There’s been a rash of people like Elon Musk posting rants about “declining birth rates in the developing world” (and sometimes dog whistling while at it) - getting upset that contrary to the worries of Malthus and Ehrlich, it turns out humans are not the same as bacteria in a petri dish just exponentially reproducing until they exhaust all the carrying capacity of their environment. Instead, it seems that those of us that are in paradigms where we have relatively high per capita energy and materials consumption, respond to economic, cultural and environmental stimuli, and slow our roll once we feel we are at an “x” threshold of population density and environmental & economic stress.
Given that we live on a finite planet with finite resources this small bit of self control might just be what saves humanity from a truly dystopian future.
What the demographic shift of less younger workers versus more retiring seniors does mean is that our systems of depending on constant growth of consumption for our faith in our currency and financial institutions, and for providing for government guaranteed retirement funding, both end up under threat - but those issues could still be easily fixed simply by allowing more immigration from the multitude of places on this globe that still have relatively high birth rates, that have plenty of people with strong work ethics seeking greater opportunities.
I really like how you connected the birth rates and excessive consumerism as a self-fulfilling prophecy. As capitalism reaches its apex, motivations for increasing birth rate collapse. As birth rates collapse, excessive consumerism stagnates, because people can’t afford to retire.
Immigration is really irrelevant to this discussion. Every country is rapidly aging, including the poorer countries that currently have above-replacement birth rates. We’re all going down the same path. Some nations are just further along the path than others. Unless there’s a large population of Martians eager to immigrate that I’m not aware of, immigration is not a long term solution to this.
Total population across the planet is most certainly still climbing each and every year - significantly. And prior history (e.g. USA during the Ellis lsland era circa 1890-1924) shows allowing & enabling immigration most certainly can be a way of markedly improving economic outlooks for not just the immigrants but also the prior residents - for at least the next few decades, if not a good bit beyond that, perhaps even into the next century.
And as for beyond that - again, my take is we should be celebrating that it looks like humanity, is not going blindly pop out babies beyond the carrying capacity of our planet.
Of course we likely could be facing massive challenges due to climate change and idiotic policies being dictated by short sighted oligarchies. But at least it looks like the kind of overpopulation overshoot that was feared by lots of 20th century analysts might get avoided due to some arguably rational reactions by younger generations to the world they now find themselves in.
There’s been a rash of people like Elon Musk posting rants about “declining birth rates in the developing world” (and sometimes dog whistling while at it) - getting upset that contrary to the worries of Malthus and Ehrlich, it turns out humans are not the same as bacteria in a petri dish just exponentially reproducing until they exhaust all the carrying capacity of their environment. Instead, it seems that those of us that are in paradigms where we have relatively high per capita energy and materials consumption, respond to economic, cultural and environmental stimuli, and slow our roll once we feel we are at an “x” threshold of population density and environmental & economic stress.
Given that we live on a finite planet with finite resources this small bit of self control might just be what saves humanity from a truly dystopian future.
What the demographic shift of less younger workers versus more retiring seniors does mean is that our systems of depending on constant growth of consumption for our faith in our currency and financial institutions, and for providing for government guaranteed retirement funding, both end up under threat - but those issues could still be easily fixed simply by allowing more immigration from the multitude of places on this globe that still have relatively high birth rates, that have plenty of people with strong work ethics seeking greater opportunities.
Looks like it ain’t developing anymore lol
I really like how you connected the birth rates and excessive consumerism as a self-fulfilling prophecy. As capitalism reaches its apex, motivations for increasing birth rate collapse. As birth rates collapse, excessive consumerism stagnates, because people can’t afford to retire.
Immigration is really irrelevant to this discussion. Every country is rapidly aging, including the poorer countries that currently have above-replacement birth rates. We’re all going down the same path. Some nations are just further along the path than others. Unless there’s a large population of Martians eager to immigrate that I’m not aware of, immigration is not a long term solution to this.
Total population across the planet is most certainly still climbing each and every year - significantly. And prior history (e.g. USA during the Ellis lsland era circa 1890-1924) shows allowing & enabling immigration most certainly can be a way of markedly improving economic outlooks for not just the immigrants but also the prior residents - for at least the next few decades, if not a good bit beyond that, perhaps even into the next century.
And as for beyond that - again, my take is we should be celebrating that it looks like humanity, is not going blindly pop out babies beyond the carrying capacity of our planet.
Of course we likely could be facing massive challenges due to climate change and idiotic policies being dictated by short sighted oligarchies. But at least it looks like the kind of overpopulation overshoot that was feared by lots of 20th century analysts might get avoided due to some arguably rational reactions by younger generations to the world they now find themselves in.
But then the immigrants will take all the jobs and also not work and take all the money from citizens.
Do you even FOX bro?