> “There’s no silver bullet,” said Bhattacharjee. “Social policies to improve birth rates such as enhanced parental leave, free childcare, financial incentives, and extra employment rights, may provide a small boost to fertility rates, but most countries will remain below replacement levels. And once nearly every country’s population is shrinking, reliance on open immigration will become necessary to sustain economic growth.
We should NOT be aiming for economic growth! That is fundamentally unsustainable. It is good that the population growth will slow down. What we should be aiming for is using LESS energy every year, and looking for new ways to become a "steady state" population that does not NEED economic growth to survive.
We need to become minimalists, seeking for satisfaction beyond growing this horrendously unsustainable economy, or else we will surely end in disaster. We should:
* Reduce our dependence on global supply chains
* Become more sustainable locally with locally grown food through sustainable farming which includes vastly reducing meat intake
* Use MUCH less energy
We have more than enough resources to do it, only the wealthy don't want a world where their portfolios aren't always growing, which is one of the main obstacles to sustainability. (But if we are smart, we will take them down by force in the same way they have pillaged the ecosystem by force.)
> Social policies to improve birth rates such as enhanced parental leave, free childcare, financial incentives, and extra employment rights, may provide a small boost to fertility rates, but most countries will remain below replacement levels
The poorest, most religious, and least developed countries have the highest birth rate. We should be honest with ourselves about why people aren’t having kids.
This is a nice way to end up repeating historical blunders.
Economic growth is what empowers people.
What do you suppose your role will be in the society you are imagining? Hint: it likely won't be anywhere close to being able to make decisions for yourself.
Let's talk about your points:
* Reduce dependency on global supply chains - Are you willing and able to work in a factory?
* Sustainable local food - same as the above, would you work on a farm with just the food as compensation?
* Much less energy - this one is doable for sure, you just won't be able to choose what you give up. It'll be someone else deciding that.
> * Sustainable local food - same as the above, would you work on a farm with just the food as compensation?
How is that different than working in a corporation all your life with only new technology as a compensation?
If I lived in a small community of people surrounded by nature instead of the artificial desert made by concrete, I would gladly work on a farm as long as I had th autonomy to feed myself and contribute to the community. Why not? We don't have to go back to feudalism. If we had independent communities, I would gladly learn a combination of farming, hunter-gathering, and a more wholesome relationship with nature rather than participate in this industrial farce. I don't want MONEY for compensation, I want the ability to provide for my basic needs directly through small community efforts. Seems like other animals do it just fine, and we are no different. We just lost our way.
> * Much less energy - this one is doable for sure, you just won't be able to choose what you give up. It'll be someone else deciding that.
Again, as long as I can live in a community and provide for myself in my own way my contributing my skills to working on a farm/hunter-gathering, perhaps with indigenous knowledge in sustainable ways, I would gladly give up my computer, smartphone, movie collection, etc.
> * Reduce dependency on global supply chains - Are you willing and able to work in a factory?
My aim is to abolish most factories and just live off the land.
> Sure, as long as you can't force everyone to follow you.
What about the fact that many people are FORCED to develop new technology as a job because that is pretty much the only job that has existed? What about the species that were FORCED into extinction because you can have your technology. You speak of FORCING, but modern society has FORCED indigenous people out of their way of life, forced poor people from their lands for resources.
None of us has ANY RIGHT to destroy the ecosystem and ruin lives and exterminate wild species for technological development. It's immoral and thus I believe anyone who does not wish to give up their technology has already forfeited their right to keep it.
What you are oblivious to is that technological development forces people into a way of life and forces this world into a way of being that many people simply do not want.
> What do you suppose your role will be in the society you are imagining? Hint: it likely won't be anywhere close to being able to make decisions for yourself.
So you now have the ability to predict what a new society would be like? What about societies that have done it before? The Amish do it pretty well (except for their insistence on having large numbers of children).
You know, I am often accused of being a "doomer" or some other such, but your lack of imagination and belief in our ability to be sustainable is both astounding and depressing.
It's the local maximum and a prisoner's dilemma in one. You'd need everyone to agree to change at the same time and they'll need to believe no neighbours will conquer them by being able to afford more military. This gets even more rough when the available working/serving population gets smaller and any local gains are bigger relative to your neighbours.
Populations in poverty have much higher fertility rates. I have seen that fact used as both a qualifier and cause for artificial political divisions and even ethnic cleansing.
For example Israel claims opposition to granting citizenship to Palestinians because they are an impoverished people with a much higher birth rate. Past Israeli prime ministers have stated the fear is that they would eventually achieve population dominance and thus Israel would no longer be an officially Jewish state. This ignores the political realities of the wealth divisions to maintain an argument favored by the politically dominant segment.
Similar arguments were made by Serbia to qualify their invasion of Bosnia, north Sudan against South Sudan, Germany against Poland, and so. As such we should to see greater wealth disparities due to differences in birth rates and that as justification for future ethnic cleansing.
This paper is using a slightly more careful and factual wording than what I've seen before.
In my opinion we're already suffering from over population, and a reduction followed by stabilization should not be feared.
Of course we'll have to change things, a different age distribution means we'll have to invest less in education and childcare and more in elderly care.
There are benefits of a different age distribution, criminality/violence tends to peak for boys in their twenties, and they are the easiest group to manipulate into sacrificing their lives in useless wars.
More people near retirement and less students also means we could reinstate the practice of tutoring.
Growth has its advantages, undeniably, but also many drawbacks, and there is no such thing as infinite growth, at least not on a single planet.
I think that humanity could benefit greatly from population stability.
And I also think that the most important dampener to fertility is not education and contraceptive techniques, those are factors giving more control to women.
The dampener is access to cheap space, and because a population reduction will likely lead to a radical change in the housing market, this dampener will relax.
I always wonder if it's true that we need many young people to create economic growth and prosperity
A 55 year old guy in Los Angeles who can command his tech and financial stack is responsible for 500x the amount of economic growth compared to a 20 year old in Mozambique.
It's about quality over quantity.
That is unless the amount of work that the 55 year old puts in is just a tool to be seen as "cool enough" to hang out with the 20 years old , and be friends with guys of that age and smash the chicks.
But that's a non-PC take so no economic theory would ever say it openly, and until we get an answer to this question I mantain that as far as economic growth for economic growth sake you don't need many young people otherwise Niger with 50% population between 0-14 would be something out of the Jetsons
1. Machines (industrial robots, AI etc) gradually replace humans at work.
2. There are less humans that could work.
3. ..
4. PROFIT!
To be honest it would be interesting to see how the two trends will coexist (assuming they do exist now and continue into the future "linearly").
That will indeed happen: AI and robots will replace more humans. There will be a tiny cadre of elite who are free to do whatever they want, while the rest of humanity will mostly be relegated to manual labor such mining for more material for more technological growth. We will likely also be given drugs and highly technological brainwashing so that we continue to serve the tech elite.
Economic growth is so ingrained as a measure of “success”, that decline in population is seen as a major threat. Basically all other indicators show that reducing human footprint would be better for a sustainable future.
I wouldn't go as far as calling it an obsession, but fertility is an important factor for longterm economic growth, which is surely a relevant topic of discussion on HN.
We should NOT be aiming for economic growth! That is fundamentally unsustainable. It is good that the population growth will slow down. What we should be aiming for is using LESS energy every year, and looking for new ways to become a "steady state" population that does not NEED economic growth to survive.
We need to become minimalists, seeking for satisfaction beyond growing this horrendously unsustainable economy, or else we will surely end in disaster. We should:
* Reduce our dependence on global supply chains
* Become more sustainable locally with locally grown food through sustainable farming which includes vastly reducing meat intake
* Use MUCH less energy
We have more than enough resources to do it, only the wealthy don't want a world where their portfolios aren't always growing, which is one of the main obstacles to sustainability. (But if we are smart, we will take them down by force in the same way they have pillaged the ecosystem by force.)
Economic growth is a recipe for disaster.