That is, what's currently being passed off as an immigration issue - in the USA, and Europe (e.g., Germany) - is ultimately an economic growth issue. With "native" births flat (or less), growth has to come from somewhere. The quick and simple solution is immigration. But, obviously, that's coming with baggage, at least for the proles. The economic elites continue to cash in.

Put another way, no one wants to be the next Japan. Capable but ultimately stagnant.

Note: Yes, I'm generalizing but the bottom line is, immigration in many countries is often a proxy for economic growth.

The empirical data doesn't support this. The nations with the strongest economies are also the nations with among the lowest birth rates, and it has been that way for decades. To highlight one specific example, China's birth rate fell even as its economy took off over the past 30 years. And they did not experience high rates of immigration either.

It's probably a short-term good to zero out your birthrate. That way you have tons of working age people who aren't busy being parents and can do economically useful labor.

But in forty years when those people get too old to work and there's no younger generation to replace them (and take care of them), you're gonna have a really bad time.

My hunch is that contraception is still new enough that countries like the US haven't quite reached the "have a really bad time" side of that curve, but we are fast approaching it. It's going to be rough in the US when all the Boomers retire and start consuming healthcare while there aren't enough young people paying into Social Security to support it.

Payroll taxes increase the effective tax burden on younger working families in their prime reproductive years, which means they can no longer afford to have the same number of kids, or to have kids as early. When younger workers are taxed, the less affordable it is to create new generations of younger workers, and fertility rates decrease.

The best thing the United States could do to address this would be to eliminate FICA \ self-employment taxes and fund social security out of a general income tax which taxed capital gains and dividends at the same rate as labor income. An even better solution would be fund it via a national real-estate property tax or national land value tax, and not to raise it from taxes on earnings at all, as Thomas Paine originally proposed in Agrarian Justice.

Now, I know and you probably know that it is actually run like a transfer program, where the payroll taxes from working people in 2018 are turned right around and sent out as checks to retired people in 2018.

But here's the thing: so are 401k's. The money you spend to buy investments in 2018 doesn't go into a vault; it is transferred to people who are selling investments... people like current retirees who are drawing down their 401k. And then when you're retired in 2048 (or whenever), and you're drawing down your 401k, you'll be getting your money transferred from people who are buying investments... people like younger workers building their nest egg.

Retirement programs are just collections of promises... that's all a financial asset is, a claim against future income. Social Security is a different kind of asset, but it still works fundamentally the same way; you pay into it while working, to create a claim against future payroll tax income when you're retired.

You're addressing a different, more specific question, which is "what will happen to a nation with a strong economy when their birth rate declines?" Answering this is more dependent on longitudinal data. It's fine if you think there's not enough data yet, although I'll point out that that should preclude you from making predictions too...

> It's going to be rough in the US when all the Boomers retire and start consuming healthcare while there aren't enough young people paying into Social Security to support it.

There is really nothing about Social Security that depends on a certain ratio of people. The only things that need to match are the intakes and outlays, in dollars. If a shrinking working population is accompanied by sufficient productivity growth, total economic output will continue to grow and Social Security will remain solvent.

I wouldn't worry about the Boomers specifically; they're already outnumbered about 2:1 by Gen X plus Millenials, and that ratio is growing as older Boomers start to pass away.

https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/rest.89.1.1...

But imagine that their population falls slowly, as automation increases their per-capita productivity. Imagine a future China with 1 million people, but the average person can produce 1,000x the economic value that the average person can today.

standard disclaimers about correlation not correlating with causation apply both ways.

What today may be a modest economic gain from unskilled worker immigration could quickly become a huge burden when many of these jobs go away.

Lowering coordination and transactional costs are factors too.

Gig & sharing economy leading to better allocation of capital & labor, leading to less stuff & work overall, leading to less economic activity (production & consumption, as currently measured).

For example, it's looking like we're going to have fewer cars per capita. A virtuous cycle of less inventory, greater density (less land for parking and roads), more mass transit, fewer miles traveled, and so on.

Unless that paradox where cheaper makes consumption rise kicks in.

So many variables, trends and countertrends, technology colliding with policy...

It's hard to figure out what's going on, much less guess what's next.

The OP is referring to their declining birth rates, paired with general xenophobia and anti immigrant sentiment.

As the average population gets older, they are faced with a smaller and smaller tax paying population and an increasing tax dependent population.

This will eventually lead to the death of retirement funds and an aging country that can't afford to have retirees.

Higher average age also makes old people the main voting bloc and forces the country to prioritize funding towards younger populations needs, as they have increasing lower representation.

The country's general productivity will also drop as even if older people come out of retirement, they can't match the efficiency and vigor of a young work force.

It is an all out impending disaster.

It is increasingly infuriating to watch people stall any debate by slandering those with legitimate concerns over immigration as xenophobes.

One can be wary of, for example, the increased infrastructural strain of, say, large numbers of uneducated third worlders entering a country suddenly, without being hostile to or fearful of their culture.

As somebody who is passionately pro-immigrant, I haven't been shy of having this conversation with people. The whole issue of "infrastructural strain" is difficult to address in a way that feels non-adversarial, because the facts only live on one side of the issue. Every credible study has shown that immigrants are net contributors to the economy contributing far more to the tax base (and hence to the infrastructure) than they take in terms of services; the only counter to that is vague tabloid anecdotes that are quite transparently racist and xenophobic.

But facts like this do not matter in such a debate; people have an emotional discomfort with immigrants. When pressed, the defense ranges from "Fine, I don't have any facts to support beliefs; that's just what I believe" to -- perhaps more honestly? -- stories of how immigrants "aren't like us," how they "swarm like cockroaches", and "breed like vermin", etc. (Those last two from a couple of prominent Brexiteers whom I'd started the evening legitimately intending to befriend. Things got real honest after the second pint.)

So can one have "legitimate concerns" about "the increased infrastructural strain of, say, large numbers of uneducated third worlders entering a country suddenly" without being a xenophobe? In my experience -- and really, I've wrestled with this -- no. Not any more than one can have "legitimate concerns about conspiracies of international Zionist bankers" without being a raving anti-semite. In both cases, straight-up lies are being used to provide a cover of legitimacy for attitudes that are unquestionably xenophobic, and often virulently so.

But all of those studies were conducted in countries with regulated borders. Your entire argument is flawed and, ironically, emotionally biased. I have no personal attachment to immigration either way, there is a rational argument to be made here: would a billion uneducated third worlders dumped on a country like England over the span of a month overwhelm the infrastructure?A million? Look at NYC, for example. Our subways are packed at rush our already. Same with Japan. Rationally, there is obviously some rate of influx that a city cannot accommodate, and this rate is probably not impossible in today's world.

Your friends are terrible examples.

I know it's not a scientific experiment, but the latest French interior minister (Gérard Collomb) recently resigned while giving a very strong warning about the situation of the relations between the 'native' and 'foreign' french; here is a translated quote;

> "Mister the Prime minister, I went in all those neighbourhoods, -- (lists foreign origin majority neighbourhoods) -- The situation is dire and that is where a democratic re-conquest is needed, as in those neighbourhood the law of the strongest, the law of cartels, the law of radical islam, have taken the place of democracy. We need to bring back security in those neighbourhoods, (..) but we need a global vision car if now we live side by side, i am afraid tomorrow we live against each other. We are facing immense problems. (...) We need to stop immigration in those neighbourhoods or the situation will become completely out of control"

The former french president echoed similar concerns. They are both socialist and not known to be racists. Maybe the situation is specific to France, but it doesn't it show that there can be legitimate concerns and downside about immigration ?

However, there can be no denying that Japan taken in aggregate, is xenophobic. They have made it difficult to emmigrate for even skilled workers, and even native born descendants of Asian immigrants from Korea, China, Taiwan, etc sometimes experience discrimination in Japan.

There is a defensiveness and sometimes hostility about cultural differences with foreigners and descendants of immigrants in Japan. It's not as bad with the younger generations but it's still there and has been the basis from which their immigration policy has arisen.

If I lean towards one side of an issue (e.g. unchecked immigration policies are a net negative to first world societies) then the onus is not on me to present both sides. That does not make me a xenophobe.

>can be interpreted as pushing xenophobia Only when there is social pressure to interpret things in such a way.

No matter how you slice it, automatically associating anti immigration sentiment with xenophobia is dishonest conflation.

That is correct, unless the group in question is saying "we don't want immigrants because they are intrinsically worse then us". In Japan's case, lookat the example of ethnic Koreans changing their names to hide the fact, despite south korea being an industralized economy on par with Japan in terms of technology and prosperity. It is difficult to see a reason why they would discriminate against Koreans for any reason based on actual performance of their people and seems to show that it is in fact xenophobia

The idea that immigration causes economic harm is contradicted by the tendency of business organizations and unions to favor it.

Of course, no one is saying they are. But if immigration is unregulated, a sizable majority of them likely will be, because living conditions are vastly superior in the U.S. to most poor areas in South America. We already see this in illegal migrations. These aren't doctors and scientists, for the most part.

>or that immigrants measurably strain infrastructures (they don't) More vehicles don't increase wear on roads? More people don't increase demand for emergency services? Schools have unlimited capacity for children? How are you going to pay for all of this without at a minimum limiting the immigration rate? Our infrastructure is already crumbling. And we have enough impoverished citizens to put to work.

>The idea that immigration causes economic harm is contradicted by the tendency of business organizations and unions to favor it.

Well of course businesses favor cheap labor, and labor unions favor more bodies. What good is it for locals when businesses hire immigrants who are willing to work for free? Isn't it kind of a middle finger to people who built their lives here too, to force them to effectively lower their standard of living because a competitor is used to living on a dirt floor?

In spite of benefits, unchecked immigration does not come without cost. Regulations are absolutely necessary for preserving the standards of living of the state. None of this is xenophobia.

I'm surprised we didn't get a line about carrying disease too.

In our current system, growth == prosperity, generally. But, if you believe Climate Science – then, well, this model is unsustainable. It needs tweaks at minimum (carbon tax, etc), and a total reimagining at best (e.g., Star Trek, The Next Generation.)

That said, I find Stewart Brand's argument compelling that a collapsing population can spell environmental disaster, because in a strained economy, protecting the environment is the last thing on people's minds. They will burn the cheapest, most accessible sources of energy available.

But perhaps the real story is income inequality. The working class is told the economy most keep growing for their benefit – yet, since the 1970s, wages have been relatively flat. America, in particular, has seen enormous growth over the past half-century (even if it has slowed in recent decades) – yet that money has concentrated itself into a very small number of pockets.

Read Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", which everyone interested in serious money has already read. One of his points is that prosperity for the little guy comes almost entirely from growth. In the absence of growth, money tends to flow toward those who already have it, in the form of rents. ("Rent", in the economic sense, includes any passive asset which generates revenue.)

Economists who think of this sort of thing, of course, are basically frauds. They never mention 'externalities' like the country descending into a vicious civil war because you imported new people who aren't compatible with the ones who were there before. MUH GDP

But a major thing that matters is "size of the economy" (not per capita) vs. "government expenses" (proportional to number of retirees). If you increased the population by importing a slew of retirees, that would be highly counterproductive. If you increased it by adding a lot of young working people, you raise the per-capita productivity because then a higher percentage of the population is productive workers.

This kind of thinking is just seems like an attempt to optimize a metric.

Say I add 10 million people to a country, each of whom make a dollar a day. We could say the country's GDP has grown, but in reality I'd say the country's poverty problem has simply swelled.

What the article is pointing out is that "somewhere" is not going to be able to sustainably make population donations anymore, as those countries industrialize too and their fertility rates fall as well -- which is already happening.

We may need to start looking at policies to get the domestic fertility rate back to the population replacement rate: Free childcare, more generous dependent child tax deductions, etc.

Huh? I would LOVE to be the next Japan, as opposed to the next South Africa, Israel, India, Philippines, or Brazil.

Because with the massive demographic changes caused by immigration into Europe, they are ensuring unending ethnic conflict. The best they can hope for is that the different people can carve out their own enclaves and leave each other alone, only having small wars flare up occasionally.

The problems that Japan is facing are a BLESSING compared to the rest of the 1st world.

Nobody talks about the upsides of Japan's population decline. Japan is going to experience a major redistribution of wealth, as fewer people inherit more things. Land that was locked up for centuries is going to be sold to new people. Housing will become more affordable. Already, the chronic crowding is becoming less of a problem, as Japan has essentially "finished" their major infrastructure, and there are no new plans to build any new train lines or anything like that.

Something like 30% of our jobs are going to be eliminated in the next 20 years as self driving vehicles are rolled out. Even if immigration were cut to 0, we are still facing a work crisis regardless.

Does any nation really need any more unskilled or semi-skilled labor to grow? Check out this new Japanese drywalling robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sUJtl1V8A

The Japanese are embracing this as an opportunity to improve automation and benefit from the challenge.

Countries like Italy and Hungry are rolling out programs to offer financial incentives to people that have more children: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36297177

These are very solvable problems, but many governments are only making things worse.

Western Europe doesn't have Foxconn jobs, agriculture is heavily mechanised and you need to train for 4 years to become a basic nurse.

Ethnic conflict doesn't have to be unending. Often one side wins.

In many ways, falling fertility rates are a success story.

There are too many people on the planet already, and most of them don't have a good quality of life. And more importantly, there isn't a way of significantly improving it (with today's technology and social/ethics understanding)

I feel the reaction many people have about population decline in NA and EU is understandable (one may or may not share the concern though, that's personal): your tribe is making less children, the others do no seem to care. And they will replace your tribe in the future if you don't make children, it's a game of numbers in the end.

NA and EU count very little in the great scheme of things from a population perspective [1] anyway - there are 5+ billion people in Asia and Africa (many in places that will be devastated by global warming), and those people aren't going to stop making babies any time soon. Are we going to force them to stop? How?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File:P...

Actually, in Asia they are mostly stopping https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate India is 2.5ish already, China is below 2

Yes, there is reason to worry about decline and population replacement, at the same time, numbers are not all there is (especially when people are unhappy).

> And more importantly, there isn't a way of significantly improving it (with today's technology and social/ethics understanding) Sources? Read Factfulness; you’ll be surprised at just how far of reality your view is!

Until they fall too low.

A century ago, the earth's population was two billion people.

If you really wanted to get to 2 billion people, better to do it over a thousand years than a hundred. But is that actually good for anything? Having a hundred billion people would probably be problematic, but we seem to be doing alright with 7.5 (once we stop burning oil).

So one way to keep or raise the standard of living for everyone is to have fewer people consuming resources for it. The most humane way is voluntarily not creating new kids and hoping that this helps quickly enough.

If you expect them all to be buying coffee pods every day and non-repairable epoxied electronics, sure. But is it really that much worse of a lifestyle if your coffee comes from a five pound bag instead of a half ounce pod and your computer comes with a battery that can be removed, recycled and replaced rather than having to buy a whole new computer every time?

> So one way to keep or raise the standard of living for everyone is to have fewer people consuming resources for it. The most humane way is voluntarily not creating new kids and hoping that this helps quickly enough.

It's a bad way for a number of reasons. It creates all the usual problems with population decline and a declining ratio of productive workers to retirees. It takes an entire generation to do anything at all which means it can't help any of the people who are currently alive (whereas things like repairability and renewable energy that can help us can equally help our children). It increases wealth inequality because without intervention the fertility rates are lower in wealthier regions, compounding their advantage by distributing their parents' affluence over a smaller number of children. Childless affluent people also have terrible incentives to mortgage the future of others' children for present-day benefits, and they have disproportionate resources and influence because they're not spending their wealth and time raising the next generation, so increasing the number of such people is quite problematic.

Adoption (providing care for children that are already there), education (providing a better future for children that are not your own), foreign aid (providing a future for children that live in poor regions) are all ways to raise the next generation without contributing to the population count.

The [optimal] population size is directly linked to the current level of technology. If it feels like humans would be better with fewer population it only means that our technology and resource utilization skills lag behind and the solution should be to advance in technology/management, not reduce population.

(Population x Consumption x Efficiency) / Resources

We can either all consume far less, or there can be less of us. I would rather have half as many people living a 2x more efficient and 4x more luxiourous lifestyle in 2100 than twice as many people fighting for water and arable land.

No sane person wants #2. So if there is a natural/cultural shift that is moving toward depopulation that's a huge win because the other options are doing something similar to China's previous one child policy or some other method of forcing or providing incentives to have fewer children.

As long as society is aware of the trend we can plan accordingly. Demographically, we'll be looking more like Japan, but I don't necessarily see the intrinsic harm in that. The planet has a fixed mass and fixed resources. We can't keep playing this game of "infinite growth forever!" in every aspect of the economy. As the saying goes, "that which cannot continue, will not continue."

we've had a bit of practise over the past handful of decades since the industrial revolution of trying to figure out how to have a roughly stable society under conditions of economic and population growth, perhaps a lot of those rules of thumb need to be thrown-out and rethought

If we’d go back to the Stone Age the climate change problem would solve itself within 100 years.

If CO2 weren’t bad for the environment the climate change problem would solve itself within 100 years.

If economic activity didn’t produce negative externalities the climate change problem would solve itself within 100 years.

Heck, if a giant magic wand were waved around strong enough we might get it solved in 4 days!

Personally, I don't believe there is such thing as overpopulation. There is ineffective utilization of resources and poor management which can be viewed as inability to adapt. Ancient cities couldn't grow beyond 100K population because they didn't have sewers. Once sewers became widespread, major cities hit 1 mln in just a few centuries. I believe the Earth can host many more people than it does now if resources and space are utilized efficiently and human morale is high.

Do you not believe the planet has a finite size? Because those two things go together.

So my point stands -- the problem of overpopulation is not real as long as humans can adapt technologically, environmentally, and socially. The Earth is a limited space only as long as humans don't have the technology to expand habitable space above (and below) the surface. And above the surface only the sky is the limit. Literally :)

What we can do to reduce population? Education. Worrying about poor people in poor countries having more babies? Educate them and help them to get a proper job - problem solved.

The implication are clear: anything other than GROWTH is taboo.

Most rich countries pension systems depend on sufficient workers to pay for pensioners.

How many rich countries are running a surplus this year in a non-recession year.

In 20 or 30 years with far fewer income earners per pensioner how will it look.

A better and stable system is where generation i pays for generation i.

https://medium.com/@ryandelongpre/how-liberals-are-breeding-...

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

> GBD 2017 is disturbing. Not only do the amalgamated global figures show a worrying slowdown in progress but the more granular data unearths exactly how patchy progress has been. GBD 2017 is a reminder that, without vigilance and constant effort, progress can easily be reversed. But the GBD is also an encouragement to think differently in this time of crisis. By cataloguing inequalities in health-care delivery and patterns of disease geography, this iteration of the GBD presents an opportunity to move away from the generic application of UHC and towards a more tailored precision approach to UHC. GBD 2017 should be an electric shock, galvanising national governments and international agencies not only to redouble their efforts to avoid the imminent loss of hard-won gains but also to adopt a fresh approach to growing threats.

The world hit "peak baby" this year. The number of babies born per year worldwide is now declining. The US hit peak baby in 2016. Japan hit peak baby in 1981. Japan, outside of Tokyo and Osaka, is emptying out.

On the rising temperature front, some areas of the world are becoming uninhabitable. Some of those areas near the equator have a lot of people in them.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/psychological-differences-be...

[2] This bias is well known by the way, this is not a conservative talking point. See Jonathan Haidt's talks on this point, and why this bias is bad for society.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_population_growth [2] https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Haredi-population-tops-one...

Fewer people means fewer pollutants. (Maybe the single biggest factor.) There will be other ramifications (like economic change), but for the planet it's got to be a positive.

As bad as we are, eventually most species larger than a mouse will get wiped out anyway. The only thing standing between that and inevitability is us.

Let’s consider fertility using this lens:

1) Fertility rate is heritable, 2) Fertility rates vary from person to person, and 3) People with higher fertility have higher reproductive success (it’s almost a tautology).

I’ll let you work out the implications.

No, it doesn’t. The environment we inhabit has changed drastically in the last 150 years. We were well adapted to the environment we lived in 150 years ago. We are poorly adapted to the environment which we live in now. That will change as evolution does its thing.

For a glance into the future, take a look at the habits and lifestyles of people with lots of children. There is an interesting bi-mods distribution, btw.

Their adaptations will spread. And, thus, we shall evolve.

Societal criminalization of sex with people less than 18 or 17 of old has definitely reduced birth rates.

8 year olds used to find gainful employment. By 15 or 16, these "children" were relatively self sufficient. Now, such jobs are called child labor.

Compulsory mass schooling has also pushed the average child bearing age to 30s.

Health:

Slashing infantile mortality rates has also stopped people from hedging with 5 or more children.

I don't how people perceived contraceptives in the past. However, the lowly condom has prevented lots of pregnancy.

Financial:

Cost of raising a child has sky rocketed. Child birth cost is just crazy. Cost of schooling / rearing - live time cost of a child is something people now seriously debated before giving birth. And having to change houses, and cars to accommodate the growing family is also a thing.

In undeveloped countries with poor health care, low education, child care... high birth rates is still common.

Japan 2d partners:

What's up with that country? Seems like they just became uninterested in actually having sex with actual human beings.

If having sex with animals is bestiality; having sex with dead people is necrophilia; what is sex with 2d anime girls?

To add to this (and because of the education bubble making higher education effectively compulsory), children aren't self-sufficient until they're 23-25. So the 15-20 years of relative freedom to live one's life at a self-sufficient stage (assuming children are had at 30-35 years of age) has narrowed down to 5-10.

There's been some creeping ageism (because of the lack of maturity that self-sufficiency and responsibility normally cultivates) which has made the problem even worse.

1958 was a record year for teenage pregnancies, and it's not hard to see why- you were guaranteed a job that paid the bills straight out of high school.

>Japan 2d partners: What's up with that country?

Massively inflated working hours. Women don't find it worthwhile to keep a partner who is only at home one day a week and emotionally available for even a fraction of that time, to speak nothing of the shrinking dating pool (since why would anyone forced to go through the absolutely insane education culture there suddenly give all that up at 25-30 to have a family?).

Look at Mr. overachiever over here, moving out at 25.

In countries where children can be trusted with the responsibility of doing something economically useful, birth rates continue to be high.

No, the cost hasn’t risen much. People are just buying a standard of living for their children that didn’t exist for any human alive 150 years ago. It’s an important difference.

The article contains a random quote from some woman who claims she couldn't go on holiday if she had a second child. That's clearly nonsense, of course they could go on holiday if they had a second child. Maybe she'd have to stay in the UK instead of going abroad, but that's still a holiday. Likewise her view was that she wanted to buy her daughter anything she wanted and to never have to say no: that's a choice and not even necessarily a good one.

That’s just horrible parenting.

Some would say it's the pinnacle of the society of the spectacle, in the pamphlet of the same name, Debort begins it with:

>But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.

(Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity)

Perhaps that's more relevant now in late capitalism than it was in Feuerbach's time, or maybe just in a different way. There's amazing work done inside and outside Japan on the relationship between reality and fiction, a topic which Japan has confronted in a remarkably different way to "the West" - and comes into play with the distinct ability in Japan to enjoy fiction without its real world equivalent, and to be satisfied with that much. 2D wives and the lolicon phenomenon seem to be good examples. As much as we like to talk about media normalizing the events depicted, Japan bravely (and empirically) stands in the face of it all when it comes to anime and manga.

Legal. The others are not (and harmful, although biologists have argued about bestiality). Its unfortunate but people are free individuals. Even in Japan citizens are not particularly concerned about what is good for the nation. Can't force people to have babies. Which is probably a good thing. Nobody wants to be an unwanted child.

We have plenty of babies! The 3rd world is pumping them out like an assembly line.

If you want more taxpayers, just import those people who want to move into your nation and give them citizenship.

Perfect storm for economic development by the numbers:

* Higher birth rate * Overpopulation * War

Nothing improves employment stats like a draft!

This is why people who govern based on economic metrics like this are dangerous fools and should be booted from any office with authority.

If the human norm was to be fit as a fiddle until age 85 and then suddenly drop dead for some reason, then an aging population isn't anything to worry about. This worries people because it means people need to keep working even as their health and energy levels are expected to decline, it's problematic for a shrinking workforce to service the obligation of Social Security and similar programs, etc.

If we don't successfully plan for the consequences, those consequences are more likely to turn into drama, such as government bankruptcy or suddenly de-funding (or reducing funding for) certain programs for people ill-equipped to adapt (because they are old and their health is failing), etc.

I don’t think the desire for companionship and parenthood goes away if you replace one form of sex-with-yourself with some other form of sex-with-yourself.

I will admit that later in life childbearing has an effect on total fertility, but I think that ship sailed with effective birth control.

https://jacobitemag.com/2018/04/24/uncanny-vulvas/

Strong correlation.

Can we please have a full-tilt space race to get an out of solar system backup.

It has other benefits, of course, but it isn't a solution in this case.

I meet lots of people in their seventies. There are more of them every day. The majority would be in serious trouble if social security were taken away from them. (If the racists have their way with respect to immigration, change that to will be, when.)

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-sperm/sperm-count-...

The cause and effect are obvious to anyone w/ two brain cells.

And just to show its all for the almighty dollar, millions of dollars are pumped into studies/research of this phenomenon only to avoid the elephants in the room. We call this modern society where we pretend to not know why things are the way they are. Society optimizes for certain things like profit above all else and there are a slew of negative outcomes or things that are harmed as a result.

Why would someone have a kid in the current environment? This process is pushed out to someone who either is quite wealthy and has no impact or is quite poor and is uncaring of the impact. The middle is hallowed out. It's why from anywhere from the first world EU to the US there is a big push for immigration. That too is steeped in economic factors and has little to do w/ a genuine interest in helping people. Instead of fixing core societal problems, the powers that be deem it easier to just pave over the domestic populous with new-comers who would willingly tolerate such conditions and birth new workers into the fold. The middle core of the population deems it ridiculous to have kids. The number crunchers see this as an impact to their precious economic models... and thus comes the political push to import people from places in the world who have kids in far more impoverished conditions and see 1st world countries as a step up.

Not sure how this comment will go here but that's just the plain reality. A reality people like to play pretend they don't know exists. A reality people make hordes of money to ignore and further. Humanity will pay a hefty price in the years to come for these stupid games we play. Historically, various reckonings have occurred when civilizations and empires play these stupid games. Then the cycle resets and is born again only to arrive at the same juncture when people stray far enough from sound principals.

Previously parents could obtain a house, finances for children and still be able to afford a decent quality of living in their early 20s. Middle class kids have seen what their parents obtained and are finding it hard to similarly have a house over their head that is their own.

They're now all forced to take on student debt or were conditioned to do so and with the majority of decent paying jobs (above minimum wage) requiring a degree for just an interview. People are resentful of it all with knowing how their parents had it and opting out of having kids for something more affordable like a pet. It's really messed up if you think how future little Alice or Bob are now replaced with a pet.

I'm not really buying into the idea of tinder is part of the blame. People did the same dating crap in the previous generations but it wasn't so in your face like now. I just think it has become the idea, when you're middle class it isn't financially worth having a kid and where you will then be living a lower class lifestyle to support your children; saving for their future with knowing how expensive a higher education will be for them. I feel like if society doesn't fix this soon, whenever things get changed the previous generation will riot or be extremely negative for what they missed out on (were forced into living without).

Since you haven't presented any actual evidence, this sounds like storytelling. I'm sure it's a story that appeals to some demographic, given the upvotes, but that doesn't make it true. And insisting that it's obviously right to "anyone with two brain cells" definitely raises the skeptic flag for me.

The state of politics in this country is at trash tier levels.. Even more insane when you think of the trillions of dollars tied up in this circus and what it could do for American society if it was actually put to good use.

I see this as a system that started off with good intentions, order, and promise that eventually just gets ran down with clowns. Interestingly, a good number of 1st world countries have governance of similar characteristics right now. It's like they lost the narrative as to what they should be doing so just engage in a soap opera on a day to day basis to keep up appearances.. Meanwhile squandering trillions of dollars of tax payer money.

It's not "capitalism" turning young people to Tinder, which is dirt cheap. Capitalism as a system would much rather them start families and have lots of babies. Raising one kid yields far more purchases than a Tinder Plus subscription and a pack of prophylactics.

It is certainly not the "capitalism" strawman pushing aggressive gender politics. Most of these are based on Marxist studies, and closely associated with socialist and Marxist views and movements, that is - the opposite of capitalism.

In short, you invoked a bunch of very different problems with current American culture, bundled them together and strapped the collective label "capitalism" onto them, so now you have a single throat to cut to cure all that is ill with society. Unfortunately, it's not a single problem, and certainly does not have a single cause.

You're also ignoring agency completely. Nobody "pushed" people to use Tinder. They could keep dating seriously and getting married at 23 like they did in the 50s. They don't do that because they don't want to.

Did they claim that? They didn't even use the word capitalism once. They simply mentioned that greed is also a problem, and you talk about how they supposedly blame it all on capitalism, and how that's just a convenient strawman to slap down.

> Nobody "pushed" people to use Tinder.

Yeah, because that's a simplification of a whole lot of stuff. It can be unpacked, but why even bother when you're not working along, and just go by a silly literal interpretation and point out how silly that is.

> They don't do that because they don't want to.

That's the start of the discussion, the comment was talking about why that is. And you just end with "it's fine that it is so because it is so", basically.

That was described by the parent post. That's why the push for immigration can be traced back to increased capitalistic opportunity.

> It is certainly not the "capitalism" strawman pushing aggressive gender politics.

Again, he did not describe that.

> You're also ignoring agency completely

No, he described it in sweeping generalities eg Why would someone have a kid in the current environment? - a direct reference to the wealth-education of the middle class, where you're smart enough to maximize, but not able to ascend leveraging those choices.

The primary issue with the rant is how he starts with "You" to mean a nebulous powers-that-be and then asks questions and makes statements from the perspective of the middle class.

Read it again for clarity. There's nothing about his comment that hasn't been said before.

> You are pointing out some real problems

And yet.. you're trying to falsely refute them. Meanwhile, you present nothing but 'Yeah you pointed out some real problems ... but dude.. it's totally nothing"

Agency is framed by social context. Does someone have the same Agency in America as Canada, Europe, Sweden, Japan, China? Do they express the same cultural/social trends? What happens when a country like China bans certain social activity? What about your agency then? What happens when China bans certain apps that have no social value whatsoever and will lead to a more impoverished state? What happens when a country is steeped in nonsensical divisive idiocy vs a mature country that doesn't tolerate it socially? Agency means nothing without context. Cultures are pushed through mainstream media in the west. If you deny that, you have something cognitively wrong. Agency means nothing when you don't exercise it and live your life based on populist trends which is what the majority of people do. Thus the term : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_ideology

You began with : > You are pointing out some real problems

And went off to lala land. I'm not a Marxist. I'm not an anti-capitalist. I'm a realist. Reply with something better.

Observe that the first thing wikipedia says in the entries for both topics is, "Not to be confused with" the other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate

It turns out that while the dialects share roughly the same first definition ("(of animals and plants) the quality of being able to produce young or fruit:"), British English has a second definition: "(of land) the quality of producing a large number of good quality crops".

In that sense, I can see why they used the word. They sort of invented a new definition, "the quality of producing a large number of good quality humans."

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/ferti...

The title I submitted contains information: "Human fertility rates have fallen nearly 50% since 1950".

The weak original title ("'Remarkable' decline in fertility rates") contains no information.

When people extrapolate figures the way you did when rewriting a title, they often (usually?) get it wrong and make a claim that isn't supported by the article, or emphasize something that the article doesn't emphasize. On HN we try to let the content speak for itself. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's great, but you should do it in the comments, on a level playing field with other users.

Other users pointed out a legit reason not to use the article title: "fertility rate" is misleading. In that case we look for an alternative in the article itself. The subtitle was usable; that's common. If not, you can look for a good phrase in the opening paragraph, or possibly a photo caption. Occasionally it's necessary to dig something out of the middle of the text. But there's almost always an accurate and neutral phrase somewhere in the content that can serve as a title. When we change a title on HN, that's our search path for finding a different one. We avoid making up our own language as much as possible.

This is the relevant part of the article:

> In 1950, women were having an average of 4.7 children in their lifetime. The fertility rate all but halved to 2.4 children per woman by last year.

Note that the response you got was that others aren't reliable when extracting statistics from articles, so while you may be very reliable in this way, they can't trust users to do this and have had to draw a line.

I too hate clickbait (unless it's a headline I wrote, of course) but "remarkable" doesn't trigger me.

By some metrics, it's more clickbait than the original title.

The original title told how the rate has changed since 1950 (minus 50%), which is a piece of information.

Edit: People are asking for proof of this. Unfortunately, I can't prove a negative. It's impossible. I will say this, though:

There is a long history of people claiming that overpopulation will happen, resulting in mass starvation and shortages across the globe. It never happened.

If you predict overpopulation will happen, then name a number. Whether it be global population or the a year in the future, make an estimate. We'll see if you fair better than those in the past.

* That we have any idea what that capacity is.

* That we're anywhere near close to it. The most conservative estimates say we can handle 2.5 billion more.

People love their doom and gloom, but truthfully there is a lot of room left for human growth on this planet.

So maybe "carrying capacity" is not a myth, but "human overpopulation now" of the planet as a whole certainly is.

In the year 2018, you'd think people would be more focused on higher pursuits and inquiries about the Universe than just a joy ride from life to death and a maximization driven social trend to see how much money you can make and spend in a lifetime.

Anytime prior civilizations have forgotten about the fundamentals or considered themselves to be so technologically advanced to be beyond the impact of nature, there usually is a reckoning and that reckoning usually occurs at the peak of society when resources are being improperly dedicated to vanity and idiocy. There's a reason the hallmark structures of past civilizations are erected pretty close to their demise.

The Sun goes through cycles we have yet to fully understand. That alone could cause significant effects to the earth and its something we have zero control over. I'd think it would be a far better social culture to be focused on dedicating resources to exploring and studying the universe and fundamental nature therein than mining clown coins via bit flipping wasting energy/computing resources on a ponzi scheme. However, look how many billions are involved with this.. In a so called modern highly educated society.

As far as population goes, why does a human being feel entitled to have kids? Why are there so many poor individuals having kids? Why should we try to test the limit of nature's carrying capacity? Why do we continue to push the world population higher? We did we create economic models that depend on population growth? Again, a different kind of life from just popping out kids and enjoy the rides of life. A life of inquiry and the pursuit of understanding....

> There's a lot more room left for human growth on this planet

Until there's not or nature throws you a cyclical curve ball. See history for what the results are.

You're making my case for me. I'm sure there was some doom sayer in ancient Rome who predicted the world could never support more than 10 million people tops. Yet here we are at 7.7 billion and counting.

> In the year 2018, you'd think people would be more focused on higher pursuits [...]

You've clearly got some other agenda that you're trying to argue against. Feel free to try and tell everyone how they should live, but I'm not really interested. I was responding to claims of "overpopulation".

> Until there's not or nature throws you a cyclical curve ball. See history for what the results are.

Again, you're making my case for me. Sure plagues happened... I wouldn't be surprised if in 2200 some historian will look at the archives of messages like this and snicker you thought 7.7 billion was a lot. It also wouldn't shock me if once all the third world countries have birth control and health care that we find a natural equilibrium at 20-50 billion.

Hunter gatherers can't exist in density like modern agricultural/industrial societies.

People are not going to change their behavior; maybe the problem will fix itself if people simply dwindle as a result of their actions.

Nobody has to be killed; dropping fertility could do it.

E.g. if fertility goes to zero, the species is finished. The living specimens will live out their lives (many of those being medically prolonged) and then that's it. Billions to zero in about a century.

And people have and will change their behavior, in response to regulations and market forces. Let meat, electricity, gasoline, etc. reflect their true prices, incorporating carbon externalities, and people will respond to that by adjusting their behavior.

We don't need collective action, we just need political will.

Concern about overpopulation is an ancient topic. Particularly in China, where they introduced the one-child policy in 1979 which, according to the Chinese government, prevented an additional population growth of about 400 million until it was phased out in 2015.

Think about it like so: US carbon emissions are ~19 tons per person per year. Carbon offsets range wildly in price with $40 per ton a very conservative (high) estimate. So an American's carbon emissions "costs" < $1k a year. Even if this is off by a factor of 5, it is still small compared to an individual's productive capacity and earning potential.

If the US were to prioritize fighting climate change, then a larger and more powerful US economy would be a very good thing. Obviously that goes for other developed countries as well.

And speaking of Pinker ... looking forward to see him in person tonight here in Ghent, Belgium! He's coming for a discussion ("the night of the free thinker") :-)

You can keep my old Kia in exchange.

However when your old Kia dies and you go to replace it, you may find that an electric car is a better option.

The world easily can support 15 billion Hunter gatherer humans. But, just the number alive today may far beat over consumption limits they started living like a median American.

The world isn't going to "end", but it will become a very uncomfortable place to live in.

Rather I meant a (energy) consumption per capita that was similar to hunter gatherers. ie. people only lived to eat, have shelter and survive.

That we can support.

Everyone having cars, eating beef 7 days a week, massive amounts of waste and all the amenities that a median person in a developed country enjoys.....those things are out of reach.