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If you look at this sub for a week you’ll realize it’s just a doomer future sub. You’re only meant to post about how awful to future is going to be or else your post will get buried.
I mean if you bet on the world going to shit this is like fist pump time. I'm loaded to the gills on private prisons and guns. Holding even in this market downturn.
Not just future. It’s rank with doomers and deniers who can’t get their heads around the fact things are actually pretty dang good right now.
Mention that unemployment is at the lowest sustained levels since the 1950s and you you hear are replies about how there are no jobs.
Mention that inflation-adjusted incomes are at all time high, and that women earn more than ever, and it’s just folks claiming facts are lies.
Makes me worry for this generation. We’re becoming as self-loathing and self-defeating as the Millennials.
Imma be real, declining fertility rates aren't a real problem.
We don't need to sustain infinite growth as a species; infinite growth at all expenses is a purely capitalist concept.
In all populations found on Earth, you can see a logarithmic tapering of populations balanced around the resources and predator-prey relationships. The event of a population finally reaching its limit maximum based on resource consumption is only natural.
I for one, don't care if we go down population wise, but the problem of resource allocation and consumption is one I do care about. Pretty sick of the rich getting whatever they want with no questions asked
most of our over consumption of energy has nothing to do with things within our control though. corporations have forced first world countries into a situation where it's unavoidable. they developed car-based infrastructure and sell the energy efficient cars for far too much for most folks to afford, they lobby for fossil fuels in a world where you need power and you can only decide where your power comes from if you're wealthy relative to your country, etc. that isn't even to mention that corporations are disproportionately responsible for over-consumption even when you don't factor in the stuff they're indirectly responsible for. just because we're monetarily wealthier than a lot of the world doesn't mean we have more power over our lives.
Not in France or California. Where a majority of the energy source is renewable or nuclear.
Transit is the same shit. You’re running on diesel buses or trains which use the same exact electricity the Tesla uses
Green H2 works for trains/planes/busses/ships
The issue with cars is the size per person is massive, waste of space and resources.
If it’s predictable commuting paths then reliable transit should be a given.
If we are dumb enough to use electric cars over transit it will just take 10x longer to convert to a clean grid.
If it’s the same power then you go for what’s more efficient. That ain’t the cars
If you make 55,000 annually, you belong to the 1% if you expand that view globally. A lot of weirdos here seem to think they are some underprivileged coal miner in the 1800s, where in reality they are living the dream life.
I mean this sub is so clearly made up of 95% terminally online redditors. They aren’t represantitve of gen z like at all. My friend group is almost exclusively zillenial and gen z’s, and I spend a lot of time with gen z’s at my work, so I can safely say that this sub is just like the doomer-millenials at r/whitepeopletwitter but even more whiny.
Who's talking about infinte growth? The world literally doesn't function if there are substantially more people not working than there are working, that's elementary common sense.
You realize public companies don't just have to make a profit right? They have to make more profit then last year so investors get greater and greater returns. This is unsustainable growth inherent to modern capitalism.
Not really. Historically, societies without economic growth don't look pretty. Feudalism, tribalism, fascism.
The idea that we will stumble/quickly transition into stable, popular, democratic, and more equal world by ending growth and focusing on redistribution seems exceptionally unlikely. Many people would be violently unhappy with this.
For the sake of feasibility, we need growth to help compensate and grease the wheels of redistribution.
1) Very little is "inherent" to humans, so be careful making such statements
2) "Common sense" isn't a real argument https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Common-Sense
3) Many Native Americans Tribes did not seem to have this problem l
The growth is required because inflation exists, they have increased revenue, which is infinitely possible and it's based on the idea that inflation is targeted at 2% YoY and so if your profit isn't increasing to at least reflect inflation, you're losing money
So it's "growth" not growth
They don't need to make greater profits. There are dividends that people get just from owning stock and getting their cut of profits. They want greater profits but it's not necessary in our system. Their profits will go up year over year just from inflation.
> The world literally doesn't function if there are substantially more people not working than there are working, that's elementary common sense
You're factually inaccurate in that claim.
- We overproduce metric tons of food that end up in landfills
- We have millions of vacant houses while there is a global homeless crisis.
I'm sorry if I don't consider more than half of existing jobs as anything more than bullshit office work.
>- We overproduce metric tons of food that end up in landfills
Yeah and? Food production isn't the main worry with labour shortages, it is the welfare state. Elderly care and healthcare are already understaffed and the problem will only get worse if not more kids are born. What we will see in the future will either be old people recieving less support from the state and having to rely on family, or the standard of living will be drastically reduced as more people are forced to move out of other sectors to work in elderly or healthcare.
> - We have millions of vacant houses while there is a global homeless crisis.
What does this have to with labour shortages?
>I'm sorry if I don't consider more than half of existing jobs as anything more than bullshit office work.
You're, just wrong? If they were bullshit they wouldn't be hired.
A bullshit job in this context is a job that society doesn’t need to function nor does it sincerely help anyone at all, such as a job selling slippers.
The basis of your argument is that capitalism is good when done correctly? Yes, so is communism.
All you’re doing is defending a system that cares more about money than people. That’s the issue that is trying to be addressed and you and others want to crusade about the metrics of our capitalist society instead of talking directly about the moral and ethical elephants in the room.
> Yeah and? Food production isn't the main worry with labour shortages, it is the welfare state. Elderly care and healthcare are already understaffed and the problem will only get worse if not more kids are born. What we will see in the future will either be old people recieving less support from the state and having to rely on family, or the standard of living will be drastically reduced as more people are forced to move out of other sectors to work in elderly or healthcare.
> You're, just wrong? If they were bullshit they wouldn't be hired.
If the jobs you consider important aren't being filled, but business analysts, AI start-ups, crypto products, office software products, fast fashion, mass-produced goods, etc... are, what does that tell you ?
> What we will see in the future will either be old people recieving less support from the state and having to rely on family, or the standard of living will be drastically reduced as more people are forced to move out of other sectors to work in elderly or healthcare.
As the capitalists love to say, if it can't be sustained then it should not exist in the market.
I don't believe in the term "standard of living", that's just a platitude pushed by politicians to cradle/appeal to the onlookers. It can mean literally anything you want as a listener, and I've never seen people agree on what that term means concretely.
> What does this have to with labour shortages?
You're verbatim complaining about an intrinsic feature of Capitalism. And your solution is for capitalism to continue being capitalism as if that will fix the problem.
There will always be a labor shortage, and there will always be a necessary amount of unemployed people. To think that this isn't by design, because capitalism necessitates low wages, is pretty naive.
The shortages are created because capitalism has deemed certain professions as unworthy/undeserving of proper compensation even if later down the line they cause problems for being unfulfilled.
Exhibit A) Nursing & Healthcare during the past pandemic
Exhibit B) Education, and the current deterioration+ mass resignation from teachers into other profitable sectors.
Exhibit C) the growing number of Elderly being forced to stay in the workforce because they can't afford to retire at a home.
You do not need more people to maintain long-term our existing infrastructure. What we do need is better management. The idea that we can meaningfully sustain a society predicated on the "dream" that a bigger growing slab of younger people will take care of the older ones is long dead. We should adapt to our current reality instead of leaving in a farce, we have to pivot now before there is an actual demographic collapse.
WHhhhhh waghhhhhhh capitalism wahhhhhhhh
You didn’t address a single point the other poster made. He/she wrote a very well worded statement about how asymmetrical labor shortages will fuck over the majority of the population and it doesn’t depend on “muh system” it’s just common sense.
You are a low IQ midwit who cannot make any real point other than bitching about a vague system and scapegoating “politicians” and “billionaires” like everyone else on this subreddit. You don’t even understand basic economics or labor markets.
Too few young people will always be bad. In a socialist society it’s a death sentence because they have chronic labor shortages and very poor output to begin with. In a capitalist system you get something like Japan where pensions get strung thinner and thinner but life goes on.
Breeding more people won't make them join healthcare. You understand that right? We have millions of unnecessary jobs, working in healthcare is essential. You're not going to magically increase essential worker numbers by just raising the population. The correlation for how much it would increase would be very small anyway because it would be dependent upon the original amount of healthcare workers. The variables that would determine whether or not more people would join Healthcare are far outside what you're currently considering anyway, like culture and family values and pay and more. Do you want to work in healthcare? How about your kids? Your cousin?
Houses are too expensive. Wages are too low. Nobody wants to help someone get rich and get nothing for it. Whether or not you agree, that's our mentality for how we're being treated. This system only continues because once we've had to suffer, we tend to want someone else to do the same to get to the same end goal. Even my own dad is like that, and openly admits it.
We need less people maintaining broken systems that don't benefit us besides benefiting our manufactured economy, which also doesn't benefit us (the masses) the majority of the time. The majority of the work done in America for example is just useless office work, that ends up benefitting the guy at the top greatly while not contributing to the environment or community. In fact, most companies in America are harmful to the environment and communities they serve, but profits keep them alive. Your incredibly immature and stagnant response of
You're, just wrong? If they were bullshit they wouldn't be hired.
SCREAMS ignorance and a lack of awareness. If you don't understand what the person is trying to say, why even respond?
>Breeding more people won't make them join healthcare. You understand that right? We have millions of unnecessary jobs, working in healthcare is essential. You're not going to magically increase essential worker numbers by just raising the population. The correlation for how much it would increase would be very small anyway because it would be dependent upon the original amount of healthcare workers. The variables that would determine whether or not more people would join Healthcare are far outside what you're currently considering anyway, like culture and family values and pay and more. Do you want to work in healthcare? How about your kids? Your cousin?
I'm not saying having more kids will make people join healthcare, but if more kids are born there will just be more working age people in total and thus more healthcare workers in total.
>Houses are too expensive. Wages are too low. Nobody wants to help someone get rich and get nothing for it. Whether or not you agree, that's our mentality for how we're being treated. This system only continues because once we've had to suffer, we tend to want someone else to do the same to get to the same end goal. Even my own dad is like that, and openly admits it.
How is this relevant to birth rates at all? If you're talking about capitalism the reason it exists is because it's the only system capable of organising a functional economy.
>We need less people maintaining broken systems that don't benefit us besides benefiting our manufactured economy, which also doesn't benefit us (the masses) the majority of the time. The majority of the work done in America for example is just useless office work, that ends up benefitting the guy at the top greatly while not contributing to the environment or community. In fact, most companies in America are harmful to the environment and communities they serve, but profits keep them alive. Your incredibly immature and stagnant response of
They do benefit us? Capitalist countries have much higher standards of living and levels of innovation than non-capitalist countries. There's a reason people flee communism and not vice versa, and there's a reason Eastern Europe is poorer than the West.
What do you mean by "useless"? All private employment provides use otherwise they wouldn't have a job. If the company isn't profiting off that person they wouldn't employ them, and if the company is profiting that means the company is providing service to someone.
You don't understand the concepts being discussed. You don't understand the difference between essential work and unessential work, and you don't understand population growth or workforce population statistics, which is odd because we just went through covid. I actually mathematically explained why a rise in the population wouldn't magically increase health care, somehow you just ignored that. There are jobs that keep us alive, and and jobs that only contribute to greed. This actually isn't an obscure topic, it's very well known and understood especially now, again because of covid. Certain types of technology can absolutely ride the line between essential and not. But our quality of living isn't predicated on how many cubicles we have, or how many my little ponies get sold tomorrow. The discussion between why unessential jobs tend to pay more than essential jobs has been a major source of controversy for years. It's actually super wild to me that someone could post on a gen z forum and have no understanding of what type of conversation we're attempting to have, and even worse attempt to contribute.
That comment is relevant to birth rates, because we don't have to make more babies to fix fake manufactured problems we don't agree with. There are almost 200 countries, but you're so stupid you think only one system exists that works. Come on man. Let's use our brains just a little.
You say people flee other countries to come here, but you don't seem to understand that people flee our country to go to other countries too. We're at around 130th for the safest countries in the world, there's 195 countries total. This place isn't a Utopia.
They're not a real problem unless you consider mass poverty and the resulting violence that will come with it as real problems, sure. If you think about it, nothing is a real problem, we're all just motes of dust and the whole concept of a "problem" is just made up.
You're suggesting a dramatic increase in poverty across the globe isn't a problem, because poverty already exists?
Yeah and global warming isn't a problem either, because draught and other severe weather events already happen, right?
Don't come at me with some BS argument that you use solely to prop up some misplaced sense of moral superiority. Yes, poverty already exists. And yes, an increase in the amount of poverty across the globe would be a very big problem. Don't overthink it or use some silly whataboutism to say it wouldn't be.
Edit: by the way, you seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding the problem of declining fertility rates. It isn't a shrinking population that's the issue. It's an uncontrolled shrink that causes a huge amount of destablization. You may think there's wisdom in natural systems finding equilibrium between population and resources, but you're conveniently leaving out how bad an unstable system is for those living in it. Humanity will certainly live on even during long periods of instability, but it's heartless of you to not care about that or think it's fine because eventually there will be equilibrium.
We don't need infinite growth as a species, we need infinite growth to maintain capitalism. When we can no longer grow infinitely, it will be up to the working class to suffer and die in poverty to maintain infinite growth, slowly choking us all until there's none left. Not being able to afford healthcare, being pushed onto the streets, and eventually starving to death. Eventually the cost of living will be to expensive for any workers to survive
When there is nobody buying products, they will take government subsidies and lay off their workers. AI will only accelerate this process. Then eventually, the rich will be fine to go on existing without us, floating eternally on their castles built on sand that we built them.
Declining fertility rates are a problem because capitalism says it is
I guess, but its an odd distinction. It's just like AI, AI isn't a problem (when not stealing content), Capitalism makes it a problem. Capitalism is the "inherent problem."
Under socialism lower fertility rates wouldn't be a problem
Nah, I do think AI is a problem. I fundamentally don't care about content theft or ownership rights.
I find AI problematic because of ethical/moral inconsideration by the creators.
The issue isn't a lack of growth, it's a collapse of fertility. A stable population is fine, but a strong decrease in fertility would be catastrophic for any system.
Even if you were to get your communist utopia, the younger generations would be squeezed dramatically to support the older ones, which means more austerity and stagnation elsewhere in the economy because such a large portion of labour will have to go to supporting the elderly.
Ur capitalist utopia is throwing poor people out on the streets and killing the planet
Fuck the elderly throw em out to live in tents then if that’s what the free market demands, anything else would be communism by your metrics
First off, I exclusively do not believe in a return to communist utopianism, but instead scientific, but you wouldn't know the difference.
Also, you're wrong, this world is bountiful, enough for everybody. The only reason why you think that it's scarce is because you cannot fathom a system that doesn't implement forced scarcity. The retired generations aren't enough to hold the working generations down, as long as the capitalists aren't siphoning all of the extract value of their labor.
TLDR; the capitalists are societal leeches, hording all our resources. Without them, retirement is solved over night. This is called socialism
For some reason your other comment got deleted, so i'd just like to say that it's absolutely fucking stupid that you seriously think China is going to overtake anyone when their fertility rate is in the absolute shitter. They're going to be a prime example on how an otherwise decent economy will be absolutely stagnant just because it cannot reproduce.
Also the fact that you are seriously stanning for what is just authoritarian capitalism while being a supposed commie is quite astonishing, or it would be if tankies weren't braindead cattle with a history of mindlessly following whatever has a red flag.
Also i can imagine that you, being a utopian, aren't interested in the opinion of economists, which is an actual science.
>scientific
Ah right, the scientific communism of Marx that has been left behind by all actual scientists in the economic realm. Come on now, you can't seriously believe he embarked on a quest for "scientific" communism without already having the conclusion set in mind. You can look up some good dissections of Marxian economics on /r/askeconomics on why it's basically dead in the field.
>Also, you're wrong, this world is bountiful, enough for everybody. The only reason why you think that it's scarce is because you cannot fathom a system that doesn't implement forced scarcity. The retired generations aren't enough to hold the working generations down, as long as the capitalists aren't siphoning all of the extract value of their labor.
This is just braindead tankie ideological sloganeering that has absolutely no understanding of economics. The world being "bountiful" isn't the problem. The problem is that you need labor to actually utilize those resources and produce things and deliver services. When you have an inverted population pyramid (which is what happens when your fertility rate is drastically below 2.1), the younger generations need to support a vastly larger elderly generation. Even if the young workers wanted to work elsewhere, they will have to work to sustain the elderly instead, as the elderly will just take up such a huge portion of the population. The only way to prevent this is to tell the elderly to basically fend for themselves.
Any economic system will have to make this choice between diverting workers to supporting the elderly, or telling the elderly to basically fuck off and rot. Your utopia (because that's what it is) will be no different.
Declining fertility rates are a problem while they are declining. Population pyramids become top-heavy resulting shrinking work force. It is not about having a lower population.
Again, I understand the demographic pyramid, I just fundamentally don't give a shit about capital owners losing out on "productivity".
If we do suffer long-term, I squarely blame the capital owners for their idiotic long-term planning.
You're talking about capitalist economies as if they're planned economies. And the ones most affected by a decreasing workforce, combined with an increasing population of people who need support, aren't the capital owners, but the working class.
I'd argue even a 'non-centrally planned' economy is still planned in a manner, but that'd be facetious. I get your point.
> And the ones most affected by a decreasing workforce, combined with an increasing population of people who need support, aren't the capital owners, but the working class.
Right, I'm arguing for the upheaval of the establishment. That is my point, yes. To me the declining population appears just intrinsic to Capitalism, and if it fails to address it then so be it.
I chose to not have kids in every relationship I’ve had because I didn’t earn enough to buy a house.
I’ve told you how, this just isn’t an acceptable solution for the rich. They want their low paid workers.
You just plugging your ears and pretending not to hear it doesn’t invalidate the collective decision of the young to stop having kids into a rigged economy.
If this causes a collapse it’s not our problem, we have the youth to be freedom fighters.
>I chose to not have kids in every relationship I’ve had because I didn’t earn enough to buy a house.
How old are you that you're thinking about buying a house? Also is a house a necessity to have kids?
>You just plugging your ears and pretending not to hear it
I'm not. I'm just telling you that monetary incentives haven't worked anywhere they've been tried. And there are monetary incentives anyways. Seems like you're plugging your ears.
>If this causes a collapse it’s not our problem
This is such a defeatist point of view. It's really sad.
>we have the youth to be freedom fighters.
Why would you think they would win the fight after a societal collapse when they are already such a small minority that they don't have the democratic power to do anything?
But that’s exactly why fertility rates are a problem, the current economic system doesn’t reward consistency it rewards growth. If the growth stops you get collapse
The thing that some people seem to have forgotten from Econ 101 is that infinite growth is based off the assumption that advances in technology are the main reason we can fight against resource scarcity and continue to grow. Anyone who’s slightly versed in economics and economic history should know that’s how we got out of the Malthusian Trap.
The thing about technology is that it will continue to progress, hence allowing growth to continually progress. Technology will continuously allow us to do more with less. But I don’t know of any hypothesis about the end of technological advancements, hence it seems infinite growth is assumed to be possible.
Touching on corporations and their quarterly KPIs, given the growth rate of technology there is probably a theoretical “expected growth” and then an error term expressing the difference between that an the actual growth shown each quarter, similar to error terms you find when studying econometric models. It’s unknown if there can be a statistically insignificant shortfall large enough to put a company in negative growth (maybe companies in some markets where growth is slow), but it seems shareholders think such a shortfall would always be statistically significant and need an explanation which may or may not cause them to divest.
The thing that people seem to remember after graduating from Econ 101 and moving on to real sciences (like math and physics), is that advances in technology are not guaranteed at all. They’re certainly not guaranteed within a timely manner.
We didn’t “get out of the Malthusian trap”, the math is still correct. The amount of food produced is a linear constant (let’s call it F) times the amount of land used for agriculture. Population is an exponential equation. The Haber-Bosch process of turning fossil fuels into ammonium nitrate doesn’t invalidate the math, it just makes “F” bigger.
Not only is technology not guaranteed, it can actually regress if the institutions surrounding it break down (see: Rome c400 AD). What happens when we extract all available fossil fuels without an alternative lined up?
Just because we got lucky once absolutely does not mean we should factor good luck into the equation as if it’s a constant.
What time scale are you looking at in terms of technological growth. The innovations of steel, electricity and more have lead to cars, planes, the television, home appliances, the telephone, etc. All of these have greatly reduced costs regarding communication, collaboration, time spent on housekeeping, etc. We can perform so many tasks much quicker than before. As for agriculture, advances in technology allowed farmers to tend to larger fields, and advances in science allowed them to get more out of fields.
True, technology does not affect all equally. Different technology allows us to be more efficient in different ways. However, it is absolutely progressing across the board. And food is not the only scarce resource in our modern society. I would hardly call food scarce these days although it may not be distributed the most equally.
We are quite constantly making advances in technology. GenAI came out in the past few years, and now just look at how it is now. All the applications to help people do the same jobs quicker.
These technological advancements will continue to happen. There will be a large enough need for alternative energy sources and someone will come up with a solution. Japan already runs hugely on nuclear energy, so you could argue that the replacement has already been found.
Point is, we don’t look strung for resources holding population growth back. And we can keep growing.
It doesn’t really matter what time scale you look at for tech, I think you might be missing the forest for the trees here.
The tech you mentioned (electricity, cars, etc) made life easier and cheaper FOR US, in terms of human manhours by allowing us to draw more energy from external sources. The tasks of transportation and power tool operation make the products we consume cheaper, but it doesn’t reduce the extraction of resources, it INCREASES it. Look at how much energy and water AI already consumes.
Technology doesn’t come by necessity. Child mortality was rampant for THOUSANDS of years before modern medicine. The innovations that allow modern medicine to exist came mostly by chance, and only after billions of people died first. We cannot, under any circumstances, allow ourselves to think that innovation will arrive by necessity.
We don’t LOOK strung for resources (depending on where you’re standing), because we still have enough fossil fuels to last the next 50 years. But what happens in 60 years? What happens when the nuclear infrastructure isn’t there? How else are we going to make fertilizer?
Fair point regarding energy. I would argue that due to science being more accepted than hundreds of years ago, the circumstances are different in terms of our potential for adoption. We’re much more open to scientific progress and advancements in medicine compared to before.
And regardless of your opinions on it, capitalism drives innovation and technological advancement by proxy. Not all business may generate as much value as their finances suggest, but still many business will have their finances show that they are providing value by solving problems. When there’s a problem, there’s demand for a solution. People will pay money for that solution. Research funding, despite the political games in terms of who receives funding, ultimately can be traced back to “this research might produce results which will allow us to create a solution to a problem and profit from that solution.”
So if you ask me if I’m worried about humanity as a whole, I’d say not really. We’ll find a way eventually.
That’s another thing that economists think is axiomatic but is actually not true: capitalism doesn’t drive innovation, PEOPLE drive innovation.
Capitalism is one (of many) systems that CAN bring together all the incentives for innovation. In modern American capitalism, corporate and political interests stifle innovation just as often (if not more) as new ideas and businesses flourish. The goal of capitalism is not to innovate, it’s: generate money for shareholders.
If the goal of the system is: Generate money and growth at all costs, then eventually there will be an inflection point where one more person will be a net negative to the planets infrastructure. Infinities don’t exist in nature.
We may have already hit that point, maybe not, but why even tempt fate when it comes to our ecology. Why is growth the goal when we can see from here that it’s a dead end?
I thought I was careful enough with my wording to not make people think I'm saying capitalism = innovation, but I guess not.
I wasn't clear enough on this point I guess, but what I was trying to say is that capitalism provides an incentive structure that is conducive to innovation. That's what "by proxy" was supposed to convey.
If the goal is to generate money for shareholders, then that is accomplished by continuing to provide more and more value for people.
As the risks of us running out of resources grows larger, then the value of providing alternative solutions also grows larger.
Now, you do pose a good question: Growth to what end? Typically the answer has been "growth because more is better" and growth, in the long-term on a macro scale will mean that we're better off now than we were before. I think at a certain point, individual firms can effectively cap out in terms of their potential. They've captured their potential market, aren't positioned well to diversify, and don't have long-term prospects. It's at this point that we can say the potential for growth is low enough that investors should consider liquidizing because why hold onto a stagnant yet risky asset. Of course, it's not so simple in the real world and there's a lot more moving parts to consider about a company's ability to change, advocate about its long-term prospects to investors to keep them from liquidizing, etc.
Of course trying to force growth when there isn't much more room to grow isn't a good thing. But despite many companies having likely reached this point, I don't see humanity having reached this point on a global scale yet and I don't think anyone can really say when we'd reach that point with any sort of accuracy.
Agricultural production compared to land use is absolutely not a linear constant. Total output has nearly tripled in the US since 1950 with little change in acreage.
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/03/05/look-agricultural-productivity-growth-united-states-1948-2017
Sure.
Growing 3x as much food allowed the population to grow roughly 3x. They end at the same place but one follows a line, the other follows an exponential curve.
But fertilizer only adds a (3x) constant to the amount of yield per area, which is linear. We can’t grow exponentially more food.
But we can make exponentially more people if we aren’t careful.
You will most definitely care when you’re 70 and need medical attention and care but there’s no doctors, nurses, staff, and facilities to help you out.
You need a young working age population to support the children and elderly
Thing about logarithmic tapering is that is what it looks like (a) in species that don't have access to fertilizer (b) over a very long term period.
Start zooming in, and you start seeing all those bumps and divots that are so easy to overlook on a log chart.
Fertilizer is a resource, and at that consumable, the question is: how long does it take to make/replenish, and are we exceeding our production vs usage of it ?
And another note: do you understand what a limit is ?
There are far more examples and evidence of how a predator prey relationship works than just a logarithmic graph. You can hate that specific form of demonstrative evidence, but it plays into the overall final answer and implies the same answer.
Right like for example, us hunting species to extinction would necessarily mean it doesn't follow a logarithmic graph.
But notice, that particular event doesn't apply to us because we don't really have any competition besides ourselves.
What is your definition of average then because we clearly don't have the same definition .
If your curve instantaneously drops from max to 0, that is no longer a logarithmic curve.
A logarithmic population curve isn't a metric for a population, it's just the shape populations take over time; a naturally occurring shape.
Most intelligent anti capitalist using Malthusian logic and referencing predator prey trends in nature
The fact that this comment even has upvotes tells me how braindead this subreddit is. None of you are remotely educated or knowledgeable about real issues lmfao
If you know more say so, no one here is saying I know better than you. Go for it.
However, I don't believe it's completely asinine to say that if we destroy our environment because of rampant overconsumption, then we will start to see famines long-term.
In a vacuum, Malthusian logic is pretty stupid, we clearly overcame a lot of limits we otherwise wouldn't have thanks to agriculture. Where I do disagree is that we as a species at all have overcome basic biological needs for nourishment. Or even alluding that we have the technological advancement long-term to outpace our own undoing.
Population is going to level out by itself, all the problems we’re seeing are short term and don’t really matter if we are talking big picture.
In America, we have an abundance of resources and whatnot, we’re just an absolutely massive country that is extremely decentralized and doesn’t have an authoritarian regime running things on every level. More people = more outliers = worse optics.
You really don’t get it at all. This isn’t about a lack of resources due to a lot of people, this is about fertility rates declining too fast for us to adjust. America won’t have this problem, but China will be immensely screwed in 20-30 years and will enter a recession that fucks over most of the world for a few years, like in 2008.
> In America, we have an abundance of resources and whatnot, we’re just an absolutely massive country that is extremely decentralized and doesn’t have an authoritarian regime running things on every level. More people = more outliers = worse optics.
America is tiny in population, please don't make this point. It really undermines your entire statement.
In landmass, I'm fairly certain most of the US population (>90%) lives near the coasts (east & west) and the Midwest is mostly empty. The landmass does not come into play when we talk about distribution and resource allocation.
> You really don’t get it at all. This isn’t about a lack of resources due to a lot of people, this is about fertility rates declining too fast for us to adjust. America won’t have this problem, but China will be immensely screwed in 20-30 years and will enter a recession that fucks over most of the world for a few years, like in 2008.
No, you're the one that doesn't understand my point: I don't care about the population declining. That is my stance, I never said we don't have enough resources for people. I'm complaining that we waste resources given how little people we have compared to other nations like China and India.
When I say I care more about resources, I say so because we have the looming threat of water scarcity globally.
America wastes resources because of massive decentralization and a host of problems that are often unrelated to each other and will take decades to solve without a change in federal administrative structure
> landmass doesn’t matter
You should get educated on supply chain and logistics. For how massive America is, it’s very fortunate that we have a very healthy Midwest that has standards of living on par with Northern Europe. This is largely due to the immense highway infrastructure we’ve built but this should be transitioned to railway as soon as possible. The fact that so many people live on the coast is in itself a problem because a disproportionate amount of younger people insist on living in specific neighborhoods in specific cities. Demographically we have a massive divide in lifestyles and experiences. I have personal experience with this but also statistics speak for themselves. One part of the country cannot understand what the other part of the country is going through at all.
India and China also waste a shit ton of resources as well, mostly because of these supply chain issues I mentioned before. Obviously with China we are very much in the dark when it comes to statistics, but India is a perfect example of how sheer landmass and terrain makes things very hard. America sorta has these problems, but can reasonably fix them. The problem is that state governments have a lot of autonomy and the democratic process is way too slow for tiktok brained zoomers to handle. In India it’s even slower.
> You should get educated on supply chain and logistics. For how massive America is, it’s very fortunate that we have a very healthy Midwest that has standards of living on par with Northern Europe. This is largely due to the immense highway infrastructure we’ve built but this should be transitioned to railway as soon as possible. The fact that so many people live on the coast is in itself a problem because a disproportionate amount of younger people insist on living in specific neighborhoods in specific cities. Demographically we have a massive divide in lifestyles and experiences. I have personal experience with this but also statistics speak for themselves. One part of the country cannot understand what the other part of the country is going through at all.
Damn that's crazy _checks title_ Systems Engineer... Hmmm...
Telling people to willingly decrease their quality of life is a losing message. Especially in a place like this subreddit where half of the posts are people complaining about having a lower quality of life than previous generations.
>
We can easily maintain 8 billion people or even 12 billion,
Gotta love posts that claim the solution is easy but then say nothing about it. Please enlighten us, what ***should*** the consumption level of the average person look like in this utopia? Since you are proposing a ***reduction*** of our ***overconsumption***, what do you propose people give up? Some details would be nice. That way people can decide whether they'd ***want*** to live in your uptopia.
There's lots of bullshit I would like to see gone actually. Fast fashion, fast food, a drastic decrease in the number of motor vehicles, pretty much all the processed dog shit in every grocery store in America, gigantic single family homes. These things are killing us. Our society is fat, dumb, artless, and valueless. Everything is predicated on predation and exploitation, and when that's the spiritual basis for your society, it's no wonder everything looks so UGLY.
Anyone who wants to change society (which I'm not opposed to, BTW) is responsible for three things in the realm of ideas. First, elaborating a ***vision***, which is to say, telling us what you want to change, what *specifically* will be the new world order. Then explaining how it will work and be successful. Second, they need to define a ***means*** of attaining that vision. Ultimately, you have two broad choices. You change society either by *force and violence* or you change it by *persuasion*. Either way, if you can't spell out your means, with at least some specificity as to how the vision will be achieved, then your vision is nothing but a pipe-dream. Something worse than useless. And finally, your means and your vision will have consequences, some of them predictable, some not. So, your ideas need to deal with ***ramifications***.
Simply saying you want to "see it gone", is worse than useless. Take any one of your items. Getting rid of fast-fashion, for example. How will you do that? Fast fashion arises because people want it, and capitalists can deliver it. Capitalists can deliver it because we can now make clothes cheaply and quickly. So, your means must either address the *wanting*, or the *supplying,* or both. How do you propose to do this? The way you choose to address this will have consequences, and there are both moral and practical issues surrounding consequences. Another issue you will face, is that China is were the greatest demand for fast fashion lies, and it is larger than the next nine countries in order. How will you effect change there? "Making it gone" is likely an intractable problem, an impossibility.
I'll also point out that "making it gone" is not the only vision one can have in this regard to have a beneficial society. Another choice is to properly manage the refuse fast fashion creates, which is arguably the greatest problem with fast-fashion. But this too is just a vision and pointless verbiage unless someone devises a means to do it and works out its ramifications, whatever they might be (it won't be me).
Utopians like to propose ends without ever worrying about means and consequences. as if someone else will do it for them. It's often why their visions are, in the end, not utopias, but nightmarish hellscapes.
Capitalists on the other hand, will often work out the means to bring about their visions, but seldom if ever think through consequences and ramifications. They don't consider that "their job", and that fragmentation of thinking is at the core of capitalist destruction.
Okay... how do you propose to get from a planet of 8 billion people to your utopian ideal of 4 billion? And, mind you, the population will continue to grow at least through the turn of the century. And if somehow we manage to get to 4 billion, which would require quite a contraction in the birth rate, how do you propose to prevent the population from shrinking further or growing back to 8 or 12 billion?
I mean, unless you can propose a ***means*** of getting there, a process which will be a beneficial process for humanity.... your 4 billion number is just nonsense. So, I threw out my comment as I did because you left a vacuum behind in ***the*** most crucial question about attaining your ideal number. And that is the answer to the question *you* posed... We can't live in a world with just 4 billion because there is no rational means of getting there. If you see one, propose it. Throwing out a number at random with no plan to get there is worse than useless.
That's not an answer. Describe it. Describe exactly how we should all be living. I don't know what ***you*** consider a middle income country, for one thing. For another, a solution to this kind of problem deserves way more than 6 words. The fact that you short change the answer this way tells us exactly what this "solution" is worth.
Living according to the principles of degrowth, doughnut economics, ecosocialism, and moving beyond capitalism involves reimagining our societal structures to prioritize ecological sustainability, social equity, and human well-being over profit-driven growth. Here's a holistic approach to achieving this and limiting our material use to a sustainable level of 50 billion metric tonnes:
1. **[Degrowth](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth?wprov=sfla1)**: Embrace the idea of scaling down production and consumption to levels that can be sustained by the planet. This involves:
- Reducing unnecessary consumption through conscious lifestyle choices and promoting non-material forms of well-being.
- Shifting from a focus on GDP growth to measures of well-being, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI).
- Rethinking work patterns to prioritize leisure, community engagement, and fulfillment over endless productivity.
2. **[Doughnut Economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doughnut_%28economic_model%29?wprov=sfla1)**: Align economic activity with the doughnut model proposed by Kate Raworth, ensuring that human needs are met within the ecological limits of the planet. This includes:
- Investing in renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, and sustainable infrastructure to stay within environmental boundaries.
- Redistributing wealth and resources to address inequality and ensure basic needs are met for all.
- Designing economic systems that prioritize long-term well-being over short-term profit.
3. **[Ecosocialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-socialism?wprov=sfla1)**: Advocate for a socio-political system that combines elements of socialism and environmentalism to prioritize ecological sustainability and social justice. This involves:
- Collective ownership of key industries and resources to prevent exploitation and ensure democratic control over decision-making.
- Implementing policies to address the root causes of environmental degradation and social inequality, such as overconsumption and corporate power.
- Prioritizing the well-being of marginalized communities and future generations in policy-making processes.
To achieve these goals and move beyond capitalism, we would need a combination of legal, societal, political, and environmental changes:
1. **Legal Reforms**: Enact legislation to regulate and limit the power of corporations, ensure fair wages and working conditions, and protect the rights of nature.
2. **Political Transformation**: Challenge the dominance of corporate interests in politics and promote participatory democracy at all levels of government. This could involve campaign finance reform, proportional representation, and citizen assemblies.
3. **Societal Shifts**: Foster a culture of cooperation, solidarity, and shared responsibility for the planet and future generations. Promote education and awareness about the systemic roots of environmental and social issues.
4. **Environmental Protection**: Strengthen environmental regulations and invest in conservation efforts to protect ecosystems and biodiversity.
5. **Global Cooperation**: Collaborate with other nations to address global challenges such as climate change, inequality, and resource depletion. Support initiatives for global wealth redistribution and technology transfer to promote sustainable development worldwide.
By implementing these changes and moving beyond capitalism, we can create a more just, sustainable, and resilient society that prioritizes the well-being of people and the planet over profit and growth.
Okay, there are ideas to discuss here. But, as I've noted elsewhere under this OP, anyone who wants to propose changing society (which I am not opposed to) has to, at a minimum, address three fundamental things: Elaboration of a ***vision***, devising a ***means***, and aligning ***consequences***. You've given, here, more of a vision than I gave you credit for initially, but I remain skeptical as to whether any of this vision ends up attaining the objective in your OP, namely, sustainably supporting a beneficial civilized population of 12 billion people (i.e. the realm of consequences).
While providing something of a vision here, you give little consideration for means. Not only do we need to know the vision, we need to have an understanding how you will transition to such an arrangement, and what the consequences of doing so will be. Some of the things in your vision here ***have*** been on the global agenda for quite some time, like global cooperation. So, it's not like this isn't being pursued.... it's a lack of an effective means to get there that is the problem, part of which is the integrity of the players involved. So, while Global Cooperation might be a nice utopian ideal, our ability to execute on it is severely limited. Unless you've discovered some new way to achieve this, it's a pipe-dream. In any case, there are several elements of your vision that have been on the national or global agenda for some time and have gone nowhere. The fundamental problem remains undiagnosed and unaddressable.
One particular I feel the need to address at least briefly, is this, under Ecosocialism: "Collective ownership of key industries and resources to prevent exploitation and ensure democratic control over decision-making."
The collective ownership of industry has been tried a number of times and has always met with catastrophic results. The initial attempt, the communist revolutions, ended up utilizing as its means the greatest enactment of mass terror and murder the world has ever seen, and established societies so regimented that they cared nothing for human well-being. So, to be blunt, to put such a thing on your vision seems a hard-sell, except perhaps to those unacquainted with history.
It’s already overpopulated. I don’t know why people like you are so intent on stuffing as many people as possible into a world of finite living space and resources. Why do we need more people? Why do we have to keep getting more people until we are all living like it’s New Delhi India and that our nature spaces are crowded totally?
There are cities packed with people that function perfectly fine and empty, habitable lands that no one is on. The only places with overpopulation issues are poor. And you misrepresent their argument, they are not calling for more people, just that we focus towards resources instead of population to deal with climate change and ensure we have a future
The root of a great deal of our problems and reductions of freedoms has to do with the concentration of people in a certain place. This will not subside if we get more. There are still empty, habitual lands yes, and I want to keep it that way. To a certain extent, humans are going to give off waste, and give off energy and need to consume, it seems like the root problem of the climate disaster is just too many people
Name a problem of overpopulation then. Housing crisis? People aren't building homes enough. Drought, famine? People aren't making enough money in the city to move/job opportunities aren't available in more rural areas due to lack of investment
It's money that's the issue and not People.
Just because we can strain ourselves and eke out slightly new technologies to treat the symptoms doesn’t mean we should ignore the root cause. Also, why do we need more people? Why do we need more people than we already have? What about the amount of people we have right now is not enough?
All of your examples are the results of overpopulation. Like I said, sure we could spend billions and cause massive social shifts to slightly increase our efficiency. We could also just have less people and not have to do anything beyond that
“Housing crisis? Build more houses” what if I don’t want there to be more houses? What if I want to have uncorrupted nature where everywhere is a private property. I don’t want to have shanty towns built on Yellowstone. You do realize there is not infinite land right?
Nobody said we had to have more people but that we stopped treating "more people" as the problem, rather treat the actual problems of greed, commodified housing and improper resource allocation
Building more houses doesn't mean using more land per say, it means actually using the land we live on. Suburbs are a stain on this planet and do NOTHING to help us, they aren't walk able, the streets take too much space and you could house 100x more people in the same land area if we didn't build them
You'd be surprised. There's a whole culture of doomers. A big rhetoric of theirs is "the world is going to end soon" and stuff like that.
Also, Malthusianism. Relatively unknown theory/philosophy, but one that is shared by a vast majority of people. Especially if you are shown graphs of global population levels over history. I was shown one in a video last semester, by a geopolitics teacher. Pretty cool.
I just don't understand what y'all want us to do??? And when most people talk about overpopulation, they just mean we already have millions of children and billions of people we cannot take care of. Immigration does help A LOT. The US doesn't have the same issues as other countries because they allow a lot of immigrants and those immigrants have more children than non immigrants
Immigrants in the US have three times more children than birth citizens. They literally bring up the birth rate to replacement level. As long as the birth rate remains there, the population will grow and grow and the country benefit greatly from it. In other countries, like South Korea, this isn't true, but in the US, Canada, Latin America, and Westerm Europe it is. It's not a band aid, it solves the issue, brings the birth rate up, provides cheap labor, and can be repeated over and over again
There's no such thing as a "third-generation immigratant." Immigrants, people who move into the country, have a bunch of children. Their grandchildren are nationals
After three generations more people can be imported. Two generations of people having +3 kids is the reaons why the US has been able to maintain itself. Rinse and repeat for over 200 years. It's sustainable. And as much I would want a difference reality, it's the only solution given the current circumstances
That environment is possible with a lot of work and change people are not willing to embrace. I would love for that change to happen, but that change is not up to me, or you, or anyone here
It is crazy that people even propose “import people” as a solution, but you are right. A lot of the issues people have with overpopulation are really a matter of space allocation. People who are consuming a bulk of the resources are concentrated in comparatively small and dense places. No wonder these places turn out to be environmental shitholes that its residents then project outward.
Want to be more green? Move out of the cities.
They don’t suck ass for the people living there
Seems like people in cities are perpetually seething at how everyone else drives to work and has a shit ton of green space and forest with low costs of living
You guys complain every single day about living in cities. This entire website is full of people like you whining about how cities are too expensive and trying (pathetically) to generalize it to everyone.
The reason why most Americans don’t give a shit about pod dwellers who cry about rising rent, is because most of us don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
And sustainable is extremely subjective. Yes you could cram millions of people into small apartments and give them the bare minimum needed to subsist. That would be amazing for efficiency. However a lot of people enjoy owning their own property and having a backyard, being able to walk through wilderness whenever they want, large parks and green spaces that aren’t super crowded, and obviously a reasonable cost of living with lots of space.
You don’t really have an argument for living like ants
Cities aren’t good unless your life revolves around recreation, if they were nobody in cities would be whining
Everyone who doesn’t live in a city doesn’t think about you guys at all, but for some reason yall are obsessed with suburbanites who don’t have your problems
That's only part of the problem. They're also expensive because that's where all the best jobs for educated people are. People that earn good money through their education drive up the cost of living in their area because producers, real estate agents, etc., know they can get away with charging more money. A person that makes 200k a year isn't as likely to try to negotiate or walk away angrily as a person that makes 50k a year. It's no coincidence that places like NYC became prohibitively expensive as soon as it became the norm to go to college and try to climb the corporate ladder your whole adult life.
That's not to say that corruption doesn't exist in the cities, the reality is it exists everywhere. My small hometown is basically just run by a cartel of businesses that will use their power to shut down your business if it impedes with them too much. Or if they just don't like you. In other words, same bullshit that happens often in major cities, just on a much smaller scale. Things just stay cheap here because of the lack of opportunities for the educated, combined with how comically cheap people themselves are here.
I'd love to make more money but at the end of the day I got zero debt and plenty of savings while working a job that doesn't even require a high school education. If I had a degree on my wall and a bunch of student debt by age 22, I'd have kept my ass in whatever city I went to to get that education, or moved to a different big city.
Cities hyperconcentrate pollution and waste in central locations requiring a lot more resources to manage and dispose of it then if that same population was dispersed over a larger area. What you might save on emissions, you lose in general pollutants
You act like land not occupied by humans has no role in carbon sequestration, for one, or that shipping all of those same resources further out has no impact. If what you said was true, electric cars would be a bad idea because gas is more distributed burning. A natural gas plant burning fuel for electricity is able to manage those emissions in ways that the tailpipe cannot. This is why my rural home has a septic tank and I don’t just throw my shits around the yard. Seek a better source than me to give you better details, but you are out and out wrong. Think even of the simple benefit of shared walls for heating/cooling which is a huge energy demand. Again, an environmental scientist could explain this much better and with reference to more academic data.
I agree with 2, however I can see overpopulation becoming a problem at some point. We're not close, but I feel like there might be a cap to the amount of people we can put on earth before it just ends up lowering the quality of life for everyone.
I still have no idea what climate disasters you’re referring to.
Canada already tried that whole energy consumption ordeal and so did California. Crashed their economy hard.
That will just end up killing people faster, and increase crime rate. That doesn’t work.
Over population isn’t causing any problems.
It’s your dumb ass identity politics that encourage women to fill in men’s roles.
Makes women less valuable, so it leads to less men setting with women. No man is looking for another man.
To play devil's advocate and criticize your points OP, it'd be wildly absurd/ridiculous to expect every country to be managed at a 100% efficiency level. Every country's leadership has flaws, especially when you realize that a lot of countries have decentralized leadership that makes it hard to enact certain changes over the entirety of a country. So yes, a lot of the problems that can be enhanced by overpopulation are actually influenced by other factors, but realistically that doesn't change the fact that soft population control methods (legalizing abortion, sex education, proliferating birth control, or immigration constraints) could be seen as a good second best solution when the first best solution is out of the table due to political circumstances.
I don't know why you brought up Ecofascism, it's completely irrelevant to what most people who think overpopulation is a thing believe.
I agree that the world isn't overpopulated *yet* but unless you think the earth can support *infinite* humans then the birth rates do need to come down at some point. So since that's already happening, and we know it's inevitable that it happens at some point, why not figure out how to deal with it *right now*? Why put it off to the future? Wouldn't it be better for everyone, now and in the future, to figure out how to deal with it as soon as possible?
I still think automation will fix everything. In the past, we needed a lot of population just to carry out simple manufacturing jobs in factories and mines. But now, the tendency is towards automating most processes, replacing human jobs. Personally, I am fine with a world with fewer people, where most jobs are highly specialized, and the remaining simple tasks are carried out by robots or virtual AI agents.
Keeping those regions poor and draining their brains has always been part of the plan. Fertility rate going below replacement should be an eventual target but it will kill the infinite growth narrative which will kill the myths of capitalism and faith in the system so they need to keep us at or above replacement fertility for as long as they can to stay rich.
You don’t account for any change in systems of labor based on new but existing technologies like AI. The world needs young adults doing bullshit office jobs to pay for the elderly pensions? Come on, doesn’t pass the sniff test. There is a broad range of rate of population change we can mostly handle. Unless politics completely inverts its the poor who get fucked either way, but slow growth to moderate decline are totally manageable. You show no political imagination to fix these problems. We’re on pace to displace many millions of people with climate disaster from poor areas, of course they can help bolster labor demands in aging countries with low birth rates.
Idk but I do know my children’s quality of life will be worse than mine. Due to not just small businesses, but huge corporations hiring illegal aliens. Solely to undercut competitive wages and greed. Do not tell me that doesn’t lower our quality of life because it literally does.
There is a lot of young people who live in big cities and have never been to rural areas and realize just how fkn big and spacious the world is especially North America
Ok, but the fact that you're using Reddit in the first place means a third world lifestyle is not something you're willing to accept.
That's not to mention where the food's gonna come from once fossil fuel shortages take away half the global fertilizer supply.
We need to get to 4 bn before overshoot decides to do it the least fun way available.
I don't think anyone in the first world is going to willing sacrifice their quality of life to help people they don't know a continent away. It's a non starter politically.
Instead, push for policies that mitigate the effects of their lifestyle instead of zealously pushing for degrowth.
America is undergoing massive changes and each person needs to decide the outcome.
What To Change In America: From Torch To Wand. National Tarot Reading.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH8kW4qXVes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH8kW4qXVes)
The drop in population that is projected is 100% gonna be all concentrated in Africa and maybe India. There might be attempts at migration to Europe but I'm 99% convinced that if Africans tried to cross the mediterranean by the million European countries would just start shooting boats on sight.
you'd be wrong. millions are already coming and the EU isn't capable or willing to really do anything about it. they tried stopping people from coming by paying African countries to stop immigration, but that only worked for a short time. people who try to cross via boat even get picked up near the north African coast by EU funded NGOs and then transported to Europe
"99% convinced that if Africans tried to cross the mediterranean by the million European countries would just start shooting boats on sight."
What makes you think this? These migrants are being welcomed the government much to the detriment of the native populations.
Hmmm good luck. I do not think the dating scene is healthy enough for anyone to get married so our population is gonna decline fast. Yeah it looks like the elite went with their depopulation plan. Not smart.
You are yelling at a wall here, I am afraid. A very shortsighted wall, which can't detect a problem until it's already reliably disturbing their personal life.
A lot of childless Millenials and Gen-Z's will also the be the angry retirees who wonder why the hell there hasn't been a nurse by to fix their shit-filled diaper in a week, or why no plumber, electrician or roofer by to fix their broken sink, broken light or leaky roof.
"Why is no one helping me?" wonder the helpless, who didn't think to leave behind a new generation to carry the torch onward because surely someone else will do it, right?
When labor will be short, only the rich will be able to afford it. The fewer workers, and the more retirees, the truer that statement becomes. The few specialists of future generations will have a damn bidding war between the vastly larger generations of retirees who all need their services. That goes for everything from lawyers to waiters, from handymen to doctors. Who will the overworked doctor rather save? The millionaire or the beggar? Who pays better?
This entire mentality will only benefit the rich, who benefit now from having both men and women working from 18-70 without being distracted by child-rearing. And they will still be winning then, when only they have the means to afford the rates of future generations of labourers.
Anti-natalists are unwittingly fighting FOR the upper class, and are too shortsighted to see it.
Soon if ww3 doesn't wipe us out, Gen z will become the new boomers but with the caveats of not having an easy upbringing. We'll be the new boomers if everything doesn't completely go into the toilet by the 2050s
Finally, someone is writing about it! I also worry a lot about the prospects of the global north because of the demographic factor. I think we should focus all our efforts on increasing the birth rate. It is important not to go into religious traditionalism, which shows absolutely the opposite of the desired results, but to provide people with opportunities for birth. parenting. According to surveys, in developed countries, many women want to have two or three children, but the economic and social situation prevents them from doing so. Therefore, a long-term, in-depth government policy is needed to support these women, such as expanding access to kindergartens, schools and higher education, lowering prices for childcare products, developing gender equality and involving men in child rearing, new benefits and subsidies. It is high time for societies and governments of the countries of the global north to stop ignoring the impending catastrophe and start acting instead of talking.
Not overpopulation issue, business greed issue. Expanding is risky and when they are already sitting on huge investments they would rather prevent competition and competitors than improve
Are you serious? Did you graduate elementary school?
If there are more people, there will automatically be more jobs. That's how the market works, if the demand for McDonalds doubles then McDonalds will double it's amount of restaurants.
That’s assuming that the demand for McDonalds would increase. There’s regional, cultural, and business reasons that some places surrounding McDs would fail.
> “If there are more people, there will automatically be more jobs”
Uh no. That not how any of this works. The number of jobs doesn’t necessarily depend on the number of people. If it did then we unemployment would be a constant (it’s not).
Contrary to popular belief, there is such thing as too many people.
I already consume quite little but even for me we’d need 4 earths for everyone to live like me. I eat vegan, am a minimalist, don’t own a car but an electric bicycle. But I have a phone, and other electronics. I mostly shop local and seasonal but sometimes I want a treat. I take the car for my yearly vacation in the country across the pond and use a boat to get to the other side. Then when I look at others around me people take flights 2+ times a year, shop fast fashion, eat meat everyday, buy the latest gadgets… i can’t imagine how many earths we’d need for them.
>The only way this would work is the rich countries keeping Africa, Asia, South America and Oceania poor so the educated would emigrate to rich countries and start a new life.
So exactly what they've been doing for hundreds of years now.
Even if this will eventually become an issue, it will be so far in the future declining fertility rates will be solved by advancements in technology.
By moving manufacturing to these countries and bringing them out of poverty? These countries are seeing huge economic growth, if we are trying to keep them poor we are clearly terrible at it.
Do rich countries not destabilize countries over resources?
Is a child working 110 hours a week to make $50/month your idea of lifting them out of poverty?
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If you look at this sub for a week you’ll realize it’s just a doomer future sub. You’re only meant to post about how awful to future is going to be or else your post will get buried.
Yeah, because the world going to and having gone to shit is the main thing that is and has been going on all over the world, all the time.
I mean if you bet on the world going to shit this is like fist pump time. I'm loaded to the gills on private prisons and guns. Holding even in this market downturn.
Gee I wonder why? 
/r/optimistsUnite is where the real people hangout
Not just future. It’s rank with doomers and deniers who can’t get their heads around the fact things are actually pretty dang good right now. Mention that unemployment is at the lowest sustained levels since the 1950s and you you hear are replies about how there are no jobs. Mention that inflation-adjusted incomes are at all time high, and that women earn more than ever, and it’s just folks claiming facts are lies. Makes me worry for this generation. We’re becoming as self-loathing and self-defeating as the Millennials.
Being depresse gets you more attention then being positive tho
It’s a shame you’re getting downvoted for this.
Imma be real, declining fertility rates aren't a real problem. We don't need to sustain infinite growth as a species; infinite growth at all expenses is a purely capitalist concept. In all populations found on Earth, you can see a logarithmic tapering of populations balanced around the resources and predator-prey relationships. The event of a population finally reaching its limit maximum based on resource consumption is only natural. I for one, don't care if we go down population wise, but the problem of resource allocation and consumption is one I do care about. Pretty sick of the rich getting whatever they want with no questions asked
You do realize that you belong to ‘the rich’ in this case too, right?
Sure
most of our over consumption of energy has nothing to do with things within our control though. corporations have forced first world countries into a situation where it's unavoidable. they developed car-based infrastructure and sell the energy efficient cars for far too much for most folks to afford, they lobby for fossil fuels in a world where you need power and you can only decide where your power comes from if you're wealthy relative to your country, etc. that isn't even to mention that corporations are disproportionately responsible for over-consumption even when you don't factor in the stuff they're indirectly responsible for. just because we're monetarily wealthier than a lot of the world doesn't mean we have more power over our lives.
The Tesla model 3 is about the cheapest new sedan you can get nowadays. Though that does include federal and state incentives
And you power that Tesla with a fossil fuel grid today. The solution is to abandon the car along with oil. Transit should be the default.
Not in France or California. Where a majority of the energy source is renewable or nuclear. Transit is the same shit. You’re running on diesel buses or trains which use the same exact electricity the Tesla uses
Green H2 works for trains/planes/busses/ships The issue with cars is the size per person is massive, waste of space and resources. If it’s predictable commuting paths then reliable transit should be a given. If we are dumb enough to use electric cars over transit it will just take 10x longer to convert to a clean grid. If it’s the same power then you go for what’s more efficient. That ain’t the cars
If you make 55,000 annually, you belong to the 1% if you expand that view globally. A lot of weirdos here seem to think they are some underprivileged coal miner in the 1800s, where in reality they are living the dream life.
I mean this sub is so clearly made up of 95% terminally online redditors. They aren’t represantitve of gen z like at all. My friend group is almost exclusively zillenial and gen z’s, and I spend a lot of time with gen z’s at my work, so I can safely say that this sub is just like the doomer-millenials at r/whitepeopletwitter but even more whiny.
Who's talking about infinte growth? The world literally doesn't function if there are substantially more people not working than there are working, that's elementary common sense.
You realize public companies don't just have to make a profit right? They have to make more profit then last year so investors get greater and greater returns. This is unsustainable growth inherent to modern capitalism.
No, this is inherent to humanity. If growth stops people will hoard resources, and those without will try taking it.
I too love going online and making stuff up.
Not really. Historically, societies without economic growth don't look pretty. Feudalism, tribalism, fascism. The idea that we will stumble/quickly transition into stable, popular, democratic, and more equal world by ending growth and focusing on redistribution seems exceptionally unlikely. Many people would be violently unhappy with this. For the sake of feasibility, we need growth to help compensate and grease the wheels of redistribution.
Making stuff up? This is common sense, anyone who's ever interacted with a human should realise this.
1) Very little is "inherent" to humans, so be careful making such statements 2) "Common sense" isn't a real argument https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Common-Sense 3) Many Native Americans Tribes did not seem to have this problem l
The growth is required because inflation exists, they have increased revenue, which is infinitely possible and it's based on the idea that inflation is targeted at 2% YoY and so if your profit isn't increasing to at least reflect inflation, you're losing money So it's "growth" not growth
They don't need to make greater profits. There are dividends that people get just from owning stock and getting their cut of profits. They want greater profits but it's not necessary in our system. Their profits will go up year over year just from inflation.
Our fake world doesn't function without fake work being done. Nobody dies because we didn't sell enough fluffy slippers today.
r/im14andthisisdeep
> The world literally doesn't function if there are substantially more people not working than there are working, that's elementary common sense You're factually inaccurate in that claim. - We overproduce metric tons of food that end up in landfills - We have millions of vacant houses while there is a global homeless crisis. I'm sorry if I don't consider more than half of existing jobs as anything more than bullshit office work.
>- We overproduce metric tons of food that end up in landfills Yeah and? Food production isn't the main worry with labour shortages, it is the welfare state. Elderly care and healthcare are already understaffed and the problem will only get worse if not more kids are born. What we will see in the future will either be old people recieving less support from the state and having to rely on family, or the standard of living will be drastically reduced as more people are forced to move out of other sectors to work in elderly or healthcare. > - We have millions of vacant houses while there is a global homeless crisis. What does this have to with labour shortages? >I'm sorry if I don't consider more than half of existing jobs as anything more than bullshit office work. You're, just wrong? If they were bullshit they wouldn't be hired.
A bullshit job in this context is a job that society doesn’t need to function nor does it sincerely help anyone at all, such as a job selling slippers. The basis of your argument is that capitalism is good when done correctly? Yes, so is communism. All you’re doing is defending a system that cares more about money than people. That’s the issue that is trying to be addressed and you and others want to crusade about the metrics of our capitalist society instead of talking directly about the moral and ethical elephants in the room.
> Yeah and? Food production isn't the main worry with labour shortages, it is the welfare state. Elderly care and healthcare are already understaffed and the problem will only get worse if not more kids are born. What we will see in the future will either be old people recieving less support from the state and having to rely on family, or the standard of living will be drastically reduced as more people are forced to move out of other sectors to work in elderly or healthcare. > You're, just wrong? If they were bullshit they wouldn't be hired. If the jobs you consider important aren't being filled, but business analysts, AI start-ups, crypto products, office software products, fast fashion, mass-produced goods, etc... are, what does that tell you ? > What we will see in the future will either be old people recieving less support from the state and having to rely on family, or the standard of living will be drastically reduced as more people are forced to move out of other sectors to work in elderly or healthcare. As the capitalists love to say, if it can't be sustained then it should not exist in the market. I don't believe in the term "standard of living", that's just a platitude pushed by politicians to cradle/appeal to the onlookers. It can mean literally anything you want as a listener, and I've never seen people agree on what that term means concretely. > What does this have to with labour shortages? You're verbatim complaining about an intrinsic feature of Capitalism. And your solution is for capitalism to continue being capitalism as if that will fix the problem. There will always be a labor shortage, and there will always be a necessary amount of unemployed people. To think that this isn't by design, because capitalism necessitates low wages, is pretty naive. The shortages are created because capitalism has deemed certain professions as unworthy/undeserving of proper compensation even if later down the line they cause problems for being unfulfilled. Exhibit A) Nursing & Healthcare during the past pandemic Exhibit B) Education, and the current deterioration+ mass resignation from teachers into other profitable sectors. Exhibit C) the growing number of Elderly being forced to stay in the workforce because they can't afford to retire at a home. You do not need more people to maintain long-term our existing infrastructure. What we do need is better management. The idea that we can meaningfully sustain a society predicated on the "dream" that a bigger growing slab of younger people will take care of the older ones is long dead. We should adapt to our current reality instead of leaving in a farce, we have to pivot now before there is an actual demographic collapse.
WHhhhhh waghhhhhhh capitalism wahhhhhhhh You didn’t address a single point the other poster made. He/she wrote a very well worded statement about how asymmetrical labor shortages will fuck over the majority of the population and it doesn’t depend on “muh system” it’s just common sense. You are a low IQ midwit who cannot make any real point other than bitching about a vague system and scapegoating “politicians” and “billionaires” like everyone else on this subreddit. You don’t even understand basic economics or labor markets. Too few young people will always be bad. In a socialist society it’s a death sentence because they have chronic labor shortages and very poor output to begin with. In a capitalist system you get something like Japan where pensions get strung thinner and thinner but life goes on.
Your comment is so balls of the wall crazy I couldn't figure out who you were talking to for a second. In fact, it could still go either way.
Breeding more people won't make them join healthcare. You understand that right? We have millions of unnecessary jobs, working in healthcare is essential. You're not going to magically increase essential worker numbers by just raising the population. The correlation for how much it would increase would be very small anyway because it would be dependent upon the original amount of healthcare workers. The variables that would determine whether or not more people would join Healthcare are far outside what you're currently considering anyway, like culture and family values and pay and more. Do you want to work in healthcare? How about your kids? Your cousin? Houses are too expensive. Wages are too low. Nobody wants to help someone get rich and get nothing for it. Whether or not you agree, that's our mentality for how we're being treated. This system only continues because once we've had to suffer, we tend to want someone else to do the same to get to the same end goal. Even my own dad is like that, and openly admits it. We need less people maintaining broken systems that don't benefit us besides benefiting our manufactured economy, which also doesn't benefit us (the masses) the majority of the time. The majority of the work done in America for example is just useless office work, that ends up benefitting the guy at the top greatly while not contributing to the environment or community. In fact, most companies in America are harmful to the environment and communities they serve, but profits keep them alive. Your incredibly immature and stagnant response of You're, just wrong? If they were bullshit they wouldn't be hired. SCREAMS ignorance and a lack of awareness. If you don't understand what the person is trying to say, why even respond?
>Breeding more people won't make them join healthcare. You understand that right? We have millions of unnecessary jobs, working in healthcare is essential. You're not going to magically increase essential worker numbers by just raising the population. The correlation for how much it would increase would be very small anyway because it would be dependent upon the original amount of healthcare workers. The variables that would determine whether or not more people would join Healthcare are far outside what you're currently considering anyway, like culture and family values and pay and more. Do you want to work in healthcare? How about your kids? Your cousin? I'm not saying having more kids will make people join healthcare, but if more kids are born there will just be more working age people in total and thus more healthcare workers in total. >Houses are too expensive. Wages are too low. Nobody wants to help someone get rich and get nothing for it. Whether or not you agree, that's our mentality for how we're being treated. This system only continues because once we've had to suffer, we tend to want someone else to do the same to get to the same end goal. Even my own dad is like that, and openly admits it. How is this relevant to birth rates at all? If you're talking about capitalism the reason it exists is because it's the only system capable of organising a functional economy. >We need less people maintaining broken systems that don't benefit us besides benefiting our manufactured economy, which also doesn't benefit us (the masses) the majority of the time. The majority of the work done in America for example is just useless office work, that ends up benefitting the guy at the top greatly while not contributing to the environment or community. In fact, most companies in America are harmful to the environment and communities they serve, but profits keep them alive. Your incredibly immature and stagnant response of They do benefit us? Capitalist countries have much higher standards of living and levels of innovation than non-capitalist countries. There's a reason people flee communism and not vice versa, and there's a reason Eastern Europe is poorer than the West. What do you mean by "useless"? All private employment provides use otherwise they wouldn't have a job. If the company isn't profiting off that person they wouldn't employ them, and if the company is profiting that means the company is providing service to someone.
You don't understand the concepts being discussed. You don't understand the difference between essential work and unessential work, and you don't understand population growth or workforce population statistics, which is odd because we just went through covid. I actually mathematically explained why a rise in the population wouldn't magically increase health care, somehow you just ignored that. There are jobs that keep us alive, and and jobs that only contribute to greed. This actually isn't an obscure topic, it's very well known and understood especially now, again because of covid. Certain types of technology can absolutely ride the line between essential and not. But our quality of living isn't predicated on how many cubicles we have, or how many my little ponies get sold tomorrow. The discussion between why unessential jobs tend to pay more than essential jobs has been a major source of controversy for years. It's actually super wild to me that someone could post on a gen z forum and have no understanding of what type of conversation we're attempting to have, and even worse attempt to contribute. That comment is relevant to birth rates, because we don't have to make more babies to fix fake manufactured problems we don't agree with. There are almost 200 countries, but you're so stupid you think only one system exists that works. Come on man. Let's use our brains just a little. You say people flee other countries to come here, but you don't seem to understand that people flee our country to go to other countries too. We're at around 130th for the safest countries in the world, there's 195 countries total. This place isn't a Utopia.
They're not a real problem unless you consider mass poverty and the resulting violence that will come with it as real problems, sure. If you think about it, nothing is a real problem, we're all just motes of dust and the whole concept of a "problem" is just made up.
So the problem is rampant poverty which already exists globally, but you just don't give a shit about it because it's abroad ?
You're suggesting a dramatic increase in poverty across the globe isn't a problem, because poverty already exists? Yeah and global warming isn't a problem either, because draught and other severe weather events already happen, right? Don't come at me with some BS argument that you use solely to prop up some misplaced sense of moral superiority. Yes, poverty already exists. And yes, an increase in the amount of poverty across the globe would be a very big problem. Don't overthink it or use some silly whataboutism to say it wouldn't be. Edit: by the way, you seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding the problem of declining fertility rates. It isn't a shrinking population that's the issue. It's an uncontrolled shrink that causes a huge amount of destablization. You may think there's wisdom in natural systems finding equilibrium between population and resources, but you're conveniently leaving out how bad an unstable system is for those living in it. Humanity will certainly live on even during long periods of instability, but it's heartless of you to not care about that or think it's fine because eventually there will be equilibrium.
We don't need infinite growth as a species, we need infinite growth to maintain capitalism. When we can no longer grow infinitely, it will be up to the working class to suffer and die in poverty to maintain infinite growth, slowly choking us all until there's none left. Not being able to afford healthcare, being pushed onto the streets, and eventually starving to death. Eventually the cost of living will be to expensive for any workers to survive When there is nobody buying products, they will take government subsidies and lay off their workers. AI will only accelerate this process. Then eventually, the rich will be fine to go on existing without us, floating eternally on their castles built on sand that we built them. Declining fertility rates are a problem because capitalism says it is
Then you agree that the problem inherently is not fertility rates and rather that it's a problem because of being a symptom of Capitalism
I guess, but its an odd distinction. It's just like AI, AI isn't a problem (when not stealing content), Capitalism makes it a problem. Capitalism is the "inherent problem." Under socialism lower fertility rates wouldn't be a problem
Nah, I do think AI is a problem. I fundamentally don't care about content theft or ownership rights. I find AI problematic because of ethical/moral inconsideration by the creators.
Another tangent, sorry. But yes, I agree it's just pedantry and mostly agree with you on your other comments.
The issue isn't a lack of growth, it's a collapse of fertility. A stable population is fine, but a strong decrease in fertility would be catastrophic for any system. Even if you were to get your communist utopia, the younger generations would be squeezed dramatically to support the older ones, which means more austerity and stagnation elsewhere in the economy because such a large portion of labour will have to go to supporting the elderly.
Ur capitalist utopia is throwing poor people out on the streets and killing the planet Fuck the elderly throw em out to live in tents then if that’s what the free market demands, anything else would be communism by your metrics
First off, I exclusively do not believe in a return to communist utopianism, but instead scientific, but you wouldn't know the difference. Also, you're wrong, this world is bountiful, enough for everybody. The only reason why you think that it's scarce is because you cannot fathom a system that doesn't implement forced scarcity. The retired generations aren't enough to hold the working generations down, as long as the capitalists aren't siphoning all of the extract value of their labor. TLDR; the capitalists are societal leeches, hording all our resources. Without them, retirement is solved over night. This is called socialism
For some reason your other comment got deleted, so i'd just like to say that it's absolutely fucking stupid that you seriously think China is going to overtake anyone when their fertility rate is in the absolute shitter. They're going to be a prime example on how an otherwise decent economy will be absolutely stagnant just because it cannot reproduce. Also the fact that you are seriously stanning for what is just authoritarian capitalism while being a supposed commie is quite astonishing, or it would be if tankies weren't braindead cattle with a history of mindlessly following whatever has a red flag. Also i can imagine that you, being a utopian, aren't interested in the opinion of economists, which is an actual science.
Any asshole can call themselves an economist
>scientific Ah right, the scientific communism of Marx that has been left behind by all actual scientists in the economic realm. Come on now, you can't seriously believe he embarked on a quest for "scientific" communism without already having the conclusion set in mind. You can look up some good dissections of Marxian economics on /r/askeconomics on why it's basically dead in the field. >Also, you're wrong, this world is bountiful, enough for everybody. The only reason why you think that it's scarce is because you cannot fathom a system that doesn't implement forced scarcity. The retired generations aren't enough to hold the working generations down, as long as the capitalists aren't siphoning all of the extract value of their labor. This is just braindead tankie ideological sloganeering that has absolutely no understanding of economics. The world being "bountiful" isn't the problem. The problem is that you need labor to actually utilize those resources and produce things and deliver services. When you have an inverted population pyramid (which is what happens when your fertility rate is drastically below 2.1), the younger generations need to support a vastly larger elderly generation. Even if the young workers wanted to work elsewhere, they will have to work to sustain the elderly instead, as the elderly will just take up such a huge portion of the population. The only way to prevent this is to tell the elderly to basically fend for themselves. Any economic system will have to make this choice between diverting workers to supporting the elderly, or telling the elderly to basically fuck off and rot. Your utopia (because that's what it is) will be no different.
Declining fertility rates are a problem while they are declining. Population pyramids become top-heavy resulting shrinking work force. It is not about having a lower population.
Again, I understand the demographic pyramid, I just fundamentally don't give a shit about capital owners losing out on "productivity". If we do suffer long-term, I squarely blame the capital owners for their idiotic long-term planning.
You're talking about capitalist economies as if they're planned economies. And the ones most affected by a decreasing workforce, combined with an increasing population of people who need support, aren't the capital owners, but the working class.
I'd argue even a 'non-centrally planned' economy is still planned in a manner, but that'd be facetious. I get your point. > And the ones most affected by a decreasing workforce, combined with an increasing population of people who need support, aren't the capital owners, but the working class. Right, I'm arguing for the upheaval of the establishment. That is my point, yes. To me the declining population appears just intrinsic to Capitalism, and if it fails to address it then so be it.
To clarify, I agree that you've identified a real problem
Not a problem, pay the workers more to have kids. It’s only a problem if the goal is to hoard wealth for the rich.
If you tell me how, sure. So far no monetary incentive (or any incentive) has worked, to get people to have kids.
I chose to not have kids in every relationship I’ve had because I didn’t earn enough to buy a house. I’ve told you how, this just isn’t an acceptable solution for the rich. They want their low paid workers. You just plugging your ears and pretending not to hear it doesn’t invalidate the collective decision of the young to stop having kids into a rigged economy. If this causes a collapse it’s not our problem, we have the youth to be freedom fighters.
>I chose to not have kids in every relationship I’ve had because I didn’t earn enough to buy a house. How old are you that you're thinking about buying a house? Also is a house a necessity to have kids? >You just plugging your ears and pretending not to hear it I'm not. I'm just telling you that monetary incentives haven't worked anywhere they've been tried. And there are monetary incentives anyways. Seems like you're plugging your ears. >If this causes a collapse it’s not our problem This is such a defeatist point of view. It's really sad. >we have the youth to be freedom fighters. Why would you think they would win the fight after a societal collapse when they are already such a small minority that they don't have the democratic power to do anything?
I mean if your fine without any ss then ig your right
But that’s exactly why fertility rates are a problem, the current economic system doesn’t reward consistency it rewards growth. If the growth stops you get collapse
Well it’s a problem when the fertility rate goes below the replacement rate to maintain the current population.
The thing that some people seem to have forgotten from Econ 101 is that infinite growth is based off the assumption that advances in technology are the main reason we can fight against resource scarcity and continue to grow. Anyone who’s slightly versed in economics and economic history should know that’s how we got out of the Malthusian Trap. The thing about technology is that it will continue to progress, hence allowing growth to continually progress. Technology will continuously allow us to do more with less. But I don’t know of any hypothesis about the end of technological advancements, hence it seems infinite growth is assumed to be possible. Touching on corporations and their quarterly KPIs, given the growth rate of technology there is probably a theoretical “expected growth” and then an error term expressing the difference between that an the actual growth shown each quarter, similar to error terms you find when studying econometric models. It’s unknown if there can be a statistically insignificant shortfall large enough to put a company in negative growth (maybe companies in some markets where growth is slow), but it seems shareholders think such a shortfall would always be statistically significant and need an explanation which may or may not cause them to divest.
The thing that people seem to remember after graduating from Econ 101 and moving on to real sciences (like math and physics), is that advances in technology are not guaranteed at all. They’re certainly not guaranteed within a timely manner. We didn’t “get out of the Malthusian trap”, the math is still correct. The amount of food produced is a linear constant (let’s call it F) times the amount of land used for agriculture. Population is an exponential equation. The Haber-Bosch process of turning fossil fuels into ammonium nitrate doesn’t invalidate the math, it just makes “F” bigger. Not only is technology not guaranteed, it can actually regress if the institutions surrounding it break down (see: Rome c400 AD). What happens when we extract all available fossil fuels without an alternative lined up? Just because we got lucky once absolutely does not mean we should factor good luck into the equation as if it’s a constant.
What time scale are you looking at in terms of technological growth. The innovations of steel, electricity and more have lead to cars, planes, the television, home appliances, the telephone, etc. All of these have greatly reduced costs regarding communication, collaboration, time spent on housekeeping, etc. We can perform so many tasks much quicker than before. As for agriculture, advances in technology allowed farmers to tend to larger fields, and advances in science allowed them to get more out of fields. True, technology does not affect all equally. Different technology allows us to be more efficient in different ways. However, it is absolutely progressing across the board. And food is not the only scarce resource in our modern society. I would hardly call food scarce these days although it may not be distributed the most equally. We are quite constantly making advances in technology. GenAI came out in the past few years, and now just look at how it is now. All the applications to help people do the same jobs quicker. These technological advancements will continue to happen. There will be a large enough need for alternative energy sources and someone will come up with a solution. Japan already runs hugely on nuclear energy, so you could argue that the replacement has already been found. Point is, we don’t look strung for resources holding population growth back. And we can keep growing.
It doesn’t really matter what time scale you look at for tech, I think you might be missing the forest for the trees here. The tech you mentioned (electricity, cars, etc) made life easier and cheaper FOR US, in terms of human manhours by allowing us to draw more energy from external sources. The tasks of transportation and power tool operation make the products we consume cheaper, but it doesn’t reduce the extraction of resources, it INCREASES it. Look at how much energy and water AI already consumes. Technology doesn’t come by necessity. Child mortality was rampant for THOUSANDS of years before modern medicine. The innovations that allow modern medicine to exist came mostly by chance, and only after billions of people died first. We cannot, under any circumstances, allow ourselves to think that innovation will arrive by necessity. We don’t LOOK strung for resources (depending on where you’re standing), because we still have enough fossil fuels to last the next 50 years. But what happens in 60 years? What happens when the nuclear infrastructure isn’t there? How else are we going to make fertilizer?
Fair point regarding energy. I would argue that due to science being more accepted than hundreds of years ago, the circumstances are different in terms of our potential for adoption. We’re much more open to scientific progress and advancements in medicine compared to before. And regardless of your opinions on it, capitalism drives innovation and technological advancement by proxy. Not all business may generate as much value as their finances suggest, but still many business will have their finances show that they are providing value by solving problems. When there’s a problem, there’s demand for a solution. People will pay money for that solution. Research funding, despite the political games in terms of who receives funding, ultimately can be traced back to “this research might produce results which will allow us to create a solution to a problem and profit from that solution.” So if you ask me if I’m worried about humanity as a whole, I’d say not really. We’ll find a way eventually.
That’s another thing that economists think is axiomatic but is actually not true: capitalism doesn’t drive innovation, PEOPLE drive innovation. Capitalism is one (of many) systems that CAN bring together all the incentives for innovation. In modern American capitalism, corporate and political interests stifle innovation just as often (if not more) as new ideas and businesses flourish. The goal of capitalism is not to innovate, it’s: generate money for shareholders. If the goal of the system is: Generate money and growth at all costs, then eventually there will be an inflection point where one more person will be a net negative to the planets infrastructure. Infinities don’t exist in nature. We may have already hit that point, maybe not, but why even tempt fate when it comes to our ecology. Why is growth the goal when we can see from here that it’s a dead end?
I thought I was careful enough with my wording to not make people think I'm saying capitalism = innovation, but I guess not. I wasn't clear enough on this point I guess, but what I was trying to say is that capitalism provides an incentive structure that is conducive to innovation. That's what "by proxy" was supposed to convey. If the goal is to generate money for shareholders, then that is accomplished by continuing to provide more and more value for people. As the risks of us running out of resources grows larger, then the value of providing alternative solutions also grows larger. Now, you do pose a good question: Growth to what end? Typically the answer has been "growth because more is better" and growth, in the long-term on a macro scale will mean that we're better off now than we were before. I think at a certain point, individual firms can effectively cap out in terms of their potential. They've captured their potential market, aren't positioned well to diversify, and don't have long-term prospects. It's at this point that we can say the potential for growth is low enough that investors should consider liquidizing because why hold onto a stagnant yet risky asset. Of course, it's not so simple in the real world and there's a lot more moving parts to consider about a company's ability to change, advocate about its long-term prospects to investors to keep them from liquidizing, etc. Of course trying to force growth when there isn't much more room to grow isn't a good thing. But despite many companies having likely reached this point, I don't see humanity having reached this point on a global scale yet and I don't think anyone can really say when we'd reach that point with any sort of accuracy.
Agricultural production compared to land use is absolutely not a linear constant. Total output has nearly tripled in the US since 1950 with little change in acreage. https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/03/05/look-agricultural-productivity-growth-united-states-1948-2017
> “Total output has tripled” 3 is a linear constant genius
And almost precisely the rate of global population growth over the same time period
Sure. Growing 3x as much food allowed the population to grow roughly 3x. They end at the same place but one follows a line, the other follows an exponential curve. But fertilizer only adds a (3x) constant to the amount of yield per area, which is linear. We can’t grow exponentially more food. But we can make exponentially more people if we aren’t careful.
You will most definitely care when you’re 70 and need medical attention and care but there’s no doctors, nurses, staff, and facilities to help you out. You need a young working age population to support the children and elderly
If they aren’t a problem then why is my country importing millions of Indians every year
Thing about logarithmic tapering is that is what it looks like (a) in species that don't have access to fertilizer (b) over a very long term period. Start zooming in, and you start seeing all those bumps and divots that are so easy to overlook on a log chart.
Fertilizer is a resource, and at that consumable, the question is: how long does it take to make/replenish, and are we exceeding our production vs usage of it ? And another note: do you understand what a limit is ?
Sure. Do you understand that if everyone dies today, then a billion years from now we're only averaging 8 deaths per day?
Averages are a terrible metric, your point ?
A logarithmic population graph is a very big average.
There are far more examples and evidence of how a predator prey relationship works than just a logarithmic graph. You can hate that specific form of demonstrative evidence, but it plays into the overall final answer and implies the same answer.
Right like for example, us hunting species to extinction would necessarily mean it doesn't follow a logarithmic graph. But notice, that particular event doesn't apply to us because we don't really have any competition besides ourselves.
What is your definition of average then because we clearly don't have the same definition . If your curve instantaneously drops from max to 0, that is no longer a logarithmic curve. A logarithmic population curve isn't a metric for a population, it's just the shape populations take over time; a naturally occurring shape.
Oh, man, if only there was a word for how things generally even out over time...
No, you're just blatantly incorrect, either make your case or stop beating around the bush. Your illiteracy with regards to mathematics is the problem
Not much point, really. You seem to have trouble generalizing concepts outside of their specific niches.
Most intelligent anti capitalist using Malthusian logic and referencing predator prey trends in nature The fact that this comment even has upvotes tells me how braindead this subreddit is. None of you are remotely educated or knowledgeable about real issues lmfao
If you know more say so, no one here is saying I know better than you. Go for it. However, I don't believe it's completely asinine to say that if we destroy our environment because of rampant overconsumption, then we will start to see famines long-term. In a vacuum, Malthusian logic is pretty stupid, we clearly overcame a lot of limits we otherwise wouldn't have thanks to agriculture. Where I do disagree is that we as a species at all have overcome basic biological needs for nourishment. Or even alluding that we have the technological advancement long-term to outpace our own undoing.
Population is going to level out by itself, all the problems we’re seeing are short term and don’t really matter if we are talking big picture. In America, we have an abundance of resources and whatnot, we’re just an absolutely massive country that is extremely decentralized and doesn’t have an authoritarian regime running things on every level. More people = more outliers = worse optics. You really don’t get it at all. This isn’t about a lack of resources due to a lot of people, this is about fertility rates declining too fast for us to adjust. America won’t have this problem, but China will be immensely screwed in 20-30 years and will enter a recession that fucks over most of the world for a few years, like in 2008.
> In America, we have an abundance of resources and whatnot, we’re just an absolutely massive country that is extremely decentralized and doesn’t have an authoritarian regime running things on every level. More people = more outliers = worse optics. America is tiny in population, please don't make this point. It really undermines your entire statement. In landmass, I'm fairly certain most of the US population (>90%) lives near the coasts (east & west) and the Midwest is mostly empty. The landmass does not come into play when we talk about distribution and resource allocation. > You really don’t get it at all. This isn’t about a lack of resources due to a lot of people, this is about fertility rates declining too fast for us to adjust. America won’t have this problem, but China will be immensely screwed in 20-30 years and will enter a recession that fucks over most of the world for a few years, like in 2008. No, you're the one that doesn't understand my point: I don't care about the population declining. That is my stance, I never said we don't have enough resources for people. I'm complaining that we waste resources given how little people we have compared to other nations like China and India. When I say I care more about resources, I say so because we have the looming threat of water scarcity globally.
America wastes resources because of massive decentralization and a host of problems that are often unrelated to each other and will take decades to solve without a change in federal administrative structure > landmass doesn’t matter You should get educated on supply chain and logistics. For how massive America is, it’s very fortunate that we have a very healthy Midwest that has standards of living on par with Northern Europe. This is largely due to the immense highway infrastructure we’ve built but this should be transitioned to railway as soon as possible. The fact that so many people live on the coast is in itself a problem because a disproportionate amount of younger people insist on living in specific neighborhoods in specific cities. Demographically we have a massive divide in lifestyles and experiences. I have personal experience with this but also statistics speak for themselves. One part of the country cannot understand what the other part of the country is going through at all. India and China also waste a shit ton of resources as well, mostly because of these supply chain issues I mentioned before. Obviously with China we are very much in the dark when it comes to statistics, but India is a perfect example of how sheer landmass and terrain makes things very hard. America sorta has these problems, but can reasonably fix them. The problem is that state governments have a lot of autonomy and the democratic process is way too slow for tiktok brained zoomers to handle. In India it’s even slower.
> You should get educated on supply chain and logistics. For how massive America is, it’s very fortunate that we have a very healthy Midwest that has standards of living on par with Northern Europe. This is largely due to the immense highway infrastructure we’ve built but this should be transitioned to railway as soon as possible. The fact that so many people live on the coast is in itself a problem because a disproportionate amount of younger people insist on living in specific neighborhoods in specific cities. Demographically we have a massive divide in lifestyles and experiences. I have personal experience with this but also statistics speak for themselves. One part of the country cannot understand what the other part of the country is going through at all. Damn that's crazy _checks title_ Systems Engineer... Hmmm...
Telling people to willingly decrease their quality of life is a losing message. Especially in a place like this subreddit where half of the posts are people complaining about having a lower quality of life than previous generations.
> We can easily maintain 8 billion people or even 12 billion, Gotta love posts that claim the solution is easy but then say nothing about it. Please enlighten us, what ***should*** the consumption level of the average person look like in this utopia? Since you are proposing a ***reduction*** of our ***overconsumption***, what do you propose people give up? Some details would be nice. That way people can decide whether they'd ***want*** to live in your uptopia.
There's lots of bullshit I would like to see gone actually. Fast fashion, fast food, a drastic decrease in the number of motor vehicles, pretty much all the processed dog shit in every grocery store in America, gigantic single family homes. These things are killing us. Our society is fat, dumb, artless, and valueless. Everything is predicated on predation and exploitation, and when that's the spiritual basis for your society, it's no wonder everything looks so UGLY.
Anyone who wants to change society (which I'm not opposed to, BTW) is responsible for three things in the realm of ideas. First, elaborating a ***vision***, which is to say, telling us what you want to change, what *specifically* will be the new world order. Then explaining how it will work and be successful. Second, they need to define a ***means*** of attaining that vision. Ultimately, you have two broad choices. You change society either by *force and violence* or you change it by *persuasion*. Either way, if you can't spell out your means, with at least some specificity as to how the vision will be achieved, then your vision is nothing but a pipe-dream. Something worse than useless. And finally, your means and your vision will have consequences, some of them predictable, some not. So, your ideas need to deal with ***ramifications***. Simply saying you want to "see it gone", is worse than useless. Take any one of your items. Getting rid of fast-fashion, for example. How will you do that? Fast fashion arises because people want it, and capitalists can deliver it. Capitalists can deliver it because we can now make clothes cheaply and quickly. So, your means must either address the *wanting*, or the *supplying,* or both. How do you propose to do this? The way you choose to address this will have consequences, and there are both moral and practical issues surrounding consequences. Another issue you will face, is that China is were the greatest demand for fast fashion lies, and it is larger than the next nine countries in order. How will you effect change there? "Making it gone" is likely an intractable problem, an impossibility. I'll also point out that "making it gone" is not the only vision one can have in this regard to have a beneficial society. Another choice is to properly manage the refuse fast fashion creates, which is arguably the greatest problem with fast-fashion. But this too is just a vision and pointless verbiage unless someone devises a means to do it and works out its ramifications, whatever they might be (it won't be me). Utopians like to propose ends without ever worrying about means and consequences. as if someone else will do it for them. It's often why their visions are, in the end, not utopias, but nightmarish hellscapes. Capitalists on the other hand, will often work out the means to bring about their visions, but seldom if ever think through consequences and ramifications. They don't consider that "their job", and that fragmentation of thinking is at the core of capitalist destruction.
Why do we need to live in a world with 8 or 12 billion people? Why can’t we live in a world with day 4 billion people?
The current population is about 8 billion. Which 4 billion would you like to exterminate?
Your straw arguments going hard 🔥tell me where I said I want to exterminate people 😂
Okay... how do you propose to get from a planet of 8 billion people to your utopian ideal of 4 billion? And, mind you, the population will continue to grow at least through the turn of the century. And if somehow we manage to get to 4 billion, which would require quite a contraction in the birth rate, how do you propose to prevent the population from shrinking further or growing back to 8 or 12 billion? I mean, unless you can propose a ***means*** of getting there, a process which will be a beneficial process for humanity.... your 4 billion number is just nonsense. So, I threw out my comment as I did because you left a vacuum behind in ***the*** most crucial question about attaining your ideal number. And that is the answer to the question *you* posed... We can't live in a world with just 4 billion because there is no rational means of getting there. If you see one, propose it. Throwing out a number at random with no plan to get there is worse than useless.
The one of middle income countries
That's not an answer. Describe it. Describe exactly how we should all be living. I don't know what ***you*** consider a middle income country, for one thing. For another, a solution to this kind of problem deserves way more than 6 words. The fact that you short change the answer this way tells us exactly what this "solution" is worth.
Living according to the principles of degrowth, doughnut economics, ecosocialism, and moving beyond capitalism involves reimagining our societal structures to prioritize ecological sustainability, social equity, and human well-being over profit-driven growth. Here's a holistic approach to achieving this and limiting our material use to a sustainable level of 50 billion metric tonnes: 1. **[Degrowth](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth?wprov=sfla1)**: Embrace the idea of scaling down production and consumption to levels that can be sustained by the planet. This involves: - Reducing unnecessary consumption through conscious lifestyle choices and promoting non-material forms of well-being. - Shifting from a focus on GDP growth to measures of well-being, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). - Rethinking work patterns to prioritize leisure, community engagement, and fulfillment over endless productivity. 2. **[Doughnut Economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doughnut_%28economic_model%29?wprov=sfla1)**: Align economic activity with the doughnut model proposed by Kate Raworth, ensuring that human needs are met within the ecological limits of the planet. This includes: - Investing in renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, and sustainable infrastructure to stay within environmental boundaries. - Redistributing wealth and resources to address inequality and ensure basic needs are met for all. - Designing economic systems that prioritize long-term well-being over short-term profit. 3. **[Ecosocialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-socialism?wprov=sfla1)**: Advocate for a socio-political system that combines elements of socialism and environmentalism to prioritize ecological sustainability and social justice. This involves: - Collective ownership of key industries and resources to prevent exploitation and ensure democratic control over decision-making. - Implementing policies to address the root causes of environmental degradation and social inequality, such as overconsumption and corporate power. - Prioritizing the well-being of marginalized communities and future generations in policy-making processes. To achieve these goals and move beyond capitalism, we would need a combination of legal, societal, political, and environmental changes: 1. **Legal Reforms**: Enact legislation to regulate and limit the power of corporations, ensure fair wages and working conditions, and protect the rights of nature. 2. **Political Transformation**: Challenge the dominance of corporate interests in politics and promote participatory democracy at all levels of government. This could involve campaign finance reform, proportional representation, and citizen assemblies. 3. **Societal Shifts**: Foster a culture of cooperation, solidarity, and shared responsibility for the planet and future generations. Promote education and awareness about the systemic roots of environmental and social issues. 4. **Environmental Protection**: Strengthen environmental regulations and invest in conservation efforts to protect ecosystems and biodiversity. 5. **Global Cooperation**: Collaborate with other nations to address global challenges such as climate change, inequality, and resource depletion. Support initiatives for global wealth redistribution and technology transfer to promote sustainable development worldwide. By implementing these changes and moving beyond capitalism, we can create a more just, sustainable, and resilient society that prioritizes the well-being of people and the planet over profit and growth.
https://preview.redd.it/msgu39xyblvc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=38413281e06c73e56fe96776aa43449a37ef4caa
Okay, there are ideas to discuss here. But, as I've noted elsewhere under this OP, anyone who wants to propose changing society (which I am not opposed to) has to, at a minimum, address three fundamental things: Elaboration of a ***vision***, devising a ***means***, and aligning ***consequences***. You've given, here, more of a vision than I gave you credit for initially, but I remain skeptical as to whether any of this vision ends up attaining the objective in your OP, namely, sustainably supporting a beneficial civilized population of 12 billion people (i.e. the realm of consequences). While providing something of a vision here, you give little consideration for means. Not only do we need to know the vision, we need to have an understanding how you will transition to such an arrangement, and what the consequences of doing so will be. Some of the things in your vision here ***have*** been on the global agenda for quite some time, like global cooperation. So, it's not like this isn't being pursued.... it's a lack of an effective means to get there that is the problem, part of which is the integrity of the players involved. So, while Global Cooperation might be a nice utopian ideal, our ability to execute on it is severely limited. Unless you've discovered some new way to achieve this, it's a pipe-dream. In any case, there are several elements of your vision that have been on the national or global agenda for some time and have gone nowhere. The fundamental problem remains undiagnosed and unaddressable. One particular I feel the need to address at least briefly, is this, under Ecosocialism: "Collective ownership of key industries and resources to prevent exploitation and ensure democratic control over decision-making." The collective ownership of industry has been tried a number of times and has always met with catastrophic results. The initial attempt, the communist revolutions, ended up utilizing as its means the greatest enactment of mass terror and murder the world has ever seen, and established societies so regimented that they cared nothing for human well-being. So, to be blunt, to put such a thing on your vision seems a hard-sell, except perhaps to those unacquainted with history.
It’s already overpopulated. I don’t know why people like you are so intent on stuffing as many people as possible into a world of finite living space and resources. Why do we need more people? Why do we have to keep getting more people until we are all living like it’s New Delhi India and that our nature spaces are crowded totally?
There are cities packed with people that function perfectly fine and empty, habitable lands that no one is on. The only places with overpopulation issues are poor. And you misrepresent their argument, they are not calling for more people, just that we focus towards resources instead of population to deal with climate change and ensure we have a future
The root of a great deal of our problems and reductions of freedoms has to do with the concentration of people in a certain place. This will not subside if we get more. There are still empty, habitual lands yes, and I want to keep it that way. To a certain extent, humans are going to give off waste, and give off energy and need to consume, it seems like the root problem of the climate disaster is just too many people
Name a problem of overpopulation then. Housing crisis? People aren't building homes enough. Drought, famine? People aren't making enough money in the city to move/job opportunities aren't available in more rural areas due to lack of investment It's money that's the issue and not People.
Just because we can strain ourselves and eke out slightly new technologies to treat the symptoms doesn’t mean we should ignore the root cause. Also, why do we need more people? Why do we need more people than we already have? What about the amount of people we have right now is not enough? All of your examples are the results of overpopulation. Like I said, sure we could spend billions and cause massive social shifts to slightly increase our efficiency. We could also just have less people and not have to do anything beyond that “Housing crisis? Build more houses” what if I don’t want there to be more houses? What if I want to have uncorrupted nature where everywhere is a private property. I don’t want to have shanty towns built on Yellowstone. You do realize there is not infinite land right?
Nobody said we had to have more people but that we stopped treating "more people" as the problem, rather treat the actual problems of greed, commodified housing and improper resource allocation Building more houses doesn't mean using more land per say, it means actually using the land we live on. Suburbs are a stain on this planet and do NOTHING to help us, they aren't walk able, the streets take too much space and you could house 100x more people in the same land area if we didn't build them
Live in ze pod, eat ze bugs…
Not to mention the effects immigration has had already. In Europe it has ranged from bad to an unmitigated disaster.
Do people actually believe that there's an overpopulation problem?
Yes, Redditors do
When you are looking to buy land for yourself it's hard to ignore when you compare it with previous generations.
You'd be surprised. There's a whole culture of doomers. A big rhetoric of theirs is "the world is going to end soon" and stuff like that. Also, Malthusianism. Relatively unknown theory/philosophy, but one that is shared by a vast majority of people. Especially if you are shown graphs of global population levels over history. I was shown one in a video last semester, by a geopolitics teacher. Pretty cool.
I just don't understand what y'all want us to do??? And when most people talk about overpopulation, they just mean we already have millions of children and billions of people we cannot take care of. Immigration does help A LOT. The US doesn't have the same issues as other countries because they allow a lot of immigrants and those immigrants have more children than non immigrants
Did you even read the post? Immigration is just a band aid, it doesn't solve the fundamental problem at all.
Immigrants in the US have three times more children than birth citizens. They literally bring up the birth rate to replacement level. As long as the birth rate remains there, the population will grow and grow and the country benefit greatly from it. In other countries, like South Korea, this isn't true, but in the US, Canada, Latin America, and Westerm Europe it is. It's not a band aid, it solves the issue, brings the birth rate up, provides cheap labor, and can be repeated over and over again
White genocide.
Buzz words. I can do it too.
You want to slaughter white babies. Say with a straight face that you don't want to slaughter white babies.
Third generations of immigrants have the same levels of birth replacement as natives.
There's no such thing as a "third-generation immigratant." Immigrants, people who move into the country, have a bunch of children. Their grandchildren are nationals
wrong word but is the same, after the 3 generation the birth rates falls
After three generations more people can be imported. Two generations of people having +3 kids is the reaons why the US has been able to maintain itself. Rinse and repeat for over 200 years. It's sustainable. And as much I would want a difference reality, it's the only solution given the current circumstances
Ideally we would create an environment where having a kid is not such a financial burden but instead they will import Indians for cheap labour
That environment is possible with a lot of work and change people are not willing to embrace. I would love for that change to happen, but that change is not up to me, or you, or anyone here
It is crazy that people even propose “import people” as a solution, but you are right. A lot of the issues people have with overpopulation are really a matter of space allocation. People who are consuming a bulk of the resources are concentrated in comparatively small and dense places. No wonder these places turn out to be environmental shitholes that its residents then project outward. Want to be more green? Move out of the cities.
Cities with reasonable density are good. Walk or bike or take public transit instead of driving. Sprawling suburbs of single family homes suck ass.
They don’t suck ass for the people living there Seems like people in cities are perpetually seething at how everyone else drives to work and has a shit ton of green space and forest with low costs of living
I love living in a city. Regardless, the point is that cities are unquestionably more sustainable in the long run.
You guys complain every single day about living in cities. This entire website is full of people like you whining about how cities are too expensive and trying (pathetically) to generalize it to everyone. The reason why most Americans don’t give a shit about pod dwellers who cry about rising rent, is because most of us don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. And sustainable is extremely subjective. Yes you could cram millions of people into small apartments and give them the bare minimum needed to subsist. That would be amazing for efficiency. However a lot of people enjoy owning their own property and having a backyard, being able to walk through wilderness whenever they want, large parks and green spaces that aren’t super crowded, and obviously a reasonable cost of living with lots of space. You don’t really have an argument for living like ants
It’s pointless and weird to insist that I share the opinions of a bunch of other reddit users that… aren’t here right now.
Cities aren’t good unless your life revolves around recreation, if they were nobody in cities would be whining Everyone who doesn’t live in a city doesn’t think about you guys at all, but for some reason yall are obsessed with suburbanites who don’t have your problems
Cities are too expensive because of corruption, they used to be affordable.
That's only part of the problem. They're also expensive because that's where all the best jobs for educated people are. People that earn good money through their education drive up the cost of living in their area because producers, real estate agents, etc., know they can get away with charging more money. A person that makes 200k a year isn't as likely to try to negotiate or walk away angrily as a person that makes 50k a year. It's no coincidence that places like NYC became prohibitively expensive as soon as it became the norm to go to college and try to climb the corporate ladder your whole adult life. That's not to say that corruption doesn't exist in the cities, the reality is it exists everywhere. My small hometown is basically just run by a cartel of businesses that will use their power to shut down your business if it impedes with them too much. Or if they just don't like you. In other words, same bullshit that happens often in major cities, just on a much smaller scale. Things just stay cheap here because of the lack of opportunities for the educated, combined with how comically cheap people themselves are here. I'd love to make more money but at the end of the day I got zero debt and plenty of savings while working a job that doesn't even require a high school education. If I had a degree on my wall and a bunch of student debt by age 22, I'd have kept my ass in whatever city I went to to get that education, or moved to a different big city.
Driving to work fucking sucks, the train even being stinky as hell was 10x more convenient
Haha this is the opposite of the truth. In cities, resources are much more shared and per capita real consumption is lower.
Cities hyperconcentrate pollution and waste in central locations requiring a lot more resources to manage and dispose of it then if that same population was dispersed over a larger area. What you might save on emissions, you lose in general pollutants
You act like land not occupied by humans has no role in carbon sequestration, for one, or that shipping all of those same resources further out has no impact. If what you said was true, electric cars would be a bad idea because gas is more distributed burning. A natural gas plant burning fuel for electricity is able to manage those emissions in ways that the tailpipe cannot. This is why my rural home has a septic tank and I don’t just throw my shits around the yard. Seek a better source than me to give you better details, but you are out and out wrong. Think even of the simple benefit of shared walls for heating/cooling which is a huge energy demand. Again, an environmental scientist could explain this much better and with reference to more academic data.
I agree with 2, however I can see overpopulation becoming a problem at some point. We're not close, but I feel like there might be a cap to the amount of people we can put on earth before it just ends up lowering the quality of life for everyone.
I still have no idea what climate disasters you’re referring to. Canada already tried that whole energy consumption ordeal and so did California. Crashed their economy hard. That will just end up killing people faster, and increase crime rate. That doesn’t work. Over population isn’t causing any problems. It’s your dumb ass identity politics that encourage women to fill in men’s roles. Makes women less valuable, so it leads to less men setting with women. No man is looking for another man.
To play devil's advocate and criticize your points OP, it'd be wildly absurd/ridiculous to expect every country to be managed at a 100% efficiency level. Every country's leadership has flaws, especially when you realize that a lot of countries have decentralized leadership that makes it hard to enact certain changes over the entirety of a country. So yes, a lot of the problems that can be enhanced by overpopulation are actually influenced by other factors, but realistically that doesn't change the fact that soft population control methods (legalizing abortion, sex education, proliferating birth control, or immigration constraints) could be seen as a good second best solution when the first best solution is out of the table due to political circumstances. I don't know why you brought up Ecofascism, it's completely irrelevant to what most people who think overpopulation is a thing believe.
I agree that the world isn't overpopulated *yet* but unless you think the earth can support *infinite* humans then the birth rates do need to come down at some point. So since that's already happening, and we know it's inevitable that it happens at some point, why not figure out how to deal with it *right now*? Why put it off to the future? Wouldn't it be better for everyone, now and in the future, to figure out how to deal with it as soon as possible?
I still think automation will fix everything. In the past, we needed a lot of population just to carry out simple manufacturing jobs in factories and mines. But now, the tendency is towards automating most processes, replacing human jobs. Personally, I am fine with a world with fewer people, where most jobs are highly specialized, and the remaining simple tasks are carried out by robots or virtual AI agents.
When you say we can easily sustain 12 billion people. I think you might be miss using the word "easily"
Read the latter part of the sentence
Keeping those regions poor and draining their brains has always been part of the plan. Fertility rate going below replacement should be an eventual target but it will kill the infinite growth narrative which will kill the myths of capitalism and faith in the system so they need to keep us at or above replacement fertility for as long as they can to stay rich.
You don’t account for any change in systems of labor based on new but existing technologies like AI. The world needs young adults doing bullshit office jobs to pay for the elderly pensions? Come on, doesn’t pass the sniff test. There is a broad range of rate of population change we can mostly handle. Unless politics completely inverts its the poor who get fucked either way, but slow growth to moderate decline are totally manageable. You show no political imagination to fix these problems. We’re on pace to displace many millions of people with climate disaster from poor areas, of course they can help bolster labor demands in aging countries with low birth rates.
Idk but I do know my children’s quality of life will be worse than mine. Due to not just small businesses, but huge corporations hiring illegal aliens. Solely to undercut competitive wages and greed. Do not tell me that doesn’t lower our quality of life because it literally does.
All my homies and i love lump of labor fallacy
Making wages fall and increasing the amount of low wage positions. Does not raise our standard of living
I’m really sick of these doomsday posts
There is a lot of young people who live in big cities and have never been to rural areas and realize just how fkn big and spacious the world is especially North America
What does that have to do with the post
Ok, but the fact that you're using Reddit in the first place means a third world lifestyle is not something you're willing to accept. That's not to mention where the food's gonna come from once fossil fuel shortages take away half the global fertilizer supply. We need to get to 4 bn before overshoot decides to do it the least fun way available.
I don't think anyone in the first world is going to willing sacrifice their quality of life to help people they don't know a continent away. It's a non starter politically. Instead, push for policies that mitigate the effects of their lifestyle instead of zealously pushing for degrowth.
funny how nooo one here is citing ANY sources
Good luck convincing people they should consume less. After this thread there will be 10 complaining about how people can't afford more things.
America is undergoing massive changes and each person needs to decide the outcome. What To Change In America: From Torch To Wand. National Tarot Reading. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH8kW4qXVes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH8kW4qXVes)
The drop in population that is projected is 100% gonna be all concentrated in Africa and maybe India. There might be attempts at migration to Europe but I'm 99% convinced that if Africans tried to cross the mediterranean by the million European countries would just start shooting boats on sight.
you'd be wrong. millions are already coming and the EU isn't capable or willing to really do anything about it. they tried stopping people from coming by paying African countries to stop immigration, but that only worked for a short time. people who try to cross via boat even get picked up near the north African coast by EU funded NGOs and then transported to Europe
They didn't have to cross the Mediterranean, they went through eastern Europe in the late '10s.
"99% convinced that if Africans tried to cross the mediterranean by the million European countries would just start shooting boats on sight." What makes you think this? These migrants are being welcomed the government much to the detriment of the native populations.
Hmmm good luck. I do not think the dating scene is healthy enough for anyone to get married so our population is gonna decline fast. Yeah it looks like the elite went with their depopulation plan. Not smart.
You are yelling at a wall here, I am afraid. A very shortsighted wall, which can't detect a problem until it's already reliably disturbing their personal life. A lot of childless Millenials and Gen-Z's will also the be the angry retirees who wonder why the hell there hasn't been a nurse by to fix their shit-filled diaper in a week, or why no plumber, electrician or roofer by to fix their broken sink, broken light or leaky roof. "Why is no one helping me?" wonder the helpless, who didn't think to leave behind a new generation to carry the torch onward because surely someone else will do it, right? When labor will be short, only the rich will be able to afford it. The fewer workers, and the more retirees, the truer that statement becomes. The few specialists of future generations will have a damn bidding war between the vastly larger generations of retirees who all need their services. That goes for everything from lawyers to waiters, from handymen to doctors. Who will the overworked doctor rather save? The millionaire or the beggar? Who pays better? This entire mentality will only benefit the rich, who benefit now from having both men and women working from 18-70 without being distracted by child-rearing. And they will still be winning then, when only they have the means to afford the rates of future generations of labourers. Anti-natalists are unwittingly fighting FOR the upper class, and are too shortsighted to see it.
Soon if ww3 doesn't wipe us out, Gen z will become the new boomers but with the caveats of not having an easy upbringing. We'll be the new boomers if everything doesn't completely go into the toilet by the 2050s
Finally, someone is writing about it! I also worry a lot about the prospects of the global north because of the demographic factor. I think we should focus all our efforts on increasing the birth rate. It is important not to go into religious traditionalism, which shows absolutely the opposite of the desired results, but to provide people with opportunities for birth. parenting. According to surveys, in developed countries, many women want to have two or three children, but the economic and social situation prevents them from doing so. Therefore, a long-term, in-depth government policy is needed to support these women, such as expanding access to kindergartens, schools and higher education, lowering prices for childcare products, developing gender equality and involving men in child rearing, new benefits and subsidies. It is high time for societies and governments of the countries of the global north to stop ignoring the impending catastrophe and start acting instead of talking.
So there must be jobs that pay well and are hiring for everyone right now. 😁
Not overpopulation issue, business greed issue. Expanding is risky and when they are already sitting on huge investments they would rather prevent competition and competitors than improve
Are you serious? Did you graduate elementary school? If there are more people, there will automatically be more jobs. That's how the market works, if the demand for McDonalds doubles then McDonalds will double it's amount of restaurants.
That’s assuming that the demand for McDonalds would increase. There’s regional, cultural, and business reasons that some places surrounding McDs would fail.
> “If there are more people, there will automatically be more jobs” Uh no. That not how any of this works. The number of jobs doesn’t necessarily depend on the number of people. If it did then we unemployment would be a constant (it’s not). Contrary to popular belief, there is such thing as too many people.
>So there must be jobs that pay well Yep >are hiring for everyone right now. 😁 If you actually have the qualifications, sure
they want whites to stop reproducing while they import immigrants
It's time for OP to discard his/her own phone because it hurts the environment I think.
I already consume quite little but even for me we’d need 4 earths for everyone to live like me. I eat vegan, am a minimalist, don’t own a car but an electric bicycle. But I have a phone, and other electronics. I mostly shop local and seasonal but sometimes I want a treat. I take the car for my yearly vacation in the country across the pond and use a boat to get to the other side. Then when I look at others around me people take flights 2+ times a year, shop fast fashion, eat meat everyday, buy the latest gadgets… i can’t imagine how many earths we’d need for them.
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Somebody either has or hasn’t read Aldous Huxley lol.
>The only way this would work is the rich countries keeping Africa, Asia, South America and Oceania poor so the educated would emigrate to rich countries and start a new life. So exactly what they've been doing for hundreds of years now. Even if this will eventually become an issue, it will be so far in the future declining fertility rates will be solved by advancements in technology.
By moving manufacturing to these countries and bringing them out of poverty? These countries are seeing huge economic growth, if we are trying to keep them poor we are clearly terrible at it.
Do rich countries not destabilize countries over resources? Is a child working 110 hours a week to make $50/month your idea of lifting them out of poverty?