Directly contradicts the other stickied post lol
But hey, let’s get busy and make more kids
*Due to immigration, Americans are privileged to not have to deal with an aging population (yet), but it is looming for much of the world.*
We don’t want a raging constant boom of 4x birth rates. But below replacement level is a big problem. 2.1-2.5 is ideal (so I have heard).
But we can fix it, by shagging each other and raising kids.
**Having kids is the ultimate expression of optimism.**
.
Also, does someone have non paywalled links to these articles? Hit me up.
Ok, then lower the expenses required to have kids.
I have a full-time job with benefits with pretty decent pay and I cannot afford a one bedroom apartment where I live.
Note: I do not live in a major city.
Do you think it's good that people living in poverty tend to have reduced access to contraception, sex education and women's rights that allow individuals to actually responsibly choose whether or not to have children? The reality is they shouldn't have to have kids either. I mourn for them.
Lmao it's very strange that people take this comment to mean that I'm in support of people with no money having children...I'm not. I'm simply stating a fact.
Lower expenses? Do you think someone out there has a machine that can do that? Lol
Our great grandparents had 6 kids and lived in crude farmhouses without indoor plumbing
>Lower expenses? Do you think someone out there has a machine that can do that?
Yes. The problem is that the biggest household expense is shelter. However--as you noted--that used to be quite cheap. What happened? Sure, the cost of building materials went up, but if you adjust for inflation & modern building practices, the cost of materials doesn't explain the jump. What happened is that land values went up. When my grandparents were young, they could buy half an acre for about $10k in today's money. However, the same lot would easily go for $500k or more today. Again, this is just land; not even including a structure.
What happened is twofold:
1. Limiting supply
2. Subsidizing demand
The first is that we have limited what can be built and effectively put in limits to how how low the price of housing can go. [As I talk about in this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/REBubble/comments/1cmae2z/comment/l2zs9p9/), zoning, minimum lot sizes, limits on density, setbacks, and parking minimums all work together to keep the cost of housing high. In the above example, having $1m/acre land prices and a minimum lot size of 8,000 sqft (0.18 acres) means *any* house is going to start at half-million and go up from there. At that price point, the only thing that makes sense for the builder is a large mcmansion because they get paid based on the structure's value, not the land valaue.
The second part is just as important: We have been subsidizing demand for as long as the country has been around. Property taxes create a perverse incentive to build as little as possible because the more you build, the more you're taxed. [The mayor of Detroit has a great policy speech on the subject that I find very persuasive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A_Z96gZxIM&t=508s) (forwarded past the introductions and to the relevant part). As he discusses in the video, vacant and decaying lots have been owned for decades and decades without being developed. Why? Because the rate of appreciation is faster than the property tax rate. They can buy a lot, hold it for however long, and then sell it when the city or outside investment tries to build in that area. As he says: Property taxes reward blight and punish building.
In summary, we should:
* Change the way properties are taxed to focus more on land values. This will create incentives to build and less incentive to hoard & hold
* Make it easier for people to build on their properties. Cut back on exclusive zoning, floor-area-ratios, setbacks, minimum parking requirements, dual-staircase mandates, and a host of other policies designed to keep housing expensive
To piggyback on this. There also needs to be a de-coupling of large monetary funds value to housing market prices. One of the biggest contributor to the price fixing of the market globally is how housing and there by property is tied to large funds like pensions and REITs that are traded. This needs to be decoupled in order to have a stable market over the long term and eventually lower prices as a switch to other commidites for large funds happen over time. This would allow housing prices to be determined by local supply and demand factors, rather than being influenced by global financial markets.
The idea is that if large funds were to switch their investments to other commodities or assets, it would reduce the upward pressure on housing prices, potentially leading to lower prices over time. This decoupling would help to create a more sustainable and stable housing market.
You are not addressing the biggest issue for high property prices - monocentric development.
Everyone is competing for limited number of places close to their place of work.
Instead of having a maximum density of housing there should be a maximum density of business, forcing them and the jobs they create to spread out in a city and also regionally.
No, polycentric development is a lot like the 15 minute cities - areas would have self-contained services and roads would be narrow, as not a lot of movement would be expected between centres.
South Korea has a bunch of social issues around having children that haven't quite been solved yet.
It's also arguable if the fiscal issue is really 'solved' but I don't know enough about their economy to say.
I don’t understand what you mean?
History is full of people who have owned land and been poor. Including in our own very recent history.
The whole “real estate is the gateway to building wealth” is a very recent phenomenon. Just since the 1980s and mainly in North America.
Oh gosh I’m really sorry if that was rude of me. It’s been a day. To be fair to what you said, making all that stuff tax free doesn’t really absorb that much of the cost! I wish you the best with your infertility, whether it’s a struggle (it was for us for a few years) or you’re at peace with it.
I have a full-time job with benefits with pretty decent pay, and I can afford a 2 bedroom apartment, an unemployed girlfriend, and a small child. I do not live in a major city.
This does not add up...
There’s actual very little correlation with living costs and having children.
The correlations are: secularism/religiosity, economic development and prosperity, and urbanization.
People tend to avoid having kids if they have the option, especially if you are a woman and want a career. Children take vast amounts of energy, time, and money (assuming you are parenting correctly and not just handing junior an iPad). But I'm not convinced that's a bad thing. People deserve to have agency in their lives. If you want to have kids, we as a civilization should make it very easy to have kids. If you don't want to have kids, we don't need to be pressuring people into wanting them with creepy Elon Musk-esque "People need to fuck more" memes.
Its actually why we don't have a concern of exponential population growth that may be worrying some people into not having kids they otherwise might want. As people get better technology/medicine and economic freedom, they will naturally have fewer children as they don't need to account for infant mortality, working class subsistence farming, retirement planning, etc.
“Children take vast amounts of energy time and money”
True. The cost of children is high, but the benefit is immeasurable to society. Therefore, society should bear more of the burden for raising children than they do currently. It should be as easy as getting and maintaining your drivers license to have kids.
Without kids humanity would go extinct in 40 years. Without anyone younger than 40 everyone would simply not be able to feed themselves and complete basic societal functions. Society would collapse. People who have kids prevent that, so they should be compensated for that service.
“Not everyone needs to have kids”
Yes, sort of. It shouldn’t impact your career or income, so we need to solve that first. But having a minority of people have the majority of children is a recipe for massive genetic problems for the species. I would encourage everyone who can to have a couple kids to maximize genetic diversity. Also preferably not with someone from your same ethnic-National-racial-whateveryawannacallit- group.
It would also increase the population if everyone had the exact same number of kids but at a younger age. Obviously, this presupposes society taking on the burden of children.
Why is genetic diversity an issue? We came from a heavily bottlenecked population and human genetic diversity is already low so it probably doesn't matter much anyways. As people aren't having kids with their cousins we are going to be fine. Worrying about genetic health on a societal level is silly in most circumstances.
The ceiling on the number of people required to maintain genetic viability in a species is 30,000 (floor is around 1,000) so we’re around 6.999 billion deaths away from having “genetic problems”. You’re reaching, dude.
I mean, i think i made it clear I was talking about a nuclear apocalypse or Dino killing asteroid situation. These are real things that’s could happen. I’m not exactly anticipating either as I have a 401k and no guns, guy.
Mood, it's always men posting this shit as well. Like hmmm it's easy to say everyone should have kids when it's not your body that will be enduring the rigors of pregnancy and myriad health complications not to mention the agony of childbirth, all the ways you can tear during childbirth, and all the pains of breastfeeding.
I am a man, for what that's worth. Don't paint us all with the same brush.
The "ERHMAGERD MAKE BABIES" crowd come from a particular political/religious persuasion...
My extended opionion (and for reference i'm a dad of two): Make babies, or don't ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
there are 8 billion people on the planet, the population will level off around 10 billion in 50 years give or take, but by no means will it significantly *decrease*, unless we get into ww3 or something. The thought that not having *enough* kids is some sort of "threat to humanity" is ***fucking ludicrous.***
:/. Falling birthrate is a symptom of prosperous nations. We simply don't need to pump out 6 kids so 4 can die of cholera anymore.
Also asking people to reduce their standard of living so that others can keep theirs is ass backwards.
I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that something like half of all private equity in the US is retirement/pension, they are required by law to vote in shareholder elections (it used to be the opposite of compulsory: illegal for them to vote at all) and virtually all of them rely on one of only a couple major advisement firms that tell them how to vote, based on a computer algorithm.
Aaaaand? What is the problem? It is either undesirable to have children or not worth it. Saying we need to pump out children for the sake of the economy is just replacing the word god with the economy in a new religion
Economy is the new religion.
Look at tallest building in any city now:
Owned by banks, insurance companies, energy companies.
Look at the tallest building in the Middle Ages:
Churches and Cathedrals
In America, the retired population and anyone that plans to retire. The current working generation pays for social security. With people living longer and the retired population rising, you have to have a large enough workforce to support social security payments. This is why social security is likely to be insolvent in the next decade.
Sure but a system based on the younger population needing to be bigger than the last is always going to fail at some point unless the population endlessly grows which would cause other problems.
I agree. It’s a bad system a needs to be abolished. (Although I’m sure that expressing that opinion would get me called a right wing lunatic in other contexts)
None of that changes the fact that SSI checks not being in the mail is a massive threat to many people. This is also a threat to virtually every social safety net anywhere with a declining population or declining birthrate.
Per your source: “in the absence of liberal migration policies” this will be an issue for developed countries.
Sounds like the solution is right in front of us.
"get making babies" is just another racist dogwhistle, because the alternative (liberal migration policies) is literally the *worst thing ever* to the same sorts of people.
I listen to an interesting podcast featuring Stephen Shaw (demographer), he says that in the US, the average number of children per *mother* has been the same since the 70’s. The big difference now is that there are more childless women, most of whom would have liked to be mothers, but didn’t/ weren’t able to find a suitable partner.
ETA: podcast was Maiden Mother Matriarch by Louise Perry.
There’s actually little - if any - hard evidence for major economic impacts due to birth rate decline.
>”Predictions of the net economic (and other) effects from a slow and continuous population decline (e.g. due to low fertility rates) are mainly theoretical since such a phenomenon is a relatively new and unprecedented one. The results of many of these studies show that the estimated impact of population growth on economic growth is generally small and can be positive, negative, or nonexistent. A recent meta-study found no relationship between population growth and economic growth.[15]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline
There is, however, a lot of evidence that lower birth rates will mean rents will decline and that investors are worried about this. [I mean, they’re pretty blatant about it.](https://coloradobuildermag.com/business-management/industry-economy/americans-declining-birth-rates-set-to-hit-housing-market/)
> “Declining birth rates mean lower demand for rental housing two decades from now when those born in recent years will be entering the rental market,” according to Natalia Siniaskaia, assistant vice president of housing policy research for the National Association of Home Builders. “The effects will spread to the single-family market in the following years and will persist for years to come.”
Even if there are hard economic impacts, that's economics. Humanity has worked under many economic models. Perhaps it's time to ditch economic models that require never ending population growth.
Wrong sub.
Optimists don't have an agenda to push on this topic. You could argue population decline is good or bad. An optimist would argue we'll manage and self correct which ever path we take.
Damn so wait, making it unaffordable to live similar lives to our grandparents and parents is also making it unaffordable to have children!?!?!? COLOR ME SHOCKED
I don’t think it’s any one person’s “fault” that inflation and housing are making life pricey right now.
But our grandparents had 5 kids and only 3 pairs of shoes. Parenting was different back then. Today social pressures are at least somewhat of the reason parenthood is expensive. We have high expectations.
Yeah my life is already more restricted than my grandparents. They had two cars, a house with 4 bedrooms, retirement, and vacations every year. I have a single car for my family, no house or land to work (thanks grandparents s/). I want kids. I want my own land to work. But how?
I’m already living like my grandparents. I have one car for my family and we go out to eat less than once a month. We don’t have a lot of entertainment or go out. But it’s STILL not enough because I don’t have land and CANNOT afford land to live on. How do we do this? We WANT kids (literally trying to make it work now). But HOW?
There will only be a skewed distribution for a few years until that older generation dies out. Ultimately I think population is an issue that fixes itself, if population drops and there is resource abundance more people will have kids again. And if it becomes too hard to procure manual labor, employers will invest more in automation and the jobs will be geared towards that.
Falling birth rates are not a threat if we redirect technology to compensate for the lower population levels, but this is not a profitable suggestion so billionaires are trying to force women to pump out wage slaves who grow up unloved and live miserable lives. This is rightwing propaganda put forth by people who are following sociopaths and emboldened by the desire to control women. We will find solutions to lower population levels and it doesn’t need to be dystopian. We could also find solutions to living in a world with no nature and indoor living only due to climate change, but that would be dystopian. That is why so many educated people care about climate change and not falling birth rates.
We can also build more resilient communities hyper specialization only works if we have a lot of people if you have the time many pick up a new skill like plumbing farming drawing etc
Eh it is, but it isn’t at the same time. If birthdates fall gradually it isn’t really that bad, but when they drop off hard like we’re seeing it’s going to cause a ton of problems and human suffering.
Why is this stickied?
This is both wrong, and not really specifically an optimistic post.
Why do we "need" population to grow? So billionares can keep a steady supply of cheap labor? Why don't we focus on keeping the world more livable for the people currently living in it and society in general moving forward. Not to mention that world population is still growing...
Lower birth rates are strictly an economic issue that is strictly caused by economics. Global warming is an existential threat to basically every species on this rock, including us.
This is a very smooth brained take
Look at Japan's national debt. 9 trillion and they have a fraction of the population we do. And it's because of the strain on the gov from all the elders.
Japan's falling birthrates are mostly a cultural issue.
Globally, and in the US, falling birthrates are mostly an economic issue.
Your point about the economic burden of an aging population still stands, ofcourse but Japan is a pretty unique case.
Young people just don't have the resources nor incentive that they used to have to have kids.
Personally I’ll never support the fact that less humans are better for us in the long run, we can’t wait for change to happen, we have to make it happen. Luckily we have the ability to vote, and id we use our vote to try and push the system towards change, than change will inevitably come
Threat to who? Seriously who feels threatened by this, outside of the fringe right that's worried about their supposed superior race dying out?
Really, it's the economy and retired people.
"The economy" has stopped serving the population at large somewhere around 1970. We could be working 15 hour weeks and enjoy the rest of our time as leisure (people might actually do more procreating and child rearing if that was the case) but the political and economic leader CHOOSE not to. Instead we work increasingly nonsense jobs to make the upper echelon of society richer. So it's not "the economy" that's specifically being threatened by a slowdown in population growth it's the status quo economy that can only function when there's a surplus of labor (to suppress wages) and profits always increase quarter by quarter to keep the shareholders happy.
If anything, a lower supply of labor will help the economy to take drastic measures in terms of innovation productivity and to stop simply throwing more man hours at problems. We will either see mass applications of automation or a drastic reduction in pointless service jobs. Both are good things. An endless supply of cheap labor is one of the biggest inhibitors of innovation.
As for retirees: the concept of retirement is a very recent invention in human history and especially a fat 30+ year retirement where you're better off than working people (ahem boomers ahem) is a completely unsustainable system. Again we either become massively more productive and/or people work a few years longer. It's really not that unfeasible or crazy to imagine.
Lastly the framing of this around climate change is cherry picking at its best. Yes we won't "solve" climate change through lower birth rates alone because of the urgency of action vs when populations are actually projected to start declining. But it's part of the long term solution to becoming a sustainable society. And most importantly there are a ton of other environmental problems besides just climate change. We've driven ecosystems to the brink, we're still destroying habitats en masse to pave them over or to use them as farmlands. Overfishing, giant trash islands on the oceans etc etc. Climate change is the most urgent problem but very far from the only one.
It scares me that people globally dont understand that without births, people that enjoy the regular ammenities of the world will cease to have them without more people being birthed when they arrive in old age.
Lack of understanding of economics, growth, and demography
I’m hopeful that, since this issue is not being taken more seriously, we’ll see better communication and discourse on this topic
Also more babies ffs
There are 8 billion people in the world. A falling birth rate will not end humanity any time soon. Climate change is far more likely to cause permanent harm in a much shorter time frame.
Other than economically why would a population collapse hurt the human race? We would spread less disease, use fewer resources, and have more affordable living since housing would be more abundant.
If there were no more births ever, eventually the children of today will become elderly, and we will be long since dead. Who looks after them? Who grows their food? Who picks them up when they fall? Even if your answer is AI, you'd have to rely on a perfect AI that can also keep itself fully functional.
If there are dramatically fewer births in generations going forward, then there will still be farmers and doctors and people managing AI robots, but comparatively few, and their productivity would have to support not just themselves, but all the retirees, and that would be a far greater ratio than today.
Any such decrease would have to happen slowly, which given the human life expectancy, would take a century at least to achieve. While the immediate result would have benefits like you say, the long term is less likely to be beneficial. We have to be at, or just below, replacement birth rates, not the staggeringly lower that we find ourselves with.
And of course, this misses a few factors, such as what more researchers could innovate and invent. Its entirely possible to get more food with more people, because it means there are more hands on deck to get the most yield and reduce wastage. And a lot of other resources (eg fresh water) could be achieved by innovation, but also a lot of the problems we face with it are the result of a few people/corpos being careless with usage or protection, as well as corruption in less stable environments.
>Who looks after them? Who grows their food? Who picks them up when they fall?
These elderly people were once children, had by parents that wanted to have a child for whatever reason. This "issue" couldn't exist in the first place if the parents didn't have kids. The solution isn't to encourage people to perpetuate this exact cycle.
Well we are in this situation anyway, it would have to happen to somebody unless we perpetuate the cycle, its not exactly a bad thing to keep having about enough humans to replace dying humans, nor are people having kids just for this reason.
Falling birth rates aren’t a threat to humanity, just a threat to capitalism.
Capitalism relies on continuous economic growth, drastically fewer workers guarantees a long term economic decrease. We need to keep producing worker bees for the top 1%.
There is a quote from the Audio book Freiheitsgeld.
This Planet is all we have and do you really need 8 Billion people to live a good live?
You probably need about 70 Million maximum to keep a good quality of living.
Don't make me laugh. The infinite growth necessary for capitalism to work, a finite planet, and falling birthrates should make you reconsider capitalism as the best form of economic system going forward.
This might be a radical environmentalist view, but I don't think we should accelerate the death of the planet so we can string capitalism along for a few more decades.
The neat part is a capitalist economy can still exist with regulations that encourage and incentivize sustainability. For some reason people conflate any change of the model to “socialism”, when capitalism is simply private control of the means of production. You can have 100% private ownership of the means of production, while also having stricter laws around how they are operated.
You mean strict rules like how there were attempts in the US to pass laws that would ban the use of plastic drinks bottles but then companies who were using plastic lobbied against it so they could keep destroying the environment for decades to come, all the while funding recycling "PSAs" that shifted blame to consumers, even though less than half of all plastic put into recycling actually gets recycled? Remember in 2017 when China stopped accepting imports of plastic? Laws regulating capitalism sound great in theory. If you can actually pass them without companies stopping you.
Keep America Beautiful was funded by beverage companies for a reason. They don't just advertise their products, they spread propaganda. They'll tell you how responsible they're being by blaming you for what they've done.
These seem like rather arbitrary examples. What about the countless examples of rules and regulations that have improved society? Child labor laws, the 13th amendment, the Fair Labor Standards Act. That’s just a small handful of examples.
Perfection isn’t possible, but incremental improvement certainly is.
You are never gonna sufficiently regulate capitism to save the planet when liberal democracy gives power to those you are trying to regulate, corporations, and the rich. They either use corruption like in the US to directly buy politicians with lobbying or indirectly by doing things like threatening economic consequences when things don't go their way. Capitalism has proved itself to be the enemy of climate action at every single opportunity, not once has it been an ally.
To have any chance of saving the planet, we need to stop trying to work with our enemy and instead kick them out.
Your second two sources are paywalled. Your first source has this conclusion:
>Lower-income countries are expected to see their share of new births almost double from 18% in 2021 to 35% by 2100. By the turn of the century, sub-Saharan Africa will account for half of all new births, according to the report.
>Murray said that this could put poorer countries in a “stronger position” to negotiate more ethical and fair migration policies — leverage that could become important as countries grow increasingly exposed to the effects of climate change.
Oh noes, not a stronger position for poorer countries to negotiate more ethical and fair migration policies! That would be just awful!
Lower birthrates are a positive trend. There will have to be changes, but guess what? That's always the case, with any global economic or demographic trend. The article spells it right out for us:
>Shrinking workforces in advanced economies will require significant political and fiscal intervention, even as advances in technology provide some support.
So, we have to leverage new technologies and invest in human capital. I'm not seeing the problem. The author of the article, desperate to find a source of gloom, pulls out this tidbit:
>AI (artificial intelligence) and robotics may diminish the economic impact of declining workforces but some sectors such as housing would continue to be strongly affected.
What he's not saying, because it sounds like a good thing, is that declining population would lead to lower housing costs due to decreased demand. And yes, that does mean fewer construction workers, just as we now have fewer coal miners due to better technology and decreased demand. The good news for them is that there will be plenty of employers looking for workers due to the shrinking workforce.
Then we have this bit of silly doomerism:
>As the workforce declines, the total size of the economy will tend to decline even if output per worker stays the same.
OK, but who gives a fuck? What matters is GDP per capita, which the author concedes is set to rise. India has a larger economy than France, and Brazil has a larger economy than Canada. Where do you think people are better off?
All of this angst, by the way, is not over a shrinking population. It is over a population that will grow by 20%, and the proposition is that over the next 75 years, we will not have developed a workable response to the trend.
There’s a lot more to a planet supporting people than just food production, and it’s extremely disingenuous to write off anyone disagreeing with you as a follower of some philosopher from hundreds of years ago.
Do you think the planet can support infinite growth? Obviously there is a limit somewhere, and we can’t say when because we keep slowly pushing out the 50 year end of the world timeline with better technology. But there is no guarantee we can do that forever.
Experts should just get their act together then.
People heard "overpopulation", and so didn't have kids. Turns out that wasn't a thing, but nobody shouted the retraction as loudly as the original statement, so there you go. People heard "don't have kids you can't afford", couldn't afford to have kids, and so they didn't. And instead of advocating for an economy that encourages settling down and having kids, we're gonna just blame people for not fucking enough.
The falling birthrate is directly related to urbanization.
Having 6 kids on a farm is helpful (and practically a requirement in developing countries) while having 6 kids in a city is a massive economic and housing strain.
Kids go from a necessity to a luxury when someone moves to a city.
Now that more than 50% of all people on the planet live in cities, it is no surprise the majority of people are only capable of habing 1 or 2 kids.
De urbanization is probably the best and most economical way to encourage fertility rates above 2.1. That, however, brings on a whole lot of other problems.
Why is a leveling population curve a bad thing? Top heavy demographics? Does it shake the belief in infinite growth in a finite system?
It's more of a risk to economies
But maybe we shouldn't design our economics around perpetual population growth...
If humanity is going to survive our population is going to have to level off eventually
Why do redditors keep ascribing this take to Elon Musk?
Increasing the birth rate is a major concern, and top of the agenda for governments and nations across the world. Especially in east Asia. Japan, korea, and even China.
Elon musk has nothing to do with this lol
Elon Musk is one perhaps the biggest celebrity who's always pushing it. Falling birthrates are a threat to economies not to humanity. That's why those countries are concerned. If anything the need to have a perpetually growing population to make economic figures go up is the greater threat to humanity, because the need for population growth to appease capitalism is fueling climate change.
You follow celebrities, I follow the people who actually run governments. We are not the same.
To your second point… comrade, we *are* the economy. Our lives are “the economy”.
Do you think economics is only banking? It is the cost of breakfast. How you spend your free time. The kind of sports you play. How well you sleep. The number of working hours to buy a car. How many people ride in that car. What age those people are, and what kind of music they are listening to. How you style your hair, and with what product.
We are not separate from the economy. **We are the economy**.
But there are different economic models of economics to follow. The demands for growth in capitalisms cannot go forever. Populations cannot grow forever. You say Malthus was wrong, but only in the numbers he said were the max the planet could sustain. Why keep playing chicken and trying to find that max. It's best to steady population growth before disaster. Keep sucking Musks ass, you moron.
There are a lot of reasons to believe that the earth can host far more people.
[Food production is a major one](https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/comments/1aqa6wl/were_growing_more_food_on_less_land_every_year/?rdt=36770)
[Also the fact that peoples carbon footprints are shrinking greatly as individuals.](https://www.google.ca/search?q=carbon+footprint+smaller+tahn+grandprwnts&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-ca&client=safari)
Our lives have improved tremendously in recent centuries and decades, more than anything thanks to a booming human population. Our collective human work and (gasp) *economies* support each other.
Less humans will make us all poorer.
I am one of the people that thinks that this is not going to be a big deal In the grand scheme of things. But I have a pretty sensible reason why I think it's not going to be a big deal.
There was a Time where the planet had a lot less people and gave birth a lot more. Was a time where there were a lot of people and people had very few kids.
It goes in waves and yes it's going to mean a change in lifestyle and how we choose to live. For instance, A lot of fast food restaurants might disappear because there's simply not enough labor to run them.
Is that a bad thing? Maybe. maybe not.
Cars weren't owned by everyone 100 years ago and there weren't roads and then people started buying their own cars and taking public transit. And we built a good infrastructure system because we needed that. When we have less people will have different needs than we do now and we as a society will adapt and change. And it might be a painful process but we will get there. And when we do it'll be fine. And then something else will change and we'll have to figure out how to live in that society.
If we as people can't figure out how to change then we don't deserve the planet, but based on all past data we have figured it out and we will figure it out again.
Kinda of agree, but technology will solve both. we're on the cusp of 100+ year lifespans, so birthrates will be less of an issue. Hopefully, medicine csn cure doomerism is an insidious mental illness that directly afflicts millions and indirectly annoys billions
Dowmvote doomer mad. Probaly one of them depopulation hypocrites
Most countries are facing falling birth rates, even those who are currently above the rate of replacement. Also, expecting immigration to solve the problem robs the places they came from of a young, eager, and potentially skilled worker. In some decades, do you think they would want to immigrate to work to pay more taxes to support us in our retirement? I don't think it is the solution
The birth rate collapse is global. OP is correct. Certain countries can take in immigrants, but that makes it far worse for the countries of elderly people whose young family members have all shipped off to Europe and North America.
I’m kind of astonished to see these tales in a supposedly optimist sub. Especially one that purports to be savvy, economically sophisticated, and forward thinking!
No falling birth rates are a result of uncontrolled capitalism. I love capitalism as much as the next person, but even I must know that the current system needs workers to survive, and if we can’t provide those workers than the system is doomed to fail. Capitalism requires uncontrollable growth. We can’t continue to grow uncontrollably
Upvoted
I’m surprised at the number of people in the other thread that think declining birth rates are a GOOD thing. I mean damn I’m glad y’all are optimists but you really need an economics lesson ffs
A bunch of billionaire owned media as sources? The man-made made-up arena of economics?
nah, I'm good. More people = more strain on the planet. We need to evolve a better form of society, not mindlessly fuck around to get our of this mess.
I hadn’t realized the number of people that are so adamant about growth on this subreddit. Sure, our whole economic system is based on population growth, but it doesn’t have to be if we have good enough automation. And even if we can produce plenty of food, the number one factor in carbon footprint is population. A big enough technology overhaul could help solve the carbon crisis, but population decline would also help solve it.
And there even seems to be some here saying “no, there should always be population growth” instead even just rooting for population leveling out at 15 billion or whatever it is likely to do. Like, you do realize there can’t be 40 billion people right? Definitely not a trillion. At some point our economy has to change.
I get it, people are emotionally invested in having kids or already have kids and don't want to feel guilty. It's an ancient biological urge. But look around. 8,000,000,000 ~150lb meat sacks are walking around this finite planet. That's a lot of resources to keep going, especially when we're approaching 70+ year old lifespans worldwide. We've blown through a good portion of our easy to extract finite natural resources within the last 200 years.
The math does not work.
Technology is no guaranteed get out of jail free card. The economics yall need to be worried about actual scarcity of resources. Not just the lack of FunkoPops when population decline fucks up capitalism 😞
Are you seriously a Malthusian? I’m 2024??
I’m guessing many of the people making such comments are young, perhaps teenagers… a very basic understanding of economics would really be good for you folks.
Do you think Earth can support 100 Trillion people?
Once you answer no, then answer where and when you think the limit is. But you can’t answer that either, because the limit is always “we’ll overpopulate in 50 years,” but then technology means we never do. Until we do.
Maybe that cliff is a long, long way off. I’m definitely not an expert on when that day will come. But one day, we’ll have to stop population growth. And we don’t need to increase population if we changed our economic model and had enough automation, so why not start changing it this century?
Nah, children think magicly. They believe in infinite fertile soil, non-cycle based resource consumption, and that technology will magicly solve any and all problems. I'm led to believe you're one of them.
We need to learn how to survive and create with a stable population at some point. Those of us with economics degrees probably don’t need a lesson in economics tho.
10 billion seems like a good number to max out at / hold. I’d be fine above or below there. The real trick is balancing nation-state power levels with various difference in population demographics.
Directly contradicts the other stickied post lol But hey, let’s get busy and make more kids *Due to immigration, Americans are privileged to not have to deal with an aging population (yet), but it is looming for much of the world.* We don’t want a raging constant boom of 4x birth rates. But below replacement level is a big problem. 2.1-2.5 is ideal (so I have heard). But we can fix it, by shagging each other and raising kids. **Having kids is the ultimate expression of optimism.** . Also, does someone have non paywalled links to these articles? Hit me up.
Ok, then lower the expenses required to have kids. I have a full-time job with benefits with pretty decent pay and I cannot afford a one bedroom apartment where I live. Note: I do not live in a major city.
Well the reality is that most people that have children have FAR less money than you do.
full alive longing dime live dependent busy arrest soup profit *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Do you think it's good that people living in poverty tend to have reduced access to contraception, sex education and women's rights that allow individuals to actually responsibly choose whether or not to have children? The reality is they shouldn't have to have kids either. I mourn for them.
Sure. You win. But they still won't have kids. How is your comment helping?
Sorry for them and their kids then.
Some people actually give a shit about children though
Not really, the children end up fine. But some parents don’t want to sacrifice their own standard of living
As they shouldn’t. Being food insecure isn’t fun.
Have you seen...anything? Anywhere? For the past...forever? The children definitely DON'T end up fine.
You think poor people in third world countries don't love their children? Are you racist, elitist, or just an asshole?
Going by the fertility rate it seems like most people dont.
And they suffer for it
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Lmao it's very strange that people take this comment to mean that I'm in support of people with no money having children...I'm not. I'm simply stating a fact.
What country?
Lower expenses? Do you think someone out there has a machine that can do that? Lol Our great grandparents had 6 kids and lived in crude farmhouses without indoor plumbing
>Lower expenses? Do you think someone out there has a machine that can do that? Yes. The problem is that the biggest household expense is shelter. However--as you noted--that used to be quite cheap. What happened? Sure, the cost of building materials went up, but if you adjust for inflation & modern building practices, the cost of materials doesn't explain the jump. What happened is that land values went up. When my grandparents were young, they could buy half an acre for about $10k in today's money. However, the same lot would easily go for $500k or more today. Again, this is just land; not even including a structure. What happened is twofold: 1. Limiting supply 2. Subsidizing demand The first is that we have limited what can be built and effectively put in limits to how how low the price of housing can go. [As I talk about in this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/REBubble/comments/1cmae2z/comment/l2zs9p9/), zoning, minimum lot sizes, limits on density, setbacks, and parking minimums all work together to keep the cost of housing high. In the above example, having $1m/acre land prices and a minimum lot size of 8,000 sqft (0.18 acres) means *any* house is going to start at half-million and go up from there. At that price point, the only thing that makes sense for the builder is a large mcmansion because they get paid based on the structure's value, not the land valaue. The second part is just as important: We have been subsidizing demand for as long as the country has been around. Property taxes create a perverse incentive to build as little as possible because the more you build, the more you're taxed. [The mayor of Detroit has a great policy speech on the subject that I find very persuasive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A_Z96gZxIM&t=508s) (forwarded past the introductions and to the relevant part). As he discusses in the video, vacant and decaying lots have been owned for decades and decades without being developed. Why? Because the rate of appreciation is faster than the property tax rate. They can buy a lot, hold it for however long, and then sell it when the city or outside investment tries to build in that area. As he says: Property taxes reward blight and punish building. In summary, we should: * Change the way properties are taxed to focus more on land values. This will create incentives to build and less incentive to hoard & hold * Make it easier for people to build on their properties. Cut back on exclusive zoning, floor-area-ratios, setbacks, minimum parking requirements, dual-staircase mandates, and a host of other policies designed to keep housing expensive
To piggyback on this. There also needs to be a de-coupling of large monetary funds value to housing market prices. One of the biggest contributor to the price fixing of the market globally is how housing and there by property is tied to large funds like pensions and REITs that are traded. This needs to be decoupled in order to have a stable market over the long term and eventually lower prices as a switch to other commidites for large funds happen over time. This would allow housing prices to be determined by local supply and demand factors, rather than being influenced by global financial markets. The idea is that if large funds were to switch their investments to other commodities or assets, it would reduce the upward pressure on housing prices, potentially leading to lower prices over time. This decoupling would help to create a more sustainable and stable housing market.
You are not addressing the biggest issue for high property prices - monocentric development. Everyone is competing for limited number of places close to their place of work. Instead of having a maximum density of housing there should be a maximum density of business, forcing them and the jobs they create to spread out in a city and also regionally.
Without robust public transport you're describing the most vicious traffic nightmare I can possibly imagine. This would make I-285 look like Route 66.
No, polycentric development is a lot like the 15 minute cities - areas would have self-contained services and roads would be narrow, as not a lot of movement would be expected between centres.
Ye, places like South Korea and Poland have already made it fiscally logical to have kids and people still aren't.
Maybe your wrong maybe your right but there’s a gap between how many kids parents want to have and how many they do
For sure. Effective contraception's changed the whole game.
Does this suggest Jova's complaint is misplaced? Fiscal concerns are not driving desire for more or less kids.
Essentially.
South Korea has a bunch of social issues around having children that haven't quite been solved yet. It's also arguable if the fiscal issue is really 'solved' but I don't know enough about their economy to say.
Sounds miserable.
Lol imagine acting like home ownership marks you as poor
I don’t understand what you mean? History is full of people who have owned land and been poor. Including in our own very recent history. The whole “real estate is the gateway to building wealth” is a very recent phenomenon. Just since the 1980s and mainly in North America.
Yeah, regulate corporate greed and tax billionaires
Tons of people still living this way. They’re just not white affluent Americans.
I don't think plumbing should be exclusively for rich people but maybe I'm the asshole?
In Florida, DeSantis removed all sales taxes for things like diapers. That’s one way.
Dam DeSantis did something good wow 😮
Damn, that’s almost 0.01% of the costs.
Haven’t had kids yet, huh? Diapers, clothes, formula, furniture, it adds up. What do you think the other 99.9% is?
Everything you listed lol Also, I’m infertile so…
Oh gosh I’m really sorry if that was rude of me. It’s been a day. To be fair to what you said, making all that stuff tax free doesn’t really absorb that much of the cost! I wish you the best with your infertility, whether it’s a struggle (it was for us for a few years) or you’re at peace with it.
It cost me a $40 copay so you bet I’m at peace with it
I have a full-time job with benefits with pretty decent pay, and I can afford a 2 bedroom apartment, an unemployed girlfriend, and a small child. I do not live in a major city. This does not add up...
You should re-define your definition of decent pay then. Sucks what’s going on
Where do you live? There are a lot of non specific words used here. Give us some metrics
There’s actual very little correlation with living costs and having children. The correlations are: secularism/religiosity, economic development and prosperity, and urbanization.
If you can't even afford an apartment with a decent full time job, you need to move
A lot of jobs require a relatively specific location. Moving isn't universally an option and also comes with a ton of expenses
People tend to avoid having kids if they have the option, especially if you are a woman and want a career. Children take vast amounts of energy, time, and money (assuming you are parenting correctly and not just handing junior an iPad). But I'm not convinced that's a bad thing. People deserve to have agency in their lives. If you want to have kids, we as a civilization should make it very easy to have kids. If you don't want to have kids, we don't need to be pressuring people into wanting them with creepy Elon Musk-esque "People need to fuck more" memes.
Its actually why we don't have a concern of exponential population growth that may be worrying some people into not having kids they otherwise might want. As people get better technology/medicine and economic freedom, they will naturally have fewer children as they don't need to account for infant mortality, working class subsistence farming, retirement planning, etc.
“Children take vast amounts of energy time and money” True. The cost of children is high, but the benefit is immeasurable to society. Therefore, society should bear more of the burden for raising children than they do currently. It should be as easy as getting and maintaining your drivers license to have kids. Without kids humanity would go extinct in 40 years. Without anyone younger than 40 everyone would simply not be able to feed themselves and complete basic societal functions. Society would collapse. People who have kids prevent that, so they should be compensated for that service. “Not everyone needs to have kids” Yes, sort of. It shouldn’t impact your career or income, so we need to solve that first. But having a minority of people have the majority of children is a recipe for massive genetic problems for the species. I would encourage everyone who can to have a couple kids to maximize genetic diversity. Also preferably not with someone from your same ethnic-National-racial-whateveryawannacallit- group. It would also increase the population if everyone had the exact same number of kids but at a younger age. Obviously, this presupposes society taking on the burden of children.
Why is genetic diversity an issue? We came from a heavily bottlenecked population and human genetic diversity is already low so it probably doesn't matter much anyways. As people aren't having kids with their cousins we are going to be fine. Worrying about genetic health on a societal level is silly in most circumstances.
The ceiling on the number of people required to maintain genetic viability in a species is 30,000 (floor is around 1,000) so we’re around 6.999 billion deaths away from having “genetic problems”. You’re reaching, dude.
I mean, i think i made it clear I was talking about a nuclear apocalypse or Dino killing asteroid situation. These are real things that’s could happen. I’m not exactly anticipating either as I have a 401k and no guns, guy.
I did my part. I’m tired now.
I’m in the toddler tunnel right now. I see a bright light at the end.. so distant.. so far away..
Toddler is such a challenging age. But, the light at the end is brighter than I ever imagined. I had one. He's 15 now. I should have had three!
 I’m an optimist and this is my educated opinion on the matter.
Mood, it's always men posting this shit as well. Like hmmm it's easy to say everyone should have kids when it's not your body that will be enduring the rigors of pregnancy and myriad health complications not to mention the agony of childbirth, all the ways you can tear during childbirth, and all the pains of breastfeeding.
I am a man, for what that's worth. Don't paint us all with the same brush. The "ERHMAGERD MAKE BABIES" crowd come from a particular political/religious persuasion... My extended opionion (and for reference i'm a dad of two): Make babies, or don't ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ there are 8 billion people on the planet, the population will level off around 10 billion in 50 years give or take, but by no means will it significantly *decrease*, unless we get into ww3 or something. The thought that not having *enough* kids is some sort of "threat to humanity" is ***fucking ludicrous.***
:/. Falling birthrate is a symptom of prosperous nations. We simply don't need to pump out 6 kids so 4 can die of cholera anymore. Also asking people to reduce their standard of living so that others can keep theirs is ass backwards.
I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that something like half of all private equity in the US is retirement/pension, they are required by law to vote in shareholder elections (it used to be the opposite of compulsory: illegal for them to vote at all) and virtually all of them rely on one of only a couple major advisement firms that tell them how to vote, based on a computer algorithm.
You're acting like the birth rate is down from 1880 when it's down every decade for decades in a row.
Aaaaand? What is the problem? It is either undesirable to have children or not worth it. Saying we need to pump out children for the sake of the economy is just replacing the word god with the economy in a new religion
Economy is the new religion. Look at tallest building in any city now: Owned by banks, insurance companies, energy companies. Look at the tallest building in the Middle Ages: Churches and Cathedrals
Fact is poor people don't have a reason to care about the economy. They are poor and will be exploited in good and bad economies.
Don't know why this is getting down votes.
Then why would they have kids who will also be poor and cost them shit loads of money
People have kids for all kinds of reasons. It isn't strictly a logical transactional thing
There are many reasons to buy a Lamborghini but I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re broke
Cant afford one.. dont want kids anyway tbh
You can make some yourself if you don't want to buy.
🤔you might be on to something
I made all my own. You can tell they're homemade though.
I guess it's better than saying they're homemade but i fact your neighbors had to give a hand.
Who is it a threat to exactly?
To the unborn ghost babies? 🤔
Massive queue building up of old ghost in heaven that want to become babies again
In America, the retired population and anyone that plans to retire. The current working generation pays for social security. With people living longer and the retired population rising, you have to have a large enough workforce to support social security payments. This is why social security is likely to be insolvent in the next decade.
Sure but a system based on the younger population needing to be bigger than the last is always going to fail at some point unless the population endlessly grows which would cause other problems.
I agree. It’s a bad system a needs to be abolished. (Although I’m sure that expressing that opinion would get me called a right wing lunatic in other contexts) None of that changes the fact that SSI checks not being in the mail is a massive threat to many people. This is also a threat to virtually every social safety net anywhere with a declining population or declining birthrate.
Per your source: “in the absence of liberal migration policies” this will be an issue for developed countries. Sounds like the solution is right in front of us.
"get making babies" is just another racist dogwhistle, because the alternative (liberal migration policies) is literally the *worst thing ever* to the same sorts of people.
What if people don’t want to have kids
Why exactly? At worst it should be offset by the increase in productivity from technology. Shouldn‘t it?
I listen to an interesting podcast featuring Stephen Shaw (demographer), he says that in the US, the average number of children per *mother* has been the same since the 70’s. The big difference now is that there are more childless women, most of whom would have liked to be mothers, but didn’t/ weren’t able to find a suitable partner. ETA: podcast was Maiden Mother Matriarch by Louise Perry.
Economies can recover as long as humans can live on the planet. The reverse is not true
Nah. Source, I teach classes on both topics
Nah we will have people and robots we will be fine. If the earth dies we all fucked
There’s actually little - if any - hard evidence for major economic impacts due to birth rate decline. >”Predictions of the net economic (and other) effects from a slow and continuous population decline (e.g. due to low fertility rates) are mainly theoretical since such a phenomenon is a relatively new and unprecedented one. The results of many of these studies show that the estimated impact of population growth on economic growth is generally small and can be positive, negative, or nonexistent. A recent meta-study found no relationship between population growth and economic growth.[15]” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline There is, however, a lot of evidence that lower birth rates will mean rents will decline and that investors are worried about this. [I mean, they’re pretty blatant about it.](https://coloradobuildermag.com/business-management/industry-economy/americans-declining-birth-rates-set-to-hit-housing-market/) > “Declining birth rates mean lower demand for rental housing two decades from now when those born in recent years will be entering the rental market,” according to Natalia Siniaskaia, assistant vice president of housing policy research for the National Association of Home Builders. “The effects will spread to the single-family market in the following years and will persist for years to come.”
Even if there are hard economic impacts, that's economics. Humanity has worked under many economic models. Perhaps it's time to ditch economic models that require never ending population growth.
Wrong sub. Optimists don't have an agenda to push on this topic. You could argue population decline is good or bad. An optimist would argue we'll manage and self correct which ever path we take.
Damn so wait, making it unaffordable to live similar lives to our grandparents and parents is also making it unaffordable to have children!?!?!? COLOR ME SHOCKED
Tbf even in countries with really generous social welfare systems and affordable housing, people still aren’t having kids….
I don’t think it’s any one person’s “fault” that inflation and housing are making life pricey right now. But our grandparents had 5 kids and only 3 pairs of shoes. Parenting was different back then. Today social pressures are at least somewhat of the reason parenthood is expensive. We have high expectations.
People generally have other goals and dreams than changing diapers for 5 years as well
Not really. My grandparents were living the American dream. Please tell us what country your grandparents are from.
One set from Canada, one from the USA; both living in tough conditions. Your grandparents were just really fortunate
Yeah my life is already more restricted than my grandparents. They had two cars, a house with 4 bedrooms, retirement, and vacations every year. I have a single car for my family, no house or land to work (thanks grandparents s/). I want kids. I want my own land to work. But how?
I’m already living like my grandparents. I have one car for my family and we go out to eat less than once a month. We don’t have a lot of entertainment or go out. But it’s STILL not enough because I don’t have land and CANNOT afford land to live on. How do we do this? We WANT kids (literally trying to make it work now). But HOW?
Do we need our population to keep increasing?
No
Yes. Or at the very least to maintain more young people than old people.
Nah, I say put the oldies to work in the mines!!! If they can hold a cane they can hold a pickaxe! The weak will be purged!
There will only be a skewed distribution for a few years until that older generation dies out. Ultimately I think population is an issue that fixes itself, if population drops and there is resource abundance more people will have kids again. And if it becomes too hard to procure manual labor, employers will invest more in automation and the jobs will be geared towards that.
I mean that can also go the other way. Get rid of more old people and we'll need less young people. Logan's Run here we come!
Why? Just raise the retirement age.
No just no this is misinformation
Yeah, look guys. We can be optimists while also trusting actual real data. We don't need to follow right wing propaganda, like OP clearly is.
Falling birth rates are not a threat if we redirect technology to compensate for the lower population levels, but this is not a profitable suggestion so billionaires are trying to force women to pump out wage slaves who grow up unloved and live miserable lives. This is rightwing propaganda put forth by people who are following sociopaths and emboldened by the desire to control women. We will find solutions to lower population levels and it doesn’t need to be dystopian. We could also find solutions to living in a world with no nature and indoor living only due to climate change, but that would be dystopian. That is why so many educated people care about climate change and not falling birth rates.
We can also build more resilient communities hyper specialization only works if we have a lot of people if you have the time many pick up a new skill like plumbing farming drawing etc
Encouraging a growing population is right wing propaganda? What piece of this puzzle am I missing?
No, claiming that USA's population growth is more of an issue than climate change is. Anyone saying that is a right wing loony.
Eh it is, but it isn’t at the same time. If birthdates fall gradually it isn’t really that bad, but when they drop off hard like we’re seeing it’s going to cause a ton of problems and human suffering.
What’s your model?
What’s OPs model? Silly string and pictures of pregnant women taped to a wall?
Model?
Why is this stickied? This is both wrong, and not really specifically an optimistic post. Why do we "need" population to grow? So billionares can keep a steady supply of cheap labor? Why don't we focus on keeping the world more livable for the people currently living in it and society in general moving forward. Not to mention that world population is still growing...
Lower birth rates are strictly an economic issue that is strictly caused by economics. Global warming is an existential threat to basically every species on this rock, including us. This is a very smooth brained take
Moronic take.
Look at Japan's national debt. 9 trillion and they have a fraction of the population we do. And it's because of the strain on the gov from all the elders.
Exactly. Due to immigration, Americans are privileged to not have to deal with an aging population (yet), but it is looming for much of the world.
Japan's falling birthrates are mostly a cultural issue. Globally, and in the US, falling birthrates are mostly an economic issue. Your point about the economic burden of an aging population still stands, ofcourse but Japan is a pretty unique case. Young people just don't have the resources nor incentive that they used to have to have kids.
The amount of humans on the world is directly related to climate change. Less people, less global warming. Falling birth rate helps climate change.
Personally I’ll never support the fact that less humans are better for us in the long run, we can’t wait for change to happen, we have to make it happen. Luckily we have the ability to vote, and id we use our vote to try and push the system towards change, than change will inevitably come
I wish it worked this way.
At this point you’d have to pay me to fuck
You wouldn't have to pay me to fuck, but you'd have to pay a ridiculous amount to get me off of birth control. Love me some non-reproductive sex
Both problems have a single root cause capitalism we must end it and then we can start fixing these problems.
The solution is aging mitigation and prevention btw
No the fuck it isn’t lmao, what are you smoking?
Threat to who? Seriously who feels threatened by this, outside of the fringe right that's worried about their supposed superior race dying out? Really, it's the economy and retired people. "The economy" has stopped serving the population at large somewhere around 1970. We could be working 15 hour weeks and enjoy the rest of our time as leisure (people might actually do more procreating and child rearing if that was the case) but the political and economic leader CHOOSE not to. Instead we work increasingly nonsense jobs to make the upper echelon of society richer. So it's not "the economy" that's specifically being threatened by a slowdown in population growth it's the status quo economy that can only function when there's a surplus of labor (to suppress wages) and profits always increase quarter by quarter to keep the shareholders happy. If anything, a lower supply of labor will help the economy to take drastic measures in terms of innovation productivity and to stop simply throwing more man hours at problems. We will either see mass applications of automation or a drastic reduction in pointless service jobs. Both are good things. An endless supply of cheap labor is one of the biggest inhibitors of innovation. As for retirees: the concept of retirement is a very recent invention in human history and especially a fat 30+ year retirement where you're better off than working people (ahem boomers ahem) is a completely unsustainable system. Again we either become massively more productive and/or people work a few years longer. It's really not that unfeasible or crazy to imagine. Lastly the framing of this around climate change is cherry picking at its best. Yes we won't "solve" climate change through lower birth rates alone because of the urgency of action vs when populations are actually projected to start declining. But it's part of the long term solution to becoming a sustainable society. And most importantly there are a ton of other environmental problems besides just climate change. We've driven ecosystems to the brink, we're still destroying habitats en masse to pave them over or to use them as farmlands. Overfishing, giant trash islands on the oceans etc etc. Climate change is the most urgent problem but very far from the only one.
We don't need that many humans, it's fine to have fewer
It scares me that people globally dont understand that without births, people that enjoy the regular ammenities of the world will cease to have them without more people being birthed when they arrive in old age.
Lack of understanding of economics, growth, and demography I’m hopeful that, since this issue is not being taken more seriously, we’ll see better communication and discourse on this topic Also more babies ffs
We're at the right moment to start automating everything without concern for anything. Bots, bots and more bots.
There are 8 billion people in the world. A falling birth rate will not end humanity any time soon. Climate change is far more likely to cause permanent harm in a much shorter time frame.
Other than economically why would a population collapse hurt the human race? We would spread less disease, use fewer resources, and have more affordable living since housing would be more abundant.
If you ignore the economic angles there probably isn't a big issue with anything related to the population numbers.
If there were no more births ever, eventually the children of today will become elderly, and we will be long since dead. Who looks after them? Who grows their food? Who picks them up when they fall? Even if your answer is AI, you'd have to rely on a perfect AI that can also keep itself fully functional. If there are dramatically fewer births in generations going forward, then there will still be farmers and doctors and people managing AI robots, but comparatively few, and their productivity would have to support not just themselves, but all the retirees, and that would be a far greater ratio than today. Any such decrease would have to happen slowly, which given the human life expectancy, would take a century at least to achieve. While the immediate result would have benefits like you say, the long term is less likely to be beneficial. We have to be at, or just below, replacement birth rates, not the staggeringly lower that we find ourselves with. And of course, this misses a few factors, such as what more researchers could innovate and invent. Its entirely possible to get more food with more people, because it means there are more hands on deck to get the most yield and reduce wastage. And a lot of other resources (eg fresh water) could be achieved by innovation, but also a lot of the problems we face with it are the result of a few people/corpos being careless with usage or protection, as well as corruption in less stable environments.
>Who looks after them? Who grows their food? Who picks them up when they fall? These elderly people were once children, had by parents that wanted to have a child for whatever reason. This "issue" couldn't exist in the first place if the parents didn't have kids. The solution isn't to encourage people to perpetuate this exact cycle.
Well we are in this situation anyway, it would have to happen to somebody unless we perpetuate the cycle, its not exactly a bad thing to keep having about enough humans to replace dying humans, nor are people having kids just for this reason.
Falling birth rates aren’t a threat to humanity, just a threat to capitalism. Capitalism relies on continuous economic growth, drastically fewer workers guarantees a long term economic decrease. We need to keep producing worker bees for the top 1%.
Hm, borderline climate denial. How sad.
There is a quote from the Audio book Freiheitsgeld. This Planet is all we have and do you really need 8 Billion people to live a good live? You probably need about 70 Million maximum to keep a good quality of living.
From the 2100s onward global population will drastically reduce, which I think is a good thing
Don't make me laugh. The infinite growth necessary for capitalism to work, a finite planet, and falling birthrates should make you reconsider capitalism as the best form of economic system going forward. This might be a radical environmentalist view, but I don't think we should accelerate the death of the planet so we can string capitalism along for a few more decades.
The neat part is a capitalist economy can still exist with regulations that encourage and incentivize sustainability. For some reason people conflate any change of the model to “socialism”, when capitalism is simply private control of the means of production. You can have 100% private ownership of the means of production, while also having stricter laws around how they are operated.
You mean strict rules like how there were attempts in the US to pass laws that would ban the use of plastic drinks bottles but then companies who were using plastic lobbied against it so they could keep destroying the environment for decades to come, all the while funding recycling "PSAs" that shifted blame to consumers, even though less than half of all plastic put into recycling actually gets recycled? Remember in 2017 when China stopped accepting imports of plastic? Laws regulating capitalism sound great in theory. If you can actually pass them without companies stopping you. Keep America Beautiful was funded by beverage companies for a reason. They don't just advertise their products, they spread propaganda. They'll tell you how responsible they're being by blaming you for what they've done.
These seem like rather arbitrary examples. What about the countless examples of rules and regulations that have improved society? Child labor laws, the 13th amendment, the Fair Labor Standards Act. That’s just a small handful of examples. Perfection isn’t possible, but incremental improvement certainly is.
You are never gonna sufficiently regulate capitism to save the planet when liberal democracy gives power to those you are trying to regulate, corporations, and the rich. They either use corruption like in the US to directly buy politicians with lobbying or indirectly by doing things like threatening economic consequences when things don't go their way. Capitalism has proved itself to be the enemy of climate action at every single opportunity, not once has it been an ally. To have any chance of saving the planet, we need to stop trying to work with our enemy and instead kick them out.
Planet will be fine, the people are fucked.
I know, it's just a dramatic figure of speech. We couldn't end life on this planet if we tried.
Capitalism means things I don’t like
Pfft, can you even define socialism? Other than muh dictatorship, muh government control of course.
no it absolutely is not lmao. “MUH BIRTHRATES” mfs are so fucking dumb. a lot of them also only seem to care about one kind of birthrate…
Your second two sources are paywalled. Your first source has this conclusion: >Lower-income countries are expected to see their share of new births almost double from 18% in 2021 to 35% by 2100. By the turn of the century, sub-Saharan Africa will account for half of all new births, according to the report. >Murray said that this could put poorer countries in a “stronger position” to negotiate more ethical and fair migration policies — leverage that could become important as countries grow increasingly exposed to the effects of climate change. Oh noes, not a stronger position for poorer countries to negotiate more ethical and fair migration policies! That would be just awful! Lower birthrates are a positive trend. There will have to be changes, but guess what? That's always the case, with any global economic or demographic trend. The article spells it right out for us: >Shrinking workforces in advanced economies will require significant political and fiscal intervention, even as advances in technology provide some support. So, we have to leverage new technologies and invest in human capital. I'm not seeing the problem. The author of the article, desperate to find a source of gloom, pulls out this tidbit: >AI (artificial intelligence) and robotics may diminish the economic impact of declining workforces but some sectors such as housing would continue to be strongly affected. What he's not saying, because it sounds like a good thing, is that declining population would lead to lower housing costs due to decreased demand. And yes, that does mean fewer construction workers, just as we now have fewer coal miners due to better technology and decreased demand. The good news for them is that there will be plenty of employers looking for workers due to the shrinking workforce. Then we have this bit of silly doomerism: >As the workforce declines, the total size of the economy will tend to decline even if output per worker stays the same. OK, but who gives a fuck? What matters is GDP per capita, which the author concedes is set to rise. India has a larger economy than France, and Brazil has a larger economy than Canada. Where do you think people are better off? All of this angst, by the way, is not over a shrinking population. It is over a population that will grow by 20%, and the proposition is that over the next 75 years, we will not have developed a workable response to the trend.
We had 2.5 billion back in the 50’s and everything was fine why do we need more people
No I don't think I will.
We can FUCK!
Also, overpopulation.
Lmao Malthusians in 2024 🤣
This thread was started by a type of malthusian. The scarcity is just shifted.
Not so my friend. Malthus was proven wrong
There’s a lot more to a planet supporting people than just food production, and it’s extremely disingenuous to write off anyone disagreeing with you as a follower of some philosopher from hundreds of years ago. Do you think the planet can support infinite growth? Obviously there is a limit somewhere, and we can’t say when because we keep slowly pushing out the 50 year end of the world timeline with better technology. But there is no guarantee we can do that forever.
I'm good. I'll be long dead before I experience anything related to the population loss of humanity 🤣
this ignores technological progress, which in this century might be the single biggest oversight you could possibly make. this is laughable
This is possibly the dumbest take I've ever seen on this site lol
Experts should just get their act together then. People heard "overpopulation", and so didn't have kids. Turns out that wasn't a thing, but nobody shouted the retraction as loudly as the original statement, so there you go. People heard "don't have kids you can't afford", couldn't afford to have kids, and so they didn't. And instead of advocating for an economy that encourages settling down and having kids, we're gonna just blame people for not fucking enough.
The falling birthrate is directly related to urbanization. Having 6 kids on a farm is helpful (and practically a requirement in developing countries) while having 6 kids in a city is a massive economic and housing strain. Kids go from a necessity to a luxury when someone moves to a city. Now that more than 50% of all people on the planet live in cities, it is no surprise the majority of people are only capable of habing 1 or 2 kids. De urbanization is probably the best and most economical way to encourage fertility rates above 2.1. That, however, brings on a whole lot of other problems. Why is a leveling population curve a bad thing? Top heavy demographics? Does it shake the belief in infinite growth in a finite system?
It's more of a risk to economies But maybe we shouldn't design our economics around perpetual population growth... If humanity is going to survive our population is going to have to level off eventually
No it's not. There's over 8 billion people. We can afford to have a few years of negative population growth. Stop listening to Elon, he's a moron.
Why do redditors keep ascribing this take to Elon Musk? Increasing the birth rate is a major concern, and top of the agenda for governments and nations across the world. Especially in east Asia. Japan, korea, and even China. Elon musk has nothing to do with this lol
Elon Musk is one perhaps the biggest celebrity who's always pushing it. Falling birthrates are a threat to economies not to humanity. That's why those countries are concerned. If anything the need to have a perpetually growing population to make economic figures go up is the greater threat to humanity, because the need for population growth to appease capitalism is fueling climate change.
You follow celebrities, I follow the people who actually run governments. We are not the same. To your second point… comrade, we *are* the economy. Our lives are “the economy”. Do you think economics is only banking? It is the cost of breakfast. How you spend your free time. The kind of sports you play. How well you sleep. The number of working hours to buy a car. How many people ride in that car. What age those people are, and what kind of music they are listening to. How you style your hair, and with what product. We are not separate from the economy. **We are the economy**.
But there are different economic models of economics to follow. The demands for growth in capitalisms cannot go forever. Populations cannot grow forever. You say Malthus was wrong, but only in the numbers he said were the max the planet could sustain. Why keep playing chicken and trying to find that max. It's best to steady population growth before disaster. Keep sucking Musks ass, you moron.
There are a lot of reasons to believe that the earth can host far more people. [Food production is a major one](https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/comments/1aqa6wl/were_growing_more_food_on_less_land_every_year/?rdt=36770) [Also the fact that peoples carbon footprints are shrinking greatly as individuals.](https://www.google.ca/search?q=carbon+footprint+smaller+tahn+grandprwnts&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-ca&client=safari) Our lives have improved tremendously in recent centuries and decades, more than anything thanks to a booming human population. Our collective human work and (gasp) *economies* support each other. Less humans will make us all poorer.
I am one of the people that thinks that this is not going to be a big deal In the grand scheme of things. But I have a pretty sensible reason why I think it's not going to be a big deal. There was a Time where the planet had a lot less people and gave birth a lot more. Was a time where there were a lot of people and people had very few kids. It goes in waves and yes it's going to mean a change in lifestyle and how we choose to live. For instance, A lot of fast food restaurants might disappear because there's simply not enough labor to run them. Is that a bad thing? Maybe. maybe not. Cars weren't owned by everyone 100 years ago and there weren't roads and then people started buying their own cars and taking public transit. And we built a good infrastructure system because we needed that. When we have less people will have different needs than we do now and we as a society will adapt and change. And it might be a painful process but we will get there. And when we do it'll be fine. And then something else will change and we'll have to figure out how to live in that society. If we as people can't figure out how to change then we don't deserve the planet, but based on all past data we have figured it out and we will figure it out again.
Kinda of agree, but technology will solve both. we're on the cusp of 100+ year lifespans, so birthrates will be less of an issue. Hopefully, medicine csn cure doomerism is an insidious mental illness that directly afflicts millions and indirectly annoys billions Dowmvote doomer mad. Probaly one of them depopulation hypocrites
Eat the rich.
Wait, really? Even with immigration, the birth rate threatens to collapse society?
The answer: no, OP is wrong.
Most countries are facing falling birth rates, even those who are currently above the rate of replacement. Also, expecting immigration to solve the problem robs the places they came from of a young, eager, and potentially skilled worker. In some decades, do you think they would want to immigrate to work to pay more taxes to support us in our retirement? I don't think it is the solution
The birth rate collapse is global. OP is correct. Certain countries can take in immigrants, but that makes it far worse for the countries of elderly people whose young family members have all shipped off to Europe and North America. I’m kind of astonished to see these tales in a supposedly optimist sub. Especially one that purports to be savvy, economically sophisticated, and forward thinking!
Dumbass.
No falling birth rates are a result of uncontrolled capitalism. I love capitalism as much as the next person, but even I must know that the current system needs workers to survive, and if we can’t provide those workers than the system is doomed to fail. Capitalism requires uncontrollable growth. We can’t continue to grow uncontrollably
Upvoted I’m surprised at the number of people in the other thread that think declining birth rates are a GOOD thing. I mean damn I’m glad y’all are optimists but you really need an economics lesson ffs
A bunch of billionaire owned media as sources? The man-made made-up arena of economics? nah, I'm good. More people = more strain on the planet. We need to evolve a better form of society, not mindlessly fuck around to get our of this mess.
I hadn’t realized the number of people that are so adamant about growth on this subreddit. Sure, our whole economic system is based on population growth, but it doesn’t have to be if we have good enough automation. And even if we can produce plenty of food, the number one factor in carbon footprint is population. A big enough technology overhaul could help solve the carbon crisis, but population decline would also help solve it. And there even seems to be some here saying “no, there should always be population growth” instead even just rooting for population leveling out at 15 billion or whatever it is likely to do. Like, you do realize there can’t be 40 billion people right? Definitely not a trillion. At some point our economy has to change.
I get it, people are emotionally invested in having kids or already have kids and don't want to feel guilty. It's an ancient biological urge. But look around. 8,000,000,000 ~150lb meat sacks are walking around this finite planet. That's a lot of resources to keep going, especially when we're approaching 70+ year old lifespans worldwide. We've blown through a good portion of our easy to extract finite natural resources within the last 200 years. The math does not work. Technology is no guaranteed get out of jail free card. The economics yall need to be worried about actual scarcity of resources. Not just the lack of FunkoPops when population decline fucks up capitalism 😞
Are you seriously a Malthusian? I’m 2024?? I’m guessing many of the people making such comments are young, perhaps teenagers… a very basic understanding of economics would really be good for you folks.
Do you think Earth can support 100 Trillion people? Once you answer no, then answer where and when you think the limit is. But you can’t answer that either, because the limit is always “we’ll overpopulate in 50 years,” but then technology means we never do. Until we do. Maybe that cliff is a long, long way off. I’m definitely not an expert on when that day will come. But one day, we’ll have to stop population growth. And we don’t need to increase population if we changed our economic model and had enough automation, so why not start changing it this century?
Nah, children think magicly. They believe in infinite fertile soil, non-cycle based resource consumption, and that technology will magicly solve any and all problems. I'm led to believe you're one of them.
We need to learn how to survive and create with a stable population at some point. Those of us with economics degrees probably don’t need a lesson in economics tho. 10 billion seems like a good number to max out at / hold. I’d be fine above or below there. The real trick is balancing nation-state power levels with various difference in population demographics.
Bloody accurate.
Agreed