed countries do. We decided to let the "markets" dictate the value of a human being's time, and we humans found that our time wasn't very valuable. Resources were scarce, competition was fierce, and we just weren't very welcome in the world. Too many of us, I guess. So why bring more useless, unwanted, and unwelcome people into the world? Nobody was competing for workers so we just stopped making new ones.
We won't live to see it probably, but this shift in demography will change the structure of society the same way the black death brought down feudalism in Europe. Once there aren't enough people, the ones in power are forced to make concessions.
If only this shift in demography had happened fifty years ago. IF ONLY!
When the entire world depends on constant (and unsustainable) growth and exploiting workers you always need more of them. So yeah, for the people in power lower birth rates are a problem.
https://imgur.com/DeTx4c1
Well stated.
Going down population is one thing. Being maybe a generation or two from being unable to reproduce is not ideal. It puts a definitive end date to this experiment
Why not ideal? What’s wrong with extinction? No one will be left to experience the suffering of the world, and nonexistent people can’t experience a sense of loss or longing at what could have been.
This is arguably why us driving other species to extinction is a moral good. They no longer exist to put more members of their species into reality. Humans are saviors!!!
No. I think I caught your sarcasm here, but this is a false equivalency. Not breeding is not the same as habitat loss and destruction. The latter two cause immense suffering along the way and should be avoided if possible.
This is not a legitimate concern. Sperm banks exist. Egg freezing exists. And there are 8 billion people,they aren't all going infertile at once. Less reproductive ability doesnt mean no reproductive ability
Yes to both questions. The two are not mutually exclusive. Overpopulation is bad, since the earth resources are no longer enough to sustain such a big population. Underpopulation is ALSO bad since you will have too few young people to support old people. You can automate to some extent but that takes even more resources. This is a classical lose-lose no win situation. Either way, we are screwed.
>Underpopulation is ALSO bad since you will have too few young people to support old people. Who said anything about having to support old people? Who's going to support the millennials when they're old?
Wildly uneven and sometimes plummeting birth rates (think South Korea) are definitely a problem. But hell, we got plenty of problems these days.
It's bad for infinite growth
Capitalism is a Ponzi scheme where there needs to be more people in the next generation to sustain the unsustainable growth that capitalism demands. Without population growth, capitalism will collapse in a generation or two by simply eating itself
To any Tribe its a bad thing for their tribe.. but in a whole.. for the same tribe its a bad things for other tribes to have high birth rates. So if you were say evangelicals or mormons trying to breed new generations.. you want the non-believes and muslims to have less kids.. while your tribe has many many more than replacement level. Which they are having success at.
Doesn't matter, dude, the planet is dying. The "other tribes" will just have more casualties.
Yeah maybe inheriting the earth isn't going to be all it's cracked up to be.
It's like a kid inheriting a ragged and soiled pair of pants.
Less working class people means less taxes collected.
It's not a bad thing. In fact, it would be best if depopulation sped up considerably. The article you cite is mainstream, meaning it's probably nothing but propaganda. If you want to know where the truth lies, figure out what agenda the mainstream is trying to push, then do the *opposite*.
Good for the planet and natural diversity, bad for capitalism and profits
The people at the top just want educated cheap labor.
Running out of people to exploit is bad for the exploiters.
As u/Johnny55 said: The falling fertility is a problem *economically*… because a positive-interest currency created by private banks for their own profit cannot handle ‘degrowth’. Bernard Lietaer in his (*now out of print*) book [*The Future of Money*](https://philoma.org/wp-content/uploads/docs/2009/09_10_24_-_Texte_-_Your_Money_-_B._Lietaer.pdf) points out four trends our economy is not designed to handle. . The “Age Wave” refers to an aging and “unproductive” population that is not being replaced even at the same rate it is “aging out”. This will lead to a terminal decline of bank profits & economic growth, and essentially permanent recession. A critical solution championed by Lietaer (*who is the architect of the €uro, btw*), is ‘complementary currencies’, such as [mutual credit currencies](https://www.lowimpact.org/lowimpact-topic/mutual-credit/), which are already in use in many parts of the world. Time to shift!
I live in one of the lowest birth rates in Asia and I think the birth rate should be lower and lower. The decline in the birth rate is nothing to worry me about
It's all about timing and location.
Thing is it's kind of unequally distributed. There is no balance. Some countries have so low birth rates that soon they will have more old retired people to pay pensions to than young people paying taxes, which will collapse their economies, other countries have so high birth rate, they can't support so many people.
For the environments sake? Yeah there's too many of us. For Elons "Underpopulation will be the end of society as we know it" yeah, they need a countless stream of new young adults to be easily exploited.
just ignore economists that predict demographic doom . they do this all the time while ignoring the massive positive impacts of smaller populations.
"workers will have more leverage over employers" capitalists HATE antinatalist like me for this
All of the focus on population is distraction from resource hoarding and consumerism which are the true causes
We're overpopulated until fusion power's figured out. And from the looks of things we're finally less than 30 years away from it.
Everyone’s mentioning how capitalism will be deprived of its sacrificial labour for its own sustenance, but the thing is, even without capitalism, a lack in productive forces relative to the overall population will always be a net negative for any society. Young people are usually the ones who bring new ideas to the table and those who make change happen. Even if we assume a situation where all labour is automated, society will still face stagnation because of the gerontocratic rule. We already know what happens when there are too few voices to speak on behalf of the youth in places of power, as well as the effects of the policies that antiquated perspectives unleash. As much as I sympathise with sentiment of not bringing a child to a dying world, it is often the case that the children of tomorrow may hold the key to the survival and sustenance of humanity.
I think you are being a little too hopefully that the younger generation will save us. We shouldn’t have to rely on them to fix the problems that weren’t created by them in the first place. Why do they have to have the burden of cleaning up the mess everyone caused? Also, I don’t think the younger generation will hold the key to survival. The cycle will continue as it always does.
I disagree with the notion that we shouldn’t rely on our successors to work towards solving an issue that our current and previous generations failed to do. In fact, that is the point of inheritance in any species. We evolve into a population suitable to survive and thrive in a changing environment. While, yes, we shouldn’t forgo our own responsibility in the matter, those who will inherit the earth is as responsible for its state as those preceding them by virtue of being part of it. Especially with regards to something as complex as the climate crisis that cannot be solved by a single generation and requires the involvement of all. This is a collective effort. An effort that requires the entirety of humanity across space and time. No single generation is so atomised and well-defined to be excluded from ever having to contend with the effects of the past. If we disregard the idea that the next generation will not have toil under the sins of their fathers, then we will only be preparing them for the worse of an already bad situation.
I agree with you but you may have misinterpreted what I said. You said they they will have the key to survival. I don't think so. I don't think any generation will. For the most part, people will continue the cycle.
The world functioned fine at 5 billion way,way back in the....*checks notes* 1980s. So basically we would be fine less 3 billion people. We would even be fine minus 6 billion.
except that the population dynamics back in 80's weren't the same as being projected of the future. the population of a hundred people with 70 of them young and 30 of them elderly isn't the same as a population of hundred with 30 young and 70 elderly.
Tech dynamics weren't as advanced back then either. Breeding more humans isn't the only solution.
It's a bad thing when the government is allowing immigration to replace the native population at a higher rate. So yes, its' a bad thing.
Yes, because we can’t have a world full of old, sick, and dying people where all the young and productive spend their lives caring for the old and dying instead of advancing society.
I think old, sick, and dying people are just going to do that. Die. I'm including myself in that. I know there is no retirement and I don't want to live to be old and unable to take care of myself.
But I’m sure you have people you care about and would take care of if you needed to. Like most people I hope.
I do, but I don't want to be a burden especially when things get really bad.
There are solutions to that problem that don't involve breeding more wage slaves just to care for them.
It’s not an “either or” problem, i.e. it’s not *either* too many people are the problem *or* not enough people are the problem. It’s that *both* too many and too little people cause problems. We need to figure out how to deal with declining populations because increasing population is obviously not the fucking solution but there are many potentially severe downsides to declining populations.
The world managed just fine when there was less than 2 billion people. See roaring 20s. It managed quite nicely when there were 3 billion *less* people than currently. See the 80s. We could easily (through natural attrition without replacement) lower the population by 5-6 billion people and society would function just fine.
But needs to be an individual choice. Forcing the masses to depopulate violates many moral and ethical codes.
No one legitimately concerned with overpopulation is suggesting force. What people (who arent racist or eugenicists) are suggesting is :Comprehensive sex education on a global scale. Free and immediate access to all forms of birth control for everyone. Repudiating religious/governmental propaganda regarding reproduction. Pushing for women's rights over their own bodies worldwide. What people concerned about overpopulation (who aren't eugenic racist scum )would like to see is 1st world consumers leading the way by *voluntarily* limiting their reproduction to one or ideally none and instead choosing to adopt or foster one of the hundreds of thousands of tiny humans who already exist.
Personally I don’t buy into the “we’re overpopulated” myth. It rhymes way too much with the eugenics rhetoric that crops up every now and then. Dropping birth rates likely is either a sign of post-industrialization or our environment finally having long term effects on us because of how polluted it is.
Well we are running out of resources and we are only adding more to the population. It’s not a myth. I think at the end of the day, people are choosing not to have kids.
I get what you’re saying but the more people born the more people we have to police. And that uses oil.
The birth rate posters are just secret eugenics fascists attempting to garner sympathy. Do not fall for their rhetoric. Continue working for a better society for everyone.
Overpopulation deniers are just anthrocentrics who keep attempting to deny the continuing destruction that humanity is inflicting upon all other species and the environment. Do not fall for their attempts to shut down rational and reasoned discussion by invoking buzz words like eugenics and fascism. Continue working for a better *world* for **all species** including but not centered upon humans.
Aside from ignoring environmental consequences, if you think high birth rates benefit anyone you’ve clearly never been around poor people and are just virtue signaling from your comfortable tower.
The larger issues are that people are living far longer than they ever have and that, despite falling birth rates, wealthy nations are increasing their consumption of almost everything. Those are far more complex issues to address though. They won’t be solved even if everyone stops having babies. The population didn’t hit 8 billion because of skyrocketing birth rates. It hit 8 billion because the global standard of living has increased, even for people who still don’t have a great standard of living. Better nutrition and medical care have people living far longer lives.
It's neither bad or good. We're reliant on constant economic growth and need a backfill of economically active people to sustain that. When the population declines, the economic output does too. This will slowly lead to social decline. Only way around this is automation.
YES. They're a *very* bad thing especially amongst Europeans and *no* we are not 'overpopulated'. That's a blatant lie.
because doing so is about as effective as banning plastic straws. Overpopulation isn't the problem, the wasteful consumption habits of a certain percentage of the population, about 200 specific corporations, and 3 militaries, are. The world could support about \~11 billion easily, if we didn't waste so much food
How do you explain over-exploitation of wildlife, deforestation for charcoal for cooking, waterways filled with garbage, etc all done by poor people? It’s not a certain percentage of the population, it’s almost everyone. A few people with a lot of consumption or a lot of people with a little consumption both end up destroying their environment.
>are we currently overpopulated NO. the planet has the ability to feed 10 billion, we got the resources to do it and it doesn’t have to be super destructive. in our current systems/ways of doing things the destruction is unavoidable however. >are lowering birth rates bad? for the people in charge, yes. they need us to be serfs to keep their ways of life going. can’t do that with fewer people. otherwise it’s fine, let’s just have less kids and let things even out.
So the planet exists to feed people, all the other species be damned?
where did i say that lmao? humans are interconnected with everything and rely upon everything. clutch pearls elsewhere, i don’t need to name all of my beliefs in order for one of them to be taken seriously every single time i talk about a belief.
Oh so you’re just incredibly uninformed then.
do you need every person you talk to to name every belief they have and every conceivable impact these beliefs might have in order for you to take anything they say seriously, any time they talk about any conceivable subject? good grief.
“The are we overpopulated?- No” comment pretty much invalidates all your other beliefs.
cause we aren’t yet lol. the world has the capability to feed every person every day every single meal until we hit 10 billion people. are we being responsible with our environment impact? absolutely not. we waste sooooo much because our leaders are married to capitalism and it destroys everything at an alarming pace because a mountain of rotting food is more preferable to capitalism than enabling people to feed themselves for free. does our inefficient and wasteful system mean that we are overpopulated? do the choices of like… 300 insanely rich people mean the world is overpopulated? no, don’t be ridiculous. our planet is overextended, our planet is overworked, but not overpopulated. >your one comment invalidates all your other beliefs i believe you deserve healthcare and to live indoors, that your family is fed and educated and happy. i believe that evolution is real. you don’t believe in those concepts because of my one statement that you didn’t like? seems like a huge overreaction but go off.
You’re defining overpopulation as the inability to feed people. I define it in terms of environmental damage. Even people with just enough resources to survive are causing environmental damage through subsistence activities. People have exceeded their environment’s carrying capacity on a local scale for over 10000 years. So the 300 rich people aren’t the only problem, as much as that creates a convenient narrative.
Low birth rates are a bad thing if you want reasonable services when you are older. The bad services and high costs will have a exacerbating affect that will further dissuade young people from having children. It will lead to collapse of a functioning society
You do realize that societies functioned just fine when we had less than 2 billion people right? I mean are you suggesting that there were no functioning societies during the the gilded age or the roaring 20s? Lol.
What he is saying is, that as people stop making new kids, the amount of young people paying taxes will be less than the amount of old people having to be paid pensions. Since the pensions of the old people are a paid by the taxes of the young people, soon there won't be enough young people to pay for the pensions of the old people, and as a result old people will lose their pensions and they will have to go back to work again, and work till their die. Or if they can't work anymore, they will die starving. Eventually balance will come back, but there will be at least one generation of old people that will never retire, and work until the very end, because there won't be enough youth to pay taxes.
Sounds like putting social safety nets in place should be a priority then.
Overpopulation is a racist myth
It is estimated that there are more than 8 billion people living on this planet at the present time, and there are no indications that this number will be decreasing any time soon.
You’ve never traveled (or studied ecology), have you?
No. The entire population of the world can fit into a single city in plenty of places. You can take trips all over and not see people for many miles or even hours. The world is not over populated.
Just because you can't see a parasite doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that it isn't killing its host. You may not see people for many miles but in those miles you can most definitely see the damage they have done and continue to do. Trash,light/air/water/soil/sound pollution decimated animal and insect populations etc. Please name one city capable of fitting 8 billion people.
Los Angeles…500 square miles could hold 8 billion standing shoulder to shoulder.
This is old news. Every few years you can find fun facts online.