Global population decline and corrective measures

[slant]

This is another thread about Roe v Wade possibly being overturned but hear me out. I think there might be some positive aspects to explore about this or least some legitimate reasons why this is necessary.

Although there's been a lot of discussion about the world being overpopulated, in most developed economies the birth rate isn't enough to replace the current population. Even India is beginning to see this trend, a country that had been exploding with population for quite some time.

In the United States specifically this upside down population pyramid will create a ton of economic problems in the next 30 years or so as baby boomers retire from the work force but collect social security. Not only have we borrowed money from that fund but there will no longer be enough workers to continue to fund it.

Currently we are mitigating this situation by increasing our immigration policy to invite people from other countries who are statistically more likely to have children, hoping that if they have 8 kids each we will be able to continue our economy.

The decline of children has to do mostly with children being more expensive than profitable. Before child labor laws lots of people had kids to work on their farms. As we moved away from producing in the United States and became consumers, it is less incentive to have children because they come with a high price tag and literally no be payoff. It's more cultural and emotional at this point where in the past it was sometimes for your own survival.

Despite economic incentives and state funded programs like day care for parents, China is failing in their effort to bump up their young population. Their one child policy severely hurt them and now the culture cannot so easily be shifted to having 3 children, which is what their current policy is.

If roe vs wade is overturned this might help with the population shortage. This might be one of the only "quick fixes" to the population issue- all of the other compounding factors causing people to not want to have children cannot be solved quickly, by the time it's addressed it might be too late. People will not stop having sex just because roe vs Wade is overturned and thus, whether people want to or not, we will have children being introduced into the population. Keep in mind that birth control isn't tied to this decision so many people will still have access to that and other contraceptive measures, so the real amount of babies this will result in is not nearly enough but every baby will help.

Discuss.

 

[Roses In The Vineyard]

In short the global population may have already peaked with only Central Africa having any significant growth while everywhere else has already level off or already below replacement. This trend will actually get to be a lot worse due to ever increasing cost of living coupled with the rise of infertility/sterility due to endocrine distributors mainly from micro plastics.

 

[Wyote]

The whole idea of overpopulation is kind of a myth, but we do need better technology to lower costs on sustainability of essentials for living

 

[Matty]

Perhaps a cultural and legal shift is required as well.

My brother and I were raised to help around the home, to be respectful of our parents, and even worked after school jobs to help with the family budget.

But many people have absorbed a culture which tolerates or encourages children to be disrespectful, lazy, high maintenance/expense, and even threats to the family (kids who threaten to falsely accuse parents of neglect, etc ).

Who would want to have fifth column extortionist, narcissists living in their home? Even the prospect of a child identifying as trans, and all the baggage that brings for the parents makes having children a daunting mountain of problems and disturbance of domestic serenity.

Everything about contemporary culture seems to encourage kids to be maximally annoying and troublesome. Fix that, and you'll fix the problem with aversion to being a parent.

 

[John K]

Speculating ….

I sometimes wonder if the world has a fairly fixed potential in terms of people years - which equals the sum of everyone who will ever live times their individual life spans. If so, you could have lots of people at a time for a relatively short period of time or a lot fewer for very much longer. If the total number of human beings that will ever exist is more or less fixed, it probably doesn’t matter much if they all come at once, or more gradually over a much longer time span.

It won’t be that simple, but there will be an element of this in the real world. As long as our survival depends on resources that aren’t renewable then there will be a finite number of people possible in total over time. If we can move to fully renewable resources then the total numbers of us becomes unconstrained over extended time, though there will probably be a limit on how many of us are alive at any one time.

 

[JDM]

The problem is a simple one. The internet offers easy access to people. Straight women are hypergamous. Chad chasing alpha widows who in generations past would have been moms now turn into bitter militant feminist box wine chugging cat ladies when they time out on having their shared access to the top 10-15% of men, or maybe they look for a beta sucker to manipulate and probably cheat on frequently and often divorce as a retirement strategy. Many men such as myself, once we very thoroughly understand the modern game and that a reliable life partner probably means accepting much lower quality than our parents generation had, this leaves us with absolutely no desire for a LTR or kids.

I love the Mexican culture and always enjoy interaction with them, but they too adapt once they get technology. Everyone does in time. The genie is out of the bottle and it can't be put back in.

 

[Asa]

Years ago, when China started lifting its "one child" policy I said, "They just want to breed soldiers." Banning safe and legal access to abortion will also breed soldiers.
"Pro-life" my ass. It's a great way to fool religious people into voting for them so they can feed the resulting citizens into the machine.

 

[David Nelson]

Perhaps a cultural and legal shift is required as well.

My brother and I were raised to help around the home, to be respectful of our parents, and even worked after school jobs to help with the family budget.

But many people have absorbed a culture which tolerates or encourages children to be disrespectful, lazy, high maintenance/expense, and even threats to the family (kids who threaten to falsely accuse parents of neglect, etc ).

Who would want to have fifth column extortionist, narcissists living in their home? Even the prospect of a child identifying as trans, and all the baggage that brings for the parents makes having children a daunting mountain of problems and disturbance of domestic serenity.

Everything about contemporary culture seems to encourage kids to be maximally annoying and troublesome. Fix that, and you'll fix the problem with aversion to being a parent.

And also many kids grow up and move away, making them unable to help their parents much in old age. It is a wonder some bother having kids! Seems often to be a very 1-way street.

 

[aeon]

And also many kids grow up and move away, making them unable to help their parents much in old age. It is a wonder some bother having kids! Seems often to be a very 1-way street.

That’s an American cultural thing that’s tied to the myth of the American Dream, the mythology and romanticization of the Wild West, the myth of the individual, and the kick-the-can-down-the-road pyramid scheme of suburbia, all in the name of endless consumerism and limitless growth.

Sigh,
Ian

 

[David Nelson]

That’s an American cultural thing that’s tied to the myth of the American Dream, the mythology and romanticization of the Wild West, the myth of the individual, and the kick-the-can-down-the-road pyramid scheme of suburbia, all in the name of endless consumerism and limitless growth.

Sigh,
Ian

I love Ian how you combine an open mind with strong opinions. It’s not an easy road. I try and do the same thing. Maybe an ENFP skill.

 

[slant]

This.

what overpopulation? Jordan Peterson has argued this point before. Why (as a species) do we need less people? I have to agree, where did we get this overpopulation idea because over the last 30 years it's been declining right?

It seems like an odd assumption to me that because the earth is turning to shit we should just pack up and leave. Seems to me the environmentalist should be proposing better solutions, and they are fundamentally implying we have no intrinsic connection to the environment but only extrinsic, therefore we better pack our bags.

But nobody was even making the argument about overpopulation? This thread is about underpopulation. I'm confused why you wrote this.

 

[Enso]

But nobody was even making the argument about overpopulation? This thread is about underpopulation. I'm confused why you wrote this.

Just ignore me, I'll go and do something about that population shortage......who am I kidding I'm gonna go eat chips. As you were.

 

[slant]

Just ignore me, I'll go and do something about that population shortage......who am I kidding I'm gonna go eat chips. As you were.

Let's start by overturning roe v Wade that will help make more babies

 

[John K]

Let's start by overturning roe v Wade that will help make more babies

Don't you think that it would lead to a lot of unwanted babies maybe, who would be resented and treated badly by their parent(s), and grow up to be disturbed and unhappy - which would be destabilising for society. It would also lead to the same problem that all prohibition seems to generate - a medically unsafe illegal abortion industry, probably with a lot of mob involvement, that would go on in the same way as happened for alcohol and drug supply. It would only be the rich who could get safe abortions by using clinics in other countries where it remained legal.

As a Catholic, I'm not in favour of abortion myself, but I don't think the way that views on it have polarised so strongly are a civilised way to deal with the challenge it presents to society. There needs to be understanding, compassion and sympathy on both sides of the argument and it doesn't seem to me that legislation is the way to deal with it in whatever direction.

 

[slant]

Don't you think that it would lead to a lot of unwanted babies maybe, who would be resented and treated badly by their parent(s), and grow up to be disturbed and unhappy - which would be destabilising for society. It would also lead to the same problem that all prohibition seems to generate - a medically unsafe illegal abortion industry, probably with a lot of mob involvement, that would go on in the same way as happened for alcohol and drug supply. It would only be the rich who could get safe abortions by using clinics in other countries where it remained legal.

As a Catholic, I'm not in favour of abortion myself, but I don't think the way that views on it have polarised so strongly are a civilised way to deal with the challenge it presents to society. There needs to be understanding, compassion and sympathy on both sides of the argument and it doesn't seem to me that legislation is the way to deal with it in whatever direction.

I think these are great points. I think all solutions to problems are going to create unintended consequences. There is no perfect solution.

So how I would weigh things is,

Is this potential outcome going to create more harm than the other potential outcome? And I think that there is no objective way to measure it, it more depends on what you value.

With that being said, I think people seriously understimate the issues that will occur because of underpopulation. Keep in mind that we don't truly know what would happen and that these predictions are based on assumptions, but when you have an aging population and not enough people in the workforce to carry them I would say you will see a similar breakdown of society. We will lack the labor to produce what society needs to function. It is not just about social security money lacking it is about young people lacking, which means older people will be forced to be in the workforce longer, they will be less productive because of aging itself. Once there is a lack of young people because of declining birth rates you can't just decide to have more babies and solve the problem in a few years. Humans usually aren't very helpful to society until they are at least 16. So if we allow the birth rate to fall, it would really take nearly 2 decades to fix it, and imagine the stress that 2 decades of not having enough people to do basic everyday things is going to cause. We are talking about even government being impacted, not enough postal workers, garbage people, like this will impact EVERYONE on every level.

So if I'm looking at it from that perspective....

I would say, let's not ban birth control, and basically we are going to capitalize on people who have accidents and then give birth to babies. We need those babies. Yes there will be problems because of it but the problems of underpopulation in my opinion are much much worse and way harder to solve.

The other solution I would propose is not overturning roe v Wade but only in conjunction with legalizing assisted suicide for any reason people would like to die. The other solution to underpopulation would be to encourage it and as the situation becomes worse people can simply opt out in reaction to the conditions. If people are unwilling to allow this I don't see how we can avoid this issue and the suffering that will result from it.

 

[John K]

With that being said, I think people seriously understimate the issues that will occur because of underpopulation

I think you make some great points here. Demographic imbalance of that sort is a real problem. I wonder if instead of constraining people with the force of law, we could incentivise folks to have children. We do that with other kinds of policy - for example you could give large tax breaks that start with three children and go up rapidly with more. You could even give tax-free state subsidies directly to people with families with more than two children - it wouldn't be social security, i.e. only available to unemployed folks, but to everyone in work or not. Another possibility is free nursery and child minder places for everyone. All this would be backed up by (sensible and civilised) encouragement of folks to have kids for the good of society.

These are just illustrations, because there will be pros and cons, but they give an idea of what I mean. They'd cost against taxes of course, but as you point out so will the demographic imbalance.

 

[slant]

I think you make some great points here. Demographic imbalance of that sort is a real problem. I wonder if instead of constraining people with the force of law, we could incentivise folks to have children. We do that with other kinds of policy - for example you could give large tax breaks that start with three children and go up rapidly with more. You could even give tax-free state subsidies directly to people with families with more than two children - it wouldn't be social security, i.e. only available to unemployed folks, but to everyone in work or not. Another possibility is free nursery and child minder places for everyone. All this would be backed up by (sensible and civilised) encouragement of folks to have kids for the good of society.

These are just illustrations, because there will be pros and cons, but they give an idea of what I mean. They'd cost against taxes of course, but as you point out so will the demographic imbalance.

In my OP I address this; Japan and China are great examples of countries that are providing free child care, tax breaks and even sometimes pure cash incentives for people to have more children and all of the efforts are failing unfortunately.

 

[philostam]

This topic is right at my alley.

I don't think global population decline is a problem for the world. There are always gonna be people in the world to do the "work" which is becoming more and more automated anyway.. On the nation state level it gets more tragic though. We have whole countries with rich history shrinking in population massively. Italy, Central/Easter Europe, Russia...Issues there are compounded further by high level of emmigration.

So I'm sad on a personal level about people who want to have kids, but opt out because their situation makes them feel to unstable and unsafe. I myself am getting close to my 30s and life without kids feels more and more empty.

But looking it mechanically it shouldn't be a problem for the world machine. In fact it might speed up our adoption of technology and bring more prosperity for all. Automation drives cost of everything close to 0. That in turn will lead to baby boom again.

 

[philostam]

In my OP I address this; Japan and China are great examples of countries that are providing free child care, tax breaks and even sometimes pure cash incentives for people to have more children and all of the efforts are failing unfortunately.

This shit doesn't work. Printing money won't solve our issues. It's the root cause.

 

[slant]

Info on china's efforts to increase birth rates and failure:

Singapore is flat out paying people to have children:

Explanation of why Japanese won't have more children. Mostly being overworked, but in part, the less children people have the worse this overworking problem is just going to get.