Hacker News Reader

Comment by tw04 | Hacker News Reader

>We can't live like native Americans with iPhones.

We probably could in the next 100 years through automation, massive reduction in population, and making things to last instead of making things to be replaced. Building a society whose values aren't based around never-ending growth.

We won't, but we could.

View on HN

There is a good anti-growth counter argument/observation in Homo Deus. Population growth necessitates economic growth otherwise you end up with unemployment which destabilizes society and can lead to war.

If you don't have population growth you still need economic growth to provide upward mobility to people at the bottom. Without growth you have a zero-sum game which again can lead to war.

Ideally improvements in efficiency or a shift values/culture can create a world where we can have economic growth without increasing the burden on the planet.

>If you don't have population growth you still need economic growth to provide upward mobility to people at the bottom. Without growth you have a zero-sum game which again can lead to war.

OR you reset wealth upon death. You don't necessarily need unlimited growth if you prevent wealth from pooling at the top.

What does that look like, in practice? You have a family of four, and the father dies suddenly. What happens to the house? The wife re-marries, dies, and the second husband re-marries. At what point is this 'reset' occurring? To whom does the wealth transfer when it is 'reset'?

population growth is starting to recede. Most 1st world countries are growing through immigration, with a birth rate that is too low to support our population.

We are trending towards having a smaller population in 100 years.

EU Birth rate over time: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1251516/crude-birth-rate...

US Birth rate is 1.7 kids per female.

massive reduction in population is a very ugly thing. There's basically no good way to do that.

Not necessarily. Demographics indicates that developed nations seem to have near-replacement birth rates. Anything less than 1 and you get exponential decay. So a small nudge will eventually lead to large reductions in population, but the rate of decline need not be severe.

There are of course issues that a lot of the economy is predicated on growth, but again, I'm actually pretty optimistic that markets and humans are pretty resilient and adaptable given enough warning and time.

I don't know, Japan seems to be doing OK. There are all sorts of problems that are going to eventually arise simply due to the fact that our economies are built on endless growth. But IF they embraced it and were able to advance automation fast enough, most of those would be overcome. Mainly: who will take care of the elderly.

HA part of that could be easily solved if suicide weren't so stigmatized. If everyone could just agree that once you're past the age of 80, once you get to a point of being infirm you just take a magic pill and peace out on your own terms, we'd be far better off as a species.

Raise the standard of living, and people have less babies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

From the article: "In a 1974 United Nations population conference in Bucharest, Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, illustrated this trend by stating 'Development is the best contraceptive.'"

True, although it'll eventually happen on its own, and it likely won't be on our terms.

Some decades with very old population, and many countries are headed in that direction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com