You don't have to wait until the entire world has this opportunity before ringing the alarm. If population growth is going down in the areas where the ideas are worked on, namely the developed world, which it is, we should still worry.
The secret to America's success has always been immigration, whether by violent colonialism, accepting of refugees from persecution or war, or inviting talented people to become citizens.
Actually, no. Every few decades, American has mostly shut-down immigration for a few decades. The last opening was in 1965.
And immigration is a good way to help keep the population of developed countries growing. There really isn’t any reason why we can’t tap into the incredible human resources available in the world if we try.
1. “People in developed nations don’t breed due to stress, but meh we can just replace them” is a monstrous way to think.
2. You can’t import people as replacements above a certain rate, because it’s the culture of the developed nation which causes the success — and without maintaining that culture, the benefits cease.
How do you know it doesn't have a lot to do with having two oceans to protect it, and bunch of things that happened 400 years ago to federalize it and create what amounts to a massive economic union?
How do you know it isn't one of those things where a little bit of growth magnifies over time if not disrupted by war, just as what makes SF special is that a little bit of growth started there, and the concentration of intellectual and financial capital attracted more intellectual and financial capital?
Both of those explanations have nothing to do with a hand-wavey claim of "the culture."
And what do you mean that immigration is "a monstrous suggestion?" It sounds an awful lot like you're equating high rates of immigration with genocide. What on Earth is "monstrous" about immigrants? And why is that monstrous, but gentrification of SF by techies not monstrous?
Really, this comes across as generic nativism.
I do think discouraging thinking of humans as resources is a good thing, even if this has the potential side-effect of making things more difficult for immigrants.
I agree with that. There's a famous rant by a Canadian comic/media personality where he quotes a government slogan "People are our most precious resource" and points out that Canada's approach to "resources" is to clearcut timber and strip-mine minerals.
But we're talking about having enough population to maintain an economy of ideas. If we're talking about "There aren't enough people willing to work as flesh-robots in Amazon's warehouses, or if there are, they refuse to work in those conditions so we need desperate replacements from other countries" there's a whole different conversation to have, and it isn't really about declining populations, it's about things like living wages, labour standards, unionization, and recognition that the end-game is not competing with immigrants, it's competing with automation.
Considering Canada's history with Uranium mining I'm surprised that they didn't bring that into the fold as well - it's a delicate subject since a large amount of the costs of unsafe Uranium mining were born out by indigenous peoples, but for how few actual mines there were a lot of people have died from health complications.
Companies have actively been trying to make intellectual and/or creative work streamlined so they can reduce risk factors and swap out the old cog for the new one. They benefit from the increased competition so long as we don't unite against the status quo, which is also why automation is a potential disaster if we don't rethink our ways.
This is not to fight against skilled immigrants making an effort to keep things at peace while carving out their place, no. But we've seen this scenario unfold a few times now with different things, and it turns out companies tend to be the main benefactors at the cost of everyone else already in the market, and quite a few people entering the market. That cost should be transferred to the richest people, not to the working class with less and less breathing room to spare. Both have to be tackled at the same time.
An idea which was not present in the comment originally replied to, but OK.
Can you explain what you specifically mean by culture if it differs from an alignment of personal with social priorities?
2. This has been a popular theory among the far-right and white nationalists lately. But I’d be interested to see any evidence that immigration has a negative effect on society, because it sounds fundamentally racist and wrong to me.
But yeah, I get your point. The fact that we still rely on sweatshop imports proves there's something wrong with our society.