Sorry but this is a good thing. Earths population is too large for the resources available.
My instinct is that you’re right, but I wonder if what we’re really saying is that earth’s population is too large under the currently dominant socioeconomic and lifestyle constructs.
In the end, that’s more or less the same thing. But the question is, do we need more people? It’s also easier to be sustainable if we require less.
I mean, yes but also no. There’s just way too many people, period. Merely 60 years ago the human population was sitting around 3 billion people. Now it’s 8. Earth’s resources are finite, and at this rate of growth I would not be surprised if we ran out of non-renewables (with no renewable alternatives that scale as well as non-renewables) in our lifetime or our children’s.
How do you know this?
The esteemed Mr. Malthus wrote about it. The admirable J. Swift has also written a wonderful proposal for how we may deal with it.
Big oof. Eco-fascism ahoy!
Lots of ecofascist Maltusianism in this thread. Not surprising since the
migration has happened.
Of course this is a good thing, but there are still serious negative consequences to a reducing population, which must be mitigated. Primarily, old people who are past working age are an expensive population to maintain. When there are as many or more old people as there are young, the burden is too heavy for young people to bear. And I say this as a 70 year old. Young people today CANNOT hit old age without their own substantial retirement resources.
But, maybe the idea that the young should support the old in their retirement is bad idea.
Why shouldn’t it be someone’s responsibility to finance their own retirement? Why should it be expected that the younger generation supports the old?
It has always seemed insane to me that I’m expected to fund the retirement of people 25+ years older, and I’m counting on people 25+ years younger to take care of me. Of course purely individual retirement planning only works for the rich and the lucky. But, you pay into a pot that helps with retirement costs, they should be the retirement costs of people roughly your age.
If a generation is funding its own retirement, then it doesn’t matter if people are having fewer kids. In fact, if they have fewer kids they’ll have more money left over to put into the pot for their own retirement.
I am not an expert, but it seems like most developed countries are learning to deal with a shrinking population. The current decline hasn’t had effects like loosening up the job market, so it seems to me this means it’s not currently causing any problems that would be catastrophic. There’s clearly enough workers for the work that needs to get done.
I think there’s not yet been a article of all the ‘doom and gloom’ of population decline that actually explains why it’s worse than overpopulation.
Because the problems come years after the birthrate decline when a large portion of your population is retired and you don’t have enough young workers to fill the roles they typically fill
It’s going to be tough but it needs to happen eventually, plus now we have ai which should help alleviate some of that once it really gets going
and you don’t have enough young workers to fill the roles they typically fill
This is a myth. Immigration guarantees that you’ll ALWAYS have workers to fill whatever roles you need filled.
Oh man let’s tell that to the Koreans and see how they feel about that…
Except we need really tight labor shortages to jack up wages and house prices to go down
most developed countries are learning to deal with a shrinking population
Not really, most countries are dealing with it by increasing immigration. That’s clearly not a sustainable long-term plan.
Why not? If you manage immigration such that the population stays constant, what’s bad?
This is because by and large koreans are smart.
Yay for Korea! A constantly growing population is not sustainable.
This isn’t a Children of Men scenario, so there’s no need to fear intentional low birthrates.
Except
- Young Koreans aren’t getting better jobs
- Housing isn’t slowing down fast enough
- Yoon and South Korean Government are trying to raise working hours
Koreans are having a low birth rate because they are destroying their youth
Those points seem to all be a result of rapid growth, which will (eventually) have to correct itself.
The only people who should worry about low birth rates are corporations who know that won’t be selling their garbage to as many people as they forecasted for shareholders. 😁
