Can Govt Debt Solve Fertility?
overcomingbias.com
overcomingbias.com
Our planet cannot support 10 billion people.
With automation and robots, we can support a population without an eternal underclass of serfs to throw their vitality into the meat grinder of capitalism.
Source needed
Food is not the limiting factor for population.
Parent post hints that X < 10B, but I'd wager many believe X < whatever we have now
It is obvious Earth could hold a very large human population - but not for very long, and not (for those people) very well
As resources like clean drinking water get more and more scarce, and climate change and the refugees it produces cause all of us to pack into smaller and smaller areas we'll need to start paying more and more attention to this to make sure that we're not destroying what resources we still have.
But then the people who own the robots won't feel special...
Instead they would line up for an overpriced apartment in London or a condo in Silicon Valley. A nice coast with view if they have the money.
It would not be easy to beat people into moving off Earth en masse, if they aren't willing to move out of metro area.
At an annual growth rate of 1%, starting from the present population in 3400 years the amount of mass we need for human bodies is equal to the combined mass of the Earth and the Moon.
In another 600 years and the mass we need for humans equals the mass of Jupiter.
From there it is only 700 years until we need the mass of the entire solar system, including the Sun, for human bodies.
From then it is about 2000 more years before we need the mass of the entire Milky Way galaxy, which is problematic because unless we have FTL travel we won't have been able to use any resources that are farther than 6700 light years from Earth, which is only a small fraction of the Milky Way.
Another 5600 years (about 12300 years from now) we need the mass of the observable universe.
Without FTL after about 12000 years at 1% annual growth the amount of space we could theoretically have access to (a sphere of radius 12000 light years around the Earth) does not have enough space to hold everybody. The volume of that sphere divided by the population would fall below 0.006 m^3, which is about how much volume a human body takes up. (And we can't actually pack people that densely because we are not actually a shape that packs well).
How about energy, rather than mass or space? If our energy needs grow by 1% per year in about 9300 years our annual energy consumption will be equal to the total energy of the Milky Way. By "total energy of the Milky Way" I mean what we could get if all of it were converted to energy (E=mc^2).
In 12000 years we'd need the energy of the entire freaking observable universe.
That people who have to fight each other just for clean water and food will focus on building guns and bombs instead of spaceships and won't have the time or resources to search for suitable planets.
Perhaps this is a satirical post?
A dog is happy to run through grass and you need not parental love to find your own happiness - I say this from experience
I will have children because I enjoy them, a shallow self interest to enjoy my life
Parental love is a big factor in folks lives / happiness.
The Amish lose a significant share of their children to secularism each epoch.
Climate change will force 1/3rd of the world's population out of Africa and into Europe/The Americas/South Asia within the next 30 years.
Unless you kill them at the border like the Saudi's are doing they will always still have incentive to get into your country by any means.
Only difference is you have the option to stop it.
This is blindingly obvious when he mentions social security obligations. Most people both pay into the social security system and they receive money out of it -- just at different times of their lives.
In other words, there isn't really a net debt at the societal level (you can quibble about foreign effects, but the relevant numbers there look very different). It is primarily a system of (re-)distribution.
The fact that the author doesn't seem to understand this fairly basic fact makes the entire argument suspect.
We do not owe the debt to ourselves. We are liable for the debt ourselves, directly and indirectly. We owe our debt to creditors, which can (and does) include other countries.
And obligations like social security are not debt. They may be funded by debt, but the obligation itself, being paid out to some US citizen, does not represent debt being paid off. Its payment is funded by debt, and in order to fund $100 of SS, we had to take $100 from someone's paycheck, or by issuing new debt, etc.
Gov debt? If we are worried about debt for any reason, we should just reduce the deficit. I'm old enough to remember when we were running surpluses--I actually read a WSJ article which was in near panic that by 2020, we would run out of 30-year treasury bills--how ever could Fannie Mae subsidize home mortgages!!
If we have a smaller population we are at a tactical disadvantage in inevitable wartime.
Lower birthrates are only acceptable if they are experienced equally. They are not.
You’d be very confused had you started Return of The King with no idea of Tolkien or the previous movies.
If women would be fertile up to 60, which is also something reasonable for almost every other mammal, we would be swimming in children even in developed countries and will have much more severe issues with overpopulation :)
Currently there is a huge evolutionary pressure towards having longer fertility period so it is bound to arrive in some quantity anyway.
They may hire a part time assistant for the first two years and it becomes pretty easy later on. Even single grannies of that age can host a kindergarden or school age kids for a prolonged period of time.
A lot of people even today are mostly raised by their grannies.
Do you want parents worrying about breaking hips when chasing kids around or playing catch?
Raising a child does not become easy after 2 years. It still requires the majority of your time and energy - energy that is in decreasing supply as you age.
You can play catch with your brother who is 15 years older and your sister who is 30 years older will haul you around.
Grannies raise children just fine, and if the family is complete they can do it indefinitely.