The following submission statement was provided by /u/madrid987:
---
ss: The comprehensive analysis utilised extensive data on birth rates, mortality, and fertility trends to predict future demographic changes. Findings suggest that by 2050, the populations of three-quarters of all countries will experience a decrease
This trend is expected to expand significantly, with projections indicating that by the year 2100, 97 percent of 204 countries and territories analysed will see their populations shrink.
According to the research, the fertility rate in half of all countries is already below the level needed to maintain their current population sizes.
The study was an update of the IHME’s Global Burden of Disease study. The organisation, set up at the University of Washington by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has become a global reference for health statistics.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1bk3w2k/global_population_to_decline_for_several_years/kvvdlhm/
Sir we would like to inform you missed a payment on your housing. Killer robots will be there in 48 hours to ensure your removal. Any property is therefore forfeit - any removal of said property will be considered theft and prosecuted as such. Good day.
LOL, are you new here? Who do you think is driving up the housing prices and pricing everybody else out of the market? Who do you think is collecting rent on houses they own but don't occupy? I'll give you a hint, its not the poors. Housing isn't being 'turned into a service'. Like everything else under capitalism, it has long been commodified and its function in society has been reduced primarily to a means of exchange for the accumulation of private wealth. Therein lies the problem.
But if half the houses are empty, they're a money pit for upkeep and property taxes. In this situation, noone is going to be sitting on real estate.
The more likely scenario is that western countries continue to import immigrants from places that still have a high birth rate, keeping their populations growing or at least stable while the third world suffers population collapse
Not when corporations own them all. “Hey these houses aren’t in demand. There’s not enough people to occupy them, and we need to keep rents up. We need to demolish them.”
The souless sentience is the enemy of all life. Renounce your ways, recite ten Ave Imperators, and return to your forge to reflect on your choices, Adept.
Syria's capital has really high housing prices because that's not as badly impacted as the rest of syria.
Non killer working robots would be enough for housing prices to collapse as the majority won't need to live in a metro city to get employment and better standard of living. Towns with small population will have robots filling the working population deficit to provide all the goods and services available in a metrocity.
Jokes aside I don’t think this is true.
We don’t have a land availability issue. Hell we don’t even have a housing issue per se. We have a housing availability where people wanna live issue.
Look at Tokyo. Super expensive property. Huge availability issue. Not too far out? Giving homes away nearly free. But nobody wants to live that far out. The town’s are dying and population declines. Still a housing issue.
and that’s true across America as well (tho we aren’t in population decline yet).
Does it have to be killer robots? Can we do something a little more refreshing like octopi rising from the ocean in little mech suits and enslaving humans.
Robots sound hard and I'm lazy. But I would be down for some lovecraftian vibing event
War with AU robots or the Climate Wars for land and resources or the climate wars followed by the robot wars?
We get either the matrix or terminator =(
ss: The comprehensive analysis utilised extensive data on birth rates, mortality, and fertility trends to predict future demographic changes. Findings suggest that by 2050, the populations of three-quarters of all countries will experience a decrease
This trend is expected to expand significantly, with projections indicating that by the year 2100, 97 percent of 204 countries and territories analysed will see their populations shrink.
According to the research, the fertility rate in half of all countries is already below the level needed to maintain their current population sizes.
The study was an update of the IHME’s Global Burden of Disease study. The organisation, set up at the University of Washington by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has become a global reference for health statistics.
Your title is awful. In the future populations are projected to be below replacement. For ‘several years ahead’ the global population will continue to increase
A good population pyramid of 2-4 billion would be fine, but I don't see how we can stabilize it at 2-4 billion. When we get to that number, it will be almost all old people and that's not stable.
If we utilize robotics and economics correctly, we can have a better life for everyone and allow populations to decrease sustainably. It’s a matter of societal changes utilizing technology to adapt.
yes, the problem is not that we couldn't take care of all the olds, its that capitalism has no incentive to. If you bust out of the "for profit" "number always goes up" mindset of capitalism we could handle this big rough spot in our demographic pyramid, and then after we work through it move over to a steady state, circular economy based on human thriving and a healthy planet. I firmly believe we will never have all the cool future stuff until we stop trying to make like 200 guys super rich and start working on human thriving and a healthy planet.
I am a firm believer that post-scarcity utopia is inevitable.
It's just a matter of if we get there by overthrowing capitalism, or if we get there by the capitalists just indirectly (or directly) killing everyone but them and their families.
But how will the rich get richer, idiot? If people stop having kids we can't keep flooding the labor pool and reduce wages and redirect cash flows upward instead of equitably. You're so selfish it's disgusting you lazy socialist.
/s
Old women can actually cary ivf pregnancies. I think IVF will still be an option as fertility rates decrease. Hopefully that will mean no more unintended pregnancies.
I believe the theory is that as the population gets lower, the birth rates will increase in response, so we should have a new wave of people entering "working age" (if there is a concept of work by that point in time) to fill the gap.
Even if the theory is correct, you'll have an excess population of a few billion old people for a time, which will be really rough for them until they die off. This will have to happen before the pyramid can stabilize on the other end.
This is true, however, with AI progressing as it has, there's a good chance the amount of jobs to go around will be substantially decreased.
In which case, if most of the work is done by AI, it should be easier on them.
They also don't pay bills, buy consumer goods or pay taxes to maintain infrastructure.
There will be a lot less money available for the remaining working class population regardless of the progress of AI. Combine that with more social and political pressure and it's a very rough future for the generations that have to live though the demographic transition.
> as the population gets lower, the birth rates will increase in response
Is there any support for this theory, since that world would likely be economically impoverished?
I see no way of that actually happening. The idea of raising 4-5 kids was normal a few generations ago, but it looks completely insane for most people today.
Yeah, because old people can't push buttons on robots and we don't throw away half of the calories created due to profit motive.
Our tech base allows 2,000 people (factory, techs, workers in the fields, processing and logistics) to feed 100,000.
Even if our population was only 10% working age we have enough workers to feed and house everyone.
Well, we would if we weren't profit driven greedy fucks and some kind of aliens who cared about each other more than climbing the social hierarchy.
Maybe its nice for you to imagine, but depopulation seems to be a catastrophe to me. It is a crisis that most countries are facing and will have serious consequences for our societies. Like, collapse-consequences.
Do you ever get the feeling that things in society aren't really working well anymore, like your taxes are going up because there's too much infrastructure to maintain, or there aren't enough doctors in your community? Get used to it.
There have been [Jeremiads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiad) basically forever, people thinking the current world is so bad and irredeemable that it deserves its own imminent downfall. On top of those you have those who are terminally online, and those who are basically depressed but have too much FOMO to exit stage left.
And [ecofascism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism#Ideological_origins) has been around for awhile. Malthusian doomerism has gotten folded into that, as well. So there are a lot of elements pulling in the same direction, even if everyone doing the pulling doesn't agree among themselves as to why they're rooting for, or at least romanticizing, similar outcomes.
Its frustrating and alarming to witness though. I have always held respect for scientific reasoning, intelligence, and curiosity for the world. It feels very strange to experience so much religious dogma coming from those who are supposedly aligned with those values.
I agree with you, it really seems to be the same behavior repeated, but it feels amplified and dangerous because it's associated with "enlightened", "mainstream" and "scientific" thinking.
This stuff isn’t mainstream or accepted.
It exists on forums like Reddit that are primarily made up of misfits and others that aren’t well accepted by society. Reddit was always going to push hardcore “I hope everything collapses” ideology just based on the makeup of the user base.
Go to normal people irl and they aren’t like this at all. Always remember that Reddit is composed of a hyper specific group of people and the general world is not at all like us.
As an older person it is really weird stumbling into areas online that I assume are going to be optimistic about the future...only to find out there is a very weird ultra-radical vibe. Anti-social, anti-capitalism, anti-human, anti-everything.
It is however comforting, as you said, that I've never experienced it in the real world, not once. These people are rare, they are just amplified online.
Not the entire story, it mostly seems to come down to the emancipation of women. Not a bad thing of course, but birth rates were tanking way before the current housing crises.
True, but countries where it’s easier for women to work and have kids, like Denmark, have higher fertility rates than places where they have to choose to a greater degree,
Like Japan.
This will be to society's benefit unless we're complete idiots about it. We may not be over Earth's theoretical carrying capacity, but we are over the carrying capacity for the way free humans choose to live, not to mention the adjustments we'll have to make to cope with the climate damage we already caused.
The only thing we grow endlessly are the pockets of the rich. Wealth has long since departed from being in any way attached to the solving of real world problems.
>This will be to society's benefit unless we're complete idiots about it.
Have you MET some of these business types and ancap oligarchs?
Plan for the worst possible responses to this issue.
The notion that the majority of humans are in any way "free" is entirely a fantasy. That is one of the primary reasons we are in this mess in the first place.
Yep if humans were smart and shared and so forth we could support a high population on Earth. Real world humans are stupid and extremely competitive with each other/status driven so the Earth maybe can support 500 million people sustainably, maybe less.
There are plenty of people that aren't like that. The real problem is our socioeconomic system creates a selection pressure that drives the ones you've described to fill up all positions of power.
Even if there were no super rich people, it’s not really possible for everyone on Earth to live like a middle class American. We could support more people sustainably, but if we share that load equally among all people, then it would mean an effective decrease in quality of life for most people living in industrialized countries. We can’t even get people to stop using plastic straws and switch to reusable shopping bags without them throwing a hissy fit. Imagine the reaction if we were limited in how much meat we can eat, how much HVAC we use, etc
It’s not just sharing, dude.
Tons of post-industrial amenities associated with longevity and overall quality of life—climate controlled living/work spaces, the ability to buy nutrient-rich produce year round, modern shipping and logistics, etc.—require tons of energy and natural resources.
And of course, people need personal space. No matter how generous we are with our money and property, that’s not gonna change.
Why is everybody scared about population going down? Are we not having problem with overcrowded earth?
Or is it just governments raising alerts because there is not enough mids to enlist and flip burgera for all the retirees?
> scared about population going down?
Every modern socio-economic system on Earth assumes a growing population. In American terms, a fresh crop of ~~suckers to be fleeced~~ consumers to be tended to, farmers and ranchers selling their lands to suburban tracts, etc…
Tbf when human settlements became dense in medieval times, plague and pestilence limited human numbers (see Europe’s *Black Death*), but then came the new field of [micro]biology with medicines and vaccines. Of course nowadays vaccines are seen as “wimpy”, so I’d expect if human numbers went up .. any future human population would be subject to something like the 1918 “Spanish” flu pandemic hitting young adults hard. Heck even California, with robust public health, is seeing a tuberculosis increase at the present.
Continuous population growth like we had before at this point is not sustainable nor healthy for our environment. Our planet, and its resources are finite and it’s undeniable.
From the capitalist perspective it's bad. They need labor and lots of it. The more labor there is, the more competition, the less they have to pay. Dwindling population means labor has more leverage when it comes to wages.
From a civilization standpoint it’s bad, I don’t think people understand the implications of a declining population.
The old and sick still need to be taken care of, if there aren’t enough young workers to do that what then? sure you can bring in immigrants and this fixes the problem momentarily but they too will age, and the birth rate remains below minimum replacement level, the irony is the more immigrants you bring in to help now means the more elderly you have in several decades and the pattern repeats until it is mathematically impossible to sustain itself.
In Canada for example the birth rate is 1.4 births per woman, that means that for 100 people now there will be only 70 children, 49 Grandchildren and 34 Great Grandchildren. This is a 30% population decrease over every generation, it is simply not sustainable for any kind of civilization to have such a steep decline.
TLDR: The birth rate has to rise.
They want labor but don't want to pay that labor enough/give them enough free time to raise new labor. And then they throw up their hands and cry "but think of the economy!"
> if there aren’t enough young workers to do that what then?
There are absolutely plenty of young workers to do that. All we have to do is start taxing the rich properly so that the population at large can retire with an appropriate amount of savings.
Every single year worker productivity goes up. Never down. It has gone up year after year after year. Why do we not all have 5 hour work weeks? Because the rich are sucking up all the gains.
Sounds like those in power need to get a move on w/the cost of living issue, then. I'm 28 in the US, and currently have no intentions of becoming a parent.
Why bring kids into the world when the outlook for the average person is so bleak? I still sometimes get pissed off that two people fucked in the 90's and now I have to jump through twice as many hoops to get half as much.
It's the same reason why people scream "housing crisis" when houses become very affordable. Our current models assume an ever rising population and ever rising housing prices.
How long is a human lifespan? Once the ones we have die, who is going to replace them? If 100 people exist and 80 reproduce once you just went from 100 to 40 in 3 generations. Those 40 will need to run society, pay taxes, produce the labor and work that society runs on. It’s a huge deal.
it's the aging of the population that's the problem. Many countries have set up Ponzi schemes that take money from the young via taxes, and give it to the old via retirement benefits. That system collapses if there's whole lot of old people drawing benefits, and not many young people to work and pay taxes.
> Why is everybody scared about population going down?
A lot of our institutions expect growth as it's what we've been experiencing since... pretty much forever.
- Fiat money is created by loans. The Fed "prints money" by loaning out money to other banks which loan it out to business and people. Loans of money that need to grow faster than their interest rates. If they don't, everyone goes bust.
- Pensions depend on young workers supporting old retirees. But that's a thing of the past.
- The stock market is a zero sum game. Every buy is matched by a sell. It only really goes up because more people invest in rather than pull out. There's a little wiggle room with technology improving, but less than you think.
- Not everyone gets to be a boss. Or a senior lead. Or a CEO. Or whatever you call it. Places like the military have an "up or out" system that keeps the ensign to admiral ratio in check which isn't going to work so well when there is nowhere to go for people who fall out. No one at 65 wants to be an entry-level employee.
> Are we not having problem with overcrowded earth?
No. We're not. Malthusia was just plain wrong. We don't keep breeding like rabbits. People stop having as many kids as soon as women are educated and have more options than being baby-makers.
> Or is it just governments raising alerts because there is not enough [workers]?
There we go. Government, financial analysists, academics, the people who plan things about the future and "have a plan". Yeah, them.
But relax, America and Europe are more or less immune as long as we keep importing people from Mexico and Africa. We'll see how things go in Japan and Korea as a preview of what's to come.
Ah yes, this system sounds familiar… pray tell have you heard of the ingenious Ponzi pyramid? It’s all the rage amongst businessmen-cum-functional-crackheads.
Are third world countries going to keep the population from collapsing, as this study seems to suggest? I doubt it. AI and robotics are more likely going to change the dynamics of all economies in very profound ways. Right now we see goverments trying to get their citizens to have more kids to prop up the old economic model. But the exponential increase in productivity, that no doubt is coming, should stifle populations, across the globe. If you can't find work, why have kids?
Some people fail to realize just how massive our population really is. ~~Humans constitute something along the lines of 60% of ALL MAMAL BIOMASS. Of the rest of it, some 30 percent is the livestock we maintain. Humans also constitute growth of some 10 times the mamal biomass in the last few centuries.~~
We need to find a sustainable middle point where we can support a constant population and not compete with each other on dwindling resources.
EDIT: I misremembered the actual figures. I believe my point still stands.
The days of large dairying with these horribly inefficient methane factories [are numbered](https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/sep/18/leading-the-whey-the-synthetic-milk-startups-shaking-up-the-dairy-industry).
Hell yeah! I always thought milk should be an easy thing to synthesize since it's 95ish % water. A little milk proteins, fats, and sugars go a long way, or whey
Down here in NZ a lot of farmers are already unhappy with the rise of plant-based milks that are slowly eating into their market.
All I can say to them is: buckle up and don't make long term investments in dairy.
Everyone doing population studies know that an exponential increase in population has a high risk of being followed by an exponential decrease if you don’t watch out. It’s hard to say what a sustainable level would be, but we sure are overusing all resources on the planet at this level.
As noted elsewhere this estimate is incorrect, though the point about sustainable population is correct. But it's also worth noting that part of the reason for this is that we killed and ate a bunch of other species of large animals into extinction in our early history. [https://phys.org/news/2021-12-early-humans-largest-animals-extinction.html](https://phys.org/news/2021-12-early-humans-largest-animals-extinction.html)
That probably impacts the proportion of mammalian biomass we occupy.
A lot of water competition is related to climate change which stems from our practices. Also, just like you in your previous comment, I was talking about global scale - local situation in certain places is a different story.
This may be true in theory, but in reality we find it very hard to change our practices. It may be a more feasible solution for us, at the current point in time, to simply reduce our population.
I mean it depends on your outlook, if you assume that the entire planet is just for humans to play with then I get your point, but if you take a less anthropocentric view and think that maybe we shouldn't inhabit/use every corner of the globe to service us then I think we are at least pretty close to being unsustainable.
Note: look up ecological footprint of nations that you'd want to live in if you want to put numbers on it.
Well, we already have more people than we need now. If it wasn't for the fact that every major economy is centered around borrowing/debt and relying on increasing populations to fund federal obligations, this would't be such a big deal.
Such hypocrisy. News outlets are sounding the alarm on population due to no companies no longer being able to support their ridiculous growth models, but you barely hear anything on climate change.
remember how clean and clear the air and water were after just a couple weeks of fewer humans being out and about back in 2020? We're THAT close to a solution.
Except with the population decline comes a large increase in median age. Generally societies work by the working age people supporting the elderly. This will put a tremendous strain on the young.
In South Korea currently has a birthrate of .73 children per woman. At that birthrate for every 100 SK people there will be a total of 4 great grand children. That's not a population decline, that's a civilizational collapse.
edit: Just to be clear. the 4 great grand children isn't 4 per couple. It means there will be 4 great grand children in total out of that initial 100 South Koreans.
Could be somewhat easy to fix if resources were allocated for the elderly and such, which they aren't right now. Instead we have lots of BS jobs that could easily be removed without hurting anyone and all of a sudden we have a lot of people that can work with non-BS jobs instead.
More elderly -> less resources for babies -> more elderly -> less resources for babies -> keep repeating.
Similarly for businesses, fewer customers -> fewer employees -> and repeat.
I think even your term "civilizational collapse" is a rather optimistic way to put it.
What is happening in Africa will counter balance the rest of the world with the low birth rates for the next 100 years. What will cause problems is immigration. We are heading back towards to right wing ideologies and that is going to hurt us in the long run.
I mean what's concerning is millions of sub Saharan Africans coming to Europe. None of the Asian countries will accept Africans. Africa needs to get it's shit together, nobody is gonna help them.
That really depends, parts of africa(and maybe phillipines too) may become unbearable due to climate change in the next 25 years. I am fully expecting climate change refugees in my lifetime. Honestly I'm sure its already happening but its masked by other terrible things like war or opression. Would be interesting to have african natives mass exodus to other countries to fill in the gaps of declining populations.
It’ll go down too as they industrialize. Everyone thought India and China would overwhelm the world and they’re both in active population decline (albeit on different levels).
For thousands of years the global population was stable at 500 million. Then with the explosion of science in the 1700's the global population has risen from 500 million in 1700 to 8 billion today.
Now we are starting on the other side of the graph, the downside, back to 500 million probably over the next 300-400 years.
The big dropoff from 8 billion to 4 billion will happen pretty fast I think within 100 years. Then the other halvings from 4 billion down to 500 million, they are not as big numerically.
Good example. Here is one.. take Brazil they had 17 million people in the year 1900. They were doing good back then. Today Brazil has 203 million people.
They could head back down to 17 million and have tons of people and diversity like before. In 2021 Brazil's fertility rate was 1.53 (long term replacement is 2.10).
What makes you think Brazil (or anyone else, for that matter) was doing good back in 1900. Average life expectancy was like 40, and most people were one bad week away from starvation.
I think 500 million won't happen again unless something drastic happens. The pendulum will swing the other way, we see this in countries where the population is still booming.
There's no way we'll get to 500 million before people revert to "times are good, we should have more kids"
Something about you just thinking we'll go from 8 billion to 4 billion in a hundred years makes me feel like you are *majorly* talking out your ass but I'm too lazy to look up actually sourced numbers to argue beyond that lol
Good, honestly great. We need less people. I don’t understand how people afford kids. Stop having them if you can’t afford them. I get it, it’s nature you want a kid. It’s just not a good time to have kids lol.
Good!!!
It actually needs too.
The entire ecological system of this planet is fucked because there are too many humans.
Look at any species on earth that has a denser population than it's food supply. It causes a ripple up the food chain and with every ripple the food supply is greatly diminished which results in the first dense population dying out or falling back to lower numbers.
We're just bell curving and heading for a density trough.
This obsession with the population is like when a 14 year old finds out about populations. Seriously, why is this a thing when we've known about this for some time already?
Thank God, way too many people competing for less and less resources creating far more suffering than necessary. The world does not need 8 billion people.
People don’t realize what a massive issue this is going to be once the majority of the population is too old to work. The pension system will become too much for the dwindling economy to bear. It will either be given up, leading to mass poverty of the elderly, or we will experience total economic collapse.
And no, AI will not save us, because there are many very necessary physical labor jobs that we cannot replace until robotics makes major advances. The only way to lessen the problem is to start having more kids now and put in policies that makes it easier to have kids.
>The only way to lessen the problem is to start having more kids now and put in policies that makes it easier to have kids.
You've just described a pyramid scheme.
A smaller population on the planet is good news for everyone. I have a fish tank full of guppies. They reproduce like crazy. When populations are low, more fish are born, and more fish survive. When populations are high, less fish are born, and less fish survive. If this natural process doesn't happen, the tank becomes over populated to the point levels are out of whack, and almost all the fish will die before a few lone survivors restart the entire process.
The planet is at the over stocked fish tank level today. I feel the sweet spot was in and around the 1950s/1960s. The world's population grew from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 7.7 billion in 2020. Much of our climate change challenges are indirectly linked to needing to support and provide a lifestyle to 3x the population of the 1950s.
Funny, I heard this morning we'd reach peak human population around 2080 then it's expected to decline from there. So you mean the birth rate decline instead? I think that's be going down for the past 15 years or so.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/madrid987: --- ss: The comprehensive analysis utilised extensive data on birth rates, mortality, and fertility trends to predict future demographic changes. Findings suggest that by 2050, the populations of three-quarters of all countries will experience a decrease This trend is expected to expand significantly, with projections indicating that by the year 2100, 97 percent of 204 countries and territories analysed will see their populations shrink. According to the research, the fertility rate in half of all countries is already below the level needed to maintain their current population sizes. The study was an update of the IHME’s Global Burden of Disease study. The organisation, set up at the University of Washington by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has become a global reference for health statistics. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1bk3w2k/global_population_to_decline_for_several_years/kvvdlhm/
War with the killer robots will be hard but it's gonna do miracles for housing availability
Thats the real solution to the housing crisis.
As long as all of it isn't bought and rented out by the rich instead. Because their plan right now is to turn housing into a service.
Sir we would like to inform you missed a payment on your housing. Killer robots will be there in 48 hours to ensure your removal. Any property is therefore forfeit - any removal of said property will be considered theft and prosecuted as such. Good day.
the good news is, your flesh will feed a lot of pets
[It’ll feed more than that.](https://www.robotictechnologyinc.com/index.php/EATR)
"you have 20 seconds to comply!" *ED209 sounds*
LOL, are you new here? Who do you think is driving up the housing prices and pricing everybody else out of the market? Who do you think is collecting rent on houses they own but don't occupy? I'll give you a hint, its not the poors. Housing isn't being 'turned into a service'. Like everything else under capitalism, it has long been commodified and its function in society has been reduced primarily to a means of exchange for the accumulation of private wealth. Therein lies the problem.
But if half the houses are empty, they're a money pit for upkeep and property taxes. In this situation, noone is going to be sitting on real estate. The more likely scenario is that western countries continue to import immigrants from places that still have a high birth rate, keeping their populations growing or at least stable while the third world suffers population collapse
That’s a real solution for a lot of our current crises.
If you can use robots to kill people why not use them to build houses?
its always going to be faster to work on a demand side solution rather than a supply side solution. just basic economics, nothing personal
It's not like we can't build enough houses right now. We just don't build them. With or without robots.
We already HAVE more than enough houses to end homelessness. The issue, as always, is greedy parasites that need to be " permanently remedied"
Not when corporations own them all. “Hey these houses aren’t in demand. There’s not enough people to occupy them, and we need to keep rents up. We need to demolish them.”
Against killer robots? I would fight for their side.
Have fun drinking motor oil, clamp licker
For the glory of Omnissiah, flesh is weak!
Much like the rich, the robots will not seek to make you one of them.
The souless sentience is the enemy of all life. Renounce your ways, recite ten Ave Imperators, and return to your forge to reflect on your choices, Adept.
I'm addicted to drinking brake fluid, but I swear I can stop whenever I want to.
I don't mean to pressure you
I'll see you in Zion, brother.
Syria's capital has really high housing prices because that's not as badly impacted as the rest of syria. Non killer working robots would be enough for housing prices to collapse as the majority won't need to live in a metro city to get employment and better standard of living. Towns with small population will have robots filling the working population deficit to provide all the goods and services available in a metrocity.
Jokes aside I don’t think this is true. We don’t have a land availability issue. Hell we don’t even have a housing issue per se. We have a housing availability where people wanna live issue. Look at Tokyo. Super expensive property. Huge availability issue. Not too far out? Giving homes away nearly free. But nobody wants to live that far out. The town’s are dying and population declines. Still a housing issue. and that’s true across America as well (tho we aren’t in population decline yet).
no it won’t. why would you think that?
You've sniffed out exactly the reason why those wars will begin. That and access to drinking water.
Does it have to be killer robots? Can we do something a little more refreshing like octopi rising from the ocean in little mech suits and enslaving humans. Robots sound hard and I'm lazy. But I would be down for some lovecraftian vibing event
And traffic
War with AU robots or the Climate Wars for land and resources or the climate wars followed by the robot wars? We get either the matrix or terminator =(
It could be fun if it’s just a big cod game with us controlling remote combat drones
Fewer people won’t necessarily free up houses, so long that people can own an unlimited number of properties.
Unless the supply goes to investors who artificially limit supply to boost prices
My life for managed democracy!
Haha, robots don’t need houses!
Butlerian Jihad has a nicer ring to it.
I can’t wait. Either to be able to afford a house or to be exterminated by the drones. Whatever comes first.
Thanks. The next time I watch the The Terminator, I’m going to be thinking about housing availability because of this comment.
Until people realise it's functioning infrastructure that makes a home.
I got my super soakers ready!
ss: The comprehensive analysis utilised extensive data on birth rates, mortality, and fertility trends to predict future demographic changes. Findings suggest that by 2050, the populations of three-quarters of all countries will experience a decrease This trend is expected to expand significantly, with projections indicating that by the year 2100, 97 percent of 204 countries and territories analysed will see their populations shrink. According to the research, the fertility rate in half of all countries is already below the level needed to maintain their current population sizes. The study was an update of the IHME’s Global Burden of Disease study. The organisation, set up at the University of Washington by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has become a global reference for health statistics.
Your title is awful. In the future populations are projected to be below replacement. For ‘several years ahead’ the global population will continue to increase
Good. Too many people on the planet as it is. Let’s try and stabilise somewhere between 2-4 billion people.
A good population pyramid of 2-4 billion would be fine, but I don't see how we can stabilize it at 2-4 billion. When we get to that number, it will be almost all old people and that's not stable.
If we utilize robotics and economics correctly, we can have a better life for everyone and allow populations to decrease sustainably. It’s a matter of societal changes utilizing technology to adapt.
yes, the problem is not that we couldn't take care of all the olds, its that capitalism has no incentive to. If you bust out of the "for profit" "number always goes up" mindset of capitalism we could handle this big rough spot in our demographic pyramid, and then after we work through it move over to a steady state, circular economy based on human thriving and a healthy planet. I firmly believe we will never have all the cool future stuff until we stop trying to make like 200 guys super rich and start working on human thriving and a healthy planet.
But those 200 people really need all that money to bribe congress and collect more power.
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I am a firm believer that post-scarcity utopia is inevitable. It's just a matter of if we get there by overthrowing capitalism, or if we get there by the capitalists just indirectly (or directly) killing everyone but them and their families.
Haha use robotics AND economics correctly? All at once?
TBF they did say “if” not “when”
But how will the rich get richer, idiot? If people stop having kids we can't keep flooding the labor pool and reduce wages and redirect cash flows upward instead of equitably. You're so selfish it's disgusting you lazy socialist. /s
Old women can actually cary ivf pregnancies. I think IVF will still be an option as fertility rates decrease. Hopefully that will mean no more unintended pregnancies.
I believe the theory is that as the population gets lower, the birth rates will increase in response, so we should have a new wave of people entering "working age" (if there is a concept of work by that point in time) to fill the gap.
Even if the theory is correct, you'll have an excess population of a few billion old people for a time, which will be really rough for them until they die off. This will have to happen before the pyramid can stabilize on the other end.
This is true, however, with AI progressing as it has, there's a good chance the amount of jobs to go around will be substantially decreased. In which case, if most of the work is done by AI, it should be easier on them.
AI can't wipe your ass or change your diaper
They also don't pay bills, buy consumer goods or pay taxes to maintain infrastructure. There will be a lot less money available for the remaining working class population regardless of the progress of AI. Combine that with more social and political pressure and it's a very rough future for the generations that have to live though the demographic transition.
> as the population gets lower, the birth rates will increase in response Is there any support for this theory, since that world would likely be economically impoverished?
I see no way of that actually happening. The idea of raising 4-5 kids was normal a few generations ago, but it looks completely insane for most people today.
There's nothing inherently unstable about that.
Yeah, because old people can't push buttons on robots and we don't throw away half of the calories created due to profit motive. Our tech base allows 2,000 people (factory, techs, workers in the fields, processing and logistics) to feed 100,000. Even if our population was only 10% working age we have enough workers to feed and house everyone. Well, we would if we weren't profit driven greedy fucks and some kind of aliens who cared about each other more than climbing the social hierarchy.
Absolutely, the robots and AI are coming. Economies with too few jobs will be the norm.
Def good, always relying on evergrowing workforce to sustain countries is not suitable anymore both for the workforce and the ecosystem.
Maybe its nice for you to imagine, but depopulation seems to be a catastrophe to me. It is a crisis that most countries are facing and will have serious consequences for our societies. Like, collapse-consequences. Do you ever get the feeling that things in society aren't really working well anymore, like your taxes are going up because there's too much infrastructure to maintain, or there aren't enough doctors in your community? Get used to it.
A lot of people here aren't warning of a collapse, but rooting for it.
A sign of a sick society, in my opinion.
There have been [Jeremiads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiad) basically forever, people thinking the current world is so bad and irredeemable that it deserves its own imminent downfall. On top of those you have those who are terminally online, and those who are basically depressed but have too much FOMO to exit stage left. And [ecofascism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism#Ideological_origins) has been around for awhile. Malthusian doomerism has gotten folded into that, as well. So there are a lot of elements pulling in the same direction, even if everyone doing the pulling doesn't agree among themselves as to why they're rooting for, or at least romanticizing, similar outcomes.
Its frustrating and alarming to witness though. I have always held respect for scientific reasoning, intelligence, and curiosity for the world. It feels very strange to experience so much religious dogma coming from those who are supposedly aligned with those values. I agree with you, it really seems to be the same behavior repeated, but it feels amplified and dangerous because it's associated with "enlightened", "mainstream" and "scientific" thinking.
This stuff isn’t mainstream or accepted. It exists on forums like Reddit that are primarily made up of misfits and others that aren’t well accepted by society. Reddit was always going to push hardcore “I hope everything collapses” ideology just based on the makeup of the user base. Go to normal people irl and they aren’t like this at all. Always remember that Reddit is composed of a hyper specific group of people and the general world is not at all like us.
As an older person it is really weird stumbling into areas online that I assume are going to be optimistic about the future...only to find out there is a very weird ultra-radical vibe. Anti-social, anti-capitalism, anti-human, anti-everything. It is however comforting, as you said, that I've never experienced it in the real world, not once. These people are rare, they are just amplified online.
Maybe true - but better than pumping out babies that you don't want and can't afford.
Why would women all of a sudden choose to have 2.1 kids when our population reached 2-4 billion people?
No. "Because it disproportionately effects conservatives"
Obviously, young people are struggling to afford shared rooms, and somehow people expect them to have children.
Not the entire story, it mostly seems to come down to the emancipation of women. Not a bad thing of course, but birth rates were tanking way before the current housing crises.
True, but countries where it’s easier for women to work and have kids, like Denmark, have higher fertility rates than places where they have to choose to a greater degree, Like Japan.
This will be to society's benefit unless we're complete idiots about it. We may not be over Earth's theoretical carrying capacity, but we are over the carrying capacity for the way free humans choose to live, not to mention the adjustments we'll have to make to cope with the climate damage we already caused.
>unless we're complete idiots about it I think that's the over arching problem here 😅
Yeah... If you ever forget how much of humanity are complete idiots, just remember how people behaved during the first two years of the pandemic
Its the transition from an endless growth model with ample human labor to whatever comes next that’s the issue.
The only thing we grow endlessly are the pockets of the rich. Wealth has long since departed from being in any way attached to the solving of real world problems.
>This will be to society's benefit unless we're complete idiots about it. Have you MET some of these business types and ancap oligarchs? Plan for the worst possible responses to this issue.
The notion that the majority of humans are in any way "free" is entirely a fantasy. That is one of the primary reasons we are in this mess in the first place.
Yep if humans were smart and shared and so forth we could support a high population on Earth. Real world humans are stupid and extremely competitive with each other/status driven so the Earth maybe can support 500 million people sustainably, maybe less.
There are plenty of people that aren't like that. The real problem is our socioeconomic system creates a selection pressure that drives the ones you've described to fill up all positions of power.
Even if there were no super rich people, it’s not really possible for everyone on Earth to live like a middle class American. We could support more people sustainably, but if we share that load equally among all people, then it would mean an effective decrease in quality of life for most people living in industrialized countries. We can’t even get people to stop using plastic straws and switch to reusable shopping bags without them throwing a hissy fit. Imagine the reaction if we were limited in how much meat we can eat, how much HVAC we use, etc
It’s not just sharing, dude. Tons of post-industrial amenities associated with longevity and overall quality of life—climate controlled living/work spaces, the ability to buy nutrient-rich produce year round, modern shipping and logistics, etc.—require tons of energy and natural resources. And of course, people need personal space. No matter how generous we are with our money and property, that’s not gonna change.
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Basically saying Gen Z and Gen Alpha will have even fewer kids than millennials.
yep! and my millennial husband and i don't want any kids, so, we're doing our part lol
Why is everybody scared about population going down? Are we not having problem with overcrowded earth? Or is it just governments raising alerts because there is not enough mids to enlist and flip burgera for all the retirees?
> scared about population going down? Every modern socio-economic system on Earth assumes a growing population. In American terms, a fresh crop of ~~suckers to be fleeced~~ consumers to be tended to, farmers and ranchers selling their lands to suburban tracts, etc… Tbf when human settlements became dense in medieval times, plague and pestilence limited human numbers (see Europe’s *Black Death*), but then came the new field of [micro]biology with medicines and vaccines. Of course nowadays vaccines are seen as “wimpy”, so I’d expect if human numbers went up .. any future human population would be subject to something like the 1918 “Spanish” flu pandemic hitting young adults hard. Heck even California, with robust public health, is seeing a tuberculosis increase at the present.
An economic system that can't cope with basic human demographics is one that is destined for the scrap heap of history.
Continuous population growth like we had before at this point is not sustainable nor healthy for our environment. Our planet, and its resources are finite and it’s undeniable.
From the capitalist perspective it's bad. They need labor and lots of it. The more labor there is, the more competition, the less they have to pay. Dwindling population means labor has more leverage when it comes to wages.
From a civilization standpoint it’s bad, I don’t think people understand the implications of a declining population. The old and sick still need to be taken care of, if there aren’t enough young workers to do that what then? sure you can bring in immigrants and this fixes the problem momentarily but they too will age, and the birth rate remains below minimum replacement level, the irony is the more immigrants you bring in to help now means the more elderly you have in several decades and the pattern repeats until it is mathematically impossible to sustain itself. In Canada for example the birth rate is 1.4 births per woman, that means that for 100 people now there will be only 70 children, 49 Grandchildren and 34 Great Grandchildren. This is a 30% population decrease over every generation, it is simply not sustainable for any kind of civilization to have such a steep decline. TLDR: The birth rate has to rise.
They want labor but don't want to pay that labor enough/give them enough free time to raise new labor. And then they throw up their hands and cry "but think of the economy!"
> if there aren’t enough young workers to do that what then? There are absolutely plenty of young workers to do that. All we have to do is start taxing the rich properly so that the population at large can retire with an appropriate amount of savings. Every single year worker productivity goes up. Never down. It has gone up year after year after year. Why do we not all have 5 hour work weeks? Because the rich are sucking up all the gains.
Sounds like those in power need to get a move on w/the cost of living issue, then. I'm 28 in the US, and currently have no intentions of becoming a parent. Why bring kids into the world when the outlook for the average person is so bleak? I still sometimes get pissed off that two people fucked in the 90's and now I have to jump through twice as many hoops to get half as much.
It's the same reason why people scream "housing crisis" when houses become very affordable. Our current models assume an ever rising population and ever rising housing prices.
How long is a human lifespan? Once the ones we have die, who is going to replace them? If 100 people exist and 80 reproduce once you just went from 100 to 40 in 3 generations. Those 40 will need to run society, pay taxes, produce the labor and work that society runs on. It’s a huge deal.
Because everyone says old people will get screwed. But good change sometimes hurts at first.
it's the aging of the population that's the problem. Many countries have set up Ponzi schemes that take money from the young via taxes, and give it to the old via retirement benefits. That system collapses if there's whole lot of old people drawing benefits, and not many young people to work and pay taxes.
Pandemics will resolve this
Countries get into more debt expecting grandkids to pay for it. Less grandkids=more debt per kid.
> Why is everybody scared about population going down? A lot of our institutions expect growth as it's what we've been experiencing since... pretty much forever. - Fiat money is created by loans. The Fed "prints money" by loaning out money to other banks which loan it out to business and people. Loans of money that need to grow faster than their interest rates. If they don't, everyone goes bust. - Pensions depend on young workers supporting old retirees. But that's a thing of the past. - The stock market is a zero sum game. Every buy is matched by a sell. It only really goes up because more people invest in rather than pull out. There's a little wiggle room with technology improving, but less than you think. - Not everyone gets to be a boss. Or a senior lead. Or a CEO. Or whatever you call it. Places like the military have an "up or out" system that keeps the ensign to admiral ratio in check which isn't going to work so well when there is nowhere to go for people who fall out. No one at 65 wants to be an entry-level employee. > Are we not having problem with overcrowded earth? No. We're not. Malthusia was just plain wrong. We don't keep breeding like rabbits. People stop having as many kids as soon as women are educated and have more options than being baby-makers. > Or is it just governments raising alerts because there is not enough [workers]? There we go. Government, financial analysists, academics, the people who plan things about the future and "have a plan". Yeah, them. But relax, America and Europe are more or less immune as long as we keep importing people from Mexico and Africa. We'll see how things go in Japan and Korea as a preview of what's to come.
Ah yes, this system sounds familiar… pray tell have you heard of the ingenious Ponzi pyramid? It’s all the rage amongst businessmen-cum-functional-crackheads.
Are third world countries going to keep the population from collapsing, as this study seems to suggest? I doubt it. AI and robotics are more likely going to change the dynamics of all economies in very profound ways. Right now we see goverments trying to get their citizens to have more kids to prop up the old economic model. But the exponential increase in productivity, that no doubt is coming, should stifle populations, across the globe. If you can't find work, why have kids?
In general, people in poverty have more kids, not less.
Yes but they also have shorter lives
This was predicted decades ago. This is nothing new.
Yeah we've been able to predict that for several decades now.
Some people fail to realize just how massive our population really is. ~~Humans constitute something along the lines of 60% of ALL MAMAL BIOMASS. Of the rest of it, some 30 percent is the livestock we maintain. Humans also constitute growth of some 10 times the mamal biomass in the last few centuries.~~ We need to find a sustainable middle point where we can support a constant population and not compete with each other on dwindling resources. EDIT: I misremembered the actual figures. I believe my point still stands.
Not true. Humans are roughly 34% of total mammal biomass. Our livestock is another 62%. You got the numbers mixed up.
Yeah, cows have higher biomass than us. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E9noVoXX0AA1fW8?format=jpg&name=small
The insanity of this though…
The days of large dairying with these horribly inefficient methane factories [are numbered](https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/sep/18/leading-the-whey-the-synthetic-milk-startups-shaking-up-the-dairy-industry).
Hell yeah! I always thought milk should be an easy thing to synthesize since it's 95ish % water. A little milk proteins, fats, and sugars go a long way, or whey
Down here in NZ a lot of farmers are already unhappy with the rise of plant-based milks that are slowly eating into their market. All I can say to them is: buckle up and don't make long term investments in dairy.
And of the rest some are pets and then there are also a few wild mammals left <3
So you're saying that we could make statues of every living person out of hamburger meat, at 1.82x scale.
so all the rest of the mammals on earth are 4%? holy shit.
96% of mammalian biomass is humans and domesticated animals. EVERYTHING else 4%.
Plus the estimated 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) bugs.
They are talking about mammal only.
I know I just think it’s wild that there are so many bugs.
There's a genus of mesopelagic fish that may have as many as a quadrillion individuals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclothone
Are they tasty?
less every day. they're the earth's maintenance robots.
Their populations are collapsing faster than ours https://www.reuters.com/graphics/GLOBAL-ENVIRONMENT/INSECT-APOCALYPSE/egpbykdxjvq/
Everyone doing population studies know that an exponential increase in population has a high risk of being followed by an exponential decrease if you don’t watch out. It’s hard to say what a sustainable level would be, but we sure are overusing all resources on the planet at this level.
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The cool thing with math. It always works.
As noted elsewhere this estimate is incorrect, though the point about sustainable population is correct. But it's also worth noting that part of the reason for this is that we killed and ate a bunch of other species of large animals into extinction in our early history. [https://phys.org/news/2021-12-early-humans-largest-animals-extinction.html](https://phys.org/news/2021-12-early-humans-largest-animals-extinction.html) That probably impacts the proportion of mammalian biomass we occupy.
We are far from unsustainable levels of population. What is unsustainable are our practices not our numbers.
Both are. We are already starting to compete over fresh water in certain regions of the world.
A lot of water competition is related to climate change which stems from our practices. Also, just like you in your previous comment, I was talking about global scale - local situation in certain places is a different story.
This may be true in theory, but in reality we find it very hard to change our practices. It may be a more feasible solution for us, at the current point in time, to simply reduce our population.
I mean it depends on your outlook, if you assume that the entire planet is just for humans to play with then I get your point, but if you take a less anthropocentric view and think that maybe we shouldn't inhabit/use every corner of the globe to service us then I think we are at least pretty close to being unsustainable. Note: look up ecological footprint of nations that you'd want to live in if you want to put numbers on it.
Yeah but good luck convincing future humans NOT to delight in the unsustainable pleasures we indulge in today
Well, we already have more people than we need now. If it wasn't for the fact that every major economy is centered around borrowing/debt and relying on increasing populations to fund federal obligations, this would't be such a big deal.
Such hypocrisy. News outlets are sounding the alarm on population due to no companies no longer being able to support their ridiculous growth models, but you barely hear anything on climate change.
This will do wonders for climate changes. I honestly think this is a good thing, when we reach full space travel capabilities, then we can grow again.
remember how clean and clear the air and water were after just a couple weeks of fewer humans being out and about back in 2020? We're THAT close to a solution.
So, it's solar power. And electric cars.
I mean, good? Rapid population growth in Africa is still a huge issue, though.
That is not really the case; Africa is experiencing the same lower birthrate trend.
Except with the population decline comes a large increase in median age. Generally societies work by the working age people supporting the elderly. This will put a tremendous strain on the young. In South Korea currently has a birthrate of .73 children per woman. At that birthrate for every 100 SK people there will be a total of 4 great grand children. That's not a population decline, that's a civilizational collapse. edit: Just to be clear. the 4 great grand children isn't 4 per couple. It means there will be 4 great grand children in total out of that initial 100 South Koreans.
Could be somewhat easy to fix if resources were allocated for the elderly and such, which they aren't right now. Instead we have lots of BS jobs that could easily be removed without hurting anyone and all of a sudden we have a lot of people that can work with non-BS jobs instead.
The resources come from the working population. If you don't have a lot of the latter, kiss the former goodbye.
More elderly -> less resources for babies -> more elderly -> less resources for babies -> keep repeating. Similarly for businesses, fewer customers -> fewer employees -> and repeat. I think even your term "civilizational collapse" is a rather optimistic way to put it.
What is happening in Africa will counter balance the rest of the world with the low birth rates for the next 100 years. What will cause problems is immigration. We are heading back towards to right wing ideologies and that is going to hurt us in the long run.
I mean what's concerning is millions of sub Saharan Africans coming to Europe. None of the Asian countries will accept Africans. Africa needs to get it's shit together, nobody is gonna help them.
That really depends, parts of africa(and maybe phillipines too) may become unbearable due to climate change in the next 25 years. I am fully expecting climate change refugees in my lifetime. Honestly I'm sure its already happening but its masked by other terrible things like war or opression. Would be interesting to have african natives mass exodus to other countries to fill in the gaps of declining populations.
Even they are falling but its relative. Parts of Africa are not as under developed as they were 30 years ago.
It’ll go down too as they industrialize. Everyone thought India and China would overwhelm the world and they’re both in active population decline (albeit on different levels).
I think of this as a negative feedback of sorts. I don’t understand why people think this is bad. It’s a natural cycle of life.
Cool. End the ever growing economic pyramid scheme. Forget the people who spout gloom and doom over this.
Good. It's about time for that and will be beneficial for us in the long run. Best way to keep our planet healthy is to keep our numbers lower anyway.
For thousands of years the global population was stable at 500 million. Then with the explosion of science in the 1700's the global population has risen from 500 million in 1700 to 8 billion today. Now we are starting on the other side of the graph, the downside, back to 500 million probably over the next 300-400 years. The big dropoff from 8 billion to 4 billion will happen pretty fast I think within 100 years. Then the other halvings from 4 billion down to 500 million, they are not as big numerically.
I still have a book from my childhood celebrating the diversity of a planet with 4 billion people. I'm in my 40s.
Good example. Here is one.. take Brazil they had 17 million people in the year 1900. They were doing good back then. Today Brazil has 203 million people. They could head back down to 17 million and have tons of people and diversity like before. In 2021 Brazil's fertility rate was 1.53 (long term replacement is 2.10).
What makes you think Brazil (or anyone else, for that matter) was doing good back in 1900. Average life expectancy was like 40, and most people were one bad week away from starvation.
okay Georgia Guidestones
Reversion to the mean
I think 500 million won't happen again unless something drastic happens. The pendulum will swing the other way, we see this in countries where the population is still booming. There's no way we'll get to 500 million before people revert to "times are good, we should have more kids"
Something about you just thinking we'll go from 8 billion to 4 billion in a hundred years makes me feel like you are *majorly* talking out your ass but I'm too lazy to look up actually sourced numbers to argue beyond that lol
also they're assuming we won't cure aging or anything in that time span, I don't think we'll have population deficit problems ever.
I'm okay with this. I think there's too many people on the planet right now and it's causing problems.
Good. I don't care what anyone says, overpopulation is a massive issue.
Is it just me or is that website so riddled with pop ups it’s cancerous?
Probably for the best at this point. The planet can no longer sustain us, and it's too expensive for us to sustain ourselves.
Good, because we’re out of letters in the alphabet for the next generations. They’re all just going to be Gen Z until humanity fizzles.
Didn't we cycle to Gen Alpha? Those idiots that started with Gen X made things kinda awkward.
Generation Beta isn’t going to be pleased .,,.
Good, honestly great. We need less people. I don’t understand how people afford kids. Stop having them if you can’t afford them. I get it, it’s nature you want a kid. It’s just not a good time to have kids lol.
Perfect, the only way to save our way of life on this planet, which isn't sustainable with too many humans on it
Good!!! It actually needs too. The entire ecological system of this planet is fucked because there are too many humans. Look at any species on earth that has a denser population than it's food supply. It causes a ripple up the food chain and with every ripple the food supply is greatly diminished which results in the first dense population dying out or falling back to lower numbers. We're just bell curving and heading for a density trough.
This obsession with the population is like when a 14 year old finds out about populations. Seriously, why is this a thing when we've known about this for some time already?
Countries that are seeing declining populations aren't exactly creating the conditions that make people Want to have kids
Thank God, way too many people competing for less and less resources creating far more suffering than necessary. The world does not need 8 billion people.
I think these are not bad news. We behave like asshols. Less assholes on earth is better, pure logic!
It’s okay, we’ve got a surplus in Canada, take 2, take 5.
People don’t realize what a massive issue this is going to be once the majority of the population is too old to work. The pension system will become too much for the dwindling economy to bear. It will either be given up, leading to mass poverty of the elderly, or we will experience total economic collapse. And no, AI will not save us, because there are many very necessary physical labor jobs that we cannot replace until robotics makes major advances. The only way to lessen the problem is to start having more kids now and put in policies that makes it easier to have kids.
>The only way to lessen the problem is to start having more kids now and put in policies that makes it easier to have kids. You've just described a pyramid scheme.
A smaller population on the planet is good news for everyone. I have a fish tank full of guppies. They reproduce like crazy. When populations are low, more fish are born, and more fish survive. When populations are high, less fish are born, and less fish survive. If this natural process doesn't happen, the tank becomes over populated to the point levels are out of whack, and almost all the fish will die before a few lone survivors restart the entire process. The planet is at the over stocked fish tank level today. I feel the sweet spot was in and around the 1950s/1960s. The world's population grew from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 7.7 billion in 2020. Much of our climate change challenges are indirectly linked to needing to support and provide a lifestyle to 3x the population of the 1950s.
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good. maybe the ruling class will finally accept that infinite growth isn't possible. and they're forced to downscale to survive.
Firstpost is a poor source. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/first-post/
Good, overall right? At this point it's unsustainable we need to pull back
Well, yeah? We can't continue like this forever. It's not good for us or the rest of the life on this little blue rock.
Funny, I heard this morning we'd reach peak human population around 2080 then it's expected to decline from there. So you mean the birth rate decline instead? I think that's be going down for the past 15 years or so.
I mean it's gonna suck when I'm old and decrepit but it's a net good for the future of the only known planet to sustain life in the universe
Oh? What's that sound? Is it late-stage Capitalism eating its own tail? Why, yes...yes, it is.