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Comment by yc-kraln | Hacker News Reader

Reading the article through and through, it seems that it is a given that the world's currently huge population should not be allowed to shrink, for the good of the economy.

This is an .. amazingly shortsighted take, especially when taking into consideration the resource (over-)utilization and flat-out exploitative extraction which was required just to get us this far. 1/13 of all people that have ever lived are alive right now. Maybe--just maybe--it's a good thing that the world's population will shrink over the coming decades, and quite possibly we need to disconnect our economies from unbounded growth while we're at it.

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This was also my main problem with the article (I submitted it!). However this does raise the issue that we haven't found the economic model which allows population to age/decline while maintaining living standards. I guess the answer is going to be "robots".

Honestly, the model where families stayed together longer and aging parents lived with their kids as they got older is probably the closest thing to sustainable out there.

The alternative is going to be a huge amount of caretaking career opportunities.

> Honestly, the model where families stayed together longer and aging parents lived with their kids as they got older is probably the closest thing to sustainable out there.

Paraphrasing a quote from memory: modern society took an integrated solution, then divided it to create two problems.

The original context was something about factory farms. In the past farms were diversified, with animals being raised next to crops, and their waste being easily used as fertilizer. Now it's all specialized and separate: animals being raised at such density that their waste is so concentrated that it can't practically be used for anything; and crops being raised away from animals so they need chemical fertilizers that have to be produced separately.

In multi-generational house, raising young kids is easier because the grandparents can do day care, and being old is easier because the younger generations can help you once you're infirm. Separate that out and you have to pay mega $$$ for all those needs.

I don't know if that is the answer either. I live in a society where kids are duty bound to provide care for their parents and grandparents as they age. The result is many single people pushing into their thirties who never got to live their own life. When their parents pass they risk living a life devoid of meaning and with nobody to look after themselves.

It’s also weird that the article starts with something caused by this trend which is either generally, or universally, considered good - fewer wars - and then, without comment or explanation (other than a throwaway line about the sound of children), postulates the trend is bad. The example he opens the article with (!) implies there’s some upside.

EDIT: I can name two - less war and a damper on climate change, especially if pausing to figure out solutions with a lower global population will lead to a larger, permanent, global “carrying capacity” later.

Thank you for saying this. I fully agree.

In order to keep everyone fed and happy, and sustainable, we need fewer everyones.

Starting with whom?

It seems like the unborn.

Indeed, but who has to be forced to have fewer children than they’d like?

I wish I could have afforded children when I was younger. I guess I’m one of those these elevated minds have decided should not get to do that their children can have a better life. I don’t actually take it personally, but that is what’s happening here from a perspective that isn’t their own.

I don’t think our problem is scarcity. I believe our problem is living in excess.

You're making a very valid point. In the US at least, incentives are low (not zero... There's the child tax credit, but how does that stack up against an economy where two-person households work 39.5 hours each to stay in place?)

You mean fetuses?

With increasing robot productivity level, those under that rising level/threshold will not be allowed to raise children, should they have them. Those children will be raised by people of the highest productivity percentile. /s

Starting with having fewer children, which appears to shady be happening via mostly-uncoerced process(1).

(1) Debatably. Plenty of room for disagreement. Point is, we don't have to remove anyone if we just don't replace them.

Starting with the elderly, as they naturally pass away by virtue of being human, and being old.

No-one is suggesting that we actively kill people.

The article is talking about attrition (rates of reproduction are declining - fewer people are being born and the people who are here naturally age & die)

From TFA: "The next stage of the demographic transition, after a drop in mortality, is a subsequent drop in fertility (although the relationship isn’t straightforward). Family sizes fall from 5 to 6 down towards replacement level. But then they drop further — and never come back. Indeed across most of the world, outside of sub-Saharan Africa, family sizes are still shrinking, and populations ageing."

I wasn’t asking “TFA”. This is a discussion, isn’t it?

The lawyers.

Not forcing people to be parents when they don’t want to be seems like a good place to start. Giving kids (heck, adults, too!) the resources they need to avoid becoming parents (if they so chose) seems like another.

Ending tax exemptions for religious organizations (who historically oppose the above and encourage having more children so as to grow their follower count) could be another easy place to start.

Definitely sounds like a good place to start if you’re any to simply reduce the number of people.

But is that really the problem, or just the most expedient solution to a subset of minds?

Starting with attrition, no one is saying we should kill people and you know it.

I didn't imply we should kill anyone. If that's your read into it, that's on you.

What I mean to highlight about what's stated above is that it's always someone else who shouldn't have children, or someone else who shouldn't exist so that you† and yours† have it better going forward.

You must understand how that is fundamentally problematic.

Kind of akin to "you should not drink water, so that I may not run short in the future".

It's especially ironic to me that these kinds of opinions tend to come from the wealthiest, most materially-excessive societies on the planet. God forbid we just gear down together.

† general, abstract 'you'

It really is the case that some people cannot be happy while there are too many other people -- they need to live on enormous properties and drive huge gas-guzzling trucks at high speeds without ever meeting any traffic or parking contention. The presence of neighbors genuinely diminishes their well-being. From both a geometry and energy perspective, not too many people can have this life.

But it's also the case that a lot of people are happy living in Manhattan and taking the subway. Billions more people could have this life if we allowed it.

I think people whose preferences are incompatible with the vast majority of their fellow humans being alive, need to take one for the team here.

No, it's the opposite. Happyness comes from wealth, more or less. Economists are pretty much in agreement on that and their case is strong. Wealth in turn is basically "population * technology", where "technology" is broadly defined and also depends somewhat on population.

If population goes down wealth goes down, life gets harder, people get less happy. Pretty simple. Consider that in a low population world it's probably not worth being a computer programmer, because the demand for your physical labor would be higher.

I think there may be a different way to think about it:

- the larger a society / civilization. The more specialty it can support

- reducing the size of a civilization can result in a reduction of specialty.

- this can result in a reduction of capacity and effectively inflation and a reduction in technology

There are definitely other factors as well, but GDP is almost directly correlated to population. A reduction in population is effective a civilizational contraction.

If we start seeing a general reduction in population above a certain threshold (idk what that is), you may even see cascading failures. Entire technology sectors are abandoned, etc. which could result in civilization collapse.

Arguably, this is similar to what happened in the Bronze Age when the interconnected trade networks failed. Similarly, during the dark ages.

Quite possibly we are seeing one now.

It's not the number of people, it's how they live. Big houses, big cars, commute.

  >  it's a good thing that the world's population will shrink

Not if it happens too fast. It may very well be unstoppable. In countries like South Korea every couple has one child these days. So its population is going 1/2. If they want to correct that and return to previous level, every couple formed among those children would have to bear 4 children.

They won't.

> It's not the number of people, it's how they live. Big houses, big cars, commute

There's a whole world outside of USA.

Malthusian economics is an intuitive and once-popular idea, that is pretty well discredited by the the world getting a lot more pleasant to live in since Industrial Revolution England. Do people really still believe it?

They do in certain parts of academia. The message that academic models fail to predict reality isn't a popular one, hence the failure to haven anything from the 70s Malthusians "limits to growth" models.

Yeah there are enough humans. We will reach an equilibrium point. Right now that looks to be between 8 and 10 billion and that's a hell of a lot of people on a increasling resource limited planet.

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